by Cara Dee
“I’m more at home here,” I admitted. “We automatically plan to spend holidays here. It’s here we hang our pictures on the wall…” Not that we didn’t have photos in Santa Monica, but more often than not, it was a place to crash. Mattie and Ty obviously loved it there; it was their full-time home while they were in school. For me, though…? “We put more care into this place too.”
“I agree.” He lowered his head and kissed me softly. It was…yeah, a contrast to the fact that he also shifted his softened cock deeper into my ass.
I smirked.
He wouldn’t be deterred; he stayed on the subject. “I have to admit, I’ve come to see this as my primary home. It’s…private and just ours.”
That was how I’d felt too. Henry had found the lodge only a couple weeks after coming up here, though there’d been renovations. New kitchen, slamming up walls here on the second floor, fixing the guest bath downstairs. Now we had four rooms upstairs—three bedrooms and Henry’s office. The open living room and kitchen took up most of the downstairs, and I had been frustrated with Henry for taking so long to get it right. It was just a place to cook and a place to watch TV or make a fire, right? Or not.
Now I was glad he’d been meticulous and a raving perfectionist because it’d turned into a home I could see myself sharing with Henry for the rest of our lives.
My fingers traveled along his arm that was locked over my stomach, and my thoughts wandered to the lonely attic. I had given up the pretense of taking shit slowly a few months after Henry and Ty had moved in. Mattie had told me he and Ty wanted to turn the attic into their man cave. Mattie’s brain and heart had already lived here, even then. It was a matter of moving his stuff, and then he was set. So I’d terminated our lease on the apartment shortly after, and that was that. Henry welcomed me home to where I belonged, and then we almost got caught fucking in front of the fireplace. Good times.
“Maybe we should let Mattie and Ty take the attic now?” I glanced back at Henry.
“Hmm?” He tilted his head.
I shrugged a little. “Just sayin’… They’re only here for some breaks, and we could turn their rooms into something else. Rich people always have home gyms. Or…you know.” I cleared my throat. “A kid’s room?”
The look in his eyes softened, and his mouth twisted up at the corners. “You want to talk about adopting?”
I was getting there, that’s for certain. “Soon…? Yeah. What about you?”
“Well,” he sighed, then smiled ruefully. “I’m not getting any younger, my dear.”
I snickered and kissed his chin. “You’re forty-seven, not eighty.” Given how old his entire family was, he’d probably outlive me at this point. His decrepit grandparents hadn’t passed until way into their nineties, which didn’t bode well for us where Henry’s parents were concerned. For all I cared, they could drop tomorrow.
“That will be fun,” he mused. “I’ll join the ranks of Hugh Hefner and date my young model.”
My shoulders shook with laughter, something he obviously felt, because he groaned under his breath and pressed his crotch harder against my ass.
“I don’t think Brooklyn wants me around in thirty years,” I said. “Shit, I don’t want that. Maybe another year or two, tops.”
Henry hummed and kissed me with an underlying current of hunger. “You’ll always be my model. Let an old man keep his fantasy.”
“You’re so fucking dirty. I love you.”
I couldn’t say that enough. We were allowed to have our superficial fantasies too. Lord knew I did. I got off on our differences: his experience, his laugh lines, his scruff that glinted silver here and there…it was all so fucking sexy to me. And it made me stick my ass in the air for him to claim, kiss, fuck, and smack.
It also turned him into the hottest bottom. He didn’t find himself in that mind-set often, which suited me perfectly, but when he did? Sweet Jesus, I couldn’t go more than a day without bending him over and ramming my cock inside him. He begged shamelessly and commanded his little boy to fill his asshole—I groaned at the images flooding my brain. In a way, he was in charge even then, ’cause I did as he said. Like some insatiable slut.
“Where’s your head, boy?” Henry demanded huskily.
I bit my lip. “Given that I can literally feel you getting harder, I think our minds are kinda synced.”
