Page 40 of Crumbling Truth
Esther hummed quietly, swaying against me. “Remind me why I said no sleepovers?” she asked breathlessly.
Laughing against her skin, I laid a trail of kisses to her shoulder. “Because you’re not ready for that and we’re taking it slow?”
“Five or six orgasms doesn’t seem slow to me,” she replied.
“Oh?” I lifted my head. “Does that mean you lost count, sweetness?”
She wrinkled her nose at me. “It is possible, yes. You’re very talented, you know.”
I opened my mouth to reply, then caught sight of a swatch of red on her neck. “Did I do that?” I asked, mildly horrified at having marked her beautiful skin.
“It’s called beard burn, and yes.” She lifted one hand to gently scrape her fingernails through my beard. “I found it in various other sensitive places, too, but before you apologize, it was well worth it.”
“Was it?” I mused, stroking my fingers over the redness. “I could shave.”
“Don’t you dare,” she protested. “Nothing wrong with a little reminder.”
Pure heat streaked through me. I hooked one finger in the loose neckline of her sweatshirt and let my knuckle tease along her skin. She shivered under the caress.
“Maybe you should show me those other reminders, just in case they need some attention.”
She wrapped her arms around my waist. For about half a second, hope sprang, then she tipped her head up to me and grinned.
“No such luck, sidekick. We’ve got work to do.”
Chapter Sixteen
Esther
SeeingTheo’sfacefallwas almost enough to convince me to drag him into my bedroom and tear his clothes off, but we did, in fact, have plenty to get done. I kissed him once more, then let go of him to pull a French toast casserole out of the oven.
“First we eat,” I told him, “then we work. Then, if we get all of our work done, we get naked. Deal?”
A whoosh of breath left his lungs, but he nodded. “Given the right inducement, I can workveryhard, Esther, and I can’t think of any better reward.”
His enthusiasm for life was swiftly becoming one of my favorite things about him. He ate with gusto, vocalized his appreciation every step of the way, and was willing to assist whenever possible. As my temporary sous-chef, he was in charge of putting my color-coded cupcake papers into pans, handing me ingredients, and tasting any leftovers. He even tried his hand at frosting a few of the extras, though his rosettes were a little cockeyed.
While I was demonstrating the technique again, Sofia invited us for Thanksgiving dinner via a group text.
“Shit,” I whispered.
“This is exactly why we’re doing this. We’ll politely decline and tell her we’re spending the day together. Alone. In peace.”
I gestured for him to proceed, made him show me the response before he hit send, and then my phone lit up on the counter beside us while Theo’s stayed silent. It was a separate text from Sofia featuring some incredibly explicit dessert suggestions and ending in a string of fire and eggplant emojis.
Theo burst out laughing while I stared down at the screen in horror. “Even before you propositioned me, you did say she was going to make assumptions,” he reminded me.
“Yeah, I just…didn’t realize she’d make them right away. While you’re standing here. Or that she’d suggest such an off-label use of chocolate syrup.”
His voice rumbled against my ear as he leaned down to say, “I’d choose your homemade frosting over chocolate syrup any day. I know just where I’d put it.”
There was no hiding the shiver that worked its way through my body, not with him standing so close, so I stayed silent while he laughed softly and pressed a kiss to my temple. It took another minute for me to get my brain back into gear until it was time to break for lunch.
As we sat down at the table with sandwiches, my phone rang. Theo lifted a brow when I answered, repeated my “hello” a second time, and hung up.
“Spam?” he asked.
I wrinkled my nose. “I think my information must’ve ended up sold to some new list, I’ve been getting a lot more than usual lately.”
