Page 64 of Treat

“It feels what?” Jude asked, and she turned.

He was standing in the bedroom doorway, his hair still damp from his shower. Dark with wet, it was almost the same shade as his mustache—a mustache she still hadn’t yet made full use of. Savoring the curl of heat in her belly at the thought—and wasn’t it nice to be able to savor instead of having to ignore?—she soaked in the rest of him.

His chest was bare, but he’d pulled on loose cotton pants, this pair in a rich navy blue that made his eyes look even bluer, and how that worked when they were nowhere near his eyes she didn’t know, but it did. They hung low on his hips, exposing the deep V of muscle separating waist from hip that she’d traced with her tongue in the shower. He’d tasted salty and musky, like his sweat and her pussy, and after that she’d forgotten about tracing things with her tongue and concentrated on gobbling things with her mouth.

She sighed at the memory, and he chuckled. “What are you thinking?”

“I was thinking about how you taste,” she said, still thinking about it.

“Well, that explains why your face went red,” he said, amused, and pushed off the door jam.

She grimaced. “I’m not a redhead, but somehow I ended up with the complexion of one,” she complained.

He came around the counter and stood in front of her, the dog between them at her feet. “I like it.”

He smelled like soap and shampoo. It made her want to stink him up again. “That makes one of us.”

He just grinned and dropped a kiss on her nose. “Is one of those steaks for me?”

She nodded, trying not to sigh. Nobody had ever kissed her nose before, and she liked it. She liked it a lot. “How do you like it?”

“Rare, or medium rare.” He reached into the fridge for a bottle of water. “I can live with medium if I have to.”

She nodded. “Rare it is.”

His grin flashed again as he leaned back against the counter and opened the water. After drinking half of it down, he set it aside. “So?”

She was staring at a tiny droplet of water clinging to the edge of his mustache, wondering if he’d think she was weird if she licked it off. “So, what?”

“If it doesn’t feel icky, what does it feel?”

“Oh.” Jerked back to reality by embarrassment, she turned to fuss over the steaks. “You weren’t supposed to hear that.”

“Should I pretend I didn’t?”

She almost said yes, but since she’d just been declaring herself a grown adult, it seemed ridiculous. She flipped the steaks, setting off a fresh round of sizzling, and metaphorically pulled up her big-girl panties. “Of course not.”

“Okay. Are you going to answer me?”

“I’m not sure how,” she confessed and with her cheeks burning, glanced back. “I was trying to come up with the right word.”

“Un-icky?” he suggested, a smile lurking under his mustache.

She snorted out a laugh. “Gee, why didn’t I think of that?”

He set his water down. “How about I come up with a word?”

Her heart was suddenly in her throat. He was still smiling, so that was good, but it felt like she was at the top of the roller coaster again. “Um. Okay.”

“Right.”

“Right, what?” she asked.

“That’s how it feels,” he elaborated, his smile broadening. But it was soft and somehow sweet, and it made her knees go boneless. “Right.”

“Oh,” she breathed, clutching the tongs to her chest. “I think that’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

His smile took on an impish edge. “More romantic than ‘we all gotta go sometime’?”

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