Reese flashed her a smile. Mati shoved aside thoughts of her family and picked up a package of fresh dried pasta.
“What if the meal is something we don’t like?” she asked.
Reese held three more bottles of wine aloft. “What if we don’t drink?”
David smirked. “There’s always room service if you don’t like it, and I can drink the wine all by myself.”
Mati clutched her bottle to her chest. “That won’t be necessary.”
“That’s what I thought,” David said, taking the bottles from Reese and laying them on their sides on top of the kitchen cabinets.
David unloaded the rest of his haul into various cabinets, arranging everything in the tiny spacejust so. When Reese went to get a glass of water, David nudged him aside, got it for him, kissed him soundly, and sent him back to the table adorably dazed.
Mati decided she was also thirsty.
She and Reese spent the afternoon trying to get some work done, but it was easily one of the least productive days in her professional life. David kept touching them, humming while he worked, and sometimes wiggling his hips in time to the tune he had going in his head. She’d defy anyone to focus in the face of all that.
He brought them ham and brie sandwiches on fresh crusty bread at noon and spent the early afternoon chopping and dicing and sautéing. The tiny apartment filled with the scents of garlic, parsley, and olive oil.
Mati had an unexpected pang of homesickness, something she hadn’t feltoncein the years since she’d moved out of her parents’ house. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the smell of good cooking percolating from the kitchen all day. These days, she rarely spent more than an hour before any meal at her parents’ house, knowing if she did, her father would expect her to be in the kitchen with her mom, rather than catching up with her brothers or playing with her nieces and nephews.
It wasn’t a coincidence that Mati couldn’t cook for shit.
David seemed perfectly happy working on his own. Mati spent most of an hour waiting for him to ask for her help, expecting that at some point he would insist she chop something for him or stir while he worked on something else. He didn’t, allowing her to wallow in the incredible aromas he was generating.
She considered offering to help, but Reese beat her to it. David accepted, and they ended up side-by-side at the tiny sink and countertop, chatting quietly.
Mati gave up any pretense of working in favor of enjoying the view. They were both beautiful, but in totally different ways. David was more heavily muscled, from his neck to his arms to his thighs. Just, thicker all over, but oddly graceful and at ease in a kitchen better suited for the Barbie Dream House than a man his size.
Reese was an inch taller, and much leaner, but his shoulders were just as broad and his movements more sinuous, his arms long and lithe as he reached for whatever he was to wash next. They were both winter-pale, but David’s skin held the deeper olive tones of his Mediterranean heritage. Reese’s chestnut hair looked red and curly next to David’s pin-straight dark brown.
David snatched something from Reese’s hands. “You aren’t allowed to help if you’re going to violate my vegetable scrubber.”
Reese burst into laughter. “You make it sound like I was going to shove it down my pants!”
David looked for all the world as if he’d had pearls, he would have clutched them.
Reese curled a wet fist into David’s t-shirt. “Don’t be mad, sweetheart,” he said in a low voice.
David’s eyes went dark, his outrage gone in a blink.
Reese towed him in, their lips barely touching, when an alarm went off on David’s phone.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
Reese drew his hand through the sudsy water in the sink and dabbed a ball of foam on the tip of David’s nose. “I’ll make it up to you later.”
With a frustrated huff, David silenced the timer and returned to the stove.
“Damn right you will,” he mumbled.
David glared at his laptop and cleaned out his mailbox with ruthless efficiency, leaving the email he’d been waiting for until last. Dinner was simmering on the stove, but it had a while yet and he couldn’t put this off any longer.
“Chance sent me the video,” he said at last.
Mati looked up from her screen. “The one from the house, you mean?”
“Yes. Do you want to watch it now?”
