“No. Well, yeah,” he added with a devilish little smile. “Plan to beinyou as often as you’re down with that.” My body enthusiastically agreed with that. “But that’s not what I meant. I meant. This. Whatever… this is,” he said, waving between us. “And I know it’s something.”
“How?” I was being a little mean, but I was really loving getting this side of him.
“How’d I know it was something? ‘Cause you were supposed to be a job. I was supposed to get to know just enough to know if you’d be a willing partner to us, or if I’d need to do this shit behind your back.”
“Okay.”
“And then… then I started to get to know more. And more. Not because of the job. Because I wanted to know. Then the more there was to know, the more there was to like.”
“So… you like me?” I asked, lips curving up.
“Something like that,” he agreed.
“And?” I asked.
He exhaled hard at that. “You’re killing me.”
“It’ll feel better to say it,” I promised him.
“Dunno about that but fine. Fuck it. And… I’m in this. I…”
“Go ahead,” I encouraged, reaching over to put my hand on his thigh, giving it a squeeze.
“I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I had a shitty fucking childhood.”
“Yeah, I gathered.”
“With shitty fucking parents. Who didn’t give a fuck about me. Not on my birthday. Not on the holidays. So all that shit you see on TV, in movies, about kids coming down the hall to see the presents under the tree on Christmas morning, I didn’t get that.” He sucked in a deep breath. “I guess what I’m saying is… I get it now. You make it feel like Christmas morning.”
I couldn’t tell you what the sound that escaped me then was. It was some kind of awful hybrid of a cry and a squeal. And it was loud enough to make Meatball startle, grumble, and climb off the bed via the storage ottoman at the bottom.
Venezio looked equally startled.
“That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
Bandages making it impossible to climb onto him, I reached for him instead, pulling his head down on my chest and wrapping my arms tightly around him.
“No nuzzling,” I grumbled after a moment.
“Why not?”
“Well, you know how I ran for like two hours in slippers?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I also did it without a bra on,” I told him, cupping one of my boobs. “They’re angry.”
Venezio pressed a kiss to each one before pushing up as the buzzer sounded. “I can make ‘em happy later. Right now, gotta do something about that stomach growling.”
“Hey, Venezio?” I called as he reached the doorway.
“Yeah?”
“I’m in this too,” I told him.
“Yeah?” he asked, eyes warm.
“Yeah.”
