Page 31 of The Thanksgiving Hookup

“What are you thinking about?” River crooked his head and gave me a look, and I knew I must have been making some kind of face.

“Just fighting the snow on your behalf.” I shrugged my shoulders, and he pressed a kiss there.

“I thought you might be daydreaming about food again,” he teased.

My mouth formed a smirk in response. I was surprised I hadn’t started drooling.

“What are we going to bring back to the room? None of this is good cold.” I waved a hand over our Thanksgiving meals.

“Mashed potatoes are okay cold. And the bread will be fine.”

I wasn’t convinced. Both of those sounded subpar, and I knew I’d be hungry later. For actual food.

“Raul will make me a pizza to go. Won’t he?” I batted my eyelashes at River, and he brushed his thumb down my cheek.

“If he won’t, I will.”

“Who knew you were so sweet?”

“My mom,” he quipped without taking a breath, and I laughed. “But the pizza’s for both of us, babe. You’re going to need the energy for what I have planned.”

I dropped my fork, and it clanged loudly against my plate. I felt my cheeks flush, and I started waving a hand to fan my face. My body was already sore in places I hadn’t realized could even get that way. I really needed to start stretching more. Especially if River was going to be in charge of my sex life. That man had moved my body into positions I’d never managed to get into before. At one point, I had sworn I was folded in half like a lawn chair while he railed into me.

Not that I was complaining.

I was just definitely going to need that pizza. And maybe a massage.

EPILOGUE

SKY

SEVEN MONTHS LATER

Ihad to sit on my suitcase in order to get it closed. I was usually better than this, but I was also typically packing for work and not a tropical vacation with my boyfriend. River had insisted that we enjoy the spoils of our job and actually use our perks to go somewhere and relax.

We really did work a lot. And with our busy schedules and overtime requests, we didn’t get to see each other as much as we’d like, even now that we lived together. Yeah, I had moved into River’s condo in Miami a few months back. And, yes, it had been deemed quick by everyone around us, but River and I weren’t into taking things slow.

Fast worked for us. Anything else felt uncomfortable and like we were forcing ourselves to follow someone else’s rules for how we should live our lives. We both hated it and had realized pretty early on that we were doing things because we weresupposedto, not because it was what we wanted or how we truly felt.

We wanted to live together, make dinner in our kitchen, make love on the balcony, and never spend our moments apart when we didn’t have to. It was still insane whenever I thought back to how we had gotten here. I’d wasted so many years hating the man for no reason really when we could have been doing this the whole time instead.

Although we probably wouldn’t have worked out before now anyway. When things were supposed to fall together, they seemed to do it without much effort. Timing was everything, and the two of us were no exception.

“Are you almost ready, babe?” He poked his perfect head through our doorframe before he started laughing. “What’s happening here?” He pointed at the suitcase, damn well knowing that I couldn’t get it zipped.

“I can’t close it.”

“That means you have too many clothes. I told you, bikinis and that’s it.”

Shaking my head, I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to fight off the smile that threatened to overtake my face. “I need to wear actual clothes in restaurants, River.”

“Not if I don’t let you leave the room to eat, you don’t.”

“Are you planning on keeping me hostage this whole vacation?”

“Damn straight.” He stepped into our bedroom, picked up my body like I weighed nothing, and zipped up the suitcase with no effort. “There.”

“You’re so annoying.”

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