Aura

I’d expected a whole lot of shift-eye and veiled smartass remarks from my colleagues when Milo and I came back from Europe. God knows I had to endure enough of them from my sister who was very pouty when she saw the stretch limo parked outside our parents house and discovered the owner was all mine.

I’d made sure not to act all smug over her, seeing as her bf hadn’t even called her on Christmas. I’m supposed to the elder and wiser of us two. I was just so happy that Milo came for me, making all that effort to find out if I was ghosting him and flying back from Japan early to keep the promise he made to a drunk girl.

Because he was completely deranged with jet lag, we stayed up all night. Flor found us in the morning, snuggled on the couch in the den in front of a fire just like I’d pictured. And Milo told me how we were going to handle everything. He had it all figured out and he wouldn’t allow me to leave the company because I’d screwed the boss. Him.

“I need to see you every day,” he murmured into my ear and twirled a strand of hair around his thick finger. “We’re a partnership, I don’t want that to only take place on weekends and when we’re exhausted at the end of the work day.”

“You want to continue fighting with me every day,” I’d joked.

“If it means I get to punish you in my office,” he husked. “I can feel you rolling your eyes and I’m not beyond bending you over my knee right here.”

“You wouldn’t.” I lifted my head off his shoulder to search his face. Grinning as usual. Which didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t one hundred per cent serious.

I didn’t push him that time. But most days since, I do.

His solution was to make me girl boss.

Milo built a geodesic dome inside the office to house my new department. “Seeing as you’re such a liberal ecologist,” he grinned.

And I immediately hired a team of women developers. “Seeing as you’re such a capitalist alpha male,” I smiled.

“Uh huh. We’ll see how that works out for you.”

Argh. I hate it when he’s right. A couple of the women worked out fine but most started covert battles against each other from day one. And once they started making eyes at the boss - my boss - they had to go.

“I had no idea you were so possessive,” Milo said as he piloted his yacht back from Napa with me in the white leather co-pilot chair doing nothing but sip the champagne we bought.

“Maybe you will be too when you see the Ryan lookalikes I’ve hired for the team.”

“Ryan Gosling?” He rolled his eyes.

“Any Ryan will do.” I was trying to prod his buttons, hungry for his attention again even though we’d spent most of the weekend in bed at the spa resort.

This year we’re having a straight up office party. No swanky themes or deviant Santas. Just some great food and a ton of drink and unwind with each other. I made myself the subject of a ton of negative tweets, hashtag GirlGrinch, for cancelling the Christmas movie day so that was reinstated. The geeks got to eat popcorn, nachos and shoot tequila each time an actor said ‘Merry Christmas’.

And this will be our first Christmas at home. We’ve been talking about living together but I know my father will flip out at me giving up the milk before the cow is paid for. I spend most nights at Milo’s Mission District Victorian house that’s been completely re-modernized on the inside. And the nights I’m at my tiny place, if Milo and I have had a fight and I’m ghosting him, I have to put up with my ex-colleague Cutter smooching all over my roommate.

Eww.

My parents came to town for a couple of days and I have lunch with them on Christmas Eve before they head back to Texas. My dad is careful not to make too many remarks about my ‘It’s complicated’ status but I can tell he’s bristling. Milo doesn’t join us because he and I had a little disagreement over where to spend the holidays. He doesn’t want to be with anyone but me.

Alone in my tiny bed last night I realized I want the same but I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings - namely my parents. I get through the lunch, barely managing to hold all my emotion in. I’m dying to tell my mom the news and make her Christmas but I can’t until I know what’s happening.

I call Milo as soon as I get out of the airport after seeing them off. I can’t even put my parents in a Lyft, I have to go and do the manic waving at the departure gate as though that makes up for not going home. He doesn’t pick up, nor the second and third time I call. Is he ghosting me? Has he decided I’m too much work?

The city hasn’t emptied out at all judging by how hard it is to find a parking spot in my neighborhood. And once I get home, I realize the heating’s gone out. I call down to the Super who grudgingly says he’ll come up and check the thermostat.

