Hot and Burning

[Nesrin Aziz]

“Spoken like a true soldier,” she said: efficiency over decadence. Nesrin spoke of feasts but it had only been to give a sense of identity to the woman Eddie took home. She did like Egyptian food, that was true. In this part of the world she rarely ate it though. Nesrin didn't mind cooking but there wasn’t any incentive when it was just her – far easier to bask in room service or maxing out other people's credit cards than navigate the high tech wizardry of luxury kitchens, only to set a table for one at the end of it. As such, Eddie could have poured them both a bowl of cereal and she would have been content.

She laughed. “Let's both be glad you didn't try that cheesy line in the club,” she teased. The amusement was genuine and a little enamoured, because the smile Eddie shot back over his shoulder was all coy and flirtatious but she'd never met a man quite so innocent. She hadn't been asking about what she could do to help prepare breakfast.

He leaned a little, pressing her body against him in a way that made her very aware, but she wasn't sure if he didn't also seem a bit flustered. Peppers, onions and bacon hardly seemed unusual enough to worry about her taste. It was cute. She presumed he was mostly meaning the bacon frying off in the pan with the question, but he needn't have worried. She reached around him to steal a slice of the chopped pepper.

“I'm not Muslim if that's what you're wondering. Good Muslim girls don't go home with guys they just met no matter how cute and charming they are. And they definitely don't, well… you know.” She put the piece of pepper in her mouth. There was a sultry gloss to her dark eyes, and a smile tugging her lips. Clearly, she was not thinking about the taste of the pepper. Eddie’s temperance this morning amused her, and it was hard not to play with it. He wasn’t tense – she could feel that from the pleasant ways their bodies were touching – and his smiles were easy, so she wouldn’t call it nerves either, but she wondered if he just didn’t know how to navigate his desire.

“This is fine. This is good. And I'd try anything once, anyway,” she assured him, in answer to his query about the omelette and her preferences for it, but maybe not only. Nesrin grinned, laughed, and added in his ear. “Or maybe twice, just to be sure.”

He’d been the one to suggest she get dressed, and Nesrin intended to be well behaved as a result, but her interest in being good was rapidly curtailing. She pressed a kiss to the side of his neck, just below his ear. She didn’t want the knife to slip. But she absolutely enjoyed knowing what she was doing to him, especially while he was trying to concentrate. “You must have some stories, Eddie. What's the most adventurous thing you've ever done?”