He stopped cradling his nose, and she pushed his shoulder until he lay back down, and she could snuggle her head into the spot she liked at the top of his chest.
She felt good.
They lay there for a while, and her breathing slowed and evened out. He thought she’d fallen asleep.
“Wabbit,” she whispered. Followed by a contented sigh.
A dark worry snaked through his chest, and he pulled the blanket higher, tucking it tighter around them.
When he rolled over in the night and reached for Julie, she was gone.
Carson sat up. It was dark in the room, too dark for her to be awake already. Too soon for her to have left.
“Jules?” His voice held a note of panic he didn’t approve of.
“Shh. I’m over here.”
Then he saw her by the window. She’d wrapped herself in a blanket, and she was looking out at the yard.
“What’s wrong?” he asked more quietly.
“Nothing. Couldn’t sleep. It happens sometimes when I drink too much.”
He got up and padded barefoot across the floor to place his hands on her shoulders. “Is there something out there?”
“No. It’s just pretty in the moonlight.”
He wrapped himself around her and looked over her shoulder. The night was clear and cold, the snow covering everything with a brittle, fragile crust.
“You could freeze to death out there in about four minutes.”
“I know.”
Carson shuddered. “Come back to bed.”
She turned around and opened the blanket, inviting him inside. “I’ll keep you warm.”
She folded him in a cocoon, and she was soft and warm and welcoming. Everything it wasn’t outside. When he kissed her, she dissolved against him, and there was something dreamlike about it, a fuzziness in his head from the brandy or from still being only about two-thirds awake.
Something so easy, he let it happen.
Her tongue still tasted minty, her body supple and languid. The kiss went on for a long time as his cock rose to press against her belly, seeking. She tipped her hips up and rubbed against him.
They didn’t usually do it this way. Face-to-face, standing on equal footing, and Julie with the sheltering arms. Usually, he took her, and she let him, and she made it clear just how much she liked it that way. They had an equal inequality, if such a thing was even possible.
But this felt different. He thought there was something not quite right about it, something forbidden to him, but he accepted it anyway.
He stroked his hand up the gully of her spine, over the flare of her hip.
“Come back to bed,” he said again.
“All right.”
She dropped the
blanket, and he grabbed a condom from the table before they burrowed beneath the covers. When she took it from his hand, he let her roll it on, and then he let her climb on top of him and take him inside her.
“Fuck,” he said.