Page 23 of Merry Christmas To Me
I smiled and held up a finger. “One second, okay?”
“Okaayy,” he drawled out, a sexy smirk on his face.
Jumping off the couch, I raced over to the tree and pulled out his gift that I had hidden. I also thanked God that I had gotten him something. I couldn’t imagine how horrible I would have felt if he had presented me with a gift and I’d had nothing to give back.
I hurried back, sat down, and held out his gift for him. The second he realized it was a gift for him, his hand came around the back of my neck, and he pulled me in for a kiss. It wasn’t frantic, or sexually charged. It was a kiss between two people who cared about each other.
When we finally pulled apart, Archer stunned me by saying, “I love you.”
My heart started to race, and I could feel blood rushing in my ears. I hadn’t been expecting that. I had just begun to wrap my mind around the fact that we were going to give this a serious try.
And did he mean it?
Since day one, it’s been nothing but a highly sex-fueled relationship. Sure, we got personal and intimate over the past few days, but could he be mistaking a very strong sexual attraction for love? Staring into his amber eyes, I didn’t want to insult him or ruin the moment, so I really didn’t know what to say.
Archer finally took pity on me and setting my gift aside, he reached out and hauled me into his lap. My back against his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around me, he said, “I know what you’re thinking, Sia, and you’re wrong.”
“What am I thinking?” I asked meekly.
“That it’s too soon,” he replied. “That I’m probably confusing the best sex of my life with love. That we barely know each other. Take your pick.”
“Archer, I-”
“The thing is,” he continued, “is that I know you feel it, too. That day you showed up at my shop, you said you were tired of playing it safe. Well, nothing is more dangerous than being in love, baby.Real love.Not the comfortable kind of love. Not the easy kind of love. But the kind that’s real. The kind that tests you. The kind that irritates the shit out of you.” I let out a soft laugh. “The kind that makes you scared to tell the other person how you feel because you’re afraid they might not feel the same.”
“And you’re sure I don’t feel the same way,” I asked, testing the conversation.
“No, baby,” he replied. “I’m talking about how you were ready to walk out of my apartment this morning because you were too scared to tell me this became emotional for you. You were so worried that it hadn’t been the same for me, you were scared enough not to find out.”
That hit me hard.
Archer was right.
I had been willing to throw away a possible future with him because I had been afraid that he might not have felt the same way about me that I felt about him.
Turning in his lap, I looked into those startling golden eyes of his and made the decision to not be afraid. “I love you, too.”
“I know you do, Sia,” he simply replied.
My eyes narrowed. “How?”
His grin looked positively rakish when he said, “The same reason why we won’t be having sex today.”
I barked out a laugh. “Way to ruin the romance.”
He reached over, grabbed my present, and handed it to me. “I’ll work harder with the romance,” he teased.
We exchanged gifts, and we both started laughing when we noticed that they practically matched. My stunning diamond and sapphire necklace and his sapphire watch.
“Great minds think alike?” he joked.
I snorted. “Hardly. Your watch doesn’t have any diamonds on it.”
“That’s a sapphire necklace,” he replied. “Not a diamond necklace.”
I cocked my head. “Yeah, definitely not a diamond necklace,” I deadpanned.
“Sia, trust me when I tell you the first time I give you diamonds, it won’t be in a necklace.”
“Is that you working harder with the romance?”
Archer smiled. “That’s me telling you I plan on marrying you one day.”
Merry Christmas to me.
