“Yeah, you know…” Why couldn’t I stop talking? Things had gone from really, really good, to slightly awkward, and I was dragging the situation down into unbearable, wasn’t I? “The animal thing was a…a compliment. It was good.”
“Okay.” He ripped off a wing and set it on a serving dish.
“It’s just that, while we were kissing, I felt…like…” His brows rose above those light, shimmering eyes and for just a second I wondered if he knew exactly what I meant and was messing with me, letting me shovel my own stupid hole. “Animalistic.It was intense for me. I don’t usually… It was like we wereboth…wild animals. Like you were dominant…and I was…” Shit, Shut up, Christa.Shut up!“Oh, God. What am I talking about?”
His head tilted to the side and he watched me, closely. “You liked it?”
“Well, you know…” I shut my mouth on a string of words he didn’t need to hear and I didn’t need to say. “Yes. I liked it very much.”
After a last assessing look, he nodded once and went back to carving, the knife glinting in the low light, his movements so freaking precise, so well-practiced, something an awful lot like fear twisted in my belly. I glanced out the window at the eerie blue light. It was still coming down, hard.
And I was still stuck. With him.
I shivered as that sliver of fear unfurled into something else.
18
Micah
“Want to grab a couple beers from the fridge?” I said in the lightest voice I could muster. Not easy when I wanted to growl.
She made her careful way to the kitchen, reminding me that she must still be sore as hell and in no way up for the kind of long, hard session that was flashing through my mind right now. Of course, it’d been so many years since I’d done it that I was pretty sure I wasn’t up for that either. I’d probably last about five seconds. Already, my cock was throbbing angrily at me, demanding that I do something about this situation.
Using the bottom of her shirt—myshirt—to protect her hand, she unscrewed the caps before throwing them in the trash. Something about that clogged my throat. Jesus, she was delicate. Her skin was soft, bruised to hell now, and totally breakable. If the fluted edge of a screw top was too much for her, what the hell was I? She needed tender and careful, not coarse and blunt.Animalistic, she’d called it.
Knowing it didn’t stop the images from coming. Gettinginher, seated deep and tight. Watching her face while I pounded…
“You want this here?”
Oh. My beer.
I lifted my chin toward the table. Couldn’t walk away from the counter sporting this hard-on. I’d have to let her eat on her own at this rate. Or carry the chicken real low on my way over there.
I finished carving, piled the dog bowls high with chunks of thigh meat—their favorite—grabbed the baked potatoes from the oven, and buttered the green beans. She came to get the sides, making all kinds of comments about them, when really, it wasn’t anything special. I ate this kinda stuff all the time.
Well, maybe not two roast chickens at a time, but I made all my food. What else was I supposed to do with my time? No TV, no violent-ass video games, no girlfriend. Just the dogs, the job, and this.
Me.
“This looks amazing.”
I met her eye. “Taste it before you decide.”
“Well, it smells good. And your stew was unbelievable. Geez, if my ex had cooked like—” She shut her eyes hard, then opened them, grabbed her beer and took a long swig, her cheeks flushing like she’d run ten miles. “I’ll shut up now. Cheers.”
I had to smile as she clinked her bottle to mine, met my gaze quickly and looked away again. I wished she wouldn’t shut up. I liked the shit she said, from out of left field.
I’d just taken hold of the serving spoon when a strange, long-dead urge to give thanks rose up, straight from my childhood. It made sense, I guess, for it to show up here and now, after all these years of devoutly avoiding anything resembling religion. I tried to ignore it, but something about the situation, the day, the fact that she was here, made it impossible.
“You, um, you say grace or anything?” I served her a potato and some beans, pointed to a thigh and nodded my thanks when she put it on my plate.
“Not usually. You?”
“Thinking we should.”
“Oh. Yeah. You’re right. It’s Christmas Eve. I should have thought of it.” She put her hands out and I took them, did my best not to notice the details of short, soft fingers, weaving through mine.
She watched me solemnly, tightened her hands, and gave me the courage to say the words I’d never once uttered in my life. “I want to give thanks for this food, for the heat and the, uh,” I shot her a look, “company.”
