Delicious
It’s one in the afternoon, and Brian should be arriving at my house any minute. I can’t wait to see what he has planned. Guy has so many ideas, I wonder what he has in store for me today. His car appears, and he pulls into our driveway.
He hops out, and darn it all if that boy doesn’t gallop, then skip. I giggle.
I open the door with a smile. “Hi, I saw that.”
“What?” he grins. He has no idea.
“You galloped and skipped like a kindergartener.”
“I most certainly did not.” He is laughing. He knows I caught him.
I’m busting a gut. “Damn, you’re cute when you’re immature.”
“Oh, well in that case,” he says as he begins to skip and gallop all over the sidewalk.
The girls are inside, and I can hear them laughing through the window.
Brian stops and waves to them. They wave back.
“Those girls are becoming infatuated with you,” I say.
“All from good reports from you, I hope.” He smiles as he ushers me toward the car. “I’d kiss you, but, ya know, we don’t need an audience. But so you know, I’m just dying to kiss you.”
“Patience.” I wave to the girls as I get into the car. “So, where are we going?” I ask.
He backs up the car and says, “It’s a surprise.”
“Well, it already is a surprise since I don’t know, so now that’s over, and you can tell me.”
He pulls over after a few hundred feet, once we are out of sight of the girls in the window, and shoots me a seductive look.
I laugh. “Well, I didn’t expect to end up so close to home.”
He pulls me close, teases my lips apart with his, and we kiss, and like fulfilling a savagely deprived hunger, it hits me: I need him. My lips and hands animate like his kiss gives them the ability to move, to exist, as he kneads my body into his—we couldn’t get much closer in this tiny space in the front seat of the car.
Other vehicles are passing by, and one honks.
We separate. Woken up.
“Whoa,” he says, breathing heavily as I am.
“Yeah, what you said.” I’m almost panting like I just ran for miles, and my heart is jumping like there’s a new hunger inside me. So … this is what passion is. I want to lunge back at him, but he starts the car.
“We better go. We don’t want to give your neighbors a show.”
I can’t help but notice he’s still breathing hard, and that’s so freaking hot.
“Right,” I say, but my heart totally disagrees as I attempt to slow my breathing. I grip the seat hard with my hands to give some of that excitement an outlet.
After a minute of silence, he tells me all about the dinner he made last night and how he learned to make the best tiramisu. “I brought some, so you can try it. It’s divine. You’ll love it.”
“You’ll have to make it for Becca—that’s one of her faves.”
“Yes, I’ll bring it next week.” He smiles at me. “Did you have fun at the sleepover?”
“It was awesome, like old times, but even better.”
“Did you talk about me?” he asks.
“Of course.”
“I hope it was juicy.”
I laugh. “Oh, it was! They liked my story.”
“I want to hear it.” He raises an eyebrow and makes his bright blues go wide.
I blush. Why am I blushing? What the …
He notices. “Oh, if I could have been a fly on that wall, if it’s enough to make you blush.” He laughs super hard. “That’s so good. I love this! You must be a mind reader with how you keep fulfilling all my fantasies. You have a witchy crystal ball packed away in your room or something?”
I punch him in the arm. “Stop. You really are mean.” I’m smiling, kicking myself for letting my cheeks go red. Traitors. After all our dates, how does this boy still make me blush?
“Ah, this is so perfect. You rock, Landra.”
I cross my arms in mock anger.
“I have lots of other fantasies you can fulfill, if you want a list.” He can’t stop laughing.
I smack his arm and put a fake pout on my face. “Rude,” I say, but then I lose it and laugh. “You’re impossible.”
“I’ve been told that before.” He smirks.
He pulls the car into the parking lot of our town’s famous Steaming Cup Coffee House. “We are starting with a coffee and tiramisu.”
“Oh, yay, I love coffee.” I open the car door.
We get out of the car, and the coffee aroma is thick and yummy around the building—like it’s exhaling its pent-up coffeepot fumes.
“Damn, that does smell good, doesn’t it?” he asks.
“Delicious.” I smile. “I love that you brought me here. I’ve always wanted to come here.”
“Oh, Landra, please don’t tell me you’ve never had coffee here before?”
I shake my head. “Never.”
“Wow. A Steaming Cup Coffee House virgin—I don’t think I’ve ever met one.” He gives me the teasing look that I’m coming to just love. “I get to be a part of your first.”
