I prayed to be struck dead by lightning.
“Anyway, she’s on his timetable, so whenever it is, let Jer know and coordinate with him. Have Ian talk to Stanhope. Your name is mud over there.”
I knew that.
“I don’t want to talk about this again. I just need to know where to show up and when.”
“Yessir.”
“Give my best to Mr. Harrington.”
“Yessir,” I agreed as he hung up.
And it would have mattered, all the little frustrations occurring during the course of a regular day that I used to drag home. But now I was greeted when I walked through the door. There was music playing, and something Cel had made or ordered was making the apartment smell warm and inviting, and if I was the first one home, I’d make sure it was the same when he came in.
Waiting for him in the terminal, my heart was pounding, and I had no idea why. Maybe because he’d never been away and come home before. Back before we were us, I’d pick him up and he’d walk over and give me a hug, and it was nice and friendly. But now we were more, and I had to wonder what that would look like.
There was a stunning man, of course there was, walking next to him, talking, and Cel was listening, but mostly, he was looking for me.
“Oh sorry, excuse me,” he rushed out, and then, with his rolling suitcase in tow, bolted toward me.
I levered off the column I was standing next to, held out my arms, and he let the handle of his suitcase loose and leaped at me. It was not a beautiful one, not a Celso Harrington elegantly executed grand jeté, but to me, it was perfect. I wrapped him up, and his arms wound around my neck, holding me tight.
“Missed you,” he barely got out before he eased back and planted a kiss on me that curled my toes. I belonged to him, and there wasn’t anyone in that terminal who didn’t know it.
“All he talked about was you, mate,” said the guy in a warm Australian accent as he walked away.
I could only smile against Cel’s lips and then close my eyes again as I fell into a kiss that was all tongues and teeth and his lips devouring mine.
In the car he told me everything about his plane ride, because I knew everything else. We’d talked every night on FaceTime, and he learned that I was not a have-sex-over-the-internet kind of guy, and phone sex was not my thing either. I didn’t have his imagination. I needed him there, with me, warm skin next to mine, to engage my mind and body. I learned from him that he liked to fall asleep listening to me breathe.
“That’s weird,”I’d told him.
“I’m used to it already. I like sleeping next to you.”
“Yeah, I like that quite a bit myself.”
“We won’t do this again,” Cel declared. “I don’t want to be separated until we’ve been together at least five years.”
“That sounds about right,” I agreed and then thought of something. “Hey, you didn’t forget to pack your mother’s wind chimes, did you? They aren’t still in the hotel room in Copenhagen?”
“No,” he said, chuckling. “They’re in my suitcase ready to go back where they were, hanging on our balcony.”
I loved that it wasourbalcony.
When we were almost home, I asked him if he was hungry. “We could stop and have dinner, or I could—”
“No,” he said breathlessly, and when I glanced at him, the look I got nearly made me swallow my tongue. The intensity of his stare, the desire and hunger, all of it directed at me, was overwhelming. He wanted me badly.
“Maybe we’ll just go home and go to bed,” I murmured.
“Yes, I—yes.”
“I told my mother she could see you tomorrow, but not tonight. Only I get to see you tonight.”
“Is there any way we could get home faster?” Cel asked hopefully. “Don’t you have a light switch in this thing or something?”
I loved how he loved me, with his whole heart, always right out in the open. I told him that as we reached the front door, and I opened it for him so he could go in first.