Easy because Sabrina Ramirez is extraordinary.
Within a couple of days, she’s created a virtual team hub connecting her, my agent, the head trainer, and the skills coach to ensure my schedule is readily updated. We’ve organized my office together and unpacked all the moving boxes. She even wrapped the presents we picked for my parents and sister, who have invited themselves over for Christmas.
At the moment, Sabrina is decorating the fireplace mantelpiece with a fresh pine garland. It smells like a forest in our living room.
Her dark hair is pulled into a half ponytail, swinging behind her when she turns. The lights around us are bright, but her brown eyes catch them all. When she smiles, I take a mental picture of our first Christmas together. Having lived alone for most of my adult life, I’ve never bothered with holiday decorations.
That is, till my wife moved in.
My wife. I’m still getting used to the sound of that.
“Candles?” I ask when she nestles white columns between pinecones. I’m no arson expert, but flames beside foliage seems uncharacteristically careless.
Sabrina has to remove the candy cane in her mouth to answer. She’d been sucking it while decorating, her cheeks hollowing at the effort. She waves the sharp point of the cane, the aroma of sweet peppermint wafting between us. Her plush, reddened mouth glistens, snagging my attention.
The tantalizing image of me leaning over and sucking on her candied bottom lip hits me so hard, I have to turn away.
“They aren’t real,” she clarifies. “Here, press this.”
She’s holding out a tiny rectangular object in her palm. I press the power button. Like magic, the candles flicker to life.
“Ta-da!” she says with arms out, making her cropped top lift slightly. My eyes sting at the effort it takes not to stare at the sliver of exposed skin.
By the way, that’s what I mean by hard.
I’ve jerked off so much since she’s moved in, my right forearm is bigger than my left. Having Sabrina so close all the time while trying to stay within the boundaries of a marriage of convenience is torture.
Imagining all the things I want her lips to wrap around other than candy canes is my new hobby. Checking out her ass as she walks across the room has reached perv-level obsession. Making excuses to touch her without seeming too obvious about wanting to be close all the damn time has turned my balls an unhealthy shade of blue.
“Do you want this outside or here?” she asks, lifting a pine wreath. “Your family always had one over the mantel.”
She’s right. My mom always used to adorn the fireplace with holiday decorations.
I wonder how much our shared memories factor into Sabrina’s initiative to design this Christmas setting.
Does she feel obligated to re-create a version of holidays past? The thought of Sabrina feeling obligated to do anything makes me sick.
I hope she’s going through all this trouble for herself, too, and not just because my family is visiting. They are visitors, but she is my wife.
I want her to love it here. Sabrina’s efforts at transforming our house into a home—the practical things like organizing and decorating as well as the intangibles, like the way she angles the large chairs to face the gas fireplace or her music playing while we cook—cannot be only for me.
I want Sabrina to put her mark on everything around us. The way a wife would.
“I’m good with anything. What do you think?” I ask, lifting my chin in the direction of the mantel.
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
Smiling, she unfolds the medium-height step ladder for me to use because this woman does not start a project without being fully prepared.
I climb the ladder to position the wreath.
“Move it to the right a bit. Yup. And lower,” she instructs from a few paces away.
“Good?” I’m holding it up and leaning forward.
She doesn’t immediately answer.
“Are you going to decide where this goes or just stare at my ass?” I tease.
