“Had to taste you with that flavor in your mouth,” he said in a gritty voice. “Just as good as I thought it’d be.”
His words did nothing to cool her off, but still she managed, “Dare, I have a confession.”
His expression darkened, and he tried to step back, to put that old distance between them again.
But Haven grabbed the lapel of his club cut. “Don’t go. Please.”
He glanced down to how she was holding on to him, and it took everything Haven had not to shy away from the intensity of his gaze. “What’s your confession?”
“I made the cookies,” she rushed out. “And the cinnamon buns.”
The darkness bled out of his eyes and off his face, only to be replaced by confusion. “You made the cookies? You’re the one who’s been making all the cookies and bars and buns?”
She nodded.
“You?” His eyebrow arched as he stared at her, and then his eyes went wide with what looked like surprise. “Jesus, Haven, you’re really fucking good at baking. You know that, right?”
She shrugged. “I like to do it.”
“You should be doing it. It’s your thing.” An arm around her waist, he reached for another cookie. Ate it. Closed his eyes and hummed as he chewed it. “So fucking good. And you made it.” He shook his head.
The whole thing made Haven smile. “So you’re not mad?”
His eyelids flipped open. “Why the hell would I be mad?”
God, she loved the feeling of his arm thrown so casually around her, her body still pressed all up against his. “Because I kept something from you again.”
He shook his head. “I don’t care about that, but why did you? Just out of curiosity.”
“I bake when I can’t sleep. It calms me, and I really enjoy it. But I didn’t want any attention for it, especially when I didn’t know any of you,” she said, looking down at his chest.
Fingers gently tipped her chin back up. “I get it,” he said, and then he was quiet for a long moment. Suddenly, he frowned and his brow furrowed. “I’m glad you told me. And, well, I have something to tell you, too. A confession of my own.”
“You do? About what?” she asked, unable to imagine what he could need to reveal to her.
Sighing, he stroked his fingers through the side of her hair again, his eyes tracking the movement. “So, the other day—”
Bang, bang. The door flew open, and Phoenix and a man Haven thought was called Caine stepped in. Where Phoenix could be a playful screwball, Caine seemed quiet and severely serious to the point of being kinda scary. But she’d thought that about Dare once, too, hadn’t she? “Oh, shit. Sorry, Dare, Haven,” Phoenix said. Both men seemed upset. Or, at least, Phoenix didn’t seem like his usual smart-alecky, laid-back self. “We got something.”
Dare looked down at her, and that was the moment she realized that he hadn’t let her go when the men had let themselves into his office. His arm still wrapped around her lower back, holding her to him. “Can we finish this later?” he asked her. “I’m sorry.”
“Of course. I hope everything’s okay,” she said. She pulled away, only to have him grab her hand and tug her back again.
He kissed her long and deep and hard, and Haven thought her heart would beat out of her chest from the intensity of it, from the fact that he’d done it in front of his brothers—and that she’d liked that he’d done that. “Later.”
“Later,” she whispered, her lips still tingling from the kiss. She slipped out—or floated out, more like it—and wondered how she was going to avoid going crazy until she saw him again and heard whatever it was that he needed to confess.
CHAPTER 17
“Not a word,” Dare said, glaring at his brothers. He shouldn’t have kissed her in front of them, but they’d already seen them all up against each other and Dare hadn’t been able to resist having just one more taste. It turned out having a little bit of something good in your life just made you want more. “What’s going on?” Dare asked as Phoenix held up his hands as if in surrender and Caine closed the door behind Haven. Now Dare understood the first item on her list a helluva lot better, didn’t he? Have your own kitchen.
Jesus. She shouldn’t have to wish for something that talent demanded be nurtured.
“We put out the word about the hardware we want to get rid of like we talked about,” Phoenix said, meaning the guns they’d acquired from the Church Gang a few weeks before.
“Yeah,” Dare said, the thought of Haven’s list making him regret that they’d been interrupted before he could confess to knowing about it. Maybe it was just as well he hadn’t opened his mouth any more than he already had, though. Because that woman extracted all of his self-control every time they were within five feet of each other. “Any word?”