Page 61 of Right Side of Paradise
“I’m trying to make Rico a dessert I found online. For his birthday. I have ten days to get it right and that was my second batch.”
“What happened to the first one?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
I fought my laugh, but my shaking shoulders still told on me.
“Soul, I promise you, Rico isn’t expecting you to bake him anything.” We had no less than five bakeries scattered around the island for that.
“I know and that’s why I want to do it.”
Soul’s hand glided over my thigh until he reached the hem of my denim shorts. He moved his hand mindlessly, so used to touching me that he didn’t realize how much I craved his touch and didn’t want him to stop.
Then he pulled his hand away and stood up without warning. “Come inside and help me?”
Chills skated over my skin at the needy inflection of his words, and I imagined him begging for something else.
Shaking the thought away, I got up to follow him back into the house. My period had come the day after Juneteenth and ever since it stopped, I’d beenon one. I fell asleep with Christian still inside of me last night. Just for me to roll over in the middle of the night and let Rico put me back to sleep with deep strokes from the side. I came hard but quietly, my moans dying on the palm he had fastened over my mouth.
And now? Now I needed Soul.
I was unhinged. Insatiable. The more I got it, the more I wanted it.
Still attempting to keep those thoughts at bay, I watched Soul jump off the patio and retrieve the now sandy remains of the cookies he’d ruined. “Birds don’t deserve that,” he explained when I caught his eye.
Laughing, I followed him inside the house and into the kitchen, moving close to study the picture he was showing me on his phone.
Birthday brownie sugar cookies.
“Ooh, these look good.”
“You think I can make them?”
“Umm…”
“Harley.”
I slid in the tight space between him and the counter, beaming up at him when he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Soul.”
He lowered his head to look at me, his lips quirking when I circled my arms around his waist.
“I’ll help you.”
“Thank you, Harley baby.” Soul kissed the top of my head and turned around to regather the ingredients.
July was our birthday month.
Rico’s was the tenth, Christian’s was on the eleventh and mine was the eighteenth. Soul’s closed out the month on the thirty-first.
I wasn’t Betty Crocker but between the two of us, we had to come up with something edible by the time the month was over.
“Canyou tell me what else is on your list?”
Soul looked at me after closing the oven.
“My list?”
“Aside from sex, what doyouwant?”
