Page 147
And it was fucking gutting me. This was what I had wanted. Not merely Charm in my bed or inside my home, but Charm being mine…out loud.
For one weekend, I could have it. I could stop measuring how badly it would hurt when Sunday arrived and take every fucking thing she had once been too afraid to give me home and burry it there.
Charm dipped a spoon into the charred salsa. “Taste.”
I opened my mouth, and she fed it to me. “Needs lime,” I said.
“You say everything needs lime.”
“Because everything does.”
She tasted it from the same spoon, considering the flavor. A streak of salsa remained near the corner of her mouth. My thumb moved over it.
Charm went still beneath my touch.
I could have wiped it away. Instead, I caught her waist and pulled her against me before licking the taste from the seam of her mouth. “I know something that tastes better.”
Heat filled her eyes. “Do you?”
“Had it last night.”
The spoon struck the counter.
Charm’s fingers tightened in my apron as my mouth covered hers. The kiss tasted like lime, smoke, and the woman I had spent fifteen months trying to forget. She opened immediately, letting my tongue sweep through her mouth while my hand traveled down the curve of her spine and closed around her ass.
Someone whistled. I didn’t give enough of a fuck to identify them.
Charm smiled against my mouth. “People are watching.”
My stomach dropped when I pulled back a fraction. “You worried?”
“No.” She laughed against my lips.
The answer changed the kiss. My hand tightened around her, dragging her onto the counter flush against the proof of exactly what her answer did to me. Charm made a quiet sound and rocked once against me before I caught her jaw.
“Keep doing that and this competition ends early.”
“Maybe I’m done cooking.”
“We haven’t plated.”
“You care about plating now?”
“I care about winning.”
Charm glanced between us. “I thought we already were.”
The words struck somewhere I refused to examine while standing in a ballroom full of witnesses.
I kissed her once more—shorter, harder— brought her back down and then turned her toward the counter with my hand remaining on her ass.
“Finish the fucking tacos, mami.”
“Yes, Chef.”
“Don’t start.”
Her laugh followed me back to the griddle.
