Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69424 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69424 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “I guess this’ll be what mine looks like when I finally find the time to decorate.”
She hadn’t decorated yet, and still hadn’t put together the couch, so I didn’t see that happening for her anytime soon.
“You could always just move in here and sell your place, and then we can enjoy my decorated house together.”
She choked. “What?”
“You heard me,” I said.
She shook her head. “I don’t think the world is ready for that.”
“We’ve been dancing around this for years,” I pointed out. “And there are no rules here. We do what we want, and what we feel comfortable with. If your immediate disagreement with the suggestion was because you weren’t ready, that’s fine. But if your disagreement is because you think it’s too soon because it’s socially unacceptable, then that’s their problem. Not ours.”
She looked at me with deep consideration in her eyes before she said, “We fight like cats and dogs. I’m a slob and you’re…” She took a long look around my house. “Not. I don’t think you’re really thinking through what you’re saying.”
My lips twitched. “The reason my place isn’t messy is because I use the same cleaning lady as Apollo and Dru. She cleans my place once a week, which was today while we were dealing with your arrest.”
She shook her head. “Was that seriously today?”
I looked at my watch to see that it was well past three in the morning. “Well, yesterday at this point. It’s three.”
She sighed. “That’s probably why I’m so tired.”
My grin was soft as I said, “Let’s go to bed.”
She followed along with me and said, “Just to sleep, right?”
I snorted. “For now.”
She got to the bedroom before me, and I walked in behind her, pulling the huge comforter that I rarely ever used off the bed and letting it fall to the foot of the bed.
“You don’t sleep with that, I’m guessing?”
“Nope,” I said. “It’s suffocating.”
“But you do sleep with a blanket, at least. Right?”
“Right,” I said as I went to the closet where I got the much lighter blanket and explained. “My cleaning lady likes everything to look pretty. That’s why she puts all the ugly ass throw pillows Sophia bought me on the bed. Along with the comforter and the top sheets. I use this blanket and the normal pillows. But no matter where I hide this damn comforter, she always seems to find it. So I just let her do what she wants now.”
“Dru complains constantly about how Rose puts her bathmat back against the counter. But she always moves it back because the counters are always so cold and she hates when her bare skin touches them. Dru moves them back. Rose moves them back.” Calli giggled as she put a knee into the bed, baring her creamy, smooth thigh to my gaze.
My erection instantly unfurled to life, and I shook my head at myself.
All it takes is some leg from Calli and I’m ready to go.
Jesus, I sure wasn’t a teenager anymore, but my body was acting like it.
I didn’t make a move, though, when I crawled into the bed beside her.
The lights were on in the living room, and they were casting an annoying glow into the bedroom, but Calli was crawling across the bed into my arms, and I couldn’t scrounge up the energy any longer to get up and turn them off.
It’d been a really long day.
I was exhausted, and I had this warm, sweet weight pressed against me that made me never want to move again.
Then she curled her arms around my neck, which brought the blanket she had wrapped around herself up higher, blocking my view of the light.
I reached blindly for the blanket at the end of the bed and covered us both with it before pulling her impossibly closer.
“Merry Christmas, Calamity.”
She squeezed my neck as hard as she could, which was admittedly not very much. “You’re such a jerk.”
“Your jerk,” I teased.
She melted into me. “Maybe I’ll consider moving in with you when you stop calling me Calamity.”
My hand smoothed down to her ass to pull her hips closer to mine. “Maybe I like teasing you because you get so feisty.”
“Or maybe you’re a sicko that finds annoying people and making them want to murder you fun,” she countered back.
I hummed in response, my eyes already growing heavy.
“Merry Christmas, Jas,” she whispered right before darkness pulled me all the way under.
I had a solid hour of sleep, which I noticed on the ceiling with my alarm clock illuminating the numbers, when I was woken by a deafening explosion.
I was out of bed and at the window in the next second, unable to comprehend what I was seeing.
“What is it?” Calli asked from behind me.
I looked over my shoulder to find her sitting up in the bed, blankets still cocooning her face, looking worried.