Because standing in front of the sink was Holland, wearing her white T-shirt and the cotton boy shorts I hadn’t gotten a good look at till now since I kept ripping them off her ass yesterday. They were her favorite shade of blue—soft and pale, especially against the sun-kissed bronze of her tanned skin. Her hair was pulled into a high ponytail, and it bounced as she moved her head from side to side, singing along to poppy-sounding music I didn’t recognize in the least.
It was definitely a scene that I’d never witnessed before in my kitchen. One I would’ve never guessed that I’d welcome.
But like she tended to, Holland got away with it.
She was so distractingly cute that it took a second for me to process the groceries scattered all over the counter, and the fact that they looked entirely foreign to me. Eggs. Berries. A variety of different fruits. They certainly hadn’t been in my home last night, but with a quick scan around, I saw the paper grocery bags on the floor, my address printed on stickers slapped to the sides.
She’d had the groceries delivered to my house.
I raised my eyebrows, impressed as I took a seat at the island, my gaze following the dozen emptied orange halves on the counter next to a citrus juicer I’d never used before in my life.
Looking up again, I realized what Holland was doing at the sink: carefully straining the pulp out of her freshly squeezed juice. Suddenly, I remembered my many breakfasts at the Maxwell house in Jersey. The fact that Holland liked pulp in her OJ.
I, however, didn’t.
And I had a feeling that particular fun fact was on her mind right now.
Resting my elbows onto the counter, I stroked my fingers across the smile curving my lips, managing to keep my laughter suppressed till the moment Holland turned around.
I caught a nanosecond of her happy, relaxed smile before she spotted me and jumped.
“Oh!”
She gasped and yelped at the same time, sloshing fresh juice onto her shirt and pausing in shock for exactly two seconds before closing her eyes, inhaling through her nose then breathing out with laughter.
>
“Dammit. That was like… a whole orange’s worth,” she groaned while looking down her wet front. “I don’t even want to admit how long it took my weak arms to squeeze out the amount of juice that I’m currently wearing.”
I smirked. “Let’s not waste it then.”
Her head tilted as she looked up at me and cocked an eyebrow. But with a glint of mischief on her eyes, she read the look on my face, and without missing a beat, she rounded the counter to me, grinning as she let me pull her in by the waist and press a kiss to her lips, my tongue sweeping in full strokes against hers before I dropped my mouth to her breasts.
Hugging her arms gently around my head, she tipped her own back, breathing the sweetest little sounds as I ran my tongue over her juice-soaked cotton and sucked her nipple over her shirt. I could feel the heat of her pussy as she climbed into my lap, allowing me to lick up the swell of her breast before pulling my lips to hers and kissing me so sweetly but so deeply that I felt like I’d been fucking drugged.
I was at the height of my high when a timer went off, prompting Holland to gasp with excitement, and forcing me to feel an actual physical pain as she popped up to get off me.
I dragged my palm down my face, spinning around in my seat and willing my dick down as I watched her rush excitedly to the oven, bending over to carefully pull out a white casserole dish that I only vaguely remembered owning.
My eyebrows furrowed but went right up when she finally turned around to show me what was inside.
Baked French toast with blueberries.
What they cooked every June at the Maxwell house for birthday breakfasts.
Holland stared bright-eyed at my reaction for a second before she burst out laughing. “Okay, so I figured in case you were a stubborn jerk who insisted on working through your birthday next week, I’d at least make you celebrate today with this breakfast,” she explained as she set the dish onto the counter. “But judging from the look on your face, I just triggered the PTSD you have for my house.”
I laughed. “Memories,” I corrected, leaning forward on the counter. “I wouldn’t classify it as PTSD. I actually enjoyed staying at your house.”
She narrowed her eyes at me while taking off her oven mitts. “Shut up. Really?”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t have kept coming back if I didn’t genuinely like it there.”
“Huh.” Her eyebrows went up and stayed there as she blinked to process this information. “Adam always made it seem like it was such a pain for you guys to come.”
I smirked. “Well, your brother’s instinct is to be an asshole.”
“True. So it wasn’t torture after all?”