Milo still doesn’t respond to me and I’m starting to get nervous. Tai and Cutter have gone to Mexico and maybe I’m going to be alone for Christmas for the first time in my life. Me and our tiny tree, wobbling on the pot plant stand every time someone walks past it.

“Coming,” I shout, unnecessarily loudly when the Super finally knocks on the door. It’s after eleven at night for chrissake. Almost Christmas.

I throw it open and there’s no one there, or not until I glance down and see Milo on his knees.

“It’s okay I don’t keep a shotgun,” I say, relief flooding through me that he’s here and on his knees in a repetition of last Christmas when he came for me.

“I’m glad,” he says.

“Why are you on your knees every Christmas?” I laugh.”And why do you ghost me every Christmas?”

“Because every Christmas I intend to ask you to marry me,” he says.

I know I’m supposed to stand there but my legs turn weak and I sink down on them, kneeling in front of Milo in the open doorway.

“You do?” I whisper. “Last year?”

“Will you?” He says, his voice cracking. I’ve never seen my boss so nervous. His hand is shaking as he unrolls his large palm to hold up a bright blue ring box.

“Ohmigod,” I moan.

“Aura I love you and I want you to be mine forever. Last year you didn’t give me the chance to ask you and then I promised your father I’d wait longer than a week before making rash decisions. This year he gave his permission.”

“You saw Daddy?” I squeak. He kept that a big secret.

“Baby you’re killing me here,” Milo says. “You and your family love keeping me waiting. Answer me, will you marry me?”

“Ah will, Sir,” I say in my best Southern drawl.

Tears start pouring over my cheeks and Milo looks like he’s fighting them back as well. He picks me up and kicks the apartment door closed behind him. He carries me to the love seat that’s really an armchair for Milo, his shoulders are so broad. He sits then sets me down between his knees.

His eyes glint as he looks up at me.

“That dress has no fastenings,” he says, his voice low and husky.

“It does but they’re hidden,” I whisper. I can only play this game so far before I have to tell him about his surprise Christmas present.

“Show me,” he orders.

I do as he says but much faster than the last time. Thanks to my raging hormones that are making me desperate for him filling me, sawing hard into my pussy and making me scream for mercy.

When I’m standing naked before him aside from a tiny and dripping wet pair of panties and my heeled boots, his eyes trail up and down the length of me with even more intense appreciation. I can see the love that’s built in them along with the intense lust.

He frowns a little and sits up to cup my weighty breast. He kisses the poking out point. The way he sucks it between his lips sets off a lightning array in my pussy. He licks and bites on the hard bullet point until I’m panting with need. I can’t wait. I’ll have to tell him after. I set my knees on either side of his hips, straddling his lap, spreading my pussy across his the huge bulge I need filling me right now.

Milo attacks each breast like a wild man. He mangles my tits in his grasp as he shoves the point into his mouth and tongues the huge nipple.

“These are so much bigger Baby,” he says. “You feel incredible. I need to be inside you, I need to feel you tight around my cock while I take you hard and fast.”

“Not too hard,” I murmur, stroking his hair as he sucks my nipples.

He looks up at me.

“So soon?” He asks.

I nod and now his voice does choke. The tears start falling out of my eyes without my permission again. I’m in a pent up state of lusty desire and extreme love, so overwrought I might break open.

“They couldn’t even be sure the reversal would work.”

“Oh it worked,” I say. “I’m nine weeks along so it must have been that weekend after you had the op and couldn’t stop fucking me like a man who had a new lease on life.”

“You are my entire life and now we’ve created a new one together. It’s incredible. You’re incredible. The love of my life.”

“Can I tell my parents now?” I say, laughing as he hugs me and covers my bare body with adoring kisses.

“I’ll fly you down there tomorrow,” he says. “Right after a stop in Vegas where we can make you into an honest woman at last.”

“But first,” I say, yanking his belt open and sliding down his zipper. I pull my underwear across to one side and hitch my spread up onto his delicious head. “These hormones are making me a crazy woman.”