Dammit. She was fucking exquisite.
I swallowed at the thought of running my hands down those hips and grabbing her ass. I wanted to hoist her legs around my waist so I could bury my hardness in her. I was aching to relieve the pressure that had been building inside me for years. Pressure I wasn’t sure I would be able to contain working beside her day after day. I’d have to, though. The only thing I wanted as much as I wanted Haylee Davis was a full-time baking gig.
“Staying away from you,” she finally answered. “Not touching you. Not wanting more from you than your talent with the dough. That will be hard and scary, but you deserve this. I can’t pretend you don’t. I know you could have gotten a job as a full-time baker anywhere else by now.”
I stood and stalked toward her, stopping just short of plastering myself against her softness. My dick was hard, and I couldn’t hide it. I didn’t want to. Maybe seeing the proof of what she did to me would help her to believe my words. “I absolutely could have.”
“Why did you stay at The Fluffy Cupcake all these years then?” she whispered, the question hesitant.
“Because of you, cupcake. There is no other bakery in the world that has anyone as gorgeous as you are working for them. I would mop the floor of The Fluffy Cupcake with a damn toothbrush if it meant I could keep seeing your sweetness every day. Career aspirations are one thing, but life goals are another. My life goal is to make Haylee Davis my cupcake. Full stop.”
Thirteen
The air around me was electrified, and he was closing in on my space. Did he just say his life goal is to make me his cupcake? Um? My eyes traveled the length of him and paused at the outline in his pants that told me one part of him was dead serious.
“You—you don’t mean that,” I stuttered, my words slurring slightly from all the wine. “You just want to get in my pants. It’s like a challenge for every guy to fuck the thick chick and then walk away, right?”
With his left hand on the wall next to my head, he rubbed the front of his shorts with the right. “Oh, I want to get in your pants, but I have no intention of walking away. I should have said I want Haylee Davis to be my cupcake for eternity.”
“Eternity,” I whispered.
He nodded that Adonis head at me.
“I originally came over here tonight to apologize for kissing you.”
And there we have it. He already had regrets, and he hadn’t even gotten in my pants. Thank God for that. “See, already wish you hadn’t.”
“Wrong,” he said, leaning in closer now, both hands braced on the wall. “Wish I hadn’t done it in the middle of the bakery? Yes. Wish I had waited until you didn’t have to worry about me claiming sexual harassment? Yes. Wish I hadn’t kissed you? Absofuckinglutely not. That was the hottest kiss I’ve ever shared with anyone, and we were in the middle of a damn cooler.”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “You talked to Amber.”
“I did, but I didn’t need to do that to know I’d made a mistake. That’s why I was back at the bakery after I showered. I wanted to tell you it wouldn’t happen again—in the bakery, at least. I was going to kiss you when we were at the lake, and then the other night when we were here alone, but I chickened out.”
“You chickened out?”
“Why do you keep repeating everything I say?” he asked teasingly.
“Because I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that you wanted to kiss me, regardless of the place.”
“Kiss every part of you until I can bury this deep inside you, you mean?” he asked, taking my hand and holding it against the front of his pants. “This is what your little shorts do to me. We aren’t even going to talk about how much I want to pull one of those beautiful nipples between my lips and swirl my tongue around it.” His hips thrust against my hand, and the air snapped and crackled like a summer storm over the lake.
“I—I don’t know what to say,” I stuttered without dropping my hand. He was hard, huge, and his dick jumped every time I caressed it. Brady didn’t have an average I want to get lucky hard-on, either. This was the hard-on of a guy who had spent a lot of frustrating nights alone. He just wanted the woman he’d been dreaming about to finally open up to him, both her mind and her legs.
“Say you’ll accept my apology so I can kiss you again. Here, where no one can misconstrue what is going on as anything but what it is.”
“What is it?” I asked breathlessly while his lips traveled down the length of my neck to my collarbone.
“A man tired of waiting for a woman to realize she’s the only one he’s wanted for six long years, but respects that her place of business is not the place to show her that.”
“I accept your apology,” I moaned when he nipped at the skin near the edge of my tank top.
He growled somewhere low in his throat before he pinned me up against the wall with his hard body and buried both hands in my hair. When he tipped my head to the right, his hungry eyes filled with a fogged passion that could no longer be denied. His lips stole the breath from mine in a fierce pounce. Before I could suck in another breath, he pried my lips open and pushed his tongue inside to swirl through my mouth with the ferocity of a summer tornado. He was lit up with desire, and all I could do was hang on or risk getting sucked into the eye of the storm.
His hand slid from my hair and down to rest at my waist. The tremble of desire rocking his body told me how hard it was to hold back and keep his hand there. He wanted more, I could tell, and when I wrapped my arm around his neck, his hand slid down to cup my hip. His fingers kneaded it while his tongue kept my mind tied up in the sensation of velvet. When I moaned, his competing moan filled the room again, as though he was waiting for me to go first before he voiced his opinion.
He pressed me up against the wall with his body, his hardness twitching against my stomach, and both hands holding my ass like a prized possession. I swear he wanted to lift me up to wrap my legs around his waist, but I knew he wouldn’t be able to hold me up for very long.
“Fuck, Haylee,” he hissed, taking his lips off mine for a second to breathe. “How can you even question how incredible you are? A few more minutes of this and I’m going to come like a teenage boy. I almost welcome it if I’m honest. It’s physically painful to be this hard and never get any relief.”
“There are ways,” I said, my brow up in the air as he held his forehead to mine. “There are things you can do to relieve the pain.”
His hips thrust against my stomach again, and he moaned in a way that made me seriously worry he was going to come like a teenage boy. “I know the ways. I use the ways frequently after spending eight hours a day with you wearing those tight bakery pants over this sweet ass,” he said, his hands caressing it again. “But the pain remains. Making myself come relieves the physical pressure, but it doesn’t relieve the emotional need to be with the person you desire the most.” His sharp intake of breath made my nipples go hard under my shirt. “I can’t believe I’m holding you up against the wall telling you how much I’d rather fuck you than masturbate.”
I couldn’t decide if the moan that filled my head was mine or his. I wasn’t sure it mattered. We both wanted the same thing. I had to decide if I was willing. I had no doubt he was. His lips were back on mine in a hungry dance of lust, longing, and six years of pent up sexual frustration. A girl can have her cake and eat it, too, right?