He stared at the bench top. “Are they…?”

Her gaze refocused on the dozen cookies in front of her. “Penis cookies?” She cleared her throat of its sudden highness and tried to affect an air of nonchalance, like she shaped dough into phalluses every day. “Yes.”

He glanced at her. “You’re making cock and ball cookies?”

Suzanne didn’t return his gaze as her cheeks flushed hot. “Yes. For Winona. Like I said, something gimmicky. You know…because she’s an erotic romance author.”

“Yeah.” He returned his attention to the cookies. “I get it. I just didn’t realize they made…penis cookie cutters.”

With her gaze firmly fixed on the cookies, she said, “Well, I’m sure you can get penis paraphernalia online, but that obviously wasn’t much help to me now. And I guess you can probably get all kind of penis-related cooking items in sex shops and the like, but I didn’t think Credence had one of those.”

Suzanne cringed internally as she ran off at the mouth again, the words spewing unchecked from her lips. “So I just kind of improvised. I wouldn’t be much of an artist if I couldn’t do a bit of freehand, would I? And I figured how hard can a penis be, right?”

Oh dear god. Shut up, Suzanne. For the love of god, shut up!

“Anyway,” she rushed on (for reasons known only to the universe), “they’re just for fun, and I’m going to put them in some little clear bags and tie a red bow around them—the bags that is, not the penises—or is that peni for plural? I never know!” Suzanne shut her eyes. Oh Jesus, please make it stop. “And I’m going to do a fancy label because nothing says Christmas like a bag of dicks, right?”

Suzanne didn’t know how many times she’d said the word “penis” just now, but she did know saying it less in front of Grady while they stared at a dozen of them would have been a better strategy.

Mercifully, he took her question as rhetorical and left it alone. “They’re quite…big.”

“Well, yeah…small dicks aren’t as funny.”

He opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, then shut it, and there was a beat or two of silence before he tried again. “They’re also quite…” He pointed at the one nearest him. “Embellished.”

“Oh yes…well.” The cookie in question was sporting a cock ring. “I mean, they’re supposed to be fun, so…”

Apart from the cock ring, she’d also frosted two cookies with bow ties, one dressed as Santa, one wearing a leather-studded jockstrap and two more where the testicles had been decorated as Christmas baubles. She’d just finished piping words onto one when Grady had appeared, and that was the one he pointed to next.

“Lick me?”