Unconditional

I giggle to myself because of both Margie’s comment and the second vodka drink I’d managed to sneak in while Cal walked Penelope out. I may have stared at them from the window a little too long, but it was enough to know that he didn’t kiss her. All he’d offered her was a polite hug, and I was thrilled that she hadn’t tried to initiate kissing him.

“Mom! Penelope is nice,” Aria says as she throws a card out.

“Penelope is boring,” Margie added without looking up from her cards.

“You’re one to talk about boring significant others.” Henry grunts and I pout. Here we go. I go to speak up when Cal pins me with a glare, knowing that it is best I stay out of that even if Margie is one of my favorite people and Grant isn’t too far down that list.

I listen because I’m a little buzzed…and Cal would always be at the top of that list.

“I raise,” Grant replies in response and I throw my cards down.

“Really?” I scoff.

“I know you know how to bluff,” Margie speaks up.

“Not with that trash hand.” I wave it off.

“Listen, all I’m saying is maybe you ought to let me and Maddie handle the fixing up from now on.” Margie points at Aria and Henry. “Because you two are clueless.”

“Mom…” Cal’s tone is exasperated and I watch him and Grant share a look. His eyes dart to the drink in front of his mother and then the water in front of Grant. Margie is no stranger to sleeping over when she’s had a little too much to drink, or just when she wanted to spend time with me. But I take the obvious glance as a sign that he doesn’t want that for tonight and all of me hopes that it’s because he wants to be alone with me.

There’s been a dull throb in my sex ever since he kissed me earlier, and now it’s exacerbated by the alcohol that wants his mouth between my legs.

“I fold.” Margie tosses her cards. “Maddie, I’m going to put my tree up tomorrow, are you coming over?”

“You know it.” I nod, knowing that helping Margie put her tree up had become a bit of a tradition since my first Christmas with Cal.

“Perfect, I got you something!” With my birthday being in December, somehow the

entire month had become Maddie’s birth month, so that my birthday doesn’t get swallowed by the holiday season. Spread over the entire month, I get all kinds of gifts, small and large, leading up to the twenty-sixth which is my actual birthday.

As much as Cal hates to admit it, he’s spoiled me rotten since that first Christmas. My birth parents didn’t have much money, and I was lucky if I got food on Christmas much less presents. Cal seemed to want to erase that from my memory, which meant each year I was surrounded by literal mountains of presents. I never asked for much, and it got to the point that they stopped asking when my response was always, I don’t need anything, I have everything I could ever want! This year, however, I want something money can’t buy, and I fully intended to ask for it.

Aria and Henry, the last of the party are barely backed out of the driveway when Cal has me pinned to the front door with his lips on mine. He tastes like the whiskey drink he’d been nursing the last hour and a hint of pumpkin. Damn, he tastes so good. Like love and lust and comfort and home all rolled into one.

“You’re going to make me lose my fucking mind.” He cups my face in his hands and continues to make love to my mouth with his tongue. He sucks my tongue into his mouth and I meet his kiss with equal aggression. I never want this kiss to end. Each kiss feels like another step in our relationship. A new revelation. Each kiss is more passionate and urgent than the last and they all tell me something new about the man I love so much.

“Sorry.”

He rubs his nose against mine and presses a chaste kiss to my mouth. “I hate that you think you have a reason to be jealous, but fuck if it doesn’t turn me on.”

I gasp and pull away from his mouth. “It does?”

“Yes.” He grunts and lifts me into his arms and walks us into the living room. “Penelope doesn’t mean anything. She’s not a threat to you, Maddie. I don’t want her.”

“Doesn’t mean I enjoyed watching her flirt with you.”

He sets me on the couch and kneels in front of me, running his hands up my thighs and gripping me hard when he reaches the apex of them. He doesn’t touch me there, but he does pop the button of my jeans. “Take them off.”

“What?” My eyes widen to the size of saucers. Is he…now? My heart slams against my rib cage and my mouth waters at the idea of crossing that line with Cal.

He darts his hands away from me like I’ve burned him. “Do you not want to?”

My pants are halfway down my legs before he can change his mind. “No, I do. I do! I just didn’t…”

He doesn’t say anything, just glues his stare to my pussy and helps me pull my jeans off. I am suddenly very grateful for the black lace panties that cover barely anything but my slit and the very thin string that went between my cheeks. “Holy fuck, these are sexy.” He plucks the string, letting it snap against my skin and the feeling makes me dizzy. The sexual tension crackles around us and it feels like every single one of my nerves are standing on end.

“Are…are you going to take them off?”