Claire
Mason pokes through my cupboards—sadly, not a euphemism—and peruses the contents of my fridge, while I stand beside him and wring my hands, unsure if I’ve got the right things, or what I’ll do with them if I do. My nerve endings are singing a protest song, as every fiber of me wants to slam all the cupboard doors and drag him into the bedroom, but here we are, looking at my freakin’ groceries.
He pulls down a couple of cans of tomatoes. “Soup, then.”
“Soup?”
“I said it would be the first thing.”
“Did you?” Like I can remember anything he said. His presence is giving me the exact opposite of a clear head.
“I did. To keep you away from the canned stuff.” He makes an ew face that would make a second-grader proud, but still manages to be cute while doing it. Now that’s a skill.
He pulls a couple of little bottles out of the spice drawer, digs around in the produce drawer of my refrigerator and comes out with some more things. Snagging a knife from the magnetic strip beside the stove, he pulls me over to the long stretch of counter and sets a big white onion on a giant wooden cutting board in front of me.
“Dice,” he says, and moves away to maneuver a large pot out from the cabinet on the other side of the stove.
I do not dice the onion—partly because I’m mesmerized by how incredible his ass looks in those jeans, and partly because I don’t know how.
I mean, in theory, I know how to cut things with a sharp object. I’m not a complete moron. But what is dice, exactly? Big pieces? Small pieces? And isn’t there, like, a technique?
On cooking shows, the chef always just chop-chop-chops along without even looking, and I’ll be doing Rafe’s typing with stumps if I try that.
Mason sets the pot on the stove and looks back at me. “You’re not dicing.”
I nod and pick up the knife, then the onion. It’s about the size of a baseball.
Now, a baseball I would know what to do with. I have three brothers, after all. Maybe this is why I can’t cook!
No, wait. My brothers can cook. I’m just hopeless, is all.
I put the onion down on the cutting board and plan my approach. If I hold it like this, and cut it in half, then it won’t rock around and I’m less likely to cut off my fingers. Hey, I did learn something from bingeing Knives Out, after all.
I cut it in half, then turn that half and cut it in half the other way. The root end is all scraggly, so I cut that off and push it to the side. The other end looks a little wilty, so I discard that as well. Now I’ve got two big chunks. Tentatively, I start to pull the layers apart.
“You weren’t kidding,” Mason says.
Intent on what I was doing, I didn’t expect to hear his voice. Especially not so close; his mouth is right next to my ear. I jump, startled, and my pulse starts to flutter, from surprise, and from the feeling of his breath on my skin.
“I wasn’t kidding?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing to that onion,” he says, “but from the looks of things, neither do you. You gotta peel it before you chop it, and are you planning to cut up each layer individually?”
“Probably,” I say. “You said you were gonna teach me, not throw me in and see if I could swim.”
“So I did.” He moves in behind me, up close and personal. He smells delicious. Not food-delicious. I mean man-delicious. Clean and masculine. His arms come around me and one hand pushes my pitiful and incorrect onion chunks off the board. The other hand sets the unmolested half of the onion in its place. “Okay,” he says, “here—”
And he shows me, with his hands on mine, how to hold the onion, the knife. Where to cut. How to keep my fingers out of the way, which I appreciate very much. Once I’ve got the hang of it, he lets go, and I finish up the last quarter myself. He doesn’t step back, though; his chest is warm against my back and—
Oh, my. Either he’s got something in his pocket, or he’s very happy to see me.
I push back, just ever so slightly, brushing my ass against the bulge in his jeans.
There’s a quick intake of breath. “Careful,” he says. “Sharp knife.”
“We could take a break,” I say.
“I thought you wanted lessons,” he says. His hands move down, settling on the curve of my hips, holding me snug against him. “Aren’t you hungry?”
I set the knife aside carefully and turn, laying both hands on his chest. I can feel his heart pounding. “Are you?”
“I’m fucking starving,” he says, “and you look good enough to eat.”
My whole body flashes warm and trembling, and I hold his eyes with mine. “Oh, really?”
“Yes, really.”
He leans down, brushes his lips over mine. Turning us around, he backs me up against the center island, then his lips wander along my jawline, down to my neck, over to my ear. I tip my head back and sigh.
His cock is hard between us, and I do what I wanted to do last time: I spread my legs and let him move between them, feel that zing of electricity again as that hardness presses against my pussy.
“You’re hot,” he whispers against my neck. “Even through however many layers of fabric, I can feel the heat of you. I want to sink in.”
My breath catches in my throat. My legs are trembling so I can barely stand.
His hand finds its way between us and he cups my pussy, pressing with the heel of his hand so that I moan. He shifts and slides that same hand inside the front of my pants, his fingers parting me and stroking.
“I knew it,” he says. “I knew how hot and wet you would be.”
I have no words, I just let myself feel as he peels my pants and undies off and hoists me up onto the surface of the island.
“There’s no way this is sanitary,” I say, out of my head with lust.
He just laughs, and strokes his fingers in and then out of my pussy. I can feel my eyes rolling back in my head. His thumb is busy on my clit, and I lean back on my elbows and let my head fall back, dizzy.
Then I feel his hands pressing my thighs apart, feel his breath on me. I lift my head to look down, and see his head between my legs. Oh my God, I think. Is this actually happening?
It is. It really is. His tongue flicks against me, fast, then slower, then fast again. His fingers find their way back inside me, and move in tandem with his tongue—his very talented tongue. I’m not sure I could be sitting on a more uncomfortable surface, and in spite of that I can feel a huge orgasm building fast. Much faster than I expected.
I guess it was all that foreplay with the onion, I think, and that makes me laugh.
Literally laugh out loud.
In the middle of oral sex from the hottest celebrity chef in the country.
I clap my hand over my mouth, but it’s too late. He stops what he’s doing—damn it!—and when I look down, he’s looking at me with one eyebrow raised.
“I have a really healthy ego,” he says, “but this might be a bit much even for me.” His voice is light, his eyes amused—clearly he’s teasing. “What’s so funny?”
“It was—” I can’t help it; I start giggling again. “I was thinking about the onion.”
“I see.”
“And honestly? I’m a little worried I’m gonna accidentally turn on one of these warmer burner and singe my ass.”
And I dissolve into helpless peals of laughter.
“Note to self,” he intones solemnly, standing and pulling me to him. He wraps my legs around his waist and picks me up. “No sex in the kitchen.”
And he carries me, my arms and legs wrapped around him, to the bedroom.