His other hand cupped my ass, pulling me down the counter a bit until I was hanging over the edge. His palm pressed harder and my back arched again. I tried to look at him, at what he was doing to my body, but he leaned over me, dropping wet, open-mouth kisses over my body. Tasting me, loving me with his mouth and then with his hands as he finally pressed them inside of me.
When I moved to arch again from the spot he pressed, I slid nearly completely off the counter. He caught me, and we fell to the ground below us.
He was wearing all of his clothes still, so I straddled his lap and ripped his leather jacket off of him, tossing it behind me as my fingers slid under his shirt and forced it up and off of him. His chest was so warm, with just the littlest bit of hair sprinkling his skin. I yanked the shirt off, and Six flipped me so he was above me, bracing his weight with one hand as he undid his belt again. There was a frenetic energy to our movements, eager and impatient as I hooked my toes into the waistband of his jeans and tugged them down as fast as I could. I’d barely made it as far as his knees before he was inside of me. My head lolled to the side, overwhelmed instantly by that immediate fullness. I couldn’t even be bothered with the way my skin stuck to the warm flooring, not when Six was pounding into my body with a pace I couldn’t manage to match.
I was so close already, so I shoved my hands on his chest, pushing him until I was straddling him myself.
He worked his jeans off as I slid over him again and again and then he wrapped his arms around my waist and swung me over so I was back on my back.
“No,” I said, but it came out more as a sound than an actual word.
“No?” he asked, pausing.
“Don’t stop,” I panted and immediately shook my head. “Wait. I’m close.” I sounded desperate, high pitched, not wanting this to end so quickly. “We need to change.”
“You’re close?” he asked. He’d slowed his movements, but hadn’t stopped again.
“Yes. We need to move so I don’t come so soon.”
Instead, Six pinned me to the ground, his hands over my wrists, as he increased his pace.
“Six,” I tried to say, but it came out more like a groan. I was seconds away, so close that my eyes were squeezed tight. But he had me pinned, I was trapped. I wanted to groan in protest, but I couldn’t, not when he was tipping me over the edge. His mouth closed over mine, swallowing my moans.
And still, even as my body came down from that, he continued. Over and over, almost like a punishment. Almost like one—but not one. Because my body climbed up again, scaling that mountain like it was no sweat. I saw stars behind my eyes as his speed increased, and felt my hands go limp under his hold. There was no way I could stop him—because I didn’t want him to.
As I came down off the second peak, he made that low, deep sound he always made right before coming. When he finally collapsed on me, we were both slick with sweat. When I worked up enough energy, I grazed his back with my fingertips.
“That was a little intense,” I told him. My legs were still wrapped around his waist, pinning him to me, so I loosened them in case he wanted to pull away. But he didn’t.
His back shivered under my touch and he leaned up, brushing my hair out of my eyes. “I missed you.”
“That’s good.” It was all I could think to say. “I missed you too.”
“Am I crushing you?”
He was, but I told him he wasn’t. The weight of his body was a welcome burden and I wasn’t eager for him to leave me just yet. He must have sensed it anyway and rolled off me.
“Do you have the air conditioning cranked on in here?”
“No.” I wiped a hand over my forehead. “I haven’t touched it. I’ve barely been here.”
“Right.” He took in a deep breath and then stood, stretching. He was the least self-conscious person I knew, moving naked around the kitchen until he was at the sink, filling his cup with cold water and taking a big swallow. “Where’d Griffin go?”
Looking around the room, I sighed. “She’s probably eating your mattress.” It wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities.
Six held out a hand for me, pulling me to standing and handing me his refilled cup of water. “I’ll go find her. Why don’t you figure out what you want for dinner?”
He slipped on his boxer briefs and ventured down the hallway, calling the dog’s name. I snatched up his tee and shoved my arms through it before he could come back and claim it. Not that I worried he would; he seemed to like me wearing his clothes.
When he retuned with Griffin, I had take-out menus scattered in front of me.
I had to tell him that I was finally ready for this. Ready for naked sex marathons in the kitchen, ready for him to hunt down the dog, ready to have a place that was ours—a we that I was finally prepared to be a part of. But, for some reason, I was too chicken shit to tell him, just yet.
“Anything look good?” he asked, arm around my waist and lips against my hair. It was gestures like that, absent-minded doses of affection, that I was realizing I’d missed my entire life. Before Six, there’d never been anyone giving me spontaneous hugs, or kisses unless they or I had earned it. I didn’t have to earn anything with Six. It was just there, for me to take.
“I have no clue.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Duh.” I shoved the burger menu into the kitchen drawer. “I don’t want greasy though. I think I still have a pound of grease in my stomach from the breakfast burrito I ate this morning, near the park.”
“I bought you cereal,” he reminded me as he peered at the Japanese menu.
“I know, but the fluffy butthole over there was sniffing like she was going to pee in every corner of my apartment this morning, so I was in a hurry to get out of the house.” I leaned into his touch. It was so natural with him—deciding over takeout menus like the incompetent cooks that we were.
