I swallowed at the thought of running my hands down those hips and grabbing her ass. I wanted to hoist her legs around my waist so I could bury my hardness in her. I was aching to relieve the pressure that had been building inside me for years. Pressure I wasn’t sure I would be able to contain working beside her day after day. I’d have to, though. The only thing I wanted as much as I wanted Haylee Davis was a full-time baking gig.
“Staying away from you,” she finally answered. “Not touching you. Not wanting more from you than your talent with the dough. That will be hard and scary, but you deserve this. I can’t pretend you don’t. I know you could have gotten a job as a full-time baker anywhere else by now.”
I stood and stalked toward her, stopping just short of plastering myself against her softness. My dick was hard, and I couldn’t hide it. I didn’t want to. Maybe seeing the proof of what she did to me would help her to believe my words. “I absolutely could have.”
“Why did you stay at The Fluffy Cupcake all these years then?” she whispered, the question hesitant.
“Because of you, cupcake. There is no other bakery in the world that has anyone as gorgeous as you are working for them. I would mop the floor of The Fluffy Cupcake with a damn toothbrush if it meant I could keep seeing your sweetness every day. Career aspirations are one thing, but life goals are another. My life goal is to make Haylee Davis my cupcake. Full stop.”
Thirteen
The air around me waselectrified, and he was closing in on my space. Did he just say his life goal is to make me his cupcake? Um? My eyes traveled the length of him and paused at the outline in his pants that told me one part of him was dead serious.
“You—you don’t mean that,” I stuttered, my words slurring slightly from all the wine. “You just want to get in my pants. It’s like a challenge for every guy to fuck the thick chick and then walk away, right?”
With his left hand on the wall next to my head, he rubbed the front of his shorts with the right. “Oh, I want to get in your pants, but I have no intention of walking away. I should have said I want Haylee Davis to be my cupcake for eternity.”
“Eternity,” I whispered.
He nodded that Adonis head at me.
“I originally came over here tonight to apologize for kissing you.”
And there we have it. He already had regrets, and he hadn’t even gotten in my pants. Thank God for that. “See, already wish you hadn’t.”
“Wrong,” he said, leaning in closer now, both hands braced on the wall. “Wish I hadn’t done it in the middle of the bakery? Yes. Wish I had waited until you didn’t have to worry about me claiming sexual harassment? Yes. Wish I hadn’t kissed you? Absofuckinglutely not. That was the hottest kiss I’ve ever shared with anyone, and we were in the middle of a damn cooler.”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “You talked to Amber.”
“I did, but I didn’t need to do that to know I’d made a mistake. That’s why I was back at the bakery after I showered. I wanted to tell you it wouldn’t happen again—in the bakery, at least. I was going to kiss you when we were at the lake, and then the other night when we were here alone, but I chickened out.”
“You chickened out?”
“Why do you keep repeating everything I say?” he asked teasingly.
“Because I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that you wanted to kiss me, regardless of the place.”