Page 19 of The Spice Play

Sebastian

Nelly turned up at my front door at seven in the morningexactly.

The goal was a trial run — two days of her coming and going without moving in, just in case this didn’t work out for some reason. At least then, she wouldn’t have to move all of her things out immediately.

I’d spent the night going over in my head all of the reasons this was a horrible idea. The main one, the one that flared wildly every time I saw her and still burned annoyingly bright when she wasn’t around, was the unending temptation to bend her over my kitchen counter and fill her with my cock instead of my fingers.

Why did she have to be so fucking sexy?

Matty ate his bowl of cereal quietly in the living room as he watched cartoons, already dressed for his day of school, as I poured myself and Nelly a cup of coffee each.

“School starts at eight, but if you need to get him there early for any reason, they can be dropped off from seven onward,” I explained, sliding a mug across the breakfast islandfor Nelly. She stared down at it with a strange expression, her mouth tightening. “What?”

“Uh, do you have any… creamer? Or even milk, maybe? And sugar?”

I groaned in exasperation as I took her mug back. I pulled out the gallon of milk from the fridge and started rummaging through the cabinets, looking for the bag of sugar I keptsomewhere.

“Do you have a spare car seat so I can install it in the truck? I have one at home, but I think Matty’s a little too big for it.”

I snorted as I pulled the bag of sugar down from the cabinet. “You’re not driving my kid to school in that death trap. You can take my Porsche for now. I’ll take the Audi.”

“It’s not a death trap,” she snapped. “It’s perfectly reliable.”

“It sounds like it’s about to explode,” I deadpanned, dropping a spoonful of sugar into the coffee. I raised a brow at her, challenging her to ask for a second, but she shook her head. “I’ve already gotten complaints about it from two of my neighbors.”

“You have not,” she grumbled, watching with precision as I tipped milk into her cup. “Stop! Yeah, that’s enough.”

“I have,” I said. I set her cup back in front of her, noting the lack of athank youin the bad-idea column. “You’ll take the Porsche. No exceptions.”

“Fine. What time does he finish school?”

“Three on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Two on Wednesdays,” I explained. I watched as she flicked open a little notebook she’d brought with her and clicked her pen, jotting down notes. “Believe me when I say the lunches at his school are better than the things I could make here, so you don’t need to worry about packing him food.And if you need to pick him up late at any point, they have an after-school club until four every day. You’ll just need to call ahead and tell them, or he’ll be waiting outside.”

“Am I cleared to do that? I won’t need to today, but just so I know ahead of time.”

I nodded. “I called them yesterday after you left. You’re on file.”

She hummed softly as she jotted something else down, underlining it a few times while she sipped her coffee. “Okay. So, we’ve gone over Matty’s schedule, unless there’s anything else I need to know with that. But I don’t know yours.”

I scrunched my mouth up to one side as I mulled over her words. “Mine changes pretty frequently depending on practice schedules, if I need to stay late, days before games, and the games themselves. This Sunday, for example, we have an important game, and I won’t be home for half of Saturday and most of Sunday. But that’s not every weekend.”

“Okay… and I get days off?” she chuckled, clicking the pen against her lip.

“Of course,” I clarified. “Two, at a minimum, per week. My sister can watch Matty if something urgent comes up, but ideally, they’ll be taken on the days when I can move my schedule to handle Matty. But if you have special requests, we can always figure it out if I know in advance,” I explained. My coffee burned my tongue as I sipped at it. “I’ll add you to my calendar so you can see my schedule, and I’ll be as transparent as I can about anything that deviates from it.”

She set her mug down and leaned back in her chair, the fabric of her loose black tee conforming around her breasts. Still, she played with that fucking pen, clickingit incessantly against her lower lip and staring at the paper before her. I wanted to take it from her to stop the clicking, but I wanted to put it in her mouth even more, wanted to watch the way her tongue curled around it, wanted to see what she was capable of.

“Can you not?” I grumbled.

“What?”

“The clicking.”And everything else.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, flipping the pen between her fingers. “I was just thinking.”

Me too.“About?”

“Does Matty ever get to go to the rink?”

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