Page 35 of A Loser by Christmas
“Yousaved him.” He dips his head, his forehead meeting mine as if to imprint this. “You, Valentin,” he insists, even though I’m not the star of what replays on a loop behind him. All I know is that a rope knotting me to a trophy with my mother’s name on slips loose when he dips his head some more.
Our mouths meet, and it feels like I won already. His harsh whisper is as good as standing on a stage to kiss that trophy for myself. “Thank you.”
I kiss him back with a gallery of past winners watching, silent like the rest of this building. The deepening quiet suggests our time here has run out. Lights flick off one by one to confirm it, and the last thing I want to do is remind Calum that he only pressed pause on a ticking clock of his own this evening.
It turns out I don’t need to—he pulls out his phone, places a call, and tells whoever answers, “Not gonna make it at all tonight.” His free hand curls around my hip to tug me against hisbig, hard body. All I register is Calum’s softness. “I’m nowhere close to finished.” He ends his call, his eyes still damp. That sight melts me almost as much as his uncertainty. “That is, if you’re free?” A flush rises. So does one big hand stealing to the back of his neck. “Let me take you out to dinner?”
Fuck no.
“I’m not hungry.”That’s a lie. I’m starving, but I didn’t know it until Calum fed me praise. Now I’m ravenous for someone who didn’t even try to hide his damp eyes from the red blink of my camera. “Come home with me, Calum.”
I bet Christmas shoppers get in our way on our return journey.
If they do, I don’t notice. Like London’s streetlight angels, I float high above them.
11
I don’t cometo earth even after we reach the marina.
If any angels keep watch over its darkest corner, I bet they’d smile at Calum trying to get me below deck in a hurry. I don’t know why he thinks he can’t compare with his older brother—he’s easily as determined as Reece. Those angels might also blush at what is pressed up against my arse to confirm we’re on the same page.
Physically we’re completely in tune; I’ve been half hard too all the way here.
“Get out of the cold,” he urges from behind me, then the temperature below decks hits him. “How the fuck can it be even colder down here?”
His breath plumes over my shoulder. That’s all the more reason for getting us under the covers in a hurry, and I guess he comes to the same conclusion. At least, I assume so until he slams on the brakes out of nowhere the moment I unknot my scarf and drop it.
Glaciers move faster than Calum then. He’s still behind me, hands still gripping my hips, only now his lips find what my scarf had covered. His mouth on my neck is scorching. Torture in slowmotion. Hell, all while angels might be watching. It’s also heaven on earth when his mouth finds a pulse. It throbs to prove I’m not as heartless as he once called me right here in this cabin. My heart beats even faster at each kiss feeling like another thank-you when I’m the one who should thank him for making me feel like my work wasn’t wasted.
“What did you say?” He doesn’t wait for me to translate. Or for me to award a score for his neck-kissing efforts. I couldn’t grade it as mediocre. I’m not that good a liar. Besides, Calum unfastens my jacket and tugs at my jumpsuit collar to suck even harder right where my neck joins my shoulder, and I ignite.
It’s that plain and simple.
He struck a match in a SoHo exhibition. Lit a fire in a gallery that still warms me. Now his teeth graze skin and tendons, and I stop thinking about anything apart from his mouth on me and his dick grinding against my arse like he can’t help it.
At least, I assume that’s what prods me. Another potential reason registers, and I can’t help repeating something else he once ordered.
“Careful.”
Calum freezes, then confirms we share a wavelength. We must do for him to rummage in his coat pocket. A gift-wrapped box lands on the galley counter, and yeah, the only hardness left when he crowds closer behind me again is all him.
For me.
Calum confirms that. He plasters his chest against my back the same way now as when he watched a rescue with me on a TV flatscreen. I’d felt his every flinch then. This time, I feel him pull and tug at my clothes, and I’m more than happy if he wants nothing left between us.
I’d help make that happen quicker if him sucking on my neck again didn’t affect my coordination.
His teeth worry at sensitive skin with the same dedication, the same focus, as when he couldn’t look away from a disaster about to happen. There’s a similar desperate edge to his teeth anchoring on the lobe of my ear. It’s sharp. So intensely sexual that I have to work even harder to get my clothes off. Each breath across my ear reduces me to a melting puddle, a reaction he must have remembered from a first time together that was meant to be spite-filled but wasn’t.
This isn’t spite-filled either.
I’ve never felt this much from so little, and I get naked in a hurry.
It’s a ten-out-of-ten performance that I turn around for more of. A perfect score proving that he’s a quick learner. Everything he does is just right for me, including the display of grace and athleticism he gives in my galley.
First, he drops his coat and promptly slips on its silky lining.
Then he kicks away a tangle of discarded clothing that hits me square in the face.