I give him the look. “Again, with the sexual references? Do you ever stop?” But my face says please don’t ever stop.
He just bursts out laughing. “Ah, that was fun.” He wraps his arms around me, a container in one hand that he manages to hold on to while pulling all of me into him. He is warm and curves himself around me. I’m so comfy in the cave of him. “I can’t resist teasing you. Let’s go in. I know you’ll love this place.”
We order and wait for our drinks before finding a table.
“It smells even more amazing inside than it does outside.” I’m rubbing my hands together to shove off the cold.
“I know. Decadent and rich.” He pulls back the lid of the container to reveal the tiramisu. Two forks are nestled inside.
“That looks super awesome.” I mean it. And I’m not afraid to eat it, either. I grab a fork first and stab it right in, pop the cake into my mouth.
He grins and copies me.
I moan. “This is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten.”
“It’s damn good, isn’t it?” he says, chewing. “Delicious.”
I take a sip of my white mocha. It’s rich and no less amazing than I imagined it would be. “This is really good too.” I take another tiny sip.
“Yeah, awesome.” He smiles, then takes another sip. “Heaven in a cup.” He flashes his eyes at me with an intense stare. “Was it as good, hot, and tasty for you as it was for me?” His smile is so sexy it cuts me deep and grabs my gut.
I smile back with an equal helping of sexiness. “For sure it was.” We are sipping and smiling, his hand holding mine, and I won’t be able to recall a single face in this coffee shop because I can’t take my eyes off him the whole time.
“Next, we are off to the mall. I need to buy my mom a gift, and I need girl advice. She got the test results back, and it’s benign. I want to give her a gift to celebrate.”
“Oh, that’s so wonderful, Brian! I’m so happy to hear this.” I could almost cry for him I’m so happy he isn’t about to lose his mom. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. “Yes, I’d love to help pick something out for her.”
We drive to the mall holding hands. He rubs his fingers across mine the whole way. It makes me feel like summer sunshine.
He parks the car and we run in to get out of the frigid wind that slaps us as we race from the back of the parking lot.
We enter a department store. I help him pick out a pretty blue-and-purple scarf, bubble bath, and a sparkly pink bath bomb in the shape of a rose.
“You have good taste. I think she will love these.”
“I’m a girl. Girls know what to buy other girls.” I smile.
“Clearly. I would have bought her something dumb, like a blanket.” He shrugs.
I grab his hand. “I bet she would have liked it.”
“She wouldn’t say if she didn’t,” he says. “That’s my mom.”
“She sounds so nice.”
“She wants to meet you. I keep coming to your house to pick you up, so I’ve met your whole family. Mom’s jealous. Maybe you can come over tomorrow and meet her.”
“Sure, I’d love to.”
“OK, let’s get out of here and on to our next phase of this spectacular Brian-built date.”
“I’m all yours,” I say.
He does a fist pump and says, “Yes! Never stop saying that.”
I giggle as we charge back through the cold, all-out running across the lot for the car.
We are shivering as he starts up the engine. He turns down the heat because it’s only blasting cold air at us.
“We can take a walk by the lake before dinner. I brought us each a blanket.”
“Oh, OK. We need to blast that heater when it warms up so I can handle being out in that cold again.” I shiver hard. “Which lake? Clear Glen?”
“Yep, then I have reservations for us for dinner at Waterfront, near the lake.”
My eyes go wide. “Brian, I’ve always wanted to go there! I think you are fulfilling my fantasies today too.”
“I fully aim to please.”
At the lake, we get a spot right up front in the parking lot closest to the water because it’s November in Minnesota, so barely anyone is here.
He wraps a fluffy red blanket around me and a blue speckled one around himself. I wonder if he did it on purpose to match his eyes. Probably not, but he looks so lovely.
“You look so electric in that blanket with those eyes of yours.” I can’t not comment on that.
He bows his head with that grin of his. “Why, thank you, my queen.” He wraps his arm around me, so I have double the blanket, plus his body heat, as we walk along with our sides touching.
The wind is dying down—which is good, because the sun is going down too, making it even colder. We walk in silence until he breaks it.
“You mind if I warm my lips up on yours? Mine are freezing.” He smiles down at me.
I giggle. Smile back up at him. Can’t resist that look. “Yes. Don’t know if that will help, though—mine are freezing too. But feel free. I’m always ready to kiss you.”