“Perhaps so.” He smirked faintly, wickedly, and gave me a sweet kiss. “Have I mentioned how happy I am to have you home?”
Once or twice, though he could say it over and over again.
Chapter 2
I Don’t Wanna
“Zach! This is a surprise.” Nan smiled and muted the TV in her room. “What brings you by?”
“Henry kicked me out.” I smirked and dipped down to kiss her cheek. “Apparently, I’m not qualified to help him decorate the house.”
He’d put up with it yesterday, and we’d had a fucking perfect evening of drinking spiked hot chocolates, listening to Christmas music, decorating the tree together, and making love in front of the fire. Today was a new day, and he’d kindly suggested I go see Nan while he finished the rest.
He was gonna redo the tree.
Nan nodded as if that made complete sense. “He does tend to struggle with you a bit there.”
Oh, whatever.
I sat down next to her bed, studying her, and shrugged out of my jacket. She looked better after having been down with a vicious cold most of the fall. It had fucked with our Thanksgiving plans, ’cause we’d wanted her to be able to see LA. She’d been bummed about not being cleared to go, but we’d take her next spring instead.
She wanted to see the Ferris wheel on Santa Monica Pier and have ice cream at sunset on the beach.
“I see they helped you decorate already.” I saw there were Christmassy drapes, a red quilt on her bed with a bunch of miniature angels, a small tree on the table by the window, and little Santa Claus knickknacks all over. “Who brought you flowers?” There were two arrangements in the window. A lot of red, a little white, plenty of green; I remembered Amaryllis and Poinsettia from Henry’s cute ramblings, and even I knew holly.
“My future grandson-in-law, of course.” Nan smiled affectionately at the flowers. “Henry did this yesterday. He came over with a delicious beverage that tasted like Christmas. We chatted.”
I could only guess he’d brought chai tea. I’d learned he only had that for Christmas. “Wait, he decorated too?”
“Mmhmm.” She was nodding and nodding. “He’s such a lovely man, sugar. Why haven’t you proposed yet?”
Not this again. I knew she adored Henry; hell, she’d been a fan from the first time they met. And it was mutual. Maybe he loved her more than me, ’cause fuck if I knew why we weren’t engaged.
“I told you. He doesn’t want me to,” I muttered bitterly. “Since I brought up the kid thing, he wants to be the one who proposes.” It was part of the truth anyway. He’d asked me to forgive him for his “chauvinism” and that he felt it was his “honor.”
I had no issues with that, as long as he popped the damn question before I got grays.
“Oh. Well, perhaps he’ll propose on Christmas.” She patted my hand. “Tell me how the boys are doing. Mattie told me he’s tired.”
I nodded. My brother had been studying hard to keep up perfect grades for as long as it’d been required to hold on to scholarships. “Ty’s doing great. He loves his classes, and he spends most weekends at the bookstore. But yeah, we’re gonna talk to Mattie when they come home in a few weeks. I think he feels pressured to do better, so I don’t know. Maybe he should drop a couple classes.”
He hadn’t turned nineteen yet. He had time.
Henry was studying menus in the kitchen when I came back home. We were both cooking more when we were in Camassia, but Henry had a preference for appetizers. If he got his way, every main course was ordered in while he made snacks and appetizers from scratch.
“Hey, gorgeous.” I’d heard an upbea
t song on the radio right before pulling into the garage, and it made me restless. I walked up behind Henry and kissed the back of his neck. “I miss dancing with you.”
He sent me half a smile over his shoulder. “You’re the one with the amazing moves.”
No way. “Come on,” I coaxed. “We have three weeks to ourselves. We’ll go stir-crazy if we don’t get out of the house at least once.”
He chuckled. “Of course we’ll go out. I was thinking we could do a weekend in Seattle.”
“Yeah?” I grinned and bobbed my head to an imaginary beat, my hips moving. “You’ll take me dancing?”
“If you take me to a show.”
“Deal.” What a crazy bargain. We enjoyed both, though his love for going to plays and shows was way more developed than mine. I was a newbie.
