“Get my girlfriend a present for Christmas?” She rolled her eyes. “I meant to give it to you this morning when it was just the two of us, but then we got a little distracted.”
She opened the album and froze. “How did you—”
“I had a little help.”
I didn’t need to look at the photos again. They were already permanently etched in my brain—all sixteen of them. Instead, I studied Nellie, absorbing every emotional reaction as she experienced them for the first time.
There was the one we had taken on my living room floor the night we’d first had sex. I had cropped her pert nipples out of the frame, but it was hard to miss the beads of sweat dotting our skin. She turned the page, smiling when she reached our photo in the snow globe. Sloane deserved a fucking bonus for that one. Much to my surprise, she had adjusted the focus, effectively blurring the rest of the background and drawing your eyes straight to Nellie and me, who only had eyes for each other.
There were candid photos, too—from our photo shoots, the rage room, even one or two from the pet store. I watched as she flipped through page after page, smiling ear to ear as she relived a series of snapshots in time that, collectively, told our story.
When she reached the last page, her eyes widened, twinkling with lust. “Holy shit,” she whispered. “That is so fucking hot.”
I didn’t need to see it to know that she was talking about the one of me jerking off in her chair. Going through the film had been an enlightening experience. Nellie had been . . . thorough, to say the least. This particular photo, though, had called to me. It was the perfect blend of dominance and submission, a man hungering for control but beholden to the woman he loved.
Damn, I was getting hard just thinking about it.
“Thank you, so much,” she said, clutching the book to her chest. “You don’t know what this means to me.”
I kissed a fallen tear from her cheek. “You don’t know what you mean to me.”
There was nothing left to say after that. Not with words anyway. We let our tongues do the talking. I snaked a hand underneath her skirt, teasing the crease of her panties. She was already wet for me. She whimpered when I pulled my hand away, then jolted against my lips when I brought it back down, lightly slapping her clit.
“Now,” I said between kisses. “What were you saying about padded carpet?”
Epilogue
Valentine's Day
Nellie
Imight never eat fish again.
Austin hadn’t been joking when he’d told me about the Amato family’s Feast of Twelve Fishes. In fact, it was thirteen dishes, by my count. There were fish I had never even heard of before.
“Will somebody pass the perch, please?”
That was one of them. What the hell was a perch, and why did it taste so good coated in brown butter?
“So, Janelle.” I turned my attention toward Char, Austin’s oldest sister. Something told me that she could give Tabitha a run for her money when it came to intimidation tactics. “Do you still have family in Ohio?”
“Definitely. In fact, my sister and I are really the only ones who moved away.”
“And you both settled in L.A.?”
She eyed my plate suspiciously. I had done my best to move around what was left so it looked like I’d eaten more, but apparently not well enough. “She moved to L.A. about a decade before I did, but yes. Now we live within a few miles of each other.”
“Do you hear that?” This time, the question was directed toward her sisters, Madi and Sav. “Janelle doesn’tabandonher sister, like some people I know.”
“My restaurant is in Boston,” Madi whined. “What am I supposed to do?”
“What’s your excuse, Miss Florida?”
Sav shrugged. “The beaches are better.”
Thankful that Char had directed her ire elsewhere and that her inquisition was over—at least for now—I pivoted in my seat to face the kitchen. Austin had disappeared at least ten minutes ago, supposedly to fetch more gravy, but now I wasn’t so sure
“He’s just changing,” Austin’s mom whispered from the seat beside me.
