Chace’s body started shaking with his chuckle.
He might be amused but she was absolutely not wrong.
He bent his head, pressed his face in her neck and whispered against her skin, “You feelin’ okay?”
“Yeah,” she replied and his arm gave her a squeeze.
“Inside,” he clarified gently. “Okay?”
“A little achy,” she told him quietly. “Not a bad achy. Just a heretofore unknown, um… achy.”
“Bath didn’t help,” he muttered.
For some reason, his words made her relax deeper into his frame.
After this, her soft musical voice came at him, still quiet. “It isn’t bad but I’ll take some ibuprofen with breakfast.”
He lifted his head and looked down at her in his kitchen, his shirt, his arms in the morning.
He was wrong.
Or maybe it was just that yesterday, she was f**king pretty.
Today, she was beautiful.
And today, she was his.
She tipped her head to the side.
“Do you have any?”
He wasn’t following.
“Any what?”
“Ibuprofen.”
Right. She was achy.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Good,” she muttered, her eyes drifted to the side and then came back to him. “Bacon, honey.”
“Right,” he whispered, bent his neck, kissed her nose and let her go.
She turned to the bacon.
He moved to the cupboard where he kept his vitamins and painkillers.
“So, making lemonade out of lemons, now I get to ask you since you’re awake instead of springing it on you,” she started. “Do you like poached eggs?” He grabbed the bottle of ibuprofen, looked at her as he closed the cupboard and saw she was grinning at him over her shoulder. “I make world class poached eggs.”
Chace felt his lips tip up. “World class?”
“Well, they haven’t been sanctioned thus by a cordon bleu panel but my Dad calls them that.”
He moved in behind her, slid an arm around her, hand gliding over his shirt and hitting the silk of her nightie at her belly as his other hand put the bottle by her coffee mug.
In her neck he muttered, “Yeah, I like poached eggs.”