How the Hitman Stole Christmas - Sam Mariano Page 0,61
walk her back until her ass bumps the edge of the counter, then I curve my hands under and start to lift her.
“Wait.” She squeezes my shoulder to stop me when she comes up for air.
My gaze darts to her face. “Yeah?”
“I have bad news,” she says, looking so damn serious.
Her drunk-girl mood swings amuse the hell out of me, but I don’t care about this bad news. If the house was on fire right now, I would still prioritize taking her clothes off and getting between her thighs over escaping the fatal flames.
“What’s that?” I ask anyway.
Pulling a sympathetic face, she tells me, “I’m not going to sleep with you.”
I cock an eyebrow. “Oh, yes, you are.”
She shakes her head with such gravity, you’d think the decision is completely out of her hands, and she’s as disappointed by it as I must be. “Nope. I can’t.”
“Is this a period thing?”
Wrinkling her nose up, she shakes her head. “No, it’s… I just can’t.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” she says, gently pushing against my chest and moving away from me.
I think she’s… serious.
She doesn’t offer any more of an explanation than that, but she seems more pensive as she puts away all the ingredients we bought and then heads downstairs.
I follow wordlessly. I’m confused, but it’s not awkward. I guess it could be, but it doesn’t feel that way to me.
Autumn gets distracted on her way back toward our bedroom. We stayed out late enough that everyone else is in bed already, so we have the entire downstairs to ourselves. Autumn stops to admire the real Christmas tree we put up down there, then she sways into the billiards room and takes a look around.
“Hey, look at this,” she says, beckoning me over to a built-in display case full of model cars and trucks.
I make my way over, glancing at the cars, but focusing more of my attention on her face. “What am I looking at?”
Carefully, she picks up a shiny red classic pickup truck and shows it to me. “My grandpa had one just like this. I don’t remember if the interior was the same color, but the truck looked exactly like this one. Every summer we’d wax it until it shined. He didn’t usually drive it in the winter because he wanted to keep it nice, but every Christmas he’d bring it out and drive us to the tree farm, and we’d haul our tree home in the back of it.”
“That sounds nice.”
“It was,” she murmurs, replacing the truck on its shelf.
I pick it up and hand it right back to her. “You should keep it.”
“I can’t,” she says, eyes widening as if my suggestion has scandalized her. “It belongs to Tom.”
“He won’t even notice it missing. Look at all these cars down here collecting dust. I bet he never even looks at them.”
Giggling, Autumn shakes her head at me and puts the truck back on the shelf. “I’m not going to steal your stepdad’s toy truck.”
“You don’t have to, I’ll steal it for you,” I tell her lightly. “Trust me, he won’t even notice. Hell, I’ll send him a new one if it makes you feel better.”
Still, she shakes her head at me. She must not trust me not to steal the truck as soon as she steps out of the room, because she grabs my hand and hauls me with her. “Stealing is wrong,” she tells me.
“I do lots of things that are wrong, snowflake. I thought you knew that already.”
She reaches into the bathroom and turns the light on with her free hand, then she looks back at me, a playfully severe look on her face. “Will you behave yourself if I let you shower with me?”
“Probably not,” I answer honestly.
Failing to bite back a smile, she says, “You have to.”
I come up behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her back against me. “Remember how much I like being told what to do?”
Her head lolls back against my shoulder, her eyes drifting closed. “Yes, but I’m making the rules tonight.”
I move her hair aside so I can kiss her neck. “I don’t know where you got that idea, but you’re very much mistaken.”
She sighs like I’ve disappointed her, but I can tell she doesn’t mean it. “You’re a real menace sometimes, you know that?”
I smirk and drag my teeth across her sensitive skin. “You have no idea.”
Despite insisting she’s reluctant, she reaches back to cradle my head in her hand, playing