Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 101662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 508(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 508(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
Once he came, he lay down beside me, completely out of breath. I crawled on top of him and licked his lip before kissing him gently. “That was…” I sighed.
He shut his eyes and kissed my forehead. “Exactly that.” He pulled me closer. “I love you, Penguin.”
I smiled as I closed my eyes. “I love you, too.”
“Give me ten minutes,” he whispered as he nibbled my ear. “Then I’m gonna make love to you again in every room of this house.”
***
After a few more rounds, we lay in the bed naked, under the sheets, me resting against his chest, completely exhausted yet at peace from the madness that was my life outside Gabriel’s four walls. Every now and again, he’d pull me closer to him and kiss my forehead, reminding me that I wasn’t alone. I hadn’t known how much I needed that reminder every now and again.
“I wasn’t able to give you your birthday gift yet,” he whispered, trailing a finger slowly up and down my neck, which sent chills down my spine.
“You mean that thing with your tongue between my legs wasn’t the gift?” I half-joked. If I could have Gabriel’s face between my legs as my alarm clock each morning, I’d wake up a lot happier.
He chuckled. “No, it wasn’t. Want to see your gift?”
“Sure.”
He sat up, raising me with his body. He then stood, slipped on his boxers, and held a hand toward me. With the sheet wrapped around me, I took his hand into mine, and he led me out of the room. We walked down the hallway, and he took me into a spare bedroom that had been transformed into a sewing room.
A sewing room with vibrant, wild wallpaper of greens and oranges. There were three machines set up: a sewing machine, an embroidery machine, and a serger.
To the left was a closet stocked with fabrics. There were bins of needles, threads, and cutting shreds.
He made me a sewing room.
He made me a sewing room!
“This is for me?”
He leaned against the doorframe and nodded. “You brought some color to my life. Figured you could use a space for your creative projects.”
“Gabriel?”
“Yeah?”
I walked over to him, stood on my tiptoes, and pressed my lips to his as I whispered, “Make love to me in here, too?”
So he did.
***
The next morning, when daylight broke through the window shades, I rolled over in the bed and found an empty spot beside me. I pushed myself up to a sitting position, searching for Gabriel, but he was nowhere to be found. Though my nose was able to smell my way through the situation.
I pulled myself up from the bed, slipped on my panties and one of Gabriel’s T-shirts sitting on his dresser, and then headed toward the kitchen.
A smile spread my lips when I saw him standing over the stove, scrambling eggs in a pan.
“Morning,” I said loudly.
He startled and jumped slightly, dropping his wooden spoon to the floor, which flung a good serving of scrambled eggs all over the place.
“Shoot, I’m so sorry,” I hurriedly said, rushing over to start picking up the mess. I reached for the paper towel and shook my head, embarrassed by the mistake. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he said, chuckling.
I still felt awful, hurrying to start cleaning up the mess. “Gosh, I’m so clumsy. I’m sorr—”
“Really, Kierra. Don’t worry about that.”
“Ugh. It’s all over the place. It’s my fault for—”
“Hey,” Gabriel said, placing a hand on my shoulder and bringing me to a halt. He leaned in, locked his eyes with mine, and gave me his lazy smile. “Hi there.”
I bit my bottom lip and slowed my erratic breathing. “Hi there.”
He moved a piece of my fallen hair behind my ear. “I made you breakfast.”
The gentleness of his touch calmed the panic in me. If the same situation had happened with Henry, I would’ve been shamed and shouted at for making him make a mess. I would’ve been called names and belittled for the scrambled eggs hitting the cabinets. I would’ve been told to clean it up as soon as possible.
Gabriel instead smiled and then kissed me gently on my lips. I didn’t think he knew how much it meant to me—his gentleness.
“Good morning,” he whispered.
“Good morning,” I murmured back.
He raised me to standing before he pulled me into a hug and kissed my forehead.
I glanced at the countertop, which had a spread of bacon, hash browns, orange juice, and of course cinnamon muffins. Along with not one, not two, but four different types of eggs.
“Are you feeding two people or an army?” I joked as Bentley came into the room, wagging his tail as he ate up all the scrambled eggs on the floor. Turned out you didn’t need a robot to clean up messes; you just needed a dog.
“Well, I was cooking and realized that I didn’t know how you liked your eggs. So I made hard-boiled, over easy, sunny-side up, and an omelet. I tried poached, but it didn’t work out. And well, you saw how the scrambled—”