Page 32 of Don't Shoot Me Santa
He brushed his lips over Aaron’s temple. “Because we’d miss the best part.”
Aaron huffed, shifting again. “You and your fucking delayed gratification.”
“It’s not about delay. It’s about depth.”
“I could bend over this bath right now, and you could be inside me in thirty seconds.”
“And it’d be good.” Kenny sipped his wine. “Brief. Blinding. Over.”
Aaron tilted his head enough to glance at him. “You think you can top that?”
Kenny dipped his hand beneath the water, gripping Aaron’s thigh. “I think I can take you somewhere you don’t come back from in a couple of minutes.”
Aaron went quiet. Not in defeat. In consideration.
“You’re… slow-cooking me.”
Kenny’s smile curved into the rim of his glass. “Something like that.”
Aaron leaned his head back, exhaling a breath filled half with frustration and the other half awe. “How do you do this?”
“Do what?”
“Make me want things when I don’t even know what they are.”
“Because, hopefully, by now, you trust I deliver.”
“Why the fucking wait then?”
Kenny drifted his fingers again, trailing from Aaron’s hipbone to his knee under the water, and tried to think how best to explain.
“You get raw when you’re like this.” He kept his voice light. Intimate. How could he not with how they were right then? The bath. The scents. The wine. Aaron all…pliable. “All your edges go soft. Your jokes fade. Your breathing changes. You stop fighting me. And the world.”
“And that’s what you want?” Aaron tilted his head back to look at him. “Me to be less… prickly?”
“I wantyou. Unarmoured. Unhurried. Honest.” He let that sit for a second, then added, “Doesn’t mean I don’t love your prickly side. I do. It makes me smile. Laugh. Occasionally makes me want to shove you in a bin. But it’s one part of you. A smaller part. And I want the rest, too.”
Aaron took a long sip of wine, then set the glass down on the edge. “You’ve already got me.”
Kenny studied him. The curve of his throat. The quiet flutter of his pulse. “Maybe. But I can still go deeper.”
Aaron groaned, tipping his head back to land on Kenny’s shoulder. “Christ, you’re filthy.”
Kenny chuckled and held him closer. “I mean, I can find more of you to love.” He pressed a kiss behind his ear, where he knew it landed somewhere between tender and electric. Then he went quiet. Let it all hang.
LetAaronhang.
Then, because he knew Aaron would need more. Need reassurance, and his own chance to analyse what was happening between them, he said, “Okay. Talk to me.”
Aaron narrowed one eye at him.
“Tell me where you are. And don’t say ‘in the bath’ trying to be clever. Nor what you’reconsciouslythinking, which I imagine is a colourful list of curse words aimed at me for trying to get under your skin. I mean whereyouare. Right now. How you—”
“If you say the wordfeel, I will hold your head under the water.”
Kenny smiled. “…Feel.”
Aaron rolled his eyes, but the threat stayed unfulfilled. Instead, he exhaled, long and shaky, sinking lower into the bath. Not for effect. Not to hide. But because letting the surface hold him felt easier than staying upright.
