Blaze (Storm MC 2.50)

A moment later he groaned as he ended the kiss. “I’ve got to get to work, babe. Otherwise I’d lock you in our bedroom and continue this.”

Smiling, I said, “Good to know.”

His hands remained on me; he seemed reluctant to let me go and I liked that. This day was starting off good.

“What’s your plans for the day?” he asked.

“I thought I might head over to the hardware store and look at paint. I want to paint the lounge room.”

“What’s wrong with the way it is now?”

My eyebrows shot up. “Really, J? The walls are off white. It’s boring; we need some colour in the house.”

I moved to the

coffee machine and began making myself one while he finished his off. His eyes never left me. Just the way I liked it.

“I know what’s going to happen. You’re going to get all fucking excited about it, you might even start painting a bit of the wall, but I’m going to be the fucker that has to do most of it.”

I gave him a pointed stare. “How do you know that?”

If J was the kind of man to roll his eyes, I was sure he would have done that right then. Instead, he muttered, “Gut instinct, babe. That, and twelve years of knowing you. Projects are your favourite thing, until they’re not. And I’m betting this’ll be the same.”

He pushed off from the bench and rinsed his mug in the sink.

I chose to ignore what he’d said. He was kind of right, but there was no way I was admitting that. “So, I was thinking grey for the lounge room. With white.”

He was back to watching me as I finished making my coffee and began making toast for breakfast. “Babe, knock yourself out. Just tell me when you need me to finish the job.”

I scowled at him. “You can be an ass sometimes, you know that?”

He chuckled and closed the distance between us. “What can I say, you bring out the fucking best in me.” He dipped his mouth to mine and gave me a quick kiss. “Gotta go, sweetheart.”

He smacked me on the ass, and as he was heading out of the kitchen, I called out, “You still haven’t said anything about my hair.” It stung that he hadn’t noticed it.

His head swung around to face me and he had a puzzled look on his face. I noted his gaze moving to my hair and then to my face. “Looks good.”

“Oh my God, you didn’t even notice that I’ve coloured it, did you?”

“Madison, I’ve got no fucking clue about women and their hair. It looks good, you look good.” His gaze swept down my body and he added, “When a woman’s got legs like yours, a man’s got no hope of noticing their fucking hair, babe.”

And that right there was J. He had a way of going from my bad books to my good even when I was annoyed at him. All it took was his dirty mouth to do it.

***

Jason

I’d taken half the day off work to spend the afternoon with Madison, but standing here watching her flick through paint chips made me wonder if I should have just let her come on her own. She had six different ones and couldn’t decide which one she liked best. We’d been standing in this hardware aisle, going back and forth over the colours for the past hour. I’d almost had enough but I was sure that she could spend all fucking day doing this.

“Baby, do you think you can narrow it down some more? Like to say, one?” I asked.

She scowled at me. “I knew you shouldn’t have come with me. You have absolutely no patience.”

“I have a lot of patience, but you’ve been trying to decide between these for an hour now.”

“Well, I want to get it right, J,” she muttered, throwing me a dirty look.

“Okay, how about this; if you pick one and hate it after we’ve painted, we can always paint it again.”