December 13¦Birdie
HAYES PUT ME TO BED WHEN WE ARRIVED HOME, ANDISLEPT THE SLEEP OF THE DEAD.The medication, combined with the headache and normal pregnancy exhaustion, put me out. Distantly, I remembered him sliding into bed behind me, careful not to disturb me as he pulled me against him. I didn’t wake until the next day, when I stumbled to the bathroom and looked at my reflection blearily.
The extra sleep had left me feeling drugged and more tired than I had to begin with, but the pain in my skull had at least subsided. As I looked at myself in the mirror, at my pale skin and dark circles under my eyes, my stomach lurched, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten any crackers before getting up. “Ugh.” I moved to stand over the toilet, still as a statue, waiting for the roiling to cease. A wash of heat suffused me, intensifying the warning prickles drifting over my skin. I closed my eyes and willed it away.
I hated puking with a passion.
Finally, the feeling subsided enough for me to pee and make my way back into the bedroom for crackers. Sitting on the edge of the low platform bed, I reached for the sleeve on the nightstand and pulled a cracker free.
I was on my second, gaze wandering idly around the room as I chewed, when I noticed the elf. He sat on the dresser next to the bathroom door, perched in an oblong white baking dish filled with cotton balls. It took a second for my sleepy brain to catch up, but I figured out that it was meant to represent a bathtub.
A bottle of sparkling cider sat beside it, chilling in a steel bucket of ice. The note lying on the wooden surface of the dresser read simply, “Relax. No work today.”
The idea appealed. A day to be lazy? Yes, please. Figuring Hayes must have called Maggie to let her know I would not be in, I decided to do as he suggested, and soak in the tub.
Walking back into the bathroom, I turned on the taps of the clawfoot tub and adjusted the temperature, testing it with my elbow until I got it where I wanted it. I undressed, tossing my clothes neatly into hamper, and then piled my hair atop my head.
When the water level was deep enough, I lowered myself into its depths, resting my arms along the sides and propping my feet against the opposite rim. The toenails that Remi had painted during our sleepover were a bright pink against antique white, and on a whim I grabbed my phone from the small table beside the tub and snapped a close-up of my feet, slick with water against the white iron and just this side of flirtatious.
I sent it to Hayes before I could second-guess myself, then laid my head back with a sigh and closed my eyes.
Today I would relax.
¦ Hayes
SHE WAS ASLEEP.I stood in the doorway to the bathroom a half hour after receiving her cheeky photo of her pink toenails. I’d arranged for my TA to collect the written assignment for my classes and had left almost immediately.
The text was friendly, for sure. It was more than that, though. It was flirty. Suggestive. Did she even realize where my head would go when I saw it, or had it not even occurred to her? I was assuming the latter, but I couldn’t ignore the possibility that a part of her was ready for more.
I leaned against the doorjamb and crossed my arms over my chest, allowing my eyes to roam. Hunger, my constant companion these days, was for once blatant rather than banked as I traced her curves beneath the surface of the water. Her head lolled to the left, her face turned away from me to exposed the delicate arch of bones in her neck. Her dark hair was piled atop her head, half in and half out of a loose bun.
It wasn’t sufficient to say she was beautiful. She was, with her luxurious dark hair and creamy pale skin. The tightness in my pants attested to that.
She was so much more than her looks, though. Sweetness and sass oozed from every pore. Her keen intelligence was as much a turn-on as her body. When I’d first seen her in Smokey’s, I was attracted to her looks, sure. But it wasn’t until she opened her mouth and set me straight with a few good-natured jabs that I realized I’d met my one. She’d made me work for it, and no ballfield victory had never been as sweet as the moment she’d agreed to be mine.
The corner of my mouth crooked up in a half-smile. In the eternal, paraphrased words of Yoda, I had to do or do not. There was no try.
With that thought uppermost in mind, I moved on quiet feet into the bathroom and knelt by the side of the tub. I tested the water with a finger and found a faint hint of warmth lingering. Using that finger, I stroked the curve of Birdie’s jaw, travelling from ear to the mid-point of her jaw, and then down along the tendon in her neck until I reached her collarbone.
Her eyes popped open and she turned her head. “Hayes.” Realization that she was in the bathtub and nude hit her in the next instant, judging from the flush that rose from her chest to her cheeks. “What are you doing?” She sat and pulled her knees to her chest in an effort to hide.
“You sent me a text. I came home.”
“It wasn’t an invitation,” she hissed, looking past me. “Hand me a towel?”
“Do I have to?”
“Y-yes…” She held steady as I leaned in.
“Because I’d much rather kiss you.” I suited action to words, kissing her shoulder first, and then the juncture of neck and jaw, before moving to her lips. They were parted with surprise, making it absurdly easy to trace her mouth with my tongue before slipping it inside to explore, slow and thorough.
She made a little sound, a mewl that signified either acceptance or submission, and relaxed into the kiss. I deepened it, twisting my hand in her knot of hair and tilting her head to give me better access. She met me stroke for stroke, her tongue dancing and dueling with mine, her arms coming up to twine around my neck and send water coursing down my back. The warm touch of metal against my tongue sent a tingle down my spine.
With a groan, I slipped an arm beneath her bent legs, braced her securely against my chest, and rose. Water poured off her, drenching me and the floor as I turned to carry her to the bedroom. I laid her on the bed and came down beside her, breaking our kiss only to slide my mouth along her neck and chest, down to the swells of her breasts. She moaned as I took one in my mouth and covered the other with my hand, circling her nipple with the pad of my thumb. “Oh, God…it’s too much, Hayes. I can’t —” She broke off with a rusty sounding groan as I sucked hard, arching up off the bed and into my mouth.
I smiled against her skin. Her breasts had always been sensitive to the point of pain. As I continued moving down her body, pausing to nuzzle my nose into the very slight swell of her belly, I wondered how far she would allow things to progress. She wasn’t ready for sex. She might want sex, but that’s all it would be. It wouldn’t be making love, like it was for me. I needed this to mean something. So, in spite of the aching pressure of my cock, this wouldn’t be a happy ending for me.
But I could make Birdie feel good.