“Well, when nature calls…” He held up the Japanese menu. “Sound good?”
I nodded. “I saw Brooke today.”
“Oh?” He pulled out his cell phone and his brow furrowed in concentration as he dialed the number. “Did you make plans or something?”
“I just ran into her while on a walk with Griffin. She looks good.” I swallowed more of the water. “Her baby is cute.” I didn’t know why I always referred to Norah as Norah in my head, like the person she was. But when I talked about her, it was as if I felt a need to separate myself from actually knowing her by calling her something as general as ‘baby.’
“That’s good.” He held the phone but was looking at me, gauging my feelings. “And it went well?”
“It did. She thanked me.” I didn’t know why I even brought it up, because all of a sudden, I was so reluctant to talk about it at all. “It was good. I might stop by again, at some point.”
“That’s great.” He looked relieved, almost the same way Brooke had when she’d realized I wasn’t going to kidnap her kid. “I’m sure you needed that. The closure.”
“I did.” I hated and loved that he knew me as well as he did. How could he call me an enigma, or mysterious, when he was inside of my head more often than I liked? “Go ahead,” I said, motioning to the phone.
He dialed the number and put the phone on the counter on speaker as he perused the offerings. When they answered, Six rattled off his normal order. “And an order of the tempura vegetables, the tricolor sushi rolls, garlic noodles with extra scallops.” He raised an eyebrow at me, making sure he said it all correctly and I nodded. “Yes, I can hold.”
“I want us to move in together,” I blurted the moment the hold music kicked on.
“What?”
“I’m ready. It makes sense. I mean, I know you practically manipulated me into moving in with you when you gave me the furball.” I rolled my eyes.
“If it’s about her, I told you I could keep her here, and bring her to my mom’s when I go out of town.”
And like the first time he offered, I shook my head vehemently. For all the compla
ining I did, I still liked having her around. I cared about her. Despite my many nicknames for her, I did love her. It was just a complicated thing for me to deal with, which was why I laughed it off so much.
“I want to move in with you so we can do this every night.”
“Eat Japanese?” Though his tone was teasing, his eyes were level with mine. This was serious to him.
“I mean, if that’s what you want. I like a little variety myself, but if that’s one of the conditions.”
“There are no conditions,” he said immediately. “I told you, we can even keep your apartment, so you don’t worry.”
“No.” I shook my head and the hold music clanged cymbals. “I don’t want a backup plan, because I’ll take it.” I swallowed down the rush of anxiety. “Let’s do it. Move in together.”
“Hello?”
Six and I stared dumbly at the phone.
“Sir?”
“Yes, I’m here.” But Six was looking at me again.
“You said garlic noodles?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, phone number?”
“The one I’m calling you from.” I laughed a little. Six was only ever patient with me.
“Give us twenty-five minutes.”
“Right.” He hung up and turned to me. “Really?”
“Really.” I heaved in a deep breath. “I am ready. It makes sense.”
“So you’re moving in with me because it makes sense? Since when have you deferred to the most sensible decision?”
“Jerk.” He wanted me to lay out my feelings, much the same way Brooke had with me. “I just realized, today, but I’ve been feeling it for a while, that I want to live with you. No more back and forth between places.”
“Being with Brooke made you realize that?”
“Not really. I was realizing that before, but then I saw her. And the family she’s made with her daughter. And.” I wished I was wearing pockets to shove my hands into. “And, I realized that you and me, we could make a family together.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” It felt like I’d just delivered a speech in front of a hundred thousand people. “So…that’s the whole thing.”
“That’s good. Because I know your lease is coming up.”
“Of course you’d know that.” I rolled my eyes. “So, what, we just move in when it’s up then?” Though I was ready to move in, I was in no hurry to say goodbye to the place that had been home for most of my adult life.
“My lease is up in February.”
“So, you’ll just renew it then?”
He shook his head. “I think it makes the most sense for us to find a place together. A place that’s only ever been ours. Not mine, not yours.”
“Shut up.” When he said stupid things like that—stupid because they sounded romantic—my first reaction was to reject it. “What’s wrong with this place?”
“This place has been mine. You always call it mine. I don’t want mine. I want ours. You and me, Mira. If we’re going to do this, I want to do it all the way.”
“Ugh. But we just christened this counter for the first time.”
“We’ll christen the counters and all the other surfaces at our place.”
Somehow, the thought of us moving in at the same time, into a new place, made it more real. It wasn’t like I’d be having a long-term sleepover at his house. It’d be an actual space that was ours. “When is my lease up?”
“January first.”
“I wouldn’t say that’s coming up.” For some reason, it annoyed me that we’d have to wait that long. I’d been prepared, expecting, to wait a few months. But almost six months felt like a punishment.
“We’ll spend some time looking. I’ll send you listings. I don’t have to break my lease, I’ll pay it out if we find something before it’s up.” He came around the counter and tipped my head back with his hands supporting my head. “You’re really ready?”
“I am.” And even though there was that sharp spike of terror at the idea, I knew, deep in my gut, that I was ready.
