But not before I asked Aiden about his perfect Christmas.
“What would be your perfect Christmas?”
He takes a moment to think about it and I use the opportunity to study the strong line of his jaw from below, growing drowsier by the second as his fingers thread through my hair, stroking it from the roots to the very—probably split—ends. “You promise not to laugh?”
“I promise,” I sigh, half asleep.
So close to giving up the fight and letting oblivion claim me.
“Matching robes,” he says, shaking his head at himself. “I think of having a family around the tree in matching robes.”
“That’s nice.” I yawn. “I like that.”
Waking up a minute ago is the next thing I remember. Did he carry me in here?
Undress me?
I’m already shaking my head. Not Aiden.
I don’t even have to feel for my tights to know they’re still on.
Wiggling my way out from under the mound of covers, I stand up and stretch my fingers toward the ceiling, frowning when my back and shoulders feel completely different. Relaxed. Free of knots I didn’t realize I had. Have I been waking up sore every morning from sleeping on the old mattress in my own apartment? I might as well have slept on a cloud last night. There is some definite tenderness between my legs, but that ache has been there since our office sex adventure yesterday afternoon. The memory of that—and perhaps the fading feeling of Aiden’s hard body against mine throughout the night—sinks a ticklish weight low in my belly.
I walk to the window and take a moment to marvel over the glow of orange and gray rising behind the buildings of midtown. Waking up like this is so far outside of what I consider ordinary that I might as well be flying through the rainforest on a zipline. Spokes poke upward from beneath my skin, trying to dissipate the warmth and safety cocooning me. There’s a sense that I’m in the wrong place. I don’t belong here in this luxury high-rise with a man who obviously has a lot of money. You always did think you were better. Ironically, it’s that taunt, that sneer straight out of the past that makes me determined…to stay.
Makes me determined not to finger comb my hair, run out the door with a brief goodbye and return to my dark apartment that, truthfully, has always just felt like a holding cell between prison and real life.
I’m going to allow myself this morning with him.
I’ll take on tomorrow when it gets here.
With a deep breath, I shed my clothes. Dress, underwear and tights. I trade them for one of Aiden’s T-shirts, a white cotton one with a little bumble bee over the pocket above some script reading Aiden and Hank’s Honey Bank. Breathing through the tug in my middle, I make a pit stop in the ensuite bathroom to pee, wash my hands and finger brush my teeth. After making some kind of sense out of my hair, I follow the scent of coffee toward the kitchen.
Where I find a shirtless Aiden cracking eggs into a bowl, his hair wet from a shower.
Who knew so many muscles were required to flex to perform that domestic activity?
His back is wide up top. Thick with muscle, along with his upper arms. Smooth. There’s a scattering of freckles down his spine that makes my mouth water even more than the coffee. From my vantage point, the breakfast bar is blocking him from the waist down, so I take several steps to the right until, dear sweet Jesus, his derriere comes into view in a seriously thin pair of pajama pants and heat coils up inside of me like a spring.
“Wow,” I whisper.
Aiden does, indeed, have a bubble butt and that fact is so much more obvious without the advantage of dress pants and a jacket to hide it. Until meeting this man, I never fully understood the human fascination with butts, but I get it now. I’m a believer. At least in this particular set of taut, brawny buns. He should enter it into some kind of booty pageant.
A twinge of jealousy catches me off-guard.
Oh great, now I’m jealous of the imaginary judging panel of a butt contest.
My life has taken a serious turn.
And when I walk into the kitchen and Aiden greets me with that gigantic heart in his eyes, I decide I don’t hate the turn it has taken. Not one bit.
I’m deciding whether or not to kiss him good morning—is that too much too soon?—when he sucks in a breath and drops an egg on the floor. Splat. Yoke and egg whites everywhere. “Shoot. Sorry.” He turns in a circle, eventually locating a roll of paper towels. “I just…you did something to your hair. Your bangs are pinned up.”
My stupid heart is clunking like a car with cinderblocks for wheels. “Oh, um…yeah. They’re messy in the morning, so I twisted them back.”