Page 37 of Oh, Sacred Dark
“Okay,” Roman accepted quietly.
A few weeks ago, Tyler would have taken that at face value, bulldozing on. Now, though, he couldn’t help but inspect closer, catching the edge of disappointment in Roman’s eyes—the way they flittered away, eyebrows dipping before he flattened his expression again. “Unless you want to,” Tyler corrected himself.
Roman stood very still. “I enjoy cooking,” he said almost too quietly to hear.
“Oh! That’s awesome. Let’s see what we can do, then.”
Tyler tried to stay mostly out of the way even though Roman kept looking to him for guidance.
“Sorry,” Tyler admitted, “I honestly don’t know what I’m doing. This is all you.”
Roman, however, reallydidknow what he was doing—he didn’t even glance at the box to know how much milk and how many eggs to add, heating the pan to perfection, the pancakes turning out in fluffy circles. The bacon, too, was oven-cooked to the ideal crispness. He even cut up some bananas and strawberries, the final result a spread that could be on the cover of BREAKFAST magazine, if there were such a thing.
“Holy crap,” Connie said when it was all placed on the table. “This lookssogood.”
Roman’s cheeks pinkened.
Tyler nodded. “And smells amazing. We’ll get the plates, Roman, come sit and eat with us.”
Roman froze by the sink. “That’s okay. I can—”
Connie interrupted him. “Nope. If you cook, you don’t clean. That’s, like, the rule.”
They managed to convince Roman to sit down, calling Cross and Charlie to join them. Tyler made sure Roman got his fair share of food instead of waiting for everybody else to eat.
The food was amazing—it had been a while since he’d had pancakes, and he didn’t remember them being so light and airy. “Damn, Roman. You’re gonna give Nai a run for her money.”
Roman protested adamantly, but the rest of the table overrode him loudly until he was reduced to a blushing, smiling mess.
Tyler felt warmth bloom inside him at the sight.
He wished he could keep that expression on Roman’s face forever.
The strength of that thought pierced a hole in Tyler’s chest. Tyler wasn’t Roman’s Dom—not really. Roman wasn’t going tokeephim. The sub needed him, and there was no real consent in that.
Roman’s shoulders seemed looser than usual, expression light, so Tyler didn’t protest when Roman parked himself by the sink to help Tyler load the dishwasher. Tyler took care of all the pots and pans while Roman placed the plates and cutlery carefully in the machine.
“Thanks for cooking,” Tyler said, focusing on the pan in his hands.
“It’s nothing,” Roman replied quietly.
“God knows what we would have come up with if it’d been left to Connie and me…we might all be dying of food poisoning now.”
Roman let out an amused burst of air, and Tyler wished he could look over without being obvious about it.
He settled for saying, “We could do that more if you wanted? You could come over for dinner sometime this week and we could try a recipe? What do you like to cook?”
“Oh. Uhm. Anything, really,” Roman said haltingly.
“Do you have a dish you used to like making?” Tyler knew he was pushing, but he wanted Roman to make a choice by himself.
The long silence that followed made him doubt that would be the case, but Roman eventually replied, “There’s a salmon meal that’s good.”
Tyler shot him a smile even though Roman wasn’t facing him, blinking down at the dishwasher instead. “That sounds great. How about we sit and you can give me a list of ingredients? We can make it tomorrow night?”
“Okay,” Roman said. His voice was flat and without inflection.
Tyler wasn’t going to let the tone deter him—he knew now that it had to be a defence mechanism. “Okay.”
