King chuckled as he brushed a hand across my lower back, leaning over me to open the fridge and grab the butter for me. I stared at it as he pressed it into my hands and then retrieved the flour from the cupboard. It took me a moment to realize he was prompting me to make his favourite, salted caramel apple pie.
“King!” I protested, before giving in to a giggle. “Why is it that whenever I’m getting anxious, you always force me to make pie?”
He shrugged a shoulder, a lopsided grin tucked into one cheek as he hopped up onto the counter beside me. “Settles that busy, beautiful brain a beat, and I like pie. Two birds, one stone.”
I shook my head as if I was exasperated, but the truth was, I loved that he knew me that well. All the little ways we loved each other and looked after one another that no one else would notice but us. It was those small miracles and mercies of love that I thought were the most beautiful.
“Seriously, though, the gall!” I continued even as I chopped the cold butter into cubes. “They obviously don’t know who they’re messing with, even after we took down Javier’s disgusting high school drug ring.”
“Babe, you gotta start swearin’. There you are acting all biker tough like any seasoned Old Lady and then you go ‘messin’’ and ‘butts’ on it.”
I shrugged as I started to work the butter into the flour mixture. “I’m still a work in progress.”
“Aren’t we all? I mean, everyone but me seein’ as I’m perfect already.” He took a huge bite out of one of the apples I had set aside for the pie.
I rolled my eyes. “No one’s perfect, not even you.”
“Funny you say that now. I gotta distinct memory just this morning after I made you come all over my dick of you sayin’ the words, ‘King, God, you are perfect.’”
I blushed madly, feeling the heat sluice down my neck over my chest. “Actually, if I remember correctly, I said ‘King, God, your cock is perfect.’”
“Ah.” He nodded somberly as if he hadn’t been playing me the whole time just to get me to say it again. “That musta been it.”
I laughed despite myself and flicked my flour coated fingers at him. “You’re lucky I love you enough to ignore your arrogance.”
“Lucky you love me, straight up, babe,” he agreed easily in that way he had of making our love seem even more epic because he was so matter-of-fact about it. “Lucky you make sweet-ass pies too.”
“You owe me an apple. Can you go grab one for me?”
“On it,” he said, jumping off the counter and smacking my ass as he moved by me to the side door.
I watched him leave, hands covered in flour, eyes wide as I appreciated the way his form had changed in the past four years. The tall, somewhat lanky body of the eighteen-year-old student I’d fallen in love with had morphed into the body of some kind of Greek god. He spent a lot of time at the club in the gym lifting weights with the guys, and his broad shouldered, narrow hipped body was testament to that. I loved tracing the lines of his muscles under all that golden skin, my tongue sliding down the trough of his obliques to the muscles that arrowed into his groin, rippling my fingers over the symmetrical boxes in his abdominals. I knew and worshipped every inch of that body and I felt no shame in checking out his tight butt as he swaggered out the door to the apple trees he’d planted at the side of the house for me years ago.
It was one of a thousand ways King had helped me to make this little ramshackle cottage a home. When I’d bought it four years ago, it was dilapidated, to say the least, with a list of issues as long as my arm. Fixing it up had been a part of King’s courtship, wooing me by bringing the brothers by to spruce things up, and over the years, we’d made it our mission to turn the neglected house into a home.
Now, the old wood floors were sanded down and re-glazed so they gleamed in the pools of honeyed sunlight spilling in from the double paned windows lining the entire back of the house. We’ve moved out for a few months one year so the kitchen could be remodeled and now the lower cabinets were painted a warm, dark green and the open shelves were stained to match the dark wood paneling done throughout the rest of the house. I had a huge butcher block slab over my island with stools on one side and the stove in the middle and a huge dining room table to match for when we had the Garro clan or the brothers over to eat.