“Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Year’s. Happy New Year, Gray.”
“Happy New Year to you too. I was hoping you’d be here. Holidays are for spending with people you love.” He had said it once before. Had been waiting, hoping, he’d have the chance to say it again.
Eddie lifted his head, resting the point of his chin against Gray’s chest. His dark eyes glowed, the curve of a smile ghosting the corner of his mouth.
“I love you too.”
Relief and joy were twins in Gray’s heart. He bit his lip, trying not to shout his happiness loud enough to wake the neighborhood. He took a deep breath. This was right, all the way down to the ground.
He hugged Eddie tight, arms feeling like they could wrap around Eddie’s skinny rib cage twice over now that he was back where he belonged.
“Thought I’d have to promise you a Christmas goose.”
Eddie snorted into his shoulder. “I’m losing my touch. Should’ve held out for holiday poultry.”
But then he skimmed his hands down Gray’s chest to his cock, wrapping his fingers around it both delicately and hard. Because Gray wasn’t glass. Wouldn’t break. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t be gentle with each other.
“This better not be my present.” Gray’s voice was tight, his muscles tense under Eddie’s hands and legs and everything. “I want you to make me something beautiful.”
Snorting, Eddie mouthed his way down Gray’s chest, dragging his lips across the crisp hair. Licking around Gray’s belly button until he shivered and laughed, both.
“Greedy.”
“Yes. Always.”
Eddie pictured the two glass ornaments he’d made in an impromptu studio under the tree that shaded Rhonda’s trailer in Texas. All that time he’d spent, trying to figure out what to make Gray for a gift, and he’d had what he needed in his hands all this time.
Two brand new globes. One glowing with the lick of fire curving up its sides. Crimson and bronze and gold dancing higher and higher in flames that met at the gold crown of the ornament’s filigree cap. The other a vortex of midnight blue and black with the hundred sparks of stars and suns and planets in a dance of their own that glowed in pink and white, gold and green pinpricks of light.
Flames and the swirl of a galaxy. The hearth and the stars. Because they could have both, a home and the road, together.
He’d made Gray the most beautiful things he knew how, but that wasn’t, would never be, as important as what they already had.
He kissed Gray on the mouth and, for once, managed to look him in the eyes as he said the hard . . . the easy, easy thing.
“This is something beautiful. Right here. Just us.”
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Bend or Break Series
Off Campus
Nothing Like Paris
The Girl Next Door
Level Hands
Real World
Love Me Like a Rock
Hard Candy
The Belle vs the BDOC
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All in a Day’s Work
Wish Come True
How We Began
The Tylers
At Your Service
Sleeping Arrangements
Calling His Bluff
When the Lights Go Down
Amy Jo Cousins writes contemporary romance and erotica about smart people finding their own best kind of smexy. She lives in Chicago with her son, where she tweets too much, sometimes runs really far, and waits for the Cubs to win the World Series again. For updates on her latest releases, subscribe to her newsletter here: amyjocousins.com/newsletter
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