My man texts me when he arrives, and I head down to the entrance of my apartment building. Sure enough, he’s lounging against his truck, looking absolutely scrumptious in a navy blue sweater that highlights those broad shoulders, and a pair of jeans that hang off his hips just so. His black hair ruffles in the wind, and I run to him, throwing myself against his broad chest.
“Hey,” he laughs. “What’s up with the warm greeting?”
I giggle.
“I just missed you, that’s all.”
He pats my bottom fondly while helping me into the vehicle.
“We just saw each other last night, bunny. This morning even. I was inside you coming hard as you screamed, remember?” he asks, waggling a brow. I giggle, blushing, but then swat at his arm while he starts the truck.
“Oh you!” I exclaim. But then I turn to him, another big smile on my face. “So Netflix and chill at your apartment, right?”
He grins while pulling away from the curb. The Steeldrivers’ “If It Hadn’t Been For Love” is playing through the speakers, and it’s my favorite song, but I don’t know if Damon knows that. It might just be a coincidence that it’s on.
He shakes his head. “A little more than that, sweetheart. I promised you Detroit-style pizza, but I thought we’d try to make it this time ourselves.”
My eyes widen. “Damon, that’s a great idea!” I exclaim. “Let’s do it. Do we need to get anything from the store? I can look up a recipe on my phone.”
He chuckles at my enthusiasm. “And here I thought you might not go for it,” he jokes. “Why don’t you find a recipe that looks good and I’ll let you know if we have everything in my kitchen?”
I pull out my phone and start searching on the Good Housekeeping site. They always have a ton of dishes that I like, and the recipes are neither too easy nor too hard. I scroll through dozens of pictures of pizza before I find one that looks like the one we had at Lions, Tigers, and Squares. Fortunately, it looks doable without a zillion steps. “Okay, do you have flour, yeast, and sugar?”
He thinks for a moment.
“No for the yeast, maybe for the flour, and yes to the sugar.”
“What about pizza sauce, olive oil, brick cheese, mozzarella, and pepperoni?”
“No to all of that.” He grins at me. “I guess we’re going grocery shopping.”
“Yay!” I burble. “This’ll be fun.” I love doing ‘regular’ things with Damon because it means we’re getting more and more established in our relationship. Not everything has to be a special event anymore.
A few minutes later, we pull up in front of a local grocery store and Damon and I hop out. The inside of the chain reminds me of a Whole Foods but about a third of the size. I grab a small cart from the front, and head down the baking aisle for yeast as Damon trails behind me. I bend to pick up a sachet of the good stuff, and when I turn back to the cart, I see him eyeing my bottom appreciatively. I smack his chest with the yeast packet.
“Behave yourself,” I tease. “We’re in public!”
“You make it hard when you look so beautiful,” he retorts. Then, the handsome man grabs a bag of flour and hoists it in the cart.
“Flattery will get you everywhere, Damon,” I tell him, “but not at the grocery store. They have cameras here!”
He runs his thumb across the bottom of his lip, looking at me in that way. This man knows exactly what he’s doing. I’ve told him too many times about how hard it is for me to resist those gorgeous blue eyes when he smolders like this, even if there are other people around.
“We’ll see about that,” he murmurs.
I giggle again before smacking him once more with the yeast packet and push the cart toward the pasta aisle. There, Damon sticks close behind me as I reach for the pizza sauce. The olive oil is up so high that I can’t reach it even when I stand on my tiptoes, straining. This time, my boyfriend takes the opportunity to press up behind me, grinding his crotch into my behind as he easily reaches for the oil. He sets it down in the front of the cart, kissing the side of my head as he does.
“Thanks,” I say, out of breath from his nearness.
“Anytime, bun.” He winks. “By the way, we should pick up some extra beers.”
“Ooh,” I say, “you’re right. Plus, there’s one I want to try that tastes like cherry lemonade. I hope this store has it.”
We head to the liquor section, and I’m delighted to see that they have not only the boozy cherry lemonade that I wanted to try, but also a few other fruit flavors in individual cans. We grab tangerine, grapefruit, and blueberry flavored bottles as well as a plain old Coors for Damon.