Page 23 of Solstice

Then we joined them, and I kissed Miri to welcome her home.

That vacation was about more than early morning orgasms and butt plugs. We bothhad a surprise for them.Lex had always wanted us to sneak away to Miri’s cottage in Aberdeen. He had envisioned our children running through the yard, me and Miri chasing after them. The older we’d gotten, the more he realized we couldn’t leave the States. So we’d done the next best thing. He’d found us a hideaway here, and I’d helped him buy it.

We had purchased it together. Our accountants had figured it all out, discreetly, of course, and we could come whenever we wanted. I wrapped my arms around Ivy’s neck, hugging her tighter against me, pleased when she moaned. She was the air I breathed, the oxygen I needed to survive. Now that we were together again, a sense of completeness settled in my gut that I only knew in their company.

We were whole, the four of us, and only when it was the four of us did that very specific smile grace Ivy’s face. We spent the next week in domesticated bliss. We talked about a future we may never get to see, idyllic in the thought that we might actually have it. Miri and Ivy plotted to introduce a joint environmental structure into Congress this term while I decorated the Christmas tree and Lex took pictures of us all.

If I could picture my perfect heaven, it was this.

And when we told the girls we had bought the place on Christmas morning, neither could believe it.

“It’s ours,” Lex said with a wide smile.

Ivy squinted in confusion, brows furrowing, but Miri’s grin lit up her face. “What?”

“Carter and I bought it for you…for us,” he explained.

“What do you mean you bought it?” Ivy straightened.

“I used my money fromFractured Crowns,”I said.

“And I cashed out some investments,” Lex added. “Traded a few things around.”

“Jesus, Lucifer.” Ivy pushed to her feet.

“We have a safe space now,” I said, even happier when tears bubbled in the corners of Miri’s eyes.

“No one else knows about this place,” Lex added. “No one except us and Theo.”

“And Poppy,” I cut in. “This is her safe space, too.”

“Of course,” Lex agreed, even if his tone made it seem like he didn’t…not really.

“I can’t believe you did this.” Miri wrapped her arms around Lex’s neck and kissed him, tender and sweet, the way she used to do when we were young.

Ivy crawled in my lap and kissed me deeply, whispering sweet nothings in my ear about what she wanted to do to me later.

And God help me…I never wanted this to end.

7

Ivy

Now that Carter and Miri were here, I could ignore this newfound lust for my fiancé. What was I supposed to say? That I loved him? That despite four years of fighting this engagement, I’d come to encourage it?

I didn’t know what transpired in those forty-eight hours we were alone or what it meant that I liked it so much, but once our spouses arrived, things went back to normal. I was grateful to wake up next to Miri each morning, her bright smile and brown eyes a peaceful balm to my soul. She brought out a tender side of Lex that he didn’t let very many people see. Being around Carter livened both of us in a way we sorely needed. We four were made to be together; I never believed that more than those precious days we spent at the cabin.

“Solstice is the longest night of the year,” Miri said, poking the fire with a metal rod. I sat on the couch in front of it, huddled under a thick, fuzzy blanket. Carter and Lex had gone hunting for more firewood about half an hour ago and hadn’t returned yet, leaving me and my wife alone. “Back home, we’d sit around the fireplace all night and wait out the sun’s return.”

She turned toward me and bounded closer, tucking under the covers, wrapping her arms around my stomach, her head on my chest.

“I missed you,” I told her, kissing the top of her hair.

“I missed you, too.” She looked up with her wide smile. “When we get the funding we need, we’ll have saved the whole world, and they won’t even know it.”

I chuckled. “Again.”

“Oh, did I tell you about the prince’s gardens?” Miri launched into a story about the prince of Monaco’s roses and how she’d made them healthier with barely a brush of her shoulder. My attention wasn’t on her tale, but on how her eyes twinkled when she talked. Did she enjoy Monaco? I thought she’d only gone once or twice. This sounded like she’d been there more often than that.

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