He pulls me sideways as he turns so we are facing each other, and he wraps his arms and his blanket around me, which helps me feel really warm. His hands are climbing down my body, slipping under my thighs, and he’s hoisting me up as I fling my legs around him. We are kissing like mad despite the cold. I can see our breath billow out like fog in the cold air as we pause our kiss, before I close my eyes again. My body is just reacting to his, our physical closeness teaching me what passion is.
I hear footsteps, so I unlock my legs from around him, and he sets me down as a woman jogs by with her dog. She is smiling at us, and I nod.
“Hi,” Brian says.
“Hi,” she says back.
We both watch her as she jogs off, and all I want to do is pick up where we left off, but he places his arm around my shoulder again and starts walking. I snuggle into his chest.
“Hot damn, you get me going.” He lets out a sigh. “I’d love to sneak into your room tonight and continue that.”
I laugh. I kinda feel like I could rocket off into space myself, or swivel dance into the air on my own will alone.
“Is that all you ever think about, you pervert?” I tease. Hypocrite much? That’s all I think about lately.
He makes a hard stop and faces me, shaking his head. There is no silly grin on his face this time. “Well, yeah, kinda, but … you don’t get it, do you?”
He places a hand on each of my biceps, looks right into my eyes, and says, “Allandra, there’s more to it than that. So. Much. More. I think about you every waking second. Like every second.” He squeezes my arms, laughs, brings his hands to my face, holds my cheeks between his hands, and looks deep into my eyes. “I also want to take walks with you. Make food with you. For you. Serve you that food and wash dishes with you. I want to watch TV with you like a couch potato, and take you and Maxie on long walks or jogs—that is, if I can keep up with you two. Take you both to the dog park. I want to swim with you in the summer at Clear Glen Lake, right here, at this spot, and then take you on a canoe ride with a picnic lunch I crafted myself. I want to make you food that will make you moan and smile and force you to sink into the enjoyment and deliciousness of life. Allandra, don’t you get it? I want to fold laundry with you,” he says with a laugh. He puts his arms down. “Paint. Do anything with you in it. Allandra, I want to do it all with you. And don’t go thinking you aren’t all that, that you aren’t enough. You are more than enough. I don’t want a perfect you. Perfect is boring and predictable. I want the real you, messy, eating chocolate cake one day and salad the next seven, running ten miles one day and twelve the next. I don’t care, I just want to do it right alongside you. You are my queen and always will be.” He holds my face again, his large hands enveloping my cheeks, and kisses my nose. “You don’t have to be perfect to be loved, not in your own eyes, or mine. You are already perfect in mine, and you always will be. I’m in love with you, Allandra. Landra, my devastatingly gorgeous, magnificent fantasy-come-true of a queen.”
My stomach tickles and tears are wetting my cheeks, and I feel like I could bust into five billion pieces. He’s shown me more love in the past few weeks than I’ve felt in years. “There’s an awful lot of food mentioned in there.” I giggle, pausing too long.
He drops his jaw when that’s all I say.
I lean in so our fronts are fully touching, place my hands on his chest, and feel his heart thudding away like mad inside. “I never thought I’d feel this way. I never thought I could feel this way. Like, ever.” Tears are streaming down my cheeks, and my eyes are trying to reabsorb them, but the tears are stronger than my will, and they fall into existence. “I’m in love with you too, Brian. I am. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. I’m so lucky.” I swallow hard, and the tears stop. The raw emotion sears through me like the sharpest knife. “You give me so much every day that I need. I didn’t know I needed you until you pestered the shit out of me while charming me at the same time, you sneaky little devil, you.” I laugh. “You were like a fly that kept jumping in my face until I found that you weren’t a fly, but a dream filled with love and attention that I so desperately needed. I need you. I don’t just want you. I need you.” My hands are shaking as he brings his lips to mine, and we kiss.
He sighs this giant sigh and takes a step back. “You scared me for a minute there—I thought I blubbered all that like a fool. That you hated me.”
I gaze into those amazing eyes of his, grab his shirt, and pull him back down to my level so we can kiss again. I’m shivering not only from the cold but from pouring my heart out. Pulling away but still looking into his eyes, I say, “Does this seem like I hate you?”
“Hello, hell no. I think this means we are in love, and yasss! Sweet success.” He smiles down at me. “And I’m thanking God every second it’s with each other. I cannot believe you are with me.”
His face spreads into an even wider grin, and I put my mouth on that grin and kiss it.
THE END