Page 49 of Holiday Interference
I sit on the edge of the bed for a beat, clutching the blanket in one fist. My body still feels heavy from him—inside, outside, everywhere. There’s a dull ache between my thighs and a deeper one in my chest.
I glance back.
He’s sprawled across the sheets, one hand stretched toward the empty space I just left. His hair’s a mess, his mouth soft, his jaw shadowed. There’s a peace to him that shouldn’t exist—not for someone who looks like he was born with the world’s weight on his shoulders.
He looks breakable. Human.
And I hate that my body aches to climb back in beside him. To press my face into his chest and listen to that steady heartbeat until the world starts again.
I stand instead. The floor is cold, the kind of cold that bites at your heels and keeps you from forgetting where you are.
I pad toward the doorway, every nerve aware of the distance stretching between us.
I tell myself I’m leaving the room because I need to breathe.
But the truth curls deep and traitorous in my gut.
I’m leaving because if I stay another minute, I’ll crawl back in that bed and forget that I’m supposed to walk away.
I quietly pad through the apartment and into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee.
It strikes me that this young guy has an old style coffee pot and not one of the new by cup type of machines.
Cal Reid is one big conundrum to me.
The coffee finishes brewing just as I hear the quiet shift of movement behind me.
The floorboards creak slightly, and I hear his footfalls just before I feel his heat.
Every inch of skin tightens with awareness, like he’s already touching me.
I stare into the mug as I pour, trying to act like I’m not trembling. Like I didn’t wake up with his arm slung heavy across my waist, his breath against the back of my neck, and the memory of his mouth between my thighs still echoing through my blood.
He comes up behind me, bare feet whispering against the floor. Then stops—close enough that the warmth of him prickles across my shoulders.
“Morning,” he murmurs, voice still gritty with sleep.
I feel it more than I hear it. A rasp of sound that lands low in my spine.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” I say, barely above a whisper.
“You didn’t.” He’s closer now. I feel the shift before I register the touch.
His hand slides around my waist. Not possessive. Not rushed.
Just warm and certain. Like it belongs there.
And then—his mouth brushes the side of my neck.
My knees go soft, and my heart stutters.
He doesn’t linger, doesn’t deepen the brush of his lips on my skin.
But the scrape of his stubble and the heat of his breath combined with the way his thumb moves in a slow circle just beneath the hem of his shirt I’m wearing…
Well, it’s almost worse than anything he did to me last night.
Because it’s slow and intentional. Domestic, even. Like we’ve done this before.
