Sweet and Salty (Marshall My Heart #1)

42. Chapter Forty-Two

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

L aura

I laugh, the motion jubilant and buoyant. “You want to learn how to make kringle?” I thought it would be something naughty—which I’m down for, no doubt—but kringle?

I pick up the rolling pin but it feels lighter than a marshmallow. It falls onto the work table with a clunk.

He leans forward and kisses my cheek again, his lips branding me with warmth and love. He loves me. Me. “Yes. Please.”

I’m a little too love-befuddled to think clearly of an appropriate response. “Okay.” With shaking hands, I pick up the rolling pin again, Ma’s sturdy bamboo one that doesn’t have any handles because I hate cleaning them.

Jesse snakes his arms around me, resting his hands atop mine and stilling them. Sparks of desire flare from our connection and zoom straight to my core. No, I don’t need sex brain, I need baking brain. “So, um, first we roll out the dough. I usually keep a stash in the freezer. Kringle is one of our more popular menu items, regardless of the season. Though holidays tend to be the busiest. Kringle wise.” A flush spreads up my neck. “Sorry. I’m babbling.”

“I like your babbling. Never apologize.” He keeps his hands on mine as we roll a disk into a nine- by fifteen-inch rectangle. “What’s in the dough?” His breath heats the skin behind my ear, making my whole scalp tingle.

I can’t remember. His proximity has robbed me of my senses.

But I’m more than a giant horny toad. This is my business. I just need to focus.

“Flour, butter. Sugar, of course. Eggs, yeast. All the basic ingredients.” I set aside the rolling pin, and Jesse takes the moment to squeeze a handful of my hip. This is one of the things that I love about Jesse. He’s not shy about showing me how much he likes my body.

For my part, I want those hands lower. Sleep deprivation plus dreams coming true equal wanting him inside me. I close my eyes, forcing myself to focus on my task. “It’s Ma’s recipe. She was from Racine, where the Wisconsin Danish kringle originated.” My cheeks flush and I take the other disk to roll into a rectangle. I’m being far more gentle now, but it’s because Jesse’s presence makes me think all sorts of things that have nothing to do with pastry.

“Really? Racine.” Jesse settles his hands on mine again as we shadow-roll the dough. Why is this so sexy? His weight and heat against my body, our conjoined touch rolling and stretching and kneading the soft dough. “The only thing I know about Racine is from A League of Their Own .”

I laugh, and it feels so good to have him behind me, holding me like this. “My grandmother’s best friend was a Racine Belle. Between my two moms, Ma was the one who taught us all how to swing for the fences.”

“Did you ever meet your grandma?”

“No. She disapproved of my moms getting married. She wouldn’t even come to Ma’s funeral. Afterward, she reached out once to all four of us, but none of us talked to her. She had said so many hateful things about our moms. We didn’t need to invite that into our lives.”

He kisses my neck, leaving a streak of damp sugar and flour. It’s like a tattoo, something forever, indelible. “You miss her.”

“Every single day.” I set aside the rolling pin again and pick up the bowl of brandied cherries, moving it beside the chocolate almond ganache. “She was an amazing woman, and she left this hole when she died.” I step around Jesse and go to the utensil drawer for an offset spatula. “She wanted so much for me, and I worry every day that I’m letting her down.”

Jesse waits, watching as I move around the kitchen. “I have a feeling she is incredibly proud of you. Look at everything you’ve built, and you’re so young, Laura. I know what it’s like to lose parents too young, and it fucking sucks. Be proud of yourself. I’m positive your ma is.”

Tears well up, but I snuff them out behind a kitchen towel. “Thank you. I’m sure your parents are proud of you too.”

Jesse barks a pained laugh. “Maybe. Maybe they were, but I don’t know if they would be now. So the kringle is filled?”

Right. Pastry lesson. “Yes. Filled and topped with icing, sometimes caramel or chocolate. Why skimp on the sugar? That’s what Ma always said. She said life is hard so we should do what we can to sweeten it up.” I swipe some of the chocolate almond ganache onto one of the rectangles with the offset spatula. “She always thought there should be a balance between the sweet and the salty parts of life.”

Jesse wraps his arms around me, hugging me from behind, resting his forehead against my hair. “I think you’re the balance in life.”

His lips graze my scalp, sending tingles that activate every sex brain-focused part of me. “Really?”

“Yes.” Now his mouth traces the line of my neck. “What kind of kringle are we making?” He dips a fingertip into the ganache, paints it on the curve of my collarbone, then licks it off. Maybe it’s my imagination, but his voice has lowered a register, and it’s exactly the kind of growl that makes me wet.

Or maybe it’s his hands, skimming down the sides of my chest, testing the weight of my breasts before moving lower and settling on my hips. I love how he treats my body, how he cherishes me. Even when he pushes me to my limits and past them, somehow I always feel safe.

“Laura?” His tone teases as his mouth sucked on my ear lobe, making me shiver. “You sound…distracted.”

“Um.” Words. He asked a question. I need words. “Chocolate cherry old-fashioned. It’s a whole thing. We make our old-fashioneds with brandy instead of whiskey.”

“That sounds delicious.” One of his hands slides into the elastic waistband of my pants. “Is this okay? You can tell me to stop.”

“Don’t stop.” Those words come out easily enough, even if I’ve forgotten every single item on the worktable. I’m wet and hot and yearning for him. Who needs fresh kringle when Jesse is here?

