“What?” Looking down, I saw Mia’s legs still locked tight around me.
Mia tugged at my shoulders, drawing me back toward him again. “Where are you going? I’m still hungry.”
I groaned, letting my head fall to the mattress beside his shoulder with an exhausted sigh. “This is just how it’s going to be from now on, isn’t it. You want something, and I just have to give it to you.”
I said it like I was complaining, but my traitorous cock was already showing signs of a second wind, giving away my true desire for a second round.
Mia looked up at me, his expression wide and innocent, but his eyes holding a secret wickedness in their depths. “What? Are you saying you won’t give me what I want?”
In one move, I hiked his hips up higher and then pinned his wrists to the mattress.
“I didn’t say that.”
I covered his mouth and body with mine, with no intention of coming up for air any time soon.
EPILOGUE
Auggie
When I first retired fromthe military and returned stateside after spending years in an active war zone, something as simple as the pop of a champagne cork would have sent me flashing back to memories of gunfire and shouts of pain. Now, all I could see was Mia’s laughter as the overenthusiastic bubbles spilled over the mouth of the bottle and onto his fingers. Everyone cheered as he filled their glasses with the soft peach colored drink, while Christmas carols played in the background.
It was Christmas day. A little early for alcohol, but Chantal assured me that as long as we mixed the champagne with orange juice, then it was a perfectly reasonable breakfast drink.
Well, she’d called it brunch, but I’d never understood where the cutoff between breakfast and brunch stood. Either way, it had taken so long for everyone to gather together this morning that it was definitely at least time for late breakfast.
My apartment was too small to host a large group, so Chantal had agreed to host a get together Christmas morning. It hadstarted with a debate about which of us Melody was going to spend Christmas with—which was decided when she pointed out my apartment didn’t have a chimney so Santa wouldn’t be able to visit—that eventually, led to us just deciding to all celebrate Christmas together. We were both her parents, after all, and Chantal’s husband, Matt, didn’t mind sharing the Holiday, so there was no problem.
Unfortunately, at almost the same time, Mia had agreed to meet up with Eli for Christmas. He’d been so distressed about the idea of having to choose between Eli’s invitation and Chantal and Melody’s invitation, that we’d ended up extending the invitation to Eli and his partner, Alex, as well, so everyone would be together and no choices would have to be made.
It was an eclectic group, to say the least, but with everyone decked out in Santa hats and ugly Christmas sweaters we looked as uniform as a military parade.
As the only child in the group, Melody loved all the extra attention. Her dance studio had put on a special Christmas performance last night, which Mia and I had both obviously attended, and she insisted on continuing to wear the costume today. The little red dress with white pompoms was especially festive, so neither Chantal nor I had the heart to tell her to change.
After all the money we spent on those costumes, she may as well get extra use out of them.
The white pompoms on Melody’s costume bounced as she dragged me by the hand over to the Christmas tree.
“Come on. Come on. It’s present time.”
Her whole hand could only grab onto a few of my fingers, and I had to bend over to keep from accidentally pulling her off her feet, but I still let her drag me across the room.
“Present time? Already? I don’t know. I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to wait until after dinner for presents.”
A few pieces of loose tinsel blew across the floor like tumbleweeds in a western standoff as Melody stared up at me and stomped her foot. “Noooo. Presents now. Dinner is in, like…” She glanced at the clock, but she didn’t know how to read an analog clock, so she had no idea what time it was. “Like, a whole lot of hours away. We can’t wait that long for presents. They’ll get lonely sitting there if no one opens them.”
“Well, we can’t let the presents get lonely,” Mia agreed, as he came up next to us. “Melody, how about you start handing the presents out while we get your mother situated, that way we’ll be ready to start once everyone’s sitting down.”
We needed some time to get Chantal from the kitchen into the living room where the tree was set up. In the last few months, Chantal’s pregnancy had progressed very smoothly, and she now had a very pronounced stomach. According to her doctors, she was as fit as any pregnant mother could expect to be, but she was still slow to get from place to place, and it was hard for her to get comfortable.
The fact that there was only orange juice in her glass and no champagne didn’t help. I knew she missed drinking. It had been the same when she was pregnant with Melody, but the new baby’s health came first.
Unfortunately, Melody struggled to understand that her mother wasn’t always immediately available when she wanted. So far,this hadn’t caused too many issues, but we did have to keep her distracted when Chantal needed our attention more. Assigning her to distribute gifts was a perfect solution. A precocious six-year-old, as she’d just celebrated her birthday last month, Melody could read, but sorting gifts was still a slow process, so it would take her a little while to work through everyone’s names.
I could have kissed Mia for coming up with this solution. Then, realizing there was nothing stopping me, that’s exactly what I did.
“Eww,” Melody complained. “Why are adults always so yucky?”
She turned away and focused on her task of sorting through the presents, picking up the nearest box and carefully sounding out each letter in the name written on the nametag.