Page 102 of The Nightmare Before Kissmas
I devour his mouth between wet gasps, nails scraping his scalp. Vaguely, I think I try to put my thoughts into words, but maybe it’s just his name, a moan.
“Hm.”
I blink, eyesight a bit hazy. “What?” A burst of panic. “Are you all right? Was—”
But he’s looking at the couch next to us, then the table on our other side. His face contorts, considering. “I expected ice,” he says, a bit short of breath.
That derails my concern. “Ice?”
“I guess it’s only when you’re upset?”
He throws a smile.
“You—” I wheeze. “I do notblast icewhen I orgasm!”
His smile dissolves into mock innocence. “I had no way of knowing for certain. Part of me thought I could have been taking my life into my hands just now.”
“Oh, you’re one to talk, Mr. Spontaneous Pumpkin.” I pinch him above his hip.
His squirm is so destructively sexy that I forget what we’re talking about. He’s ticklish. I’m done for.
“Wouldthatnot have been a delightful situation to have to explain the next time Wren came knocking?” He smirks. “Why the Easter Princess’s competing suitor is frozen to your lap.”
I curl my thumb into my hand, the metal of his ring pressing against my palm.
Hex slides off me, stumbling a bit on no doubt unsteady legs, and he suddenly seems to realize the aftermath of what we did.
His face goes more red.
“You take the bathroom.” I grab a box of tissues off the coffee table. “I’ll be fine.”
He nods, and after a few minutes of setting ourselves to rights, he comes back, the hood of his gray sleeveless robe thrown up over his head again. He folds his arms across his chest, standing awkwardly a few feet from the couch where I still sit, and silence spirals around us.
I should leave—we both need time to get ready for another day of fake-ass events. But the mood has shifted, and I’ll be damned if I let it end this way.
I reach out to him.
His stiffness melts, a relieved droop, and he takes my hand and lets me tug him back down on my lap. He slips into place, and it disintegrates my worry because yeah, thisishis place now, right here, on top of me.
“We should get ready,” he says, echoing the responsibility itching at my mind.
Fuck responsibility, honestly, for a few more minutes.
I dump us to our sides on the couch.
“Just let me kiss you for a little while,” I tell him, that low murmur like I’m worshipping at some altar.
His finger is on my cheek, and every one of my muscles softens into liquid sugar when he lays his lips across mine.
Somewhere in the last twenty minutes I’m pretty sure I died, or at least ascended, because I can’t imagine anything but the afterlife encapsulating more of a fantasy than this.
Chapter Fourteen
“Read it back to me again.”
Kris rattles off the Holidays that I told him were on Dad’s list. “That all?”
“Yeah. I think so. I only got a glance, but—yeah.” I kick in my desk chair so it spins, head thrown back, watching the ceiling heave over me. “What more info do you think we should have? Crap, like maybe the exact percentages they’re giving? I don’t remember—”
