“Thank you.” There might have been a tiny snarl in my voice as I stepped away from Liam and took possession of the cart. I looked over at Liam while I wheeled the cart toward the register. He was worrying his lip between his teeth. “What?”
“You brought out the caveman, Jack. I can’t be responsible for my actions when we get home.”
“Yeah?” Liam smiled at the hopefulness he heard in my voice. He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively at me and I stopped right there in the middle of the aisle. He stopped too and looked at me curiously. I snatched him to me before he knew what was coming and planted a serious kiss on his gorgeous mouth. I didn’t give a crap who might be looking or get mad. The moment called for a kiss.
“Wow,” he said, once he pulled away. “I’m not sure what came over you, but I sure enjoyed it.”
“You came over me,” I replied and then leaned closer so only he could hear my next words. “Well, not yet today you haven’t, but it’s part of what I was going to tell you before we were so rudely interrupted by the president of your fan club.”
Liam pulled back so he could look into my eyes. “That guy back there doesn’t know me. He only wants to fuck me. You love me with every part of you. There’s never going to be a competition for my heart or my body where you’re concerned, Jack.” He meant every word he said, which made my heart swell.
“We better get out of here before we get arrested for public indecency.” I wasn’t even joking either. Liam’s patient love liberated me from a life of unfulfilled dreams. “I’ll show you just how much your words mean to me when we get home.” I loved thatmyloft was nowourhome. This was the first year a Christmas tree would be in the loft and I was suddenly eager to put it up with Liam. I wondered how he felt about decorating in the nude.
I wrestled that big mother of a tree into the back of the Wrangler while Liam moved the boxes and boxes of decorations into the back seat. I treated him to his favorite frivolous coffee drink on the way home, making sure to tease him when he had whipped cream on his face. Hey, my jokes might not have been original, but they made Liam laugh and blush. What else mattered?
The two of us managed to drag that huge tree box up the flight of steps to the loft. I cut into the box and began unpacking pieces while Liam and Charlie went down to the garage to get the rest of our things. There were a fuck ton of pieces to this tree, but I wouldn’t let it discourage me. My mom had purchased one of those pre-lit trees that came in three pieces a few years ago, but never like it. She liked all of the lights, but she never felt the tree looked real. She wanted to manipulate the branches her way, which is almost exactly what Liam said when we started out on our excursion that morning. Who knew people were so damn picky about fake trees.
“That’s a lot of pieces,” Liam said, echoing my sentiments. “We should take a break before we get started.” I looked up at him and I realized what he intended to do during our “break.”
“Huh uh,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s going to take a long time to decorate this monstrosity and I have big plans for you later.” I turned back to stacking the limbs in piles based on the colored sticker wrapped around the wire limbs that hooked into the base. “The quicker you help me, the quicker we get done and I can light a fire and drag out the blankets.”
Liam jumped into the mess and we had the tree parts sorted relatively fast. Assembling the tree was a totally different animal. Liam became a completely different person as he formed each branch, stood back, looked at the tree to see if it looked right, and repeated. I gave up at some point, because I “wasn’t doing it right.” I popped some popcorn and drank a beer on the couch next to Charlie and watched Liam work his magic. Okay, I was mostly focused on the way his jeans molded to his superb ass and how long his legs looked, but occasionally I would notice how nicely the tree was coming along.
“I feel you staring at my ass, Jack,” Liam said, an hour into the tree transformation.
“Yup.” Why deny it.
“I’m half tempted to really give you something to look at, but you already denied me when I hinted at wanting to get fucked earlier.”
“I did not!” I sat up straighter ready to prove him wrong, but I tore my eyes off his ass long enough to see the playful smirk on his face. “You better watch it or I’ll come over there and help you.”
“Please don’t. I love you so much, but I’d prefer to do this part by myself.” I tried to look sad, but I wasn’t fooling him. He gave me a knowing smirk and returned back to his task. Charlie and I killed an entire bag of popcorn while we watched. “I’ll allow you to help me with the lights since you’re so much taller.” The superior tone of his voice made me smile.Allow me?
“Yes dear,” I replied, earning myself the stink eye.
Liam placed his hands on his lower back and began to stretch. I wanted to go to him and help work out his kinks, but I knew what would happen once my hands were on his body. We still had lights and ornaments out the ass to hang up; I wouldn’t be getting any action anytime soon, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t have a little fun. “Do you want to play a little game while we finish decorating the tree?” I waggled my eyebrows at him playfully.
“What kind of game?” Liam asked suspiciously.
“I’ll find a radio station that’s playing Christmas songs and we’ll each pick a word for each other that we hear often in those types of songs. Every time our word is used in a song we have to take off an article of clothing.”
“Okay, but not if the word is in the chorus,” Liam said, negotiating, “or we’ll be naked before we get the strands of lights out of the boxes.”
“How about we unpack all of the lights and decorations before we begin our game?”
“That sounds perfect.” I saw a devilish grin split his face seconds before he said, “I‘d like to up the game a little bit. There needs to be kissing or touching with every lost piece of clothing. What kind of prize does the winner get and who is the winner? Is the first person naked the winner or the loser?” The temperature in the living area just went up about twenty degrees.
“Baby, I think we’ll both be winners in this game regardless which one of us is naked first. The winner is the person who has at least one article of clothing left on.”
“Do you accept the changes to the game? Can you handle a teasing kiss or touch and stay focused on hanging lights and ornaments?”
“I’m up to the challenge,” I said, gesturing to the semi-erection I already had rocking. Ha! I was afraid when we first got together that I might not be able to keep up with him. It turns out that everything about Liam is an aphrodisiac and turns me inside out to have him.
I poured Liam a glass of wine and grabbed myself another beer and turned on the radio station that was known to play classic Christmas songs, which we both preferred. I helped him unwrap all of the strands of LED rainbow colored snowflake lights. This tree would be so bright you’d be able to pick it up from a NASA satellite.
“I get to pick your word first since I came up with the game,” I said smugly. “I pick bells as your word.”
Liam narrowed his eyes at me, letting me know he was going to pick that word too. “Fine. I pick snow as your word.”
