“Morning to you, too,” I said, running my fingers through his hair. Just for the sake of touching him, as though we hadn’t touched enough.
We hadn’t, though. Not for me.
“How’re you feeling?” I asked.
Milo groaned in response, and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.
“Sore?” I pulled back to look at him, running my thumb over his lower lip.
His pretty, impossible eyes cracked open, and he looked so pitiful that I had to kiss him again. I knew by now that kisses always made him feel better.
Besides, I liked kissing him. Win-win.
“It’ll go away,” I promised. “You’ll barely notice it in a couple of hours.”
“I’m not cut out for even mild discomfort,” he said, but we both knew that was a lie. He’d slept in his office chair often enough.
And okay, he complained about it, but he keptdoingit anyway.
“But,” he added before I could say so. “I don’t hate this?”
He bit his lip, which I’d have to tell him one day was devastating. If I’d ever been able to resist Milo at all, all my resistance would have evaporated the moment he bit his lip.
“I mean,” he kept going after a moment. “Last night made me feel so close to you, and I kinda love that I can still feel it? It’s not just… fleeting, that way.”
“It’s not fleeting,” I promised him. “I love you.”
I hadn’t exactly meant to say that, but now that the words were out there, hanging between us, I knew I meant them. I meant them, and I wanted Milo to know. He deserved to know.
Even if that meant swallowing the protective urge to play them down, like it was no big deal, like I didn’t mean exactly what I meant.
I was in love with Milo.
And he deserved to be loved.
Milo broke into the prettiest smile I’d seen on him yet, wide and bright, his eyes sparkling in the very first hints of sunlight outside the window.
“I love you, too,” he said, so quiet that I couldn’t have heard it if I was even an inch further away.
Which was perfect, because I didn’t need him to shout it from the rooftops. The way he said it was just for me.
I surged forward to kiss him again, laughing into his mouth, rolling us both over so he was trapped under me.
He groaned as we moved, but he was laughing, too, and it hadn’t wiped the smile off his face.
“That sore?” I asked.
“I am not a fit man,” Milo said. “Not all of us can be the kind of people who go running for fun.”
I snorted. No, I couldn’t imagine Milo going running.
But that was okay. I’d found a different cardio workout to share with him.
“Lemme kiss it better,” I murmured, pecking the tip of his nose and then claiming his mouth, tilting his head back with a hand in his hair so I could kiss him like he deserved, long and slow and deep.
Milo’s phone started vibrating on the nightstand. I pulled back, but he grabbed me with both hands and made an unhappy noise until I started kissing him again and it turned into contented purr that would have given the kittens a run for their money.
“Love you,” Milo murmured into my mouth in the single second he let me stop kissing him, just as his phone stopped going off.
