Muffin Top

by Tabatha Kiss

  “Ohh, gimme,” Evey moans, laughing slightly as she tries to reach for one with a quivering, exhausted stretch.

  I grab one and hold it up to her pink lips. She opens her mouth and I place it on her tongue.

  “Mmm,” she says, chewing softly. “That hits the spot.”

  I bite down, piercing the tiny fruit between my teeth. The juice spreads across my tongue but it’s not nearly as sweet as she is.

  Her head settles back onto my chest. “What time is it?” she asks.

  I fight the urge to look. Solving that mystery would only put a limit on the rest of this night. “I don’t know.”

  She turns onto her side and props up on her elbow to stare at me. “Vincent…” Her voice falls, along with her little, brown eyes.

  “What?”

  She hesitates for a moment longer. “Should I go?”

  I shake my head once. “Why would you?”

  “I mean, I don’t want to…” she chuckles, “I don’t know the rules here.”

  “What rules?”

  “Exactly.”

  I turn to face her. “Do we need rules?”

  “I don’t know. Do we?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Well, what are we calling this?” she asks.

  “What do you want to call it?” I smirk and she frowns. “Evey, you’re welcome to stay here for as long as you want. In fact, I’d encourage it, considering what happened at your place tonight.”

  “Okay, but… stay here as what?”

  “My friend,” I answer. “My favorite customer. Maybe even my lover, if you want, and I’d be willing to negotiate girlfriend in its place if you want that, too.”

  Her cheeks burn a bright pink and she bites her lip. “Well, that… answers that question.”

  “I’ve never been the relationship type,” I say. “I never had the time before but I’ll make time for you.”

  “Why?” she asks, pulling her eyes up.

  “Because time runs out.” I slide my hand up to rest on the side of her neck. “And you’re the first woman I’ve ever met that made that seem like a bad thing. I want to make new memories to replace the ones I’d rather forget about and I want to make them with you. I don’t want my time to run out before that happens.”

  Evey pauses with her eyes fixed on me. I wish I could be a fly on the inside of her head right now. It’s hard to gauge what she’s thinking behind those eyes but I breathe a little easier as her lips twitch upward.

  “Okay,” she whispers. “I’ll stay here with you.”

  I brush her cheek. “I can take you back to your place later to gather some things but we shouldn’t stay there for very long. Not until I know it’s safe.”

  “I should swing by the pharmacy down the street in the morning, too.”

  “Pharmacy?” I ask.

  “Well…” she screws up her face, “I haven’t exactly needed a reason to be on the pill in a long time and I can’t say I heard the crinkling of a foil wrapper at any point tonight, so…”

  I nod with understanding. Pissing off a mobster isn’t the only possible consequence of tonight’s events but it’s definitely the only negative one. I pause, seeing flashes of a future together in my head and I smile.

  “Or you don’t,” I say.

  Evey furrows her brow. “What?”

  A loud knocking echoes up the stairs and she stiffens in my arms. I focus my hearing, narrowing it down to the back exit of the kitchen. The knocking turns into a banging, pounding over and over again without stopping.

  Evey doesn’t breathe. I kiss her forehead, giving her the slightest comfort, before sliding off the bed.

  “Stay here,” I tell her. “Keep quiet.”

  I grab my slacks off the floor and slip them on as she sits up with the bedsheet clung to her breasts.

  I move with soft feet, making no noise as I descend the stairs to the bakery’s kitchen.

  The banging persists. I close the stairwell door and roll my hands into fists, prepared for anything.

  “Vincent, open up!”

  I exhale the breath I was holding and pull the door open.

  Anna stands in the alleyway with an angry frown. “It’s about time,” she snaps. “Since when are you a deep sleeper?”

  “What are you doing here?” I ask her as she plows past me into the kitchen.

  “Cleaning up your mess.”

  “What mess?”

  She paces in front of me. “I’ve just spent the last few hours interrogating a few mob thugs that showed up in the emergency room tonight.”

