Page 59 of Falcon

“First, we eat. Then, we shower, because you, sir, are sweaty. Then, we can kiss more,” she says sweetly.

“How about we eat, then we can fool around on this counter here, then I can fuck you in the shower…then we can kiss more?” I yank her ass to the very edge of the counter.

“Depends on how good this French toast is, I suppose.” She scrunches her nose at me and gives a nonchalant shoulder shrug.

Christ, she’s perfect. I want to eat her alive.

“I’ll have you know, I have no doubt, one-hundred-percent, cocky as fuck confidence that this will be the best damn thing you’ve ever put in your mouth.”

She snickers, clearly catching the naughty joke that could be made there, so I continue, “Actually, I’ll add…for now.”

“For now?”

“Yeah, because once you suck my cock, that will take the top spot.”

She covers her mouth with her hand and holds in a laugh. I’m curious as to why, but it becomes crystal clear the minute the most adorable little snort echoes from her body, which only makes her laugh even harder.

“Did you just snort at me?” I ask with a huge grin.

She nods her head then laughs some more before speaking through giggles, “I’m sorry. I just, wow, you really said that, didn’t you?” Her cheeks are flushed red like she’s been outside on a crisp winter morning.

“I did, and clearly you found it amusing.” I cross my arms and lean against her counter.

“It was just so,” she pauses as if searching for the right word and she clearly finds it, “cheesy and it caught me off guard.”

“I’ll have you know, I pride myself on being the king of cheesy lines.”

“So you’re saying you’ve used that line before?”

“No, baby, I saved that one special. Just for you.” I tap the tip of her nose, but she catches my hand swiftly, lacing our fingers together.

“I’m honored.” She brings our linked hands to her lips and places a kiss to my knuckle. “And now I’m starving so…chop-chop.”

I crack the eggs into the bowl and begin to whisk. The click-clack of the metal hitting the sides of the glass almost creates a beat and suddenly, it morphs into the sound of skin slapping skin in a heated bout of fucking.

Jesus. She’s really getting to me.

“So who taught you to make this?” I hear her ask from beside me.

Yes. Talk about family. Good. It’ll keep me from getting a hard-on in the French toast batter.

“Well,” I add a dash of vanilla and stir it in, “my mom always let me help when she’d make it. I guess I just committed it to memory. As far as adding the chocolate chips, that’s all Nora.”

“She seems to adore you, you know? She talks about you a lot.”

“I hope so, the adore part at least. She was a pain in my ass growing up, but I didn’t want her to suffer. Kids in the system hardly ever pan out. It’s rough out there, so I took the hits—literally and figuratively—so she could have the best life I could manage. In the four years before I turned eighteen, we were lucky enough to end up in the same foster homes. I don’t know how we would have done it otherwise.”

“That must have been hard.” I hear her pulling the chocolate chips from the cabinet and placing them by the bowl.

“It wasn’t easy. That’s for sure, but it’s what I had to do.” My mind slips back to all the nights I went hungry so Nora could have dinner. The times I would take an extra fight or two so she could go on a field trip, or go have pizza with her friends. “I would hide any money I made from fights in a shoebox under my bed. I saved and saved and saved until I turned eighteen and could take her away from it all.”

I would have done anything for her.

I would have died for her, if that’s what it took to keep her on the straight and narrow.

And hell, I almost have a time or two.

“Okay, enough of the sad stuff. Let’s focus on the chocolate,” she says, with a nudge to my shoulder. She must have sensed the darkness shifting over my mood, and she wasn’t going to let that come between her and chocolate.

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