“Sir, will you please take off your extremely annoying T-shirt?”
“It’s just a plain shirt. How is it annoying?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s not transparent. Duh.”
Amused, he tugged off his T-shirt and threw it on the back of a chair, then started mixing. Mila planted a kiss on his spine that made him shiver. She followed it up with several more, and goose bumps prickled up on his skin.
“So, no recipe?” she asked again.
“It’s in my head. I actually love baking.” He moved out from between her and the table, and turned the oven on to preheat.
“Ooh. A man with hidden talents.”
“Math plus eating. I’m sure it wasn’t hard to figure out.” He grabbed a spoon from one of the drawers he’d investigated earlier then stirred the batter.
“What kind are they?”
“Vanilla.”
“Atlas Larson is making me vanilla cupcakes?” she asked incredulously. “The mind boggles.”
“It’s the only vanilla I can do.”
She laughed. “You’ve never just been a vanilla guy?” she asked skeptically. “Not even when you were a teenager?”
He started to put the pretty little cupcake papers he’d bought into the tray. “No. My first kink involved tying the next-door neighbor girl to a tree when we were playing kidnapper. She was very good at pretending she was afraid.” He chuckled. “Luke and Fox were there too. She had all three of us trailing around after her until our family moved again.”
Mila burst out laughing. “Were you teenagers?”
“No. I think I was seven.” He scooped batter into the trays, then put them in the oven.
“Seven? So you’re like a kink savant?”
“Yes. I can tie knots with my dick.”
“I’m not at all surprised.”
He put the dirty dishes aside and started to work on making the icing. Mila wandered over to the oven to watch the cupcakes bake through the oven window. She bent at the waist of course, because she was a naughty little distraction.
“This is only going to take me a few more minutes.”
“Okay,” she said, still watching the oven. “What do you want to do after this?”
“I already told you what I’d be doing, and since you haven’t changed I’m guessing that’s consent.”
She tsked at him. “You can’t threaten a girl with sexual violence while you’re making cupcakes. Cupcakes are all about warm, fuzzy family stuff. Like dorky mom aprons and wooden spoons.”
“Wooden spoons are good for all sorts of clandestine things. And as for mom aprons, I’ve never seen one in real life. I have old pictures of my mom, but I don’t even know what she looks like now.”
“You were small when she left?” She straightened up and turned back to watch him.
“Almost two.” He shrugged. “Fox and Luke say our dads paid her to leave, but they’re a little old to keep lying to themselves.”
“Why do you think she left?”
“Honestly?” He kept watching the icing as he stirred it. “I think I was a pain in the ass and she couldn’t deal with me.”