  I shrug, feigning ignorance. “So?”

  “They were all beaten in an alley behind an apartment building across town. Looked like your basic, every day, gang activity at first, but something didn’t smell right.” She narrows her eyes. “Those wounds were anything but sloppy and witnesses described someone that seemed a little familiar to me fleeing the scene with a blonde woman.”

  I pause. “Anna…”

  “I looked into the residents of the apartment building and found out that the only blonde who lives there that matches her description also owns the bar right next door to your damn bakery.”

  “It’s not what—”

  “What the hell are you doing, Vincent?” she seethes. “I told you not to get involved with this.”

  “And I told you I couldn’t do that.”

  She shakes her head, angry yet amused. “Do you have any idea what you’ve gotten yourself into?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you even care about what it would do to me if something happened to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, what the hell are you doing?”

  My ears twitch, sensing the lightest pressure on the stairway behind the door. Luckily, my sister doesn’t notice. “I couldn’t just let them take her, Anna.”

  She opens her mouth to argue with me but chokes the words down.

  Why not? That’s what she was about to ask but she knows damn well why not. It’s not in her nature to sit and watch as evil happens either.

  “Where is Evey Ryan?” she asks instead.

  I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

  She closes her eyes with a flexed jaw. “Don’t lie to me, Vin. I can’t help her if you lie to me.”

  “You couldn’t help her anyway,” I say. “You said so yourself; the cops won’t touch him.”

  “And you think, what? That you can?”

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.”

  She rubs her tired eyes. “Vin… please. I can’t keep this quiet for long and we can’t hold these guys without evidence.”

  “Then, don’t.”

  “They saw your face,” she says, growing desperate. “It won’t take long for them to figure out who you are. If she comes forward, she can file a report and we can book them for attempted kidnapping. That will, at least, get them off the streets. Now, where is Evey Ryan?”

  I look at the stairway door and sigh. Even if I wanted to come forward, this isn’t my decision to make. “Evey,” I say, “come on out.”

  A few seconds pass before the knob turns and Evey steps out with ruffled hair, wearing nothing but my button down shirt. It hangs about halfway over her thighs and she stands with her arms wrapped around herself in that protective stance.

  “Hey…” she says, waving a few awkward fingers at my sister.

  Anna raises a knowing brow at me and my bare chest but quickly banishes the amusement off of her face. “Ms. Ryan, I need you to come down to the station with me and answer some questions—”

  “Look…” Evey slinks backward, “I don’t wanna file any reports or nothing. I just wanna move on.”

  My sister takes a deep breath. “If these men tried to hurt you then you should speak up before it happens again,” she argues.

  Evey shakes her head.

  Anna glares at me, no doubt hoping that I’ll step in and say something but she’s a cop. She knows better than anybody how these things w
ork. If there’s anything deader than a rival on mob turf, it’s a snitch.

  “Evey, are you sure?” I ask her.

  She nods. “Yeah.”

  I look at Anna. “You heard her.”

  Anna grits her teeth and takes a quick step towards me. “You better know what you’re doing, little brother.”

  “I do.”

  She talks under her breath. “I can only imagine what Mom would have to say about this.”

  I try to respond but she shoves the back door open before I can get a word out. The door slams behind her and Evey flinches in the stairwell.

  My eyes wander down to her toes and back up again. “Looks good on you,” I say, gesturing to my shirt.

  Her lips twitch. “I couldn’t find mine…”

  I laugh and walk over to lock the back door. “You okay?” I ask, bolting it.

  She nods with a pained look on her face. “Your sister is a cop?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sorry if I pissed her off…”

  I smirk. “Don’t worry about it. You actually caught her in a good mood.”

  Evey chuckles, then presses her lips together. “Vincent, what am I going to do? She’s right. They’ll come back for me and I can’t stay here forever.”

  I close the short gap between us. “You can’t?”

  “No.”

  “Says who?”