Doing things with Henry, dates and stuff, was part of what I lived for. Especially since I’d started making more money. We would never be completely equal, but I felt better being able to pull my weight. I took care of the mortgage on the house in Santa Monica, and I could take my man to any dinner he wanted. One day, I’d be ready to do the merging of money shit that Henry enjoyed sighing dramatically about.
My phone rang, so I stepped back and pulled it out of my pocket.
“Indian okay for dinner?” he asked, going back to the menus. “I thought I’d try my hand at making naan bread.”
“Sounds great, baby.” My thumb hovered over the accept button. It was Brooklyn calling. “I’ll do Nan’s meatloaf for us tomorrow—okay, fuck. I won’t avoid you, Brooklyn. Christ, it’s like she knows.” I put the phone to my ear and punished Henry’s chuckle at my expense by squeezing his junk. “What’s up, hon?”
Henry grunted quietly and covered my hand with his.
“Pull up your pants and tell Henry to tuck away his monster,” Brooklyn ordered. It was nothing near what we were actually doing, but I released Henry’s cock and felt like I’d been caught all the same.
She sounded frustrated, so I left the kitchen and walked through the living room. There was privacy upstairs in Henry’s study.
“Something’s up,” I said, taking two steps at a time.
“Yeah, you can say that. Why aren’t you in Cancún?”
Could I fire someone via text? I was so pissed that I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’d returned to the first floor and planted my ass at the bottom of the stairs, and I was staring at my agent’s number in my phone.
Lady Mo was in my lap, comforting me.
To my relief, Brooklyn wasn’t angry with me. She knew I took bookings seriously and never showed up late. No, this was on my agent, who hadn’t fucking told me she’d booked me for a whole goddamn week.
I released a breath and rested my head in my palm. Lady nuzzled my cheek.
If it’d been any person other than Brooklyn, I would’ve canceled somehow.
“Can I ask what you’re doing, Zachary?”
Dammit. I looked up, cursing the windows. Even when he was in the kitchen, he could see me in the reflection. “Can’t you tell I’m hiding?”
“Poorly,” he noted. Rounding the long bar in the kitchen, he passed the living room and joined me by the stairs. His hands went into the pockets of his slacks. “You have bad news.”
“I’d use the words fucking awful, but whatever.” I forced myself to look up. He’d be so disappointed. “Amanda neglected to tell me about a week-long shoot.”
He sighed, then nodded once firmly. “With Brooklyn, I assume.”
Yeah. She was the only one I had a contract with now, so it’d been a matter of scheduling.
“Tell me what to do,” I pleaded. “I swear I didn’t know. I even told her I wanted December free.”
He waved a hand and sat down next to me. “You’re not on trial, sweetheart.”
“I know, but it’s always my job that fucks shit up for us.” Lady left me, so I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, and rubbed a hand over my mouth and jaw.
“You’re in an industry where things change quickly,” he reminded patiently. “What I do is very different.” True. He sat down with his coworkers and associates twice a year to hammer out details and schedule events and whatnot. It meant he knew his travels at least six months in advance so he could coordinate his schedule between the jobs he was involved in. “Tell me about the shoot.”
Reluctance filled me. I felt spoiled for complaining, but after this year… All I fucking wanted was a quiet month at home with Henry. “It’s for the YouTube crap. Akira, Maliah, and me—we have a week in Mexico, and they’re gonna ‘capture our personalities’ or something. Basically, a small film crew is gonna make a bunch of videos with us in various locations. It doesn’t have much to do with ShadowLight and makeup, so I don’t see the point.” Of course, their products would be mentioned, but focus was on us.
“Marketing, darling.” He scooted closer and rubbed my back soothingly. “The clips make you relatable to the consumers. YouTube probably has a far greater outreach than billboards. Up there, you’re untouchable.”
I side-eyed him. “Didn’t know you studied marketing.”
Humor flashed in his hazel eyes. “I may have spent some time in Los Angeles in my day. You pick up on these things.”
