Page 12 of Defended By Love

I nod. Whatever it was—cockroach bite, home planet destroyed, parents killed after a Robin Hood movie premiere—origin stories are never pleasant. I won’t push.

On this.

“Besides, you need food and water.”

“Among other things,” I add suggestively.

He wags a finger at me, grinning, as he walks towards a kitchen so large it could host its own twenty-person cooking show. “Right. And walks twice a day,” he adds with a huge grin.

What a dork. I would roll my eyes, but I don’t want to miss the way he chuckles at his own joke.

I follow him into the kitchen half-entranced by the appliances that appear to be made entirely out of complicated buttons and dials, and half by the way he’s humming to himself. The island—which could double as a small tennis court—is lined with classy, but uncomfortable-looking stools. I slide into one and rest my head on my hands as I watch him move around, slightly judging him for how uncomfortable his stools are. Which is saying something, considering I’ve slept overnight in my office chair on multiple occasions.

Moseying over to a cupboard adjacent to the space-age-looking fridge, he opens it with a flourish, gesturing inside.

“Anything you’d like?”

It’s filled with appliances.

“Waffle maker?” I offer hesitantly.

He whips his head to the cupboard and then back at me. He smiles a sheepish grin.

“You seem like the type of person who appreciates a good, uh, immersion blender,” he says with a shrug.

Well, I have no idea how to take that one.

“Thank you?”

If he hears me, he doesn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he’s rummaging through cupboard after cupboard for something suitable to eat. The polite part of me wants to protest, to insist that he’s the only snack I need. But a second later, he’s throwing a bar of some sort at me and my stomach is growling its approval.

“Should I read into it that you just gave me a SuperSlim bar?” I ask, tearing the package open anyways and devouring it. It tastes like chalk. Delicious, delicious chalk.

Apparently, The Garnet Defender was right: I did need food. Even if it tastes like stale fossils. Not fresh fossils, stale ones.

He slides me another one when he brings me a glass of water.

“I’m trying to keep trim.” He nods towards the carnage of the ripped wrappers.

I eye him over. The spandex not only leaves nothing to the imagination, but it also goes one step further and reveals all the spicy details I didn’t know I needed. It clings to his abs, giving each one an outline, a picture frame to celebrate all of its lickable glory.

“Clearly,” I deadpan.

He just chuckles like I’m being adorable or something and not detesting him and his perfect physique.

“You have a kitchen with two ovens and this is what you brought me here for?” I ask with a mouthful of my third bar. “These taste like chalk.”

He wags a finger at me. “Chalk is an acquired taste.”

I cock an eyebrow.

“Mostly by toddlers,” he adds.

I can’t help it; I laugh. With a bar full of perhaps literal chalk, I let out a huge guffaw that sends tiny morsels of my bar across the island.

A glistening crumb glints up at me—a beacon to ground this memory for whenever I feel like diving into a shame spiral. I’ll forever remember the time I was trying to seduce my handsome, albeit dorky, saviour and I spewed crumbs on his expensive granite kitchen.

Before my cheeks can fully flood with embarrassment, he busts out into a deep, rich laugh that sets my very bones at ease.

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