Page 104 of When in December

“You want me to guess?” he whispered against my skin.

Seemed like he already had an idea.

“You.”

“Me?” The pads of Aaron’s fingers trailed down my body, turning me around until I was backed against the counter. He scooped me up and deposited me there. His touches moved lower. He bent at the knee.

“Yes, you. Me giving in to you.”

“Is that what this is?”

“Mhmm.”

He knelt in front of me and the brand-new countertops, eyes bright but mostly hungry.

I told him so.

“How can’t I be when I’m looking at something so delicious?” He wasn’t talking about the cookies.

He pressed a kiss to the inside of my thigh, and I fell back onto my elbows to look down at the sight before me.

My eyes widened. I couldn’t help it; I laughed, the sound bursting from somewhere in my chest, and I pressed a hand over my mouth.

Aaron grinned again. Such a pretty, devilish grin as the side of his face scraped up the inside of my calf, my knee, my thigh.

“I can’t help myself,” he groaned. “I think I need a taste.”

When I got up in the middle of the night, the floor was cold. Oz tipped his head at me, catching to see who was up. His collar clanged against the floorboard before I returned from the bathroom.

The poor dog hadn’t quite picked the spot to sleep yet. He always ended up somewhere between the doorway and wherever was closest to us.

When I walked past him in the hall and onward to the kitchen, he followed me, keeping watch.

“You can go back to sleep,” I whispered to him.

Oz didn’t move to turn around, watching me as I took out a fresh glass from the cabinet and filled it with water from the filter. Taking a sip, I looked around the house.

“I’m not going to disappoint myself,” I said, looking back at the dog.

Oz continued to stare at me, as if listening to my every word. He slid down on his paws until he was stretched out along the hardwood.

“I’m not.” Even though I wasn’t sure. I was basically setting myself up for disappointment, no matter how many cozy late nights on the couch I spent with Aaron, knowing full well that this wasn’t just sex though neither of us broached the topic. It wasn’t just the heated moments, where he seemed determined to take me in every room as I completed them to make them even more ours.

“You like it here, don’t you?” I asked him. “I’d like it here, I think, if I were you. Lots of space outside. Bet you never thought you would find a home in the middle of the mountains, did you? Even the snow is nicer here. It’s a good thing that Aaron gets to keep you, huh? He seems like a pretty good guy, and you’ll get to stick around and enjoy the place, I think. Or travel to wherever it is you two are going soon. Is he going to sell the place still? Do you think you can make him reconsider?”

Did I want him to? I realized that when we’d started all of this, if I were anyone else, walking away might’ve been easy. It might’ve been fun even to have the fling. But I wasn’t anyone else. I was me. And if there was anything I should’ve known better, was to think I could do fun or casual.

“Do you know what’s going to happen once this is all over?” I asked Oz.

He raised his gray eyebrows at me.

I sighed. “Yeah, I don’t either.”

The house was coming together. I should be happy. Ecstatic even. That was what I should’ve been focused on now and not anything else, but I couldn’t. Not when I was already itching to get back into bed and feel the weight of Aaron’s arms hold me, molding me into his side like I was meant to fit there. The place was nearly done with time to spare.

It was a miracle.

My first solo project was almost complete. It was all over.

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