Page 46 of Change My Mind
Then started turning red. First up his neck and then across his cheeks. It looked even more obvious against his chef blacks.
“That is less to do with you and more to do with the fact that I have a never-ending need to be in control while we get this new menu set up. So, yeah, I’ve been working a lot of hours to make sure that it’s going well.”
“What a relief to learn that it’s because you are a control freak and not because you now know that I have a scar in the crease of my thigh from cutting myself while I was shaving my pubes off three hours before I planned to lose my virginity.”
Eli made a choked-off, spluttering sound that drew Kayla’s attention. She raised her eyebrows in amusement before entering whatever mode she had to be in at the start of aservice. His cheeks reddened further, and I felt oddly happy with myself.
It was nice to have his attention again.
Although I regretted bringing that night up. I had just about managed to convince myself I had moved on. It was just a thing that happened that was fun and, in the long run, meant nothing.
But his blush and the way that his eyes darkened just a little felt likesomething.
“That was why you were doing it?” he asked when he managed to compose himself again.
I frowned. “Why else would I have been doing it?”
He shrugged. “Personal preference, I guess.”
“At seventeen? No, I was definitely doing it then because I’d overheard enough of the boys in your year talking about how bush was disgusting. If I had known what palaver it was, I wouldn’t have done it.”
Eli’s cheeks were somehow getting redder, his eyes darkening further.
“But then you wouldn’t have that extra sensitive spot that I’ve been thinking about getting my mouth on again all week.”
He clapped a hand over his mouth, a quick flash of panic in his eyes.
“You know you’d have to stop working doubles for that chance, right?” I teased.
Having an ‘again’ with Eli was even dumber than having a ‘just once’ with Eli. I actually wanted him to stop working doubles because somewhere beneath the blush and the lust-darkened irises, he looked exhausted. The purple under his eyes made him look like he’d been in a fight.
Eli nodded and rolled his lips together. “Can we discuss this later? I don’t think a kitchen moments before service starts is a good place for this talk. We should give it the time and space it deserves.”
“You’re right. We’ll talk when you get home. I’ll be in a shared living space.”
One side of his mouth ticked up. “Yes, chef,” he said as he went back to his station.
Well, I didn’t hate him calling me that.
Twenty-Nine
ELI
Within a minute of service ending, I said thank you to Addie for all her help and was locked in the staff toilet with my hand wrapped around my half-hard cock. I stroked it roughly to full hardness, then spat in my hand. In less than a minute, I was coming into a handful of toilet paper that I almost forgot to grab in my near-fevered state.
When Addie hadn’t surfaced again after our afternoon rendezvous, I decided to give her space for the rest of the day.
It had somehow managed to slip my mind that, come Monday, I was due to work all possible hours to make sure the new menu was embedded across all staff seamlessly.
Meaning my chances of seeing Addie were slim.
Which was less than ideal, seeing as Addie and I clearly needed to have some kind of conversation now that we had changed the dynamic of our friendship completely.
But she was asleep when I woke up, and in her room (with the door closed) when I came home, and the idea of sending her a ‘we need to talk’ message sounded like a surefire wayto ruin her day. That, and I couldn’t rule out that she would reply with a ‘no, we don’t’ and then the two of us would live in a never-ending cycle of ignoring each other until I inevitably moved out.
Because the fact of the matter was, she hadn’t made an effort to talk to me either.
Seeing her in Vivi’s while I was in the middle of a minor crisis had thrown me for quite a loop.
