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And the worst part was, she couldn’t even tell Antonio how she felt, because he definitely didn’t need an extra layer of guilt. He couldn’t even remember Vanessa and it weighed on him.
This was going to go down far worse than the toy store. Picking out a forty-dollar toy for their children didn’t carry a million heavy implications the way picking out furniture did.
“Please.” Antonio’s plea slid through her. “I need to feel as if I’m not still adrift and alone. I need you.”
She shut her eyes and let Antonio bleed through her. This wasn’t just about furniture. Nothing in their interaction was surface level. Or simple. Regardless, there was no point in acting as if there was a choice here. She lacked the strength—or the desire—to deny him anything.
“Okay.” She blew out a breath and turned back to the expectant clerk. “I’m ready.”
Panic ruffled her nerves. This was so far out of her realm of experience. She was shopping for furniture with a man. With Antonio.
But he was holding her hand and smiling at her as though she’d just given him the world’s best Christmas present. She couldn’t let her guilt or the circumstances ruin this. She couldn’t let him down.
“Right this way.” Judy escorted her to the left, already chattering about fabric and colors and who knew what.
At the end of the day, she’d be sleeping in Antonio’s bed. Honestly, who cared what the furniture looked like when her full attention would be firmly fixed on the amazing, sensitive man lying on the next pillow?
* * *
As dawn broke through the glass wall overlooking the pounding Malibu surf, Caitlyn curled around Antonio’s slumbering form and watched him breathe. The way she’d done yesterday morning. Because it could never be enough. He didn’t get any less beautiful, and it was her God-given right to gawk at the man she was sleeping with, wasn’t it?
His sooty lashes rested above his cheekbones and his lips pursed as if he was dreaming about kissing her. Funny, that was exactly what she’d dreamed about, too.
So she indulged them both and kissed him awake. “Merry Christmas.”
His dark eyes blinked open and he smiled sleepily. “Is it already the twenty-fifth? I lost track.”
“We’ve been busy.”
Once she’d gotten over herself, the redecoration effort had consumed them both as they’d laughed and argued good-naturedly over the style and placement of the purchases. Then Antonio had gotten started on artwork, perusing gallery upon gallery until he’d found precisely what he wanted.
Late last night, they’d tossed the final teal pillow onto the couch in the sitting area and declared it done. The finished product looked nothing like the former space. Vanessa’s taste had run to heavy and ornate baroque. Caitlyn had selected more simple lines and colors: a four-poster bed with simple square posts. A compact dresser in espresso-colored wood with silver pulls. Teal and dark brown accents.
It had been a magical, breathless few days. But as she’d suspected, Antonio was the best thing in the room. Every day was Christmas, as far as she was concerned.
Antonio rolled onto his side and pulled her into his arms. “Then, Merry Christmas to you, too.”
She snuggled into his warm body. “We don’t have to get up right away, do we?”
“Not for years and years. The kids won’t know about Santa until they’re, like, three or four, right?”
She loved it when he talked like that, as if they were a family who would be together forever, come what may. He hadn’t mentioned the word marriage. But she hoped that was where they were headed.
“Ha. We’ll be lucky if they aren’t up at 5:00 a.m. next year, pounding down the stairs on their little toddler feet to see what Santa brought.”
With a gleam in his eye that was impossible to misread, he winked. “Then, we better make good use of our one bye year.”
So slowly she thought she might weep, he took her lips in a long kiss that set off a freight train of heat through her blood.
It was so much more powerful to know what this kind of kiss led to as she fell into the sensual pleasure of his lips thoroughly claiming hers. His tongue was hot and rough and she reveled in the shock of it invading her mouth. Thrilled in it. Because while it mated with hers, it was so unbelievably arousing to recall that he’d also tasted her intimately with that same tongue.
His thigh slid between her legs, insistent and tight against her core. She moaned and arched into the pleasure as sparks exploded under his ministrations. Silently, she urged him on, riding his muscular thigh with small rolls of her hips. She needed...more. But she didn’t have to tell him because he seemed to know instinctively what she wanted, as if he could read her mind.
