“Not specifically,” Laurel replies as she chops her tomatoes.
“If you do murder him, I’d prefer it not happen in my kitchen,” Rafe tells her. “I have a thing about eating meals in a room that was once covered in blood. Plus, I would have to buy new knives. It would be a lot of trouble for me, all things considered.”
Laurel lifts the board and scrapes the tomatoes into the pan. “Well, I would never want to make your life harder,” she says, with exaggerated sweetness.
Rafe takes a sip from his coffee mug, then tells her, “Now I need more coffee.”
Laurel shakes her head, but grabs the coffee pot and heads over to refill his. “I’m starting to see why you lazy bastards are so fond of waitresses.”
“I’m not fond of waitresses,” Rafe replies, looping his arm around her waist and pulling her flush against his side.
My whole body tenses. I tell myself not to look, but I can’t look away as he presses his lips to Laurel’s in a very slow, very deliberate kiss. Fury ravages my insides, surging through me like a livewire. Laurel is too surprised to respond too enthusiastically, but it’s not like she pulls away. It’s not like I should expect her to after last night, but flashes of me on top of her come back, my lips leaving a trail down her neck. Someone else shouldn’t be fucking kissing her when 12 hours ago I was doing all that.
My gaze drifts to her neck now, and I see it. I feel fucking triumphant when I see it, even though I shouldn’t. It’s not a dark bruise. I caught myself quick, but not quickly enough. There’s a faint mark on her neck, and I’m the one who put it there.
Clearly she didn’t notice, or I would think she would have covered it up. Fuck. I’m not sure if I hope Rafe sees it—fucking asshole deserves it—or I hope he doesn’t, because he might fucking kill me. In addition to killing me, he just might be pissed off enough to take off the kid gloves and stop waiting around for Laurel’s feelings to fall in line. Nothing makes a man fuck his woman more brutally than the knowledge that she let another man leave his mark on her.
When he stops kissing her, he smiles at her tenderly and says, “I’m fond of science nerds.”
Her gaze drops, some of the spunk going out of her. I take it to mean she’s still uncomfortable being affectionate with him in front of me, but after last night I would expect her to want to throw it in my face. She doesn’t have enough meanness in her, I guess. She’s mad at me, but she doesn’t want to cut me to the quick. Her strong sense of loyalty still tells her since she had me all over her last night, she shouldn’t be kissing someone else in front of me this morning. She’s fucking right, too. I know I deserve it for giving her up in the first place, but I don’t want to see this shit.
Once Rafe releases Laurel, she goes back to the counter to resume making our food, this time without mild death threats or barbed comments.
When everything is finished, she splits the food between two plates. She brings them over, hesitating briefly before putting either plate down, then she reaches both arms forward and puts down both plates at the same time. She walks away muttering something about “sexist bullshit” but then she turns her little ass right back around and brings a plate of cut up orange slices and strawberries for us to share, I guess.
“Eat up, boys,” she tells us.
“You didn’t save any for yourself?” I question.
“It’s probably poisoned,” Rafe states, grabbing a fork and digging in regardless.
Laurel smiles to herself, then she does the most evil thing she has ever done. She holds up a banana and cracks the top, then slowly begins peeling it. “Oh, I have my breakfast right here.”
Goddammit. I ignore her, stabbing the center of my egg so the yolk spills out. I will ignore Laurel eating the phallic-shaped fruit. I will not think about her lips around my dick. I will not wonder if her lips have been around his dick. I will not take my gun out, shoot Rafe mid-bite, and haul Laurel’s little ass right out the front door.
Focus on the fucking eggs.
I can’t focus on the eggs. My gaze darts to her just in time to see the tip of the banana disappear into that perfect fucking mouth of hers. My dick responds immediately, and then it only gets worse when I look at her neck and see the mark I left there last night, then my eyes drop to her tits and I see them begging to be let out of that white bra.
My heart beats in my throat and all the blood in my body rushes straight to my cock. In an attempt to behave like a man who isn’t aroused to the point of fucking pain, I cut into the egg, shovel some herb-sprinkled tomato onto my fork, and bring it to my mouth. I’m sure it tastes good—it sure looks and smells good—but it may as well be cardboard for all the enjoyment I’m able to get out of it.
My whole body is so fucking tense, I feel like I might explode. I want to do things I can’t do. I want to shove this plate away from me, walk around the counter, grab a fistful of Laurel’s brown hair, and tell her to drop to her knees. I want to see unquestioning obedience in her eyes as she drops right in front of Rafe, like she did the day he brought her back from the Grand Canyon. I want to free my cock and shove it into her pretty little mouth, to see her big blue eyes looking up at me as she takes every inch. I definitely want that talented little tongue of hers running along my length until my cock hits the back of her throat. With Rafe sitting there, too fucking stunned to do a goddamned thing about it, I want to fuck Laurel’s face and see the desire in her eyes, like letting me use her is the single greatest experience of her life. Then I want her on her hands and knees, legs spread, this skimpy fucking robe bunched up around her waist while I give her pussy a good pounding and remind her that good girls get treats. I want to fuck her good and hard until her heart races in her chest and she struggles to breathe—but for a good reason, this time. Only for good reasons from here on out.
Only I can’t, because of the asshole sitting on my left. Because he had the dumb luck of knocking her up on a one-night-stand, and now everything is a tangled fucking mess.
Why couldn’t it have been me? Why couldn’t I be the lucky bastard who knocked her up? Then she’d be mine and no one could say shit about it.
I shove back from the counter and stand, carefully angling my body to try to hide the hard-on as I do.
“What are you doing?” Rafe asks, watching me.
I need to get the fuck out of here, that’s what I need to be doing. Before I do something I’ll undoubtedly regret, before I alter the course of all our fucking lives because Laurel decided to have a banana for breakfast, I need to get the fuck out of this house.
Only I can’t, because Rafe will know exactly why.
“Forgot to wash my hands,” I mutter, as I head for the bathroom to jerk off to the mental image of Laurel choking on my cock.
Most days I have enough on my plate that I don’t have time to think much about Laurel, unless it’s her safety I’m worrying about. When I’m done doing the work Rafe knows about, I spend the rest of my downtime keeping an eye on all the fucking trouble-making women he has unwittingly invited into Laurel’s life.