* * *
Fen
One year later…Christmas Day
It was official: I was the worst cook in the family. But in my defence, the rest of them were so good I never stood a chance.
So I left them to it and played to my strengths—hauling wood, building fires, and making a mess with the kids in as many different ways as possible. We’d decorated the trees weeks ago. That’s right—trees, plural. What was the point of having a Christmas tree farm if I couldn’t fill my house and everyone else’s with as many Nordic firs as would fit?
None. The fact that it gave my pint-sized partners in crime and myself an on-tap supply of gingerbread was an added bonus.
“All gone,” Charlie sing-songed as I crammed the last one into my mouth.
“Yup.” I swallowed it down and ruffled his hair. It had grown lighter in the past year, picking up natural highlights from the sun. He still had the Stone dark gaze, though, and he was as capable of hypnotising me as his uncle. “You still going to eat your dinner? I think Safia might kill me if you don’t.”
“I’ll eat it, but no sprouts. Stinky.”
Valid. With the trees razed of all things edible, we went back to playing the game we’d built during the Friday afternoon slot Rami and I took over Safia’s home school. The huge wooden board was as chaotic and colourful as the disordered shambles we created every week, and engrossed us so much I didn’t hear footsteps behind me.
Lean arms snaked around my waist, soft lips brushing my neck, and then the subtle, gentle scrape of teeth that made my knees weak. “Who’s winning?”
“No idea. I can’t remember the rules.”
Rami chuckled. “I told you to write them down.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
His answer was more laughter, and it was a sound that would never get old. We split our time between the homestead at the top of the mountain and the house we’d rebuilt half way down, but it didn’t matter where we were, two things remained constant: laughter and love.
Sometimes, it was hard to believe my life was real.
Christmas Day passed like the last—so fast I mourned it when it was over. The only thing I didn’t miss was Safia’s obsession with surrogacy.
“You can tell her to stop,” Rami said when we were naked in our log cabin bed, a place I’d come to see as my home as much as anywhere else on Christmas Mountain. “I’m not saying she would, but at least she’d know it’s making you uncomfortable.”
I snapped my gaze up from where I’d been exploring his chest with my tongue. “Uncomfortable? Say what?”
Rami let his molten eyes bore into me. “You cringe every time she mentions it. I figured it was freaking you out.”
“It is, but not like that.”
Rami arched a brow. He was good at making people talk—he had to be, in his line of work running a remote counselling programme from his office in the sky—and he didn’t even have to try with me. One look and everything came pouring out.
I shifted up the bed to lie next to him. “I don’t hate the idea. I’m cringing because I don’t want her banging on about it to make you think it’s something we have to do. Something I need to be happy. Because it’s not.”
“You want to have more kids?”
“It’s not as tangible as that. I just—I don’t know. I wouldn’t think twice if you wanted it too, that’s what I’m saying.”
Rami frowned, but it wasn’t a bad frown. It was speculative. Curious. And I knew that the future held the kind of conversations he was so good at. The serious ones that scared other people, but never, ever him.
Christ, I love him.
We stopped talking. Kissed, touched, and fucked. Sometimes we lost whole nights to each other like this, but after a full-on festive day, that wasn’t happening tonight. I moved inside Rami, my palm wrapped around his cock, until he groaned and spilled in my hand. Then I came so hard I swore louder than Rami, before we fell asleep as wrapped up in each other as we’d been when we woke that morning.
Dawn came fast. I opened my eyes to a crisp Boxing Day morning, clear skies, frost on the ground, sparkly icicles hanging from the trees.
There was also a sticky, chubby hand pawing my face.Charlie. Little menace had developed a habit of letting himself out of the main house in the morning and trotting over to the cabin. Paddy had installed every device he could think of to contain him, but somehow Charlie Houdini still made his escape and woke me. Yeah, that’s right. Just me. I was the soft touch, apparently, and I was okay with that.
