“Please.” His voice is raspy with sleep, and I wish it weren’t such a turn-on.
“How do you like it?” I ask as I open the cupboard and pull out a coffee cup in the shape of a medieval tankard; I’m pretty sure Dex will appreciate it.
“As long as there’s coffee in it, I’ll like it,” he says, then yawns again and stretches his arms over his head. His golden hair is tousled and beautiful, like a halo in the morning light.
I pour him a coffee, add a splash of frothy oat milk, and then place the mug on the table next to the bowl of strawberries. He takes a sip and looks like he’s about to melt through my kitchen floor.
Smiling, I return to the stove, where I’m making blueberry pancakes. I flip the last pancake onto a platter, then carry it to the table and set it beside the spread of butter, jam, peanut butter, and syrup.
Dex’s eyes go wide, as if he just noticed everything set out on the kitchen table.
“You made these?” He sounds incredulous, and it makes me laugh.
“Yeah. You woke up just in time to eat them hot.” I pass him a plate, then give Margot one last scratch, grab my coffee, and join him at the table.
He puts two pancakes onto his plate, seeming to debate his topping of choice for a moment. Finally, he opts for the peanut butter, and I grab the jam.
After taking a bite, Dex moans. “This is insane. I haven’t had homemade pancakes since I was a kid.”
“Not much of a cook?” I ask, and he scoffs and stuffs another bite into his mouth.
I’ll take that as a no.
Margot jumps from the kitchen counter onto the table. Dex immediately reaches out to pet her on the head, and she starts to purr. I’m amazed at how much she likes him already. It was like love at first sight.
The thought reminds me of the first day at the studio, when I turned to find Dex leaning in the doorway, and as I watch him scratch Margot’s chin and take another bite of pancake, I wonder how we got here—and how I’m ever going to be okay once he leaves.
Thinking about him walking out my door makes a knot form in my stomach.
I should not be this into him. I know where this leads.
A phone chimes from somewhere in the living room, and Dex takes a sip of coffee before standing and going to retrieve it. I admire his bare torso as he walks away, how the muscles in his back flex as he bends to search the floor for his cell. He finally finds the phone under the couch, and after squinting at the screen for a moment, he looks up at me and smiles.
“It’s Ashton. She said they released the track today.”
My eyes go wide. “What? Already?”
“Yeah. Check it out.” Crossing the living room into the kitchen, he holds his phone out, and I blink at the screen. He’s got “Ghost” pulled up on some music app I’m not familiar with, and the number of listens and likes keeps climbing.
“It has almost a million listens already.” My gaze flicks up to him. “Is that normal?”
He just smiles, slips his phone into his back pocket, and offers me a hand. Slowly, I reach up and take it. Dex guides me to my feet. He wraps his arms around my middle and pulls me in for a hug. His chest is firm under my hands, his skin warm as I reach around him to return the embrace.
Tears threaten to rise up in my eyes again, but this time I don’t have an orgasm to blame. I quickly force them down before Dex can see what he does to me.
“Thank you,” he says into my hair, and goose bumps rise on my arms when he trails his fingertips up and down my back, his hands gliding over my T-shirt.
“For what?” I whisper, afraid that if I talk too loud, this moment—which could very possibly be a dream—will vanish into nothingness. It’s like he’s a rare creature, and one wrong move or sound will scare him away forever. Even in my arms, he feels intangible, unreal.
Dex doesn’t say anything, just squeezes me a bit tighter. Then he pulls away, sits back down, and loads two more pancakes onto his plate.
Honestly, I expected Dex to leave after we had sex last night, so the fact he’s sitting on my couch at noon is mind-boggling to me. We’ve been playing Legend of Volthorn and checking the song’s ranking, and Dex jumps up off the couch when it hits number one.
“Fuck,” he says, one hand buried in his hair. “This is insane. People fucking love it.” His gaze shifts to me. “They love you.”
I’m about to roll my eyes and tell him how ridiculous that is, but he sinks back onto the couch and presses a kiss against my mouth before I can get the words out. Then he’s stealing the controller out of my hands, pausing my game, and running a hand through my hair in a way that makes my insides dance.
In his hands, I melt like butter, and there’s no resistance in me as he lifts me up and into his lap. The afternoon sunlight streams through the windows, bright and yellow and warm, and it turns Dex’s eyes a lighter shade of blue, like the Colorado sky on a frigid winter day.
Suddenly, I want to take him home, back to the town I grew up in. I want to show him the elementary school I attended and buy him hot chocolate at my favorite coffee shop. I want to know what he’d look like standing in a winter storm, cheeks pink from the cold and eyelashes sprinkled with snowflakes. The longing to have him rises up in me so fiercely that it takes my breath away.
He’s staring back at me, brow slightly furrowed, his lip ring shining in the light. His hand, tattooed and calloused from the guitar strings, traces the line of my cheek, then pushes a strand of hair behind my ear.
“You’re fucking beautiful.”
The way he says it, with a hint of something that almost sounds like reverence, makes me want to believe him. But I’m just me. Just Nora. And he’s . . .
Exquisite.
Something must cross my face, because his eyes narrow, seeming to study me.
“What?” he asks, twirling a lock of my hair around his finger.
All I can do is shake my head. “Nothing.”
“There’s no such thing, Nora.”
