43. Kayla

Chapter 43

Kayla

While I stretch out like a cat after the best sleep of my life, Ryan’s voice flows through the chalet, singing away in the shower. I can’t tell if it’s some country song or if he’s putting on an accent, but all I know is he’s here.

He’s here.

His arrival last night was a complete surprise. My body went into shock when he grabbed me in my room, but as soon as I heard his voice, I knew I was safe. Ryan played his role well, and I leaned into the fantasy and took everything he had to give. The tender ache between my thighs is a reminder of that.

Falling asleep in his arms afterwards would have been all the comfort I needed to recover from the adrenaline rush, but he went even further witha warm shower followed by a candlelit massage that was so good I cried happy tears.

I expect him to crawl back into bed with me, but he heads downstairs, and the singing continues with a backdrop of clattering pans and cupboard doors opening and closing. Eventually, curiosity gets the better of me. I pull on one of his t-shirts and pad downstairs to the main part of the chalet.

In the kitchen, I find him wearing nothing but tight black boxer briefs, and a Christmas apron he must have found in the cupboard. He cracks eggs into little ramekins, and tops them with cream from the fridge and lots of fresh black pepper. Next to punnets of fresh berries and yoghurt, warm baguettes are waiting to be torn open and slathered with jam.

I’m only staying in the house for a couple of weeks while my parents have an electric carport installed, so I haven’t bothered stocking up on groceries. He must have snuck out early to go to the shops down the hill.

“What’s going on here?”

His smile is miles wide when he looks sideways to find me standing in the doorway in his t-shirt. He makes no effort to pretend he’s not checking out my legs as his gaze dips lower and lower.

“Breakfast, Bunny. I hope you’re hungry.”

“Ravenous,” I tell him, coming up behind him, and admiring the view of his firm ass and strong thighs. I stroke my fingertips down the length of his spine, and when he ignores me, I run my tongue all the way back up, giving his glutes a firm squeeze.

When he removes my hands, I reach up and rake my nails through the strands of hair at the back of his neck instead. He shivers, and tries to swat me away, so I go for gold and slip my hand inside his apron, and down the front of his underwear. He’s already hard, like I hoped he might be. If I had a dick, it would never go down when he’s around.

His focus remains on grating a wedge of local hard cheese on top of the eggs, but I want all of his attention, and I want it now. At his side, I drop to my knees and shuffle between him and the under-counter cupboards. There’s not a lot of room, but it’s no hardship to press my face against him, to reach underneath his apron and cup him firmly.

“Enough!” he squeals, hoisting me up to sit on the counter and pointing a playful finger in my face. “Stop distracting me.”

“Why won’t you let me touch you? ”

“I don't think it’s very romantic to let your girlfriend blow you on the kitchen floor before you’ve made sure she’s well fed.”

My stomach drops like we’re flying over the lip of a vertical drop rollercoaster. He might have turned me brainless from all the orgasms, but I don’t remember any conversation about putting labels on this thing.

“Are we playing house now?” I slither off the counter to fill a glass of water.

“We sure are,” he says, returning to his cooking. “I told you last night, for as long as I’m here, you’re getting the full Ryan Richmond boyfriend experience.”

“Oh, because you have so much experience.”

I’m teasing, but how would I know? All those years we didn’t talk about our lives outside of winters. He might have had a hundred girlfriends.

“Sweetheart, I have a lifetime of experience with you.”

He always knows how to get me out of my head, but sometimes he says these things that send me deep inside it. I drink my water while staring out of the kitchen window at the quiet street below us. I took some of my first steps on that street, made snowmen with my dad, held my grandmother’s hand so she wouldn’t slip on icy patches.

Sometimes I long for those simple days, before jobs and worries and boys. Who would have thought the little girl back then would be here now with the boy from up the hill?

Ryan slips the tray of ramekins into the oven, washes his hands, and comes closer. His arms wrap around my waist, and he holds me close to his chest, kissing his way from my temple to my jaw.

He spins me to face him and when our foreheads touch, it’s as if he’s staring into my soul. When it gets too intense, I try to look away, but he tips my chin up and takes his time looking at me, eyes roaming everywhere. The corners of his mouth keep curling at whatever memory he’s thinking of.

“Now,” he says, kissing the end of my nose. “Eggs en cocotte take twelve minutes to cook. So…”

He unties his apron and hangs it back up with a slow ease that has my heart rate kicking up a gear. His voice dips to a sexy drawl he knows drives me wild. “It may not be very romantic to accept a blow job, but that rule doesn’t work both ways.”

His fingers trace up the inside of my thigh, dancing around where the line of my underwear would sit if I’d worn any.

“Are you sore?”

“A little,” I confess and he kneels before me.

“Let me see if I can kiss it better.”