He chuckled too, his chest moving as he pulled me in close. Happy. Nuzzling my neck, he started pressing kisses there. I was starting to realize what those neck kisses meant, and I didn’t think my poor satisfied center could handle it. But then he was kissing my mouth, opening me up and rubbing hands along that warm, sore part of me. My body responded immediately, coming to life and becoming ready for him again. He fucking purred his approval, only lifting up when I was panting.
The smile he gave me was beautiful. All slow and roguish and satisfied. I think I returned it. “I was thinking we should try it again in the shower. And then my bed. Maybe on the couch too.”
He kissed me between every suggestion, and I swear I melted inside. On my lips I felt his smile as he whispered. “But if you’re reallythatinto exhibitionism—”
He laughed as I pinched him. And later, he reacquainted me with his shower, his couch, and his bed all in the same night.
The next morning when I woke up and ventured into the kitchen, to find Connor showered and shirtless, a stack of pancakes smack in the middle of the island, I grinned. “Am I being rewarded for something?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
I sat gingerly. I didn’t want to admit it out loud, but I was sore to the point of aching. Still, though, my center warmed excitedly at the memory of what we’d done last night. What we’d done over and over and over again. I licked my lips and cleared my throat, trying to get it together before I got sucked back down that road of thinking. Wanting.
Like a hawk, Con picked up on it, his smile smug as he watched me. Instead of commenting though, he just slid my ready plate of pancakes across the table. A little bowl of mixed berries following after it.
“A lot of things,” he said finally. The words holding weight and innuendo.
I took the offered food and started to dig in immediately, situating my pancakes how I liked them. Con slid away from the island, leaning back against the counter opposite me with his arms crossed. His eyes lingered on me as I ate, a little smile visible at the corner of his mouth.
“Want a picture, Ferguson?” I asked, swallowing a big bite of berries. “It’ll last longer.”
His small smile grew into a big one as he said, “You want to know what I really thought when I first met you?”
“Sure.”
“It was after that breakfast when you wouldn’t shut up about my sister saying ‘ass’ and you put your pancakes in the shape of a mouse—” he paused, peeking down at the cartoon mouse pancakes in front of me. “Yeah, just like that.”
Rolling my lips into my mouth I hid my smile and blinked up at him. My amazing, beautiful man. “Is there a point to this,Jellybean?”
He grinned. “As soon as I realized how funny and goofy and one of a kind you were, my first thought was that I was going to keep you one day.”
My own grin spread across my face, his words both tickling me and warming me up. “Like a dog, Connor?”
“No, smartass.” He threw a blueberry at me and I caught it in my mouth. The next thing I caught was his kiss on my lips as he came around the island and leaned over me. When he pulled up he was looking at me, his mouth smiling but his eyes serious. “Like a wife, Celestia.”
Epilogue
CECI
Years later.
“Lila you little tramp!”
Yes, this is the first thing I said to my cat as she greeted me at the door after returning home. And yes, if the little irritated‘meow’she let out was any indication, she took offense to it.
But I took offense to having to wake up at the butt crack of dawn scared to death over a retching cat, only to be retching myself five minutes later from the smell. And of course this had to happen on a weekend where Connor was gone. Flown off to some conference in San Francisco for the week while I’m stuck at home wishing I was with him. But the two classes a day I taught at my training gym, four hours a day in the office, and any free hours leftover put into the organization was not something I could easily pull myself away from. It was balanced chaos, and if even one edge of it slipped, I feared it would all come tumbling down.
My heart lurched, and I looked at my phone as I laid it on the counter. I know it was still early on the west coast, Connor might still be keynote speaking or maybe having dinner with fellow Silicon Valley warriors.
Which meant I shouldn’t call him… Right?
Biting my lip, I bent low to meet Lila at her kitty level. When I met her eyes, she tilted her head like she’d been doing since she was a kitten.
I huffed. “Don’t you dare give me that look like you’re innocent. I know what you’ve been doing with the neighbor’s cat, Li.”
Another head tilt.
