His Naughty Lessons
Chapter 162: New Favorite Breakfast

Chapter 162: New Favorite Breakfast

** Eli **

"W-Wait, what are you doing?" Harper gasped in horror. "You’re not supposed to eat that! I saved it just for comparison, so I could figure out how long to cook the next one for. It wasn’t supposed to be for you!"

"Not for me?" Eli said with a mouthful and pressed a hand to his heart in feigned pain. "The first pancake I’ve ever seen my girlfriend make wasn’t for me. I’m devastated."

"..."

Harper eyed him dubiously as he swallowed every last bite, then shook her head with a helpless laugh. "So ... how bad was it?" she asked in a tentative voice.

"Crispy with a golden crust, delicious."

Eli would’ve lied if he needed to, but that was actually only half a lie. Even though the slightly charred pancake wasn’t exactly "delicious", he didn’t mind the crispy texture, and he honestly thought it was decent enough for a first timer. "You seem to have a great talent for learning new skills fast," he added as the thought occurred to him. "Pretty sure my own first try at making pancakes was much worse— Is that one done too? I can’t wait for more."

He nodded at the pan, casually hiding the hint that she should pay attention before burning the next one as well.

"Oh, I suppose ... Is it?" Harper flipped the thing back and forth, examining its firmness on both sides. "I guess that will do." Very carefully, she scooped it out, placing the food on the plate that was still in Eli’s hand.

The gesture was a little clumsy, making it obvious that she had never tried serving another person food before. But there was also a naturalness in the way she went about it, like she had already thought about doing it many times ... like this was the new norm that she planned to repeat with him every morning from now on, in the kitchen of their own home.

The thought gave Eli pause.

A homey, familial type of relationship was never something that he gave much thought to, let alone craved. For him, home meant a cold, lonely place, and family meant broken promises and blood-related strangers. But then again, for over a decade, no one had given him a glimpse of what those things could’ve been otherwise. No one had placed a homemade pancake on his plate so casually and naturally, like it was the way it always should be.

A strange feeling lodged in his heart, and he blinked, staring at the pancake without fully digesting that feeling.

"What’s wrong?" Harper asked, seeing his pause. She studied the plate. "It’s cooked this time, right?"

"... Right, it is, absolutely." Eli blinked again, snapping out of his reveries. "Should we split it?" he offered. The simple breakfast suddenly seemed too precious for him to enjoy alone.

He set the plate back down on the counter, broke the pancake in half, and took a piece in each hand. Popping one half into his mouth, he held up the other portion to Harper’s lips.

Without a second thought, she bit into it, right off his hand like she had expected it that way all along.

"Hmm, not bad," she slurred with a mouthful. "Probably would be better with some syrup ... There must be some here in the pantry?"

Eli savored his piece of the pancake as she turned to the cabinet and started rummaging through the provisions. He thought the third try was a charm though — without an overcooked shell to hide the flavor, he could taste more of the sweetness this time, and the spongy texture wasn’t too far from perfect. Syrup didn’t really seem necessary.

But then he changed his mind when Harper pulled out a K-cup sized syrup container and poured its contents onto the plate. "Here, perfect!" she declared. Then she ran her finger along the empty container’s inside, scooping up all the remaining syrup before sucking her finger clean.

... The intimate atmosphere she had just created with the breakfast abruptly shifted into a different type of "intimate". Eli’s eyes lingered on the container, then her finger, then her lips ...

"Do you always eat syrup like that?" he couldn’t help but ask.

Harper paused, her hand stopping halfway to what was left of her pancake. She followed his gaze to her licked finger ... and then her eyes lit up with that sly gleam he loved. Obviously, she was getting what he was thinking.

"What, you don’t?" She batted her pretty lashes, and her tongue darted out at the corner of her mouth, licking her lips. "You should totally try it at some point. It’s delicious."

... Damn, the words just made it that much more tempting to test out the theory by popping her finger into his mouth and—

The thought had barely grazed Eli’s mind when the girl chuckled devilishly. Plucking the rest of the pancake out of his grip, she took his hand ... and dipped his forefinger into the plate of syrup.

Then she lifted that hand to her mouth and closed her lips around the sugarcoated finger.

... Fuck.

Eli hadn’t planned for a weekday morning to get so dangerous. But how could it not, when the wicked girl in front of him was swirling her tongue around his finger in a pattern that he was all too familiar with? When she closed her eyes, let out a satisfied "Mmm", and nibbled him with a teasing graze of her teeth that tickled him in places he couldn’t scratch?

"You wicked little devil," he hissed under his breath. There would be no playing nice today then. Snatching his hand back from her possession, he took a step forward, pinning her against the kitchen counter. The next moment, his mouth replaced his finger, sealing over her lips and delving straight for that deliciousness she spoke so fondly of.

Oh yes, it was delicious indeed. Not the saccharine syrup though, or the faint note of mint lingering from her toothpaste. Those weren’t nearly enough to cover the familiar taste of her own sweetness, hidden beneath it all and waiting so eagerly for him to devour. He chased that naughty tongue, teasing it back the same way she had teased him earlier, and she whimpered softly into his mouth, her hand instinctively darting up to clutch the collar of his bathrobe.

Oh yes, that reaction was even more delicious.

Eli grinned. Without breaking their kiss, he gripped her hips and lifted her up. As a surprised gasp escaped between their lips, he placed her on the counter behind her, and he dug in to his new favorite breakfast.