Phoebe snuggled up against his back and put her arm around him. Aside from the kiss she practically forced onto him, they hadn’t been sexual with one another. The long days turned into long nights. He checked his watch, he checked his room, he walked the perimeter, and they discussed evacuation plans at least once each day. It was a strange sort of comfort they had settled into, and she was growing wary along with worried. They hadn’t heard anything about her father. While she understood this was because he was likely actually at risk, whereas she was simply stuck in a cabin with the hottest, most tactically trained babysitter on the planet.
This was simply a nap. One she had convinced him she needed. Then she used his protective streak against him by pretending to have bad dreams if he wasn’t there next to her. She wasn’t worried at all about any of this. Whatever her father was into had nothing to do with her. She inhaled the clean, warm male scent of him and let her fingers ghost across the soft fabric of his shirt, sensing the outline of his abs.
He was fully dressed and that was suddenly a problem for her. This was Holiday. Howard Holiday, a man she once loved, still loved, if she was being honest. It was the day before Christmas and she was starting to feel like he was her gift, more than her guardian. Would it hurt to peek under the wrapping, just a little?
Putting a slight bit more pressure on the shirt, she tugged and worked until her fingers felt warm flesh, the coarse hair just below his navel. She was aware this was inappropriate for a client-worker relationship, but the past few days they were back on friendly terms, talking like it was old times, laughing, playing games, by all accounts on her end falling back into love with one another.
The tip of her index finger slid lower, touched the elastic band of his underwear and the hard fabric of the jeans covering them. She pressed her entire body as close to his as she could, tried not to moan as she bit her lower lip. Her eyes closed tight, she was lost in her own little fantasy when a firm hand covered hers and pulled it away.
He turned, abruptly leaving her to find balance and settle next to him on the bed. When she opened her eyes she was surprised to find his brows drawn down in a scowl. His words were even more tight and angry. “What are doing?”
Her heart punched to her throat. Had she been misreading his emotions all this time? She gulped and admitted, “I was hoping you would like to wake up to me touching you. You used to like to wake up to me…”
“When you were mine. You’re…Steven’s.” He rolled out of the bed and stood with a stretch.
“I am not Steven’s anything.” She was lying to both of them and he scoffed.
“Does he know that? Huh, Bee? I can’t pretend not to care about you or not to feel…when I’m around you, but I’m not the guy to have an affair with and we both know that. I’m here, on this mission, and the sooner it is over the better because this mission is starting to fuck with my resolve, my sense of duty, my personal honor.”
“I’m not with him. We were dating, but we didn’t make any professions of exclusivity much less love or fidelity. I would gladly and easily put your conscience to rest if I could call, e-mail, or text him and tell him to forget about me, but I can’t because we don’t have service here.” She watched him pace back and forth. She was getting through to him a little. She didn’t give a shit about Steven. He had been a nice distraction, but she didn’t care for him, not like she cared for Holiday. “So his exit, while inevitable with or without any progress between us…”
“Us?” He stopped pacing and looked at her.
She took a deep breath and showed him her hand, no poker face, no alternate agenda, just surrender to her heart. “I love you, I never stopped loving you. Did you…stop?”
She watched a million conflicting emotions cross his facial features through his eyes, before he decided. “No. I didn’t stop.”
He wasn’t saying it, but he didn’t have to when he was moving toward her and crawling back into the bed. His lips met hers in a demanding pressure and she opened her mouth to accept his tongue. He might have been trying to give her doubts because he was being more aggressive than he had ever been before, but the fact that he was mad at her or himself, or both of them for putting him in this situation only made him more precise in his movements, in his desire, and it was turning her on rather than warning her off.
Holiday had been an unselfish lover, rarely focused on his own driving need, but that was not how he was acting right now. He pulled at her blouse, sending a button off into the room to spin on the hardwood floor as he tugged it off of her and tossed it aside. She wanted to say something, but he was already eating her mouth with intense kisses again, licking, and biting.
Her eyes opened wide and rounded as she made a slight squeaking sound. He pulled back and looked at her, brows still drawn into a frown. “If you’re mine, Phoebe. You’re mine. No one else…”
She had been doing her best to keep up with him and this was a perfect opportunity to tug his shirt enough to put the neck of it against his mouth. His eyes went wide with surprise as she countered, “Shut up and fuck me.”
She had never said anything like that to him before. It was a different couple in this bed today. He made quick work of the shirt and his jeans, underwear, and socks. She had removed everything but one sock when he was pushing her back and positioning his cock against her entry. His lips on hers, one hand propping him up, the other at her hip, he pushed into her and she arched up to meet him, press him deeper with each thrust.
He couldn’t seem to get enough, to get a rhythm, it was as if he had been a starving man and a buffet was set before him. He wanted to do everything at once and while she appreciated the compliment, it was making her crazy each time he got her close and then changed it up.
She dug her nails into his shoulders, her heels into the cheeks of his ass, and then finally let out a groan of pleasure and then frustration before saying, “Roll over.”
He flipped them easily and she was on top, in control. Able to breathe, to focus, she slowed it down a little, enough to find her own pace, to relearn the way his body fit with hers, and then she found it. He tried to take control from that position and she grabbed both of his hands and put them over his head, holding them there with hers.
He smiled up at her. “Who’s holding who hostage now?”
She lifted and settled, causing his eye to twitch and his lower lip to tuck under his teeth. She had never been the one in control in their bedroom. He had worshiped her body like it was an alter and his salvation depended on making her come repeatedly. She understood how desperate he really felt, and she began to feel that too. The need to make him feel it, not hear it. To show him the way he had shown her all those years ago that she loved him.
“Don’t make me get the rope.” She licked her lips and leaned down to kiss him. Her hips slowed, rocked, and she worked for his pleasure now, not hers. “You like that?”
“Yes.” He gasped.
“I’ve missed you so much. I’ve spent the last five years dreaming about the way you used to touch me. I’m going to spend the next five years showing you that I can touch you like that too. That you can trust me with this gorgeous body of yours. That I want it, I need it…”
He was showing it all in his eyes. He was hers, always had been, and always would be if she wanted him. She moved over him with purpose, watched that storm of emotion roll through him, understood that he was about to come. She kissed him deeply, and then nipped his earlobe before saying as he came in a long hard burst, “I love you, Handsome.”
She let go of his hands and he wrapped his arms around her. His lips at her forehead as she settled her body completely on his chest as he twitched errantly with aftershocks, he whispered, “I love you too, Bee.”
She smiled uncontrollably. She didn’t have an orgasm, but she got something better, him. She also knew that he would make it up to her later, but first, “I’m hungry. I see now why you were always hungry after sex. It’s a lot of work.”
He laughed as she removed herself from his body and began to gather up his clothing. “It’s Christmas Eve, Bee. You know what that means?”
“You’re going to give me something really special in the morning?” She winked and he nodded. “Really?”
“Yeah, actually I do have something for you, but it’s not like…you know if I knew…I just…” He pulled his clothes on and then looked at her with a horrified expression. “We…I didn’t…”
Phoebe had never seen him at such a loss for words about anything. “I knew. I thought you did too with the whole…mine speech…I thought you…”
He nodded. “I do. I want to. I mean I’m glad you’re okay with it. I didn’t pack condoms. I didn’t think I would need them. Now, I just…want so much I can hardly piece it together in my head.”
“As long as you can help me piece together a sandwich, I think we are going to be fine tonight.” She walked over to him and tiptoed up to kiss his lips. “I don’t know where my other sock went.”
He chuckled and pulled her into a hug.