I huffed under my breath and faced forward again, and my gaze landed on the Christmas tree. It was beautiful, and someone had already put some gifts underneath it.
“We were supposed to stay home, though. Or at least in Washington.” I rested my head on his shoulder. “I wanted to go Christmas shopping in Seattle, go see a movie, take you and Nan for dinner… We were gonna go to a club and dance all night.”
He hummed and pressed a kiss to my hair. “You know where I can take you dancing?”
I shook my head.
“In Mexico.” There was a smile in his voice, and I admit his confirming that he was coming along brightened my mood more than I could say.
“Thank you for coming with me,” I whispered.
He laughed softly. “My beautiful man. I’m not entirely selfless. I trust you with all I am, and I may have gotten over most of my insecurities, but I am not letting you be alone with Joseph anymore.”
I grimaced. He was right. I didn’t wanna confront Joseph on my own either, and he was the head of makeup for this sort of thing. Brooklyn rarely traveled. She sent Joseph and his obnoxious flirting.
“Are you gonna talk to him?” I wondered.
“Yes. I’ve cut him too much slack. I should’ve talked to him months ago.”
I put my hand on his leg, sensing the tension in him. It was harder on him, I bet. He’d known Joseph for a decade; they’d started Second Family together and been close friends.
“What’s Martin saying?” I asked, ’cause there was no way he didn’t know. I didn’t mention anything of this to Martin, but Henry told his best friend everything.
“That Joseph needs to back off, of course,” he replied. “I’ll talk to him.”
I nodded slowly, hoping it wouldn’t bring us drama. The silence was comfortable, and as I gathered my thoughts and started making mental notes on what I needed to do, snow began to fall outside. Just great.
“We’ll be back before Christmas.” Henry pressed a kiss to the side of my head, knowing me too well. “You’ll get your snowball fights.”
I smiled.
“When are we leaving?” he asked.
My smile was gone. “Brooklyn postponed the shoot forty-eight hours, so we gotta be on a plane tomorrow.”
He nodded and gave my leg a squeeze. “Leave this to me, baby. I’ll find us an evening flight so we can have lunch with your grandmother.”
“You’re the best.” I kissed his cheek.
Chapter 3
Well, This Is Almost Like Home, Except Not At All
“Mexico? That’s it. When I grow up, I’m becoming a model,” Mattie groused.
I chuckled tiredly and sat down next to Henry. “I don’t recommend it, but you have fun with tha
t.” Checking the nearest clock, I saw it was three minutes until we boarded. We’d made it to Houston where we had our connection, and Henry was using the time to argue with another co-founder of Second Family.
“Okay, you’ve checked in now. I gotta go, Zach.”
“You have class?” That made me check my watch again.
“Oh. No. But I gotta go see someone about a drum set.”
I held the phone away from my ear, brow furrowing, and made sure it was my brother I was talking to. Mattie had never shown any interest in music before. He was all about math and technology.
“Did I hear that right?” I asked.
Apparently, he was serious, and he didn’t have time to talk about it now.
All right. Pocketing my phone, I leaned back and tapped my fingers along my thigh. Henry was still arguing with Marisol at Second Family. She was in charge of daily operations, and they were hiring someone to work for her when she went on maternity leave.
“I wouldn’t go there either,” Henry said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No—because his idea of manual labor is delegating. He’s a funder like me. You need someone who knows real work.” He paused, listening, and I wasn’t sure comparing himself to whoever was a good idea. Henry got his hands dirty on a daily basis when he worked. “What about Joseph? I know he’s a silent partner, but he knows protocol. He should be able to help you for a few months.”
Hey, I wouldn’t mind that. It would take him away from my job.
“Well, I’d talk to him if these interviews don’t work out,” Henry said. “We’re boarding now, but I’ll check in when we get to the resort.” He smiled, then chuckled. “Of course. You take care of those cravings now. Let me know if there’s anything you want me to send you.”