  She smiles as I step closer. “Vincent, come on…”

  “I’m serious,” I whisper in her ear. “Who says you can’t just disappear? Hide away upstairs like my dirty little secret?”

  She shivers as I grip her waist and pull her closer to me. “Nobody, I guess…”

  I kiss her and she opens her lips to allow my tongue inside. She slides away to lead us upstairs again but I pull her back and pin her to the wall.

  “We can’t do naughty things in the kitchen,” she says. “Remember?”

  “Let them fine me,” I grin.

  Evey lets out a giggle as I pick her up and set her down on the counter. She wraps her legs around me, pulling me in as I rest a hand behind her neck to kiss her even harder.

  She leans her head back and groans. “Does this place ever not smell like heaven?”

  “Not really, no.”

  She moans against my lips. “Dating a baker is the best thing ever.”

  “I’ve always had the best midnight snack options, that’s for sure.”

  She bites her cheek. “Do you have cookie dough?”

  I squint in thought. “No.”

  “You don’t have cookie dough?” She recoils in smiling disappointment. “What kind of bakery is this?”

  “You know, I can make cookie dough for you,” I suggest.

  She smiles. “It won’t take long?”

  I spin to the fridge, shaking my head. “You really know nothing about baking, do you?”

  “Nada.”

  “Well… watch and learn, Evey Ryan.” I grab a few ingredients from the fridge before returning to the counter beside her. “Spread your legs for me.”

  She tilts her head. “What?”

  I gesture for her to widen her knees. “Spread, please.”

  Evey obeys with a crooked brow and I reach for the handle on the drawer beneath her. I grab a whisk from inside and nudge it closed again.

  I slap her shoulder with the whisk. “What exactly were you expecting?” I chuckle.

  She laughs and I mix the flour and sugar together. I run on auto-pilot, eyeballing the amounts from memory as I keep one eye on her. She watches with a half smile, her gaze gently bouncing between my hands and face.

  I bend over to search my cabinets for a hand mixer.

  “Hey, Vincent.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What did you mean?” she asks slowly. “Upstairs, before Anna started banging on the door?”

  I plug the mixer into the wall and flick it on, letting the wands buzz loudly for a second before flicking it off again. “I meant exactly what it sounded like,” I answer.

  She lets it sink in, sitting quietly as I blend the wet and dry ingredients. The slush quickly thickens into sweet and tasty cookie dough but I keep mixing for as long as possible. The moment I turn it off, she’ll respond to it.

  I take a breath in preparation and flick the mixer off.

  Evey stays quiet for a moment more. “Well… it sounded like you didn’t want me to take birth control, which could potentially mean you want me to…” she squints, “have your babies, which feels really strange to say out loud…”

  I smile at the suggestion. Scratch that. I smile at everything about it.

  “I want a family,” I say, stepping over to the cabinet in the corner. “I always have but I never thought I’d get the chance to have one.” I grab a bag of chocolate chips from inside and show them to her. She nods in agreement. “It does feel strange to say this but I’m ready to enter the next chapter of my life and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend that time with than you.” I throw a handful of chips into the mixture. “I can’t — and won’t — force that on you, so I understand if you’d rather take it slow but… I’m ready when you are.”

  She shakes her head, stunned to the core and I don’t blame her for a second. It’s a lot to take all at once, almost too much, but I can’t bring myself to let something like this slip by me.

  I throw my focus back to the mixing bowl and dive my hands in to fold the chips into the dough. She smiles at me and the mess I’ve made — both of them.

  Finally, she lets out a deep breath. “You know, it feels like we’ve condensed an entire relationship down into two days…”

  “That’s my fault,” I say, looking down. “If I had said something sooner—”

  “No, I like it,” she says over me. “My life is shit. That’s a fact right there.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Yeah, it is, but… I feel like I wouldn’t have been ready for something like this until now. You came into my life exactly when I needed you, Vincent, and I don’t think I could ever repay you for that — and I don’t just mean money.”

