Page 89 of Hold Your Breath

“Sorry.” He flipped onto his back to lie next to her.

Sucking in a relieved breath, she rotated so her head rested on his belly, her body perpendicular to his. Cal’s hand stroked the damp strands of hair off her face. She focused on the ceiling, feeling the rise and fall of his stomach as he caught his breath. As quiet settled over them, Lou wondered what he was thinking and then immediately wanted to slap that thought right out of her brain. She’d wallowed in enough sex clichés for the evening. His breathing gradually slowed while she concentrated on the view in front of her.

“Your ceiling beams are really pretty.”

“Thank you.”

A silence followed, but it wasn’t awkward. Lou was still unable to resist the urge to break it. Propping herself up on her elbows, she asked, “Want to go to bed and do this again?”

He was on his feet in a second, yanking his jeans and boxer briefs up over his hips so he could walk. “Definitely.”

With a laugh, she accepted his hand so he could help her stand. Instead of stopping once she was upright, he kept her momentum going until she was lying belly down over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

“Not loving this,” she grunted as he headed for the stairs. “You do know that most people who need to be carried like this are unconscious, right?”

Callum just laughed.

Despite the discomfort, she smiled at the sound. Plus, her current position gave her a really good view of his ass. All in all, it wasn’t a bad place to be.

* * *

Sunday morning was, in a word, awesome.

After an active night, they lounged in bed until a slothfully late hour, when hunger drove them to the kitchen. Since pancakes were the one thing that tasted good when she made them, she manned the griddle, wearing one of his flannel shirts. Because it was fuzzy, smelled deliciously like Callum, and kept her warm all the way from her shoulders to her knees, she decided to steal it.

As Callum was a bit possessive about the bacon cooking, she ceded that portion of the preparations to him. That did not, however, mean she didn’t peer over his shoulder and make pithy comments.

“What is that?”

He gave her a how-do-you-not-know-this look. “A bacon screen.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “So…what is that?”

His sigh was deep and long. “It keeps the grease from splattering.”

“Oh. Awesome.” Lou flipped a pancake. She’d tried for a C, but it had spread into more of an oval blob. The L was better—at least itwasuntil she tried to double flip it, and it landed on the edge of the griddle, permanently disfiguring the pancake.

“It is. This way, I don’t have to clean the stove after I make bacon.”

She nudged him aside so she could open the oven door and pull out the pan of cooked pancakes. “But you’ll clean the stove anyway.”

He didn’t deny it.

She added the blobby C and mutilated L to the stack of pancakes and slid them back into the oven to stay warm. “So now you’ll have to clean the stoveandthe grease screen?”

“What’s your point?” He sounded a bit snappish.

“Nothing.” The corners of her mouth tucked in as she fought her grin. Leaning closer, she hooked a finger in the waistband of his jeans and tugged. His eyebrow went up in question, but he allowed himself to be drawn closer to her. Standing on her tippy toes, she gave him a quick, light kiss and then released him.

“What was that for?” His voice was much warmer now. Apparently, kissing canceled out the criticism of his grease screen.

“Just ’cause I felt like it.”

“Yeah?” It was his turn to tug her toward him. “Well, I feel like it, too.”

His kiss was not quick, nor was it light. It was deep and hard and thorough, and left her leaning against the counter, panting for breath when he finally released her. Grinning, he returned to his bacon.

“Whoa,” she muttered under her breath, fanning herself with the spatula she still held in her numb fingers.