Fall by Winter

Mason began pounding into me.

Almost, almost, almost.

“Right there,” I gasped. The pleasure exploded within me a second later, and I had to bite my lip to the point where I almost drew blood in order to keep quiet. There wasn’t a goddamn part of me that wasn’t straining, but holy fucking hell, it felt so good. So good, so good, so good.

Mason came just a beat or two later, and I clenched down on him as hard as I could, earning myself a low groan as he rode out the orgasm. Or fucked me through it. He moved his cock slowly through his release and gripped my hips tightly.

I wanted nothing more than to cuddle for a bit, not to mention kiss him senseless, but I was out of time. Once he collapsed on the mattress, scrubbing his hands over his face and panting, I had just enough time for one more thing.

I bent over his delicious, spent body and sucked his cock into my mouth.

“Holy—” He jumped slightly and pushed himself up on his elbows. “Jesus Christ, baby. That’s gotta be the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

So now he was feeling chatty again.

I beamed internally and sucked him clean, then crawled up to give him a quick kiss. “I’m gonna take the fastest shower in history. You wait here. Go back to sleep if you want.” One more kiss before I was gone.

“Hurry back to me,” he commanded.EightOver the next few weeks, I lived for our moments together.

Whether we dressed up and went out for dinner at a nice restaurant or we stayed home on the couch, I loved every minute I shared with Mason. But my favorite was probably when we ordered Chinese and ate in his garage while he worked on a piece of furniture.

At the moment, he was building a crib for the baby. The garage door was up, snow was falling outside, soft rock music was playing in the background, and I sat in a lawn chair with a blanket around me and shoveled fried noodles into my mouth.

“Darlin’?” He stood by his workbench and ran sandpaper over the canopy of the crib.

“Yes, love.”

He always smiled to himself when I called him that.

“I think it’s winter,” he said.

I chuckled around a mouthful of food. “Yeah, now.”

We’d just survived a hectic Thanksgiving where we’d all crammed ourselves into Mason’s living room for a big dinner. None of us lived in places large enough to host family get-togethers, though William and Kelly had said they were officially looking for a house in Westslope, a district north of here. But I’d made a statement of sorts when I picked my cute house. I was done playing hostess. Or so I thought. The four stools around the kitchen island weren’t quite enough anymore.

“I don’t want to move,” I said.

Mason’s forehead creased as he glanced over at me. “Speaking of?”

“How crowded things became at Thanksgiving.”

He hummed and sorted through his tools on the bench, searching for something. “See, all I heard there was the indication that you’re thinking about a future where we live together and have family over.”

Christ, he was right. But before I could even think about any type of embarrassment, his smug expression removed all doubts on whether or not I was moving too fast with my thoughts.

“There’s no reason for you to move,” he went on conversationally. “Your living room is big enough, and the kitchen can be turned into a buffet at Christmas. People can sit wherever they damn well please.”

I bit into a spring roll and listened to his vision.

“Will and Kelly could be in charge of Thanksgivings once they buy a new place,” he went on. “It’d be better for all of us if we could just spend holidays together. No more going back and forth for the kids, or figuring out whose turn it is to have them. Besides, they’re all older now. Tristan has Katie, and it won’t be long before Brady and Matt bring home girlfriends. There’s gonna be enough deciding who they’re gonna be with as it is.”

I swallowed hard as a lump of emotions threatened to surface.

He cleared his throat and carefully drew his hand over the canopy piece. “And should you find yourself a handy man who’s an amateur handyman, he could build you a proper deck in your backyard for Fourth of July parties in the summer and weekend barbecues in the dead of winter.”

My vision blurred with unshed tears, and I pinched my lips together to contain my smile.

“Maybe Tristan and Katie will take over this house one day. Maybe it’ll be their getaway for when they want to get out of the city.” His focus remained on what he was doing, but I had a feeling it was for a reason. Throughout our short relationship, he had consistently been the one who put all cards on the table, and he deserved the same from me. I didn’t want him to be uncertain about us because of how cautious I’d been in the beginning. “They could host Easter brunch or something here,” he finished.