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I’m sure no one will mind if I take one of the stuffed animals out of the bin, lay out a sleeping bag, and crawl inside for a little while. There’s laughter and a warm breeze coming in through the little cut out window.
I smile and squeeze the little brown bunny to my chest.
A few minutes to remember life before it chipped and tore and broke apart.
I wake up to a featherlight touch on my cheek. My eyes flutter open, not fast and alarmed but slowly and drowsy.
Corvin’s gentle expression is the first thing I see, and I close them again as I rest my cheek in his palm.
“Dinner, sweetheart.”
Why does his voice have to sound like liquid sugar when he calls me that?
“I’m comfortable.”
“You can be comfortable with me later. You need food.”
My stomach grumbling agrees with him, so I groan and push out of the sleeping bag. I stretch my arms above my head and take the hand offered to pull me up.
When we get to the ground, Corvin pulls me into his chest and kisses me absolutely breathless.
I don’t know when we went from fucking to kissing and touching for comfort, but I can’t lie and say I want it to stop. His hair is thick and coarse under my fingers as I hold him to me. Kiss him harder.
He pulls away with the softest chuckle, brushing a thumb over my lips. “More later.”
The dining room is packed with people bustling around a table littered with food. Christmas is still a couple of days away, so I’m left perplexed by the sheer amount of bowls and plates for people to pick at.
“It’s smart to wait for the kids to grab what they want. They can get grubby and mean sometimes.” The woman—Mrs. Grenshaw—wipes her hands on her apron when she stops in front of us.
“Do you cook like this every night?”
She smiles and pats me on the shoulder. I only flinch a little, but she doesn’t act surprised or bothered.
“As often as we can. If we can swing it, I can’t see why we wouldn’t,” she says, then holds up a finger as she steps aside to settle a dispute between two of the kids.
“Marshal and Heather are some of the good ones. Foster homes can suck sometimes,” Corvin says, and I hear the buried pain in his voice rise to the surface. “They want to give as much as they can to the kids who stop in, because we never know what they’ll be going back to.”
“You’d think the system would care more about the kids it takes in to make sure the homes are good and caring.”
He smiles tightly and stuffs his hands in his pockets. “You would think.”
I don’t think before I say what I’m going to say, but maybe it’s better that way. “Will you tell me about it? Sometime? What it was like for you?”
My heart feels so full it aches when he looks at me and his smile grows soft, when he cups my face in his hands and draws me in for another kiss. Slow. Sweet. Leaves me wanting more when he finally breaks away.
“Let’s sit down and socialize for a bit. When I get you alone, I’ll kiss and touch and worship this body.”
He sweeps a hand down my side, and I shiver.
The couple—Marshal and Heather—are seated at the table with a high chair holding the toddler next to them. The little girls are beside the toddler with the older boy from outside beside them. There’s two open seats on the other side of the table, and I take the one next to the teenager from earlier, Corvin claiming the one beside me with a squeeze to my thigh.
Dinner goes by in a haze of chatter. I’ve never seen Corvin so happy or carefree. There’s a playfulness to him that reminds me of the look in his eyes when we’re going into a scene.
It’s not sexual. It’s not cruel. It’s a kind of pure joy like he really loves what he’s looking at.
He’s had that look when he’s watching me for as long as I can remember.
“Shiloh?” A hand touches my thigh, and I jolt out of my thoughts. Corvin leans in close to whisper in my ear, “is it too much?”