27
Christmas 2005
“This is probably the worst day of the year to move,” I grumbled, slapping tape on boxes and carrying them to the door.
“It's fitting,” Six replied, with no frustration, no anger. In fact, he seemed as high as a kite. Not the drug-kind of high. But an emotional one.
I'd been sober for an entire year now. And I'd finally agreed to move in with him. We still fought, often, but Six had been right since the very beginning; I was fighting for him, for this. For us. And in my head, that seemed to make everything all right.
I exhausted him, I knew. My emotional highs and lows and all my impulsive decisions impacted not just me, but him too. But he never said anything, always holding me through it all.
Six had his own things going on in the background, with his life before me. A life I tried not to envy, a life that knew nothing about me.
We didn't talk about his life, about the obligations he had outside of me, outside of our bubble. I knew he had work stuff mixed with personal stuff and tried to be content in knowing that it wouldn't touch me. Six had told me once that the people who needed him called him Six, and I knew that I wasn't the only one who needed him.
Six had been helping Cora, as she adjusted to her new life. In what little I could pry from him, I knew she was still a teenager.
It was stupid to feel jealousy toward her—she was an orphan, after all, a girl that Six felt responsibility for. He never made me feel less than, even when I pressed him.
I carried the last box from his truck into the house he'd purchased for us.
Purchased. He actually owned it. When I’d realized the listings he was showing me weren’t rentals but homes for purchase, I’d balked. I hadn’t agreed to that. But Six and his stupid romantic comments had persuaded me into accepting it.
“I want to give you a place that no one can take away. If we rent, there’s always the chance they’ll sell. Besides, I have that cash from the sale of the Michigan home. I should invest it wisely.”
I hated that he’d charmed me. But eventually, I’d agreed to it and the next thing I knew, Six was tossing me a set of shiny keys. “I had it rekeyed. Here are the keys for the front door and the back door.”
And that was how I found myself standing in the dining area of the new place he’d bought for us. It was overwhelming when I sat to think about it, so I tried not to do that too often.
On the counter was a bottle chilling in a bucket and I stared at it blankly for a moment before he came up behind me and wrapped one solid arm around my waist.
“It's sparkling juice,” he explained. “It's our sixth Christmas together,” he continued when I just stared at the bottle. “I wanted to celebrate in an appropriate way.” He twisted the lid off the top of the bottle and poured bubbles into two waiting glasses. “Toast with me.”
“What are we toasting to?” When he opened his mouth, I blurted, “Don't toast to me again.”
“What about to us?”
I took the glass he held out to me and eyed him over the rim. “What about us?”
His smile was easy, humoring me. “To us. To your successes with the self-defense lessons and to my luck at nabbing this place.”
I clinked glasses with him and took a sip. It gave me a little shock to be drinking something so close to wine, but I drained my glass anyway and set it on the counter.
In the corner of the living room was a naked Christmas tree. I stared at it longer than what was probably normal, but it was, itself, so normal, that seeing it in the place where I'd be living felt ... strange.
“What's that?”
“It's called a tree. They live outside most of the time.”
I gave him a look. “I've never had a Christmas tree.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted you to have one.” He stepped up beside me and moved my hair away from the side of my face. “I'm
ready to start something real with you here. I want you to see it as real too.”
It made me itchy, to have promises like a home that couldn’t be taken away, and an undecorated Christmas tree filling our—our—space with the scent of winter. “Something real?” I turned into him and his arm came around me.
“I know it's always been real to you, in here.” He touched my head and slid down to cover the side of my neck with his hand. “But I want you to see it's real outside of us, too.”
I wondered when I'd stop feeling equally elated and scared when he said things like that—but I guessed I'd be spending the rest of my life getting used to it.
The rest of my life.
We hadn't talked about marriage not once, but mostly because I was one breakdown away from disaster. And I think we both knew that and tiptoed around it carefully.
“I didn't wrap your present,” he told me, pulling me from my thoughts.
“Funny, I don't hear any more dogs?” Griffin was with Six’s mom so we could move in without worrying about her escaping and terrorizing all the trees in the neighborhood.
“I think Griffin is enough for us both. For now. Maybe next Christmas.”
I elbowed him in his ribs, but he caught the elbow before I could make a connection and steered me out of the open kitchen and living room to the study off the foyer.
The first thing I noticed were the drapes across the floor, covering up the hardwood. “Are you painting the walls?” I asked before lifting my eyes to the window that looked out over the side of the house. Right there in front of that gorgeous monstrosity of glass and wood was a sturdy-looking easel with a blank canvas already set up. To the side was a table covered in paints, bottles filled with all sorts of paintbrushes. There was a stool right in front of the easel with tentacle-looking legs.
I looked at Six for a moment, just blinking.
“Do you like?”
I turned back to the room, taking in the extra canvases leaning against the wall behind the easel, to the various pieces of furniture covered in an assortment of tools and palettes. I selected a palette knife from one of the tin cans and ran my finger over the blunt edge. “You did this?”
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