“Christmas,” I finish, and that’s when he stands, his hands holding the backs of my thighs as he maneuvers us around the love seat. I absolutely regret every time I have teased him for insisting on gym time for himself during our work trips. Gym time is great; gym time should have a hallowed shrine built in its honor.
He puts me down gently, swipes most of the sheets and blankets off the bed, keeping one that he drapes over the mattress before coming back to me, wrapping me in his arms to move me farther onto the now half-made bed. “We should’ve taken care of this,” he murmurs, but I stop his mouth with mine. This bed had frozen us both over last night, and I don’t want that happening again.
I don’t know how long we spend like that—minutes, hours—spread out with him on top of me, kissing like it’s what we need to stay alive, our skin growing warm, fevered, our hands clutching and desperate.
“Jasper,” I breathe, clenching my fingers in his hair, pulling him up from where he has just spent an incredibly satisfying few minutes. “Please tell me you have a condom. Please.”
It’s his turn to look startled, and he practically jolts away from me, moving back to the love seat and bending to pick up his pants off the floor. I watch as he clumsily yanks his wallet from the back pocket, tossing the pants like he’s angry at them, and I put a hand over my mouth to hide my smile, and also to hide the howl of sadness that will surely come out of my mouth if he doesn’t find a condom in there.
But he’s victorious, a foil wrapper held between his fingers and a triumphant smile on his face that dims momentarily while he stalks over to the little Christmas tree, holding the square package underneath one of the fiber-optic branches and squinting.
The fact that he has to check the expiration—it is ludicrously gratifying to me, even though I know I’ve got no business wondering.
“Thank God,” he says, coming back to me, standing at the foot of the bed. “What if I’d had to go to the house and ask that Tanner guy for a condom?” He bends and kisses my stomach, the skin there quivering with the laugh I let out.
“Probably he wouldn’t have had one.” I gasp at the feel of Jasper licking upward. He hasn’t even unwrapped the condom and I feel dangerously, embarrassingly close to the edge, his tongue doing incredible things to me. “Because—of the baby?”
“Hmm.” He kisses across my collarbone, and I’m so flushed with heat and anticipation. All at once it’s hitting me, even more so than before—I have wanted this with Jasper for so long. I have loved him for so long, and I’m so relieved to be doing this finally that I hardly know what to do with all this feeling. Somewhere, kicking around in the deep recesses of my mind, is the knowledge that we haven’t dealt with work—that inside this cottage Jasper has been all mine, but out in the world, it’s always the job for him first, and I don’t know what that means for tomorrow.
But I don’t pay attention to those deep recesses, not right now. I have to keep talking to distract myself. “Gil and Romina seem pretty connected, though. Maybe he’d have one.”
He laughs now, pulls away and looks down at me. “Kristen. If you want us to keep going here, you’d better get that image out of my head.”
For a second we stay like that, smiling at each other like coconspirators in this trouble we’re making together. The moment is so easy and simple and happy, and then I realize that all I need to do with this overflowing feeling I have is to . . . hang on to it. To enjoy it and celebrate it like the holiday it is.
I reach down, tuck my thumbs in the edge of my plain cotton boy shorts, and push them down.
He leans back and watches.
“Better image,” he says, his voice rough, and then he’s tearing open that foil square, and it’s nothing like how it’s always been before for me—nothing like when I avert my eyes for this part, worrying that it’ll feel too routine, too pragmatic, something that will spoil the mood. Nothing like when I stiffen slightly at that first press between my legs, the intimacy of joining with another person always somewhat awkward for me. Nothing like those moments where a fleeting thought—about work, about bills or laundry, or, most often, about Jasper—will tug at my mind, distracting me from what I’m doing, the person I’m with.
With Jasper, I watch everything. I feel everything. I focus on everything.
And nothing, nothing, has ever felt better.
Chapter Eleven
JASPER
This time, I wake up long after five a.m. The sun’s up, the sky bright from the reflection of the snow, and I can hear a soft dripping, melting off the edges of the cottage’s roof. Outside, the air is still, and no snow is falling.
I’ll bet she can fly out later today. She’ll get to her family; she won’t miss their whole Christmas, and I’m glad.
I close my eyes again, breathe in the smell of her hair, feel the warm curve of her back against my chest, block out the sun and the day for a little longer. I’ve got a thousand feelings rushing through my blood: the hot, insistent desire that kept us up almost