“As you wish.” His hand cups my mound before parting my folds and sliding one finger inside me. Yes. I arch back against him, seeking more friction against my clit. “When can I taste one of these brandy old-fashioneds?” he asks as he fingers me, pressing the heel of his hand against my clit. Maybe it’s because I’m exhausted or emotionally strung out, but I’m already so close to coming. I never want him to stop. I want to pause time in this kitchen, and live here for as long as we can.

Despite my hand shaking from the hormones and desire surging inside me, I manage to pluck a single brandied cherry from the bowl and hold it over my shoulder toward his mouth. “Try this.”

He leans forward, his magical hand not leaving my clit, and devours my fingers and the cherry in one long, suckling motion that zings straight to my center. “Mmm,” he murmurs, then slides a second finger into me, and that’s more than enough. The stretch, the pressure, the delicious feeling of him inside me sends me reeling, and I clench around him with a sigh falling from my lips.

“Jesse,” I breathe, collapsing a little onto the worktable, propping myself up with my forearms.

But then hot, sturdy hands on my hips whirl me around, and his mouth is on mine. He passes that same brandied cherry into my mouth, its sweet and alcoholic tang exploding like a firecracker of flavor. “I like this cherry best.” He circles my wet, swollen clit with his finger, making me whimper. With his other hand, he pulls my pants down past my ass. “Can I taste it?”

I nod, and just as my teeth clamp into the sweet cherry, he licks my clit, hard and firm. I slide my fingers through his hair and hold on as he suckles me until, impossibly, I’m coming a second time. Maybe the first never really went away, because this is waves and waves of red hot pleasure.

Cherry juice drips from my mouth, my clothes are a wreck of flour and sex and sugar, and all I can think is how I want him. Inside me. Beside me. Forever.

I see our future so clearly. The two of us on my farm, raising our animal babies. Human babies, too, toddling after Einstein. The ones with Jesse’s eyes and my dark brown hair would soften even Cree’s tough exterior.

I want it so badly. Now. Always. I feel so close to having everything I’ve always wanted, and it’s intoxicating and thrilling. Like sitting in a roller coaster car at the very top of a near-vertical drop.

“I need you.” I pull him toward me and wrestle him to a cleaner part of the worktable. Far enough from the kringle that it’s not such a major health code violation. “Please.” I reach for his belt, kicking off my pants and shoes. “I want you inside me.”

“Laura.” His voice holds a note of warning, which is not helping matters. It’s not like I’m going to fuck him in kringle dough, but he resists my tugging on him. “Laura, I didn’t bring a condom.”

“What?” Why does that matter? We love each other. This is the hottest morning sex I ever could have imagined. I want him to take the ganache, pile it on my nipples, then lick it off while he rails me. Condoms aren’t a part of the fantasy of forever playing in my brain. “I’m clean. There’s no one else. I trust you.”

“Are you on birth control?”

I still, the post-orgasmic fog ebbing, but one question sticks in my brain. Who cares if we make a baby? I want it. I want that purpose, that direction to my life. I’m tired of spinning my wheels. “No, I had a blood clot in my leg when I was twenty-two. They told me I shouldn’t take hormones.” I lick my lips. “I don’t care if we don’t use one.”

“I came here to apologize, not to have sex with you.” Jesse maneuvers his hips away from my hand, and understanding crashes through me. It feels a lot like rejection. “I mean, I always want to have sex with you, but we don’t need—”

“I want you anyway.” The words are dripping from my mouth now, too fast to be stopped or consequences fully considered. “Please.” I spread my legs on the worktable and reach for him again. “It’s okay. I want this.” I pause, but only for a moment, while every dream I don’t normally allow myself flashes through my brain. Don’t I deserve my dreams? Daphne is right. I’ve always wanted to be a mini Ma. “I want you to put your baby in me.”

Something like fear or despair crosses Jesse’s face, and he stumbles away from me, each step feeling like a mile. “I can’t do that, Laura.”

The temperature in the room drops fifteen degrees.

“Why not?” This is not a pants-less conversation. I hop off the table, grabbed my pants, and pull them over my still-quivering legs. “We love each other. Right? So why can’t we have a baby?”

He runs his hands through his hair, not looking at me. “It’s a lot.”

“Do you love me?” I hate that it sounds like an accusation.

He pauses, now gazing at me, but his expression looks like he’s about to leave on a six-month cruise to nowhere. “Yes. And that’s why I can’t do it, Laura. It’s why I should have stayed away in the first place. You deserve so much better than me.”

But I want him. I want everything that he’s ever offered me. Why can’t he just see it? “Jesse—”

My phone buzzes with a notification, and I toss it onto the table. Jesse follows its trajectory, and his face pales. He picks up the phone and turns it to me.

“What is this?” He points at the screen.

I roll my eyes, mostly to keep from sobbing. It doesn’t work. “It’s nothing. It’s just an internet troll. @EsmeLaDy takes delight in making my day worse.”

Jesse stares down at the screen. He seems to have completely forgotten our conversation. Asshole. “I am so sorry, Laura.”

“Don’t be sorry. Fix it.”

He sighs, like Atlas exhaling as he lifts the weight of the world. “You’re right. It’s time.” He takes my hands and leads me to the worktable, where he sits me down on a stool. Gazing into my eyes, he says, “This message is from my ex-fiancée. Esme LaDanza. You’re in danger.”