“You said it, it happened. I’m pretty sure it might have been you.”
“It wasn’t. Besides, we didn’t need it. We can easily see in the dark,” he said.
“Yeah, but, when I’m wet and cold I need the power on.”
He looked at her, one eyebrow raised.
“A hot shower!” she said.
“Ohhh, yeah! That does sound good.”
“I’m first!” she claimed.
“Hey, it’s my house!” he objected.
“Technically, it’s our house. I mean, you’re my mate, right?”
He looked down at her. “I am. But you don’t live here, do you?”
“Not yet! But you gave me a heart shaped key chain with the house key on it!”
“I did that?” he asked, as they finally reached his carport and were sheltered from the rain.
“Yes, you did. I have it in my pants pocket. I’ll show it to you,” she declared.
He grinned at her. “You don’t have to. Anything I have or will ever have, you are welcomed to,” he said earnestly, looking up at her as she walked ahead of him up the steps and onto the back porch.
Cristie turned with her hand on the doorknob and looked back at him.
“What?” he asked.
“I just, I’ve never had anyone feel like that about me, other than my mom and dad. It’s almost surreal.”
“Why does it feel surreal?”
“Too good to be true?” she asked, then turned the door knob and walked into his kitchen.
“Nah, finally good enough is more like it,” he said, quickly walking past her and rushing down the hallway to his bathroom.
“Hey! I called first!” Cristie yelled as she realized he was racing toward the bathroom, and started down the hallway after him. Just as she reached the door to his bedroom, he closed the bathroom door and almost immediately she heard the shower turn on.
“Cheater! I called first,” she yelled through the closed door.
“Bwahahahahahah!” he forced out loudly, mimicking the evil laughter of the old horror movies he’d seen as a child.
“Fine! But I’m making hot chocolate and you don’t get any!”
“Yeah, I do! It’s my chocolate!” he answered.
“Not any more!” she yelled, then turned and walked out of his bedroom. She made a quick pit stop in the bathroom in the hallway and dropped her wet bathrobe into the tub and grabbed a towel to wrap around her body. After wringing some of the water out of her hair, she went to the kitchen and took a gallon of milk out of the fridge. She poured a third of it into a medium sized pot, added cocoa, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, a pinch of nutmeg and half a pinch of salt, then set it on the burner and stirred it gently as she waited for the mixture to heat up and the sugar to dissolve.
Cristie leaned against the counter right beside the stove as she stirred. She could hear the sound of the shower and imagined the water running down over Remi’s soapy body. Which had her thinking of the vision he’d been when he stripped down in the storm a little earlier. Her heart skipped a beat at the memory of his body glistening in the rain. The foam from the top of the hot chocolate just almost boiling over touched her fingers, reminding her that she needed to be focusing on what she wasdoing, not what she wanted to be doing. She quickly stirred the chocolate, then turned down the heat to stop it from spilling over the edges of the pot she was using. She stirred a few more times, even tasting it from the spoon she stirred before her entire being focused on a sound she heard coming from the opposite end of the house.
She’d just about convinced herself she was hearing things, but then she heard it again. A soft moan. Cristie turned off the stove and moved the hot chocolate to a back burner, then set off down the hallway again, her body tingling and shivering in ways she’d never experienced before. When she reached Remi’s bedroom door, she concentrated, and while there was no moan, she could hear the erratic rhythm of his breathing. Approaching the door and putting her ear to the door, closing her eyes and concentrating on the sounds coming from the bathroom until she’d heard enough to convince herself she was right. She thought about it for only a second before she dropped her towel and quietly opened the bathroom door. The scent of his pheromones flooding the bathroom just confirmed what she already knew. He was pleasuring himself, and he was so concentrated on the task at hand — literally — that he didn’t realize she’d walked in.
“Cristie,” he whispered huskily, lost in stroking himself and apparently thinking of her as he did.
Cristie, caught up in what she’d discovered him doing, moved quickly to the shower and pulled the curtain back.
