Page 40 of Down, Boy

Biscuit appears in the doorway, regarding me with the solemn judgment only a rescue mutt can deliver. His expression clearly says you're still here?

"Morning to you too, buddy," I whisper.

He huffs and disappears back down the hallway. I hear the click of dog nails on hardwood, then the jingle of tags as he settles into what I'm guessing is his bed in the living room.

At least one male in this house has standards.

Callie stirs against me, making a small sound that does unreasonable things to my chest. Her eyes flutter open, green and sleep-soft, and for a second she just looks at me like she's trying to remember if last night was real.

"Hi," she says.

"Hi yourself."

"You're still here."

"That a problem?"

"Biscuit seems to think so."

"Biscuit has opinions about everything, I'm guessing."

"Strong ones." She stretches, and the sheet slips lower, and I make a heroic effort to maintain eye contact like a gentleman.

"You’re doing the face," she says.

"What face?"

"The gentleman face. The one where you look at the ceiling and think about baseball."

"I was thinking about flight vectors, actually."

"Liar." She hooks a finger in the sheet I am nobly not looking at and pulls it down another inch, watching me the whole time with those sleep-soft eyes gone distinctly not sleepy at all. "You know what the best part of last night was?"

"I have a list. It’s ranked."

"The best part"—she walks two fingers up my chest, slow, like she’s got all morning, which neither of us has checked whether she does—"is that you stopped performing. Somewhere around the second time, the whole air show just... landed. And it turns out I like the man more than the pilot."

I catch her hand and press it flat over my heart, which is not being subtle about any of this. "The man would like to state for the record that he has nowhere to be."

"The man," she says, swinging a leg over me, settling with a small sigh that rearranges every plan I’ve ever made, "talks too much."

Morning is different. That’s the thing I file away while the gold light moves over her and she moves over me—last night was a storm breaking, all urgency and disbelief, and this is the opposite of that. Slow. Unhurried. Her hair falls around us like a curtain when she leans down to kiss me, and she tastes like sleep and yesterday’s wine, and when I slide my hands up her thighs she hums against my mouth like I’ve said something worth agreeing with.

"Still with me, flyboy?" she murmurs.

"Present and accounted for."

She sinks down onto me and we both stop being clever.

I let her set the pace, because it’s hers to set—slow at first, luxurious, her palms braced on my chest, her eyes on mine with a directness that would’ve scared me two weeks ago and now just feels like the truest conversation we’ve had. The light catches the line of her throat when her head tips back. I memorize it. I’m memorizing all of it, every catch of her breath, every small sound she makes when I roll my hips to meet her, because some part of me already knows this morning is going to matter—that whatever gets decided in the next few days, THIS is the thing I’ll be deciding for.

"Dean." My name, soft and broken open, and her rhythm’s going ragged now, and my control goes with it. I sit up, wrap my arms around her, and hold her chest to chest as we move together, her forehead dropping to mine, both of us breathing the same air like there isn’t enough of it in the room.

"I’ve got you," I tell her, and mean it about more than this.

She comes apart quietly this time—a shudder, a gasp, my name—and the sound of it pulls me right over the edge after her, and for a long minute we just stay like that, tangled and upright and wrecked, her heartbeat hammering against mine like applause.

"Okay," she says finally, into my shoulder. "The morning version is also good. Noted. Logged. Filed."