I clicked through my playlists and found Prince, hitting play, and cranking that shit up to the highest level, until it drowned out everything inside. Me and Prince, we had been baking together since I first discovered his music back when I was twelve and thought I was getting away with something by listening to the dirty lyrics. As it turned out, my father knew and didn't mind and, well, a tradition was born.
I ransacked Byron's (or more accurately, Ella's) cabinets and pantry, loading up the counters into the kind of chaos I thrived on, everything within easy reach, everything a perfect mess, as I danced around and let some of the stress that had been eating at me for days start to slip away, start to dissolve into a huge batch of the best oatmeal cookies anyone could ever have and the beginnings of a cinnamon and sour cream coffee cake that was bound to make my week infinitely better.
On that note, I brewed coffee, removed two sheets of oatmeal cookies that, while they spread just a tad too much, were still melt-in-your-mouth perfect, then slipped the cake into the oven. I was belting out something about being a sexy mother fucker as I turned, heart flying up into my chest as I dropped the bag of (sealed, thankfully) oats to the floor and yelped.
Because of course, of-fucking-course, Byron freaking St. James was standing there.
No, that wasn't right.
He was leaning on the entryway to the kitchen, casually, as if maybe he had been there a good long while. His arms were crossed over his chest but, for once, the stance didn't seem cool and detached, it seemed almost casual. That might have had something to do with the fact that the sleeves to his white dress shirt were rolled up to the elbows and one button was undone. Or it also might have been the fact that Byron St. James, asshole to rule all assholes, ice king extraordinaire, was actually smiling.
Okay, so it wasn't a full smile like a normal, red-blooded person with a heart inside their chest cavity smiled, all teeth and crinkly eyes. But it was close. It was a wolf's smile- a little wicked, a little scary, but entreating at the same time.
Embarrassed, yet again, and annoyed that he had come home early and ruined the first couple of hours where I felt like myself again, I bent to grab the oats and turned toward the dock to turn down the music. Down, not off. Because fuck him.
"Prince?" he asked, still leaning against the doorway.
"He's a genius."
"Was," he corrected and I immediately small-eyed him.
"Don't remind me of that. What are you, some kind of monster?"
"Some would say so," he said, but quickly moved on before the weight of that could settle on me. "Did you have a poster of him on your wall that you kissed at night?" he teased, but for once, his voice wasn't holding the cruel edge I had come to expect.
"I don't think they still made Prince posters when I was a teenager. I mean... Purple Rain came out four years before I was even born."
"Christ, you're just a baby," he said, shaking his head at me.
"I'm not a baby!" I bristled. If there was one insult that he could throw at me that really stung, that was it. I had barely been given a chance to have a childhood at all. I had been twelve going on thirty. I was nothing if not mature for my age.
"Didn't mean it like that," he surprised me by saying, his voice still doing that soft thing as he watched me.
"Besides, you can't be that much older than..."
"I'm thirty-eight. So, to me, you're still a baby."
My mouth opened to say something very stupid, very un-thought-through. Luckily, I managed to clamp it shut before any of it leaked out.
"You have the brains to think it, Prudence, have the balls to say it."
And, while his voice was still soft, the challenge was there. I got the distinct impression that it was some sort of test. The only problem was that I didn't know if winning meant being blunt or biting my tongue.
I lifted my chin, trying to ignore the way my insides felt like they were shaking, and went with blunt. "I was a baby last night, huh?"
I made the right choice.
I knew that because his wolf smile came back, stretched a little.
"Last night you were a girl in desperate need of an orgasm," he said casually, like it meant nothing, like it wasn't a huge insult.
I was in desperate need of an orgasm?
Okay, granted, maybe there was some truth in that. But that was completely beside the point. People didn't say shit like that to other people. Men didn't say dismissive things like that to women. That was the problem right there, I realized. He was waving it off. He was acting like all he had done was rub my sore shoulders. Like it was nothing. I thought that was what I wanted. Hell, I had spent over an hour in the bathtub convincing myself of just that. I woke up with every intention of brushing it off, pretending it was barely a blip on my radar. That was what I wanted.