His friends and our family do just that, some headbang, others dance wildly, except for my grandfather, who’s now leading my grandmother in a waltz between the tables. I’m laughing so hard I can barely see the notes.
The crowd cheers and claps as I strum my final note. I turn to see Ian, still crouched over the keys. He looks up at me and smiles.
My bones turn to Jell-O. My knees go weak.
This is beautiful.
This is happy.
This is everything William would’ve wanted.
41
Ian
Two Weeks Later
“Harlow,” I say, running my hand across her bare shoulder. Fuck me. Her skin is always so soft. “It’s time to wake up.”
She rolls over, away from my interruption, mumbling curses only God could understand. I barely stifle my laugh.
“You can’t sleep in on Christmas Day,” I murmur, leaning in close to whisper in her ear. “It’s practically sacrilegious. "
She doesn’t stir.
Doesn’t say a thing.
Doesn’t even acknowledge my existence.
I know something that’ll wake her up. Down, boy.
I adjust my ever-tightening pants, which does absolutely shit to help my impatient cock.
I eye her ass, half exposed from beneath the comforter. She’s wearing a pair of tiny boy shorts I want to rip away with my teeth.
I bury the urge, raise my hand, and slap her ass—hard. She shoots up in bed, kneeling on all fours like an animal, looking for the perpetrator.
Her wide-eyed glare finds me. I can’t help it. I smirk.
“You spanked me!” she hisses.
I laugh, the sound low and soft in the dark of her room.
“You just fulfilled a personal fantasy of mine, Weathersby. Congratulations.”
She looks so angry, I think she might actually hit me. That could be fun. I sort of want her to try.
Shit. We don’t have time for this.
“Careful,” I warn her, letting my thumb caress her beautiful bottom lip. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you are about to be a very naughty girl.”
God. This is torture. My cock is going to take a vote and impeach me soon. Or it’ll skip that shit and stage a damn coup.
My gaze flits to her mouth. “Do you know what naughty girls get for Christmas, Harlow?”
“A spanking?” she breathes.
Aww. How cute...and how wrong. I am really starting to enjoy this.
“And?” I ask, leaning in close and letting my breath fan across her cool skin as I memorize everything, the freckles that scatter like leaves in the wind across her bare shoulders, the way her eyes twinkle in the darkness, the soft bursts of her breath.
She doesn’t answer my question. She just gulps, like, audibly.
“The things I’m going to do to you,” I say before my peripheral catches the clock on her nightstand. I frown. Four in the morning. Fuck. “But we don’t have time right now, unfortunately. Get dressed. We’re running late.”
“We’re going somewhere?” she squeaks, sitting back down on her heels.
I nod. “Now, get your sweet ass out of bed. I promised your mom I’d have you home for, quote, Cinnamonas.”
I raise an eyebrow at the made-up word.
“What? You don’t have Cinnamonas at your house?” she teases, slow to remove herself from the bed. “You’re missing out, Beckett. It’s like Christmas but dedicated to all things cinnamon. Cinnamon rolls, coffee cake, snickerdoodles, churros. It’s soooo good.” She walks over to her chest of drawers and fishes out a pair of jeans.
“Makes a lot more sense now,” I say, the words drier than I intended, but I am distracted. What she’s doing has got to be illegal, a violation of the Geneva Convention, maybe even a freakin’ war crime.
She’s shimmying out of her pajama shorts, thrusting her ass and her tits out as she does it, and sliding on jeans over her panties, the barely there, lacy variety I can almost see through.
She walks over to her closet and disappears for a moment, returning with her jacket.
“You may want a bathing suit,” I tell her.
She laughs. “It’s like ten degrees outside.”
I don’t laugh. I am 100% serious. I stare at her as I sit on the edge of her bed.
I shrug. “Nudity is preferred.”
“Wait,” she says, her eyes going wide as I stand, ready to head to the door. “Where are we going?”
Maybe she thinks I’m flying her to the Bahamas or the Virgin Islands, maybe even Turks and Caicos, and she’s probably wondering how I would do that and get her back in time for Cinnamonas.
I look at my watch. “Harlow, you have two minutes to finish getting ready, or I will carry you out of here myself, with or without a bathing suit.”
She takes a moment. She’s probably debating if I am being serious. She should know better. I am (almost) always serious.
She bolts into her closet, and I hear rummaging and see things being thrown before she reappears with a bathing suit in hand. Then she darts into the bathroom. I stand and follow her, finding her brushing her teeth.
“Ready?” I ask when she’s done.
I’m just being polite because it’s insanely early, and Harlow is not a morning person. I meant what I said though. I can and will drag her from this house.
She nods, and hand-in-hand, we head downstairs and outside.
My Lamborghini is already running, and I hit a button on the key-fob so the door slides up for her. I have us both buckled in and leaving her parents’ home in under a minute flat.
The car hugs the road, the engine rumbling beneath us. She’s so quiet, I wonder if she fell asleep, but we are maybe five minutes away from the airstrip when I catch her smiling.
“What are you smiling about?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she quips, biting her lip to stifle her smile.
“Careful,” I say. “If you keep it up, I will stop this car, and we’ll never make it to your Christmas present.”
“What?” she asks like she has no idea what I’m implying.
All right, I’ll play. But she’s going to do more than blush when I’m done. She’s going
