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You’re in the kitchen when you hear the front door finally open.
“I’m back,” he calls from the other room, and you can hear the shuffling of his clothes as Valko sheds his jacket and shoes. You keep your attention on the stove and the pot you have coming to a boil, and the vegetables you’ve nearly finished chopping on the cutting board in front of you.
When he joins you, he places the bag of groceries on the counter next to you.“Find everything alright?” you ask him.
He hums an agreement and you feel him draw your hair off your neck. He wraps his arms around your waist, drawing in close and pressing his nose to your hair. “I got everything on your list.” He nuzzles against your head. You can feel the slight drag of the metal wire of his glasses when his face turns and presses his cheek against your head. He sighs contentedly and tightens his hold.
“Valko, I’m busy.” You attempt to pull from his grasp but his arms do not budge. “If you want dinner you have to let me go.”
“Never. I’ll starve.”
You set down the knife and twist in his arms to look at him. You cup his face in your hands, and his eyes soften when they meet yours. He gives you a gentle smile, just a slight quirk at the corner of his mouth, and he leans down to kiss your forehead.
He’s interrupted as the neglected pot begins to boil over. He drops his hold around you and immediately grabs for the handle, pulling it from the heat to stop the bubbling. “Sorry,” he says. His smile is sheepish when he turns back to look at you. “Guess it’s probably not a good idea to distract you while you’re cooking.”
You poke him in the chest. “If you’re going to stick around you can at least help.”
“Anything you say, dear.”
Valko trades places with you, taking up your station at the cutting board to finish prepping the last vegetables. As he picks up the knife, you start adding your ingredients into the pot. When you’ve got it down to a gentle simmer, you return to the groceries and start putting them away.
He finishes with his cutting around the time you finish with the groceries, and he adds them to the pot too.
You start to put the dishes into the sink and say, “Well, that’s it for now. It has to simmer for ten minutes before we can serve it.”
“So what you’re saying,” he says, reaching for your hand and pulling you closer to him, “is that I have ten minutes to be a distraction again.” You shove at his chest, but he reaches down and grips you just above the knees. He lifts you up, and turns to deposit you on the counter, stepping between your thighs and pulling you into him until you’re flush. He descends on you, peppering kisses across your face and neck until you’re giggling. Once he’s gotten a laugh out of you, he presses his lips against yours and captures the sound.
His kisses are always earnest. Warmth floods into your stomach, and you feel content and giddy. You reach your hand up to his neck and bury the other in his shirt. One of his hands slides up from you knee to your hip, lighting your nerves on fire where his fingers trailed along your thigh. You love that he can never keep still, and you especially love when that trait comes out to your own advantage. Before long, his hands are everywhere. You squirm under his touch, energy building and looking for any outlet. You pull back to nip at his throat and collarbones, but he dives down swiftly to kiss you again.
When you pull back for a breath, you’re delighted to see that Valko’s glasses have become smudged. You laugh, and he blinks down at you trying to figure out what happened. It takes a moment for him to realize his vision is obscured, and he pushes his glasses up off his nose and perches them on top of his head. He leans down to kiss you once again. You feel the brush of his tongue against your lip, and he kisses harder, deeper. Before you can recover, he pulls back. He rests his forehead against yours. For a moment, you’re both quiet, enjoying the soft rush of his breath across your face and the feeling of his hands on your hips. You rest your hand on the back of his neck and run your thumb along his jaw as you soak in the moment.
Valko pulls away first, letting his hands drag as he steps back. “I’m going to go get cleaned up before dinner,” he says. He hesitates briefly, and holds out his hands to help you hop down off the counter, ignoring the fact you don’t need the assistance. When your feet are firmly back on the ground, he presses a kiss to the top of your head. He pulls his glasses off his head, and wipes them clean with his shirt as he walks away.