Page 10 of Mistletoe Madness

He nodded brusquely. “Fuck, yes.”

I lowered myself down onto my knees, bringing his pants and underwear with me as he ripped his shirt off over his head and tossed it somewhere across the room. He stepped out of his clothes and my hand found his cock again. I leaned forward to trace the outline of my mouth with it, my tongue darting out to lick a bead of pre-cum that formed on its tip.

He fisted his fingers in the hair at the back of my head and held me still. “You don’t have to do this.”

I flicked my eyes up the length of his body, past a chest that was sawing in and out with labored breaths, until they reached his face. His pupils were blown black with desire. “I don’thaveto, which is why Iwantto.”

“Are you sure?”

“Do I look unsure?” I asked, swiping my tongue along the underside of his glans and swirling it over the crown

His cock jerked. “No,” he bit out from between clenched teeth.

“Then Idareyou to be quiet while I finish kissing you.”

7

Nick banded an arm around my waist from behind and pulled me flush against his front. He nuzzled into the crook of my neck, nipping gently at the spot where it met my shoulder. “Did you know the Druids worshipped mistletoe as a sacred symbol of fertility?”

I batted away the hand that rested lightly against the curve of my belly and turned to face him. I rested against the kitchen counter and crossed my arms over my chest. “And didyouknow that I worship Mirena as a sacred symbol ofnotbeing fertile?”

He laughed at the joke about my IUD, and planted a quick kiss on my lips before moving away to sit at the table we’d christened three nights ago. I tried not to blush remembering the way he’d enjoyed that particular dessert.

“What’s the plan for tonight?” he asked, pulling off his glasses and rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palms. “Rudy mentioned something about dinner and a movie.” When his hands came away, he surreptitiously took in my brown Uggs, black leggings, and oversized college sweatshirt with holes cut in the wrists to stick my thumbs through.

“I saw what you just did, and don’t worry; we’re not going out. They’re bringing pizza, and we’re going to binge-watchHow I Met Your Mother. Beckett’s never seen it.”

“How is that even possible?”

I shrugged. “She’s younger than us?”

“Yeah, that’s probably true. What is she, like twenty-two?”

“Try twenty-five.” Almost two years younger than me to the day, making her five years younger than Nick, Bethany, and Rudy, which meant they sometimes acted like she was a nothing more than an overgrown child, a notion I’d observed her playing into. When people thought you were too immature to handle responsibility, they stopped asking you to take it on. Frankly, I thought she might have been a genius—and that was saying something since Nick was anactualgenius.

“All I know is that every time Bethany does one of her Barney Stinson ‘challenge accepted’ impersonations, Beckett rolls her eyes and says, ‘You’re so weird.’ We finally figured out it was because she doesn’t actually know who Barney Stinson is.”

“That’s the role that made Neil Patrick Harris famous!” He said this like it was the most well known fact in the history of the known universe.

I crossed the room and climbed up into his lap. “Nope.” I kissed him softly. “That’s Doogie Howser—something I’d expect you, of all people, to know.”

“Why should I know that?” He slipped his hand up and under the bulky fabric of my sweatshirt until he reached my breast. He stroked his fingers along its soft underside and then brushed his thumb over my puckered nipple.

I shivered, and for a few quick moments forgot what the question was. Barney Stinston … Doogie Howser … “Oh! Right. Because you were a child prodigy, too.”

He rolled his eyes. “Hardly.”

I rolled my eyes even more dramatically. “Okay, fine. Whatever you say Mister I have a Phd in rocket science.”

He grinned bashfully. “It’s aerospace engineering, actually.”

“Did you just ‘well, actually’ me?”

He chuckled. “Fuck. I did, didn’t I.”

“Just don’t let it happen again.” I twined my arms around his neck, momentarily amazed by how easily we’d transitioned from friends and roommates to … whatever we were now. It had only been six days since The Second Night That Changed Everything, but it felt like we’d been together for much longer. We hadn’t had The Conversation yet. You know, the one that put a label on what was happening between us, but I figured it was coming sooner rather than later.

Since hooking up almost a week ago, we’d been practically inseparable. Since I no longer had a job, I was home everyday, and with a series of increasingly treacherous winter storms blowing through town one after another, Nick had been working from home everyday, too. Somehow, we’d fallen into an easy rhythm where we looked like a couple, and acted like a couple, but I didn’t actually know if wewerea couple. He’d yet to utter the G-word; nor had I been too eager to call him my boyfriend yet either.

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