  I smirk, growing warmer with every word she says. “Are my muffins that good?” I joke.

  She laughs. “Hell yes.”

  “Is that so?”

  “The word orgasmic comes to mind.”

  I wince. “I don’t think I can put that on the sign out front. May need to come up with something a little more PG-rated.”

  “Well…” she points a finger and scoops a little bit of cookie dough onto the tip, “maybe a little sugar will help me think of something.”

  She licks her finger clean and her eyes rolls back. I flick the excess dough off my dirty hands and stick my thumb between my teeth to taste it.

  “Not bad,” I nod.

  “Nope,” she says, shaking her head. “Still orgasmic.”

  I laugh, stepping closer and taking the opportunity to tap my finger against her lips. She opens her mouth for me and wraps her lips around my knuckle. Blood rushes towards my groin as I feel her tongue gently laving at me from the inside.

  I pull my hand from her mouth and lean in to kiss her.

  Her face falls. “I’m not saying yes,” she whispers.

  I nod, held by her beautiful eyes. “That’s okay. I can wait.”

  “But…” she trembles, “I can’t say no, either.”

  I crush my lips on hers, seduced by sugar and chocolate, as I reach up to touch her.

  “Hfmm—” she exhales, pulling away from me. “Your hands are…”

  I look down and laugh, realizing that I’ve smeared cookie dough all over her throat. “Oops… sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she giggles.

  I cock a brow and lean forward, stealing the opportunity to lick her clean and she melts like butter. She doesn’t flinch as I reach for her again, dirtying up my shirt she’s wearing. I flick the buttons free and push it open, giving me a full view of her body and my tongue salivates for more of her. Voluptuous and wild. Stunning, am
ple perfection.

  Evey looks down at my tented groin and smiles with passion in her eyes and lust on her breath. She pushes my slacks down, scratching her nails over my ass and I shudder and twitch with each painful tickle. I step closer and she hugs her legs around me, pulling me in.

  We make eye contact and pause, breathing in each other’s air. Our pulses sync. Every heartbeat thumps in my ears, pounding blood throughout my tingling body, but I don’t move. I wait for her. I’ll wait forever if I have to.

  She wraps her fingers around my begging cock and guides it inside of her. My instincts roar as I grip her body and thrust. Her tightness clenches around me and she moans in my ear, fueling the fire between us.

  I grind her deeply, letting every fantasy in my head meet reality. I’ve thought countless times of taking her this way; naked and mewling on my kitchen counter. I attack her neck, smiling at the pleasant taste of her skin caked in cookie dough.

  “Harder,” she begs, biting her lip.

  I do as she asks and her breath catches behind a moan in her throat. Her thighs shake and her muscles lock. I wrap my arms around her to hold her up and she leans into my embrace, pressing her open mouth into my shoulder as she cries out.

  Her body breaks in my arms and I feel it all as she comes for me again. I hold back, slowing my thrust to maintain control but she raises her head and kisses me.

  “Keep going,” she breathes, meeting my eyes. “I want you to…”

  I hesitate, almost losing it as I feel her hands on me. Her moans rattle my lips, spurring a deeper thrill inside. Heat rises. My loins burn. Any second now, I’ll let go and I want nothing more than to be inside of her when I do.

  I thrust in deep and hold it there as I come. She opens her eyes and looks at me, feeling everything I do. There’s not an ounce of hesitation or doubt in her stare. She wants this as much as I do right now.

  I wrap my arms around her and kiss her, feeling a burst of protectiveness deep inside.

  I’m never going to let anyone take her away from me.

  I’d like to see them try.

  Chapter 12

  Evey

  Honestly, there are worse ways to live than hiding away in Vincent Silva’s loft.

  My tongue has been dancing all afternoon. Not just from the acrobatics it performed all night with him but from all the delicious smells constantly filling my nose since the moment he went downstairs this morning to start baking.