Page 72 of Carry on Wayward Son

I blew out a breath. “At the risk of putting the full burden on you—as little as possible? I don’t want to ruin her Christmas with worry. I’ll come clean after. Okay?”

“I can agree to that.” A pause. “I love you, Layla. You stay safe. You come home.”

“I will. Love you too, Daddy.”

I sat for a moment after I hung up, absorbing the call—what it had cost and what it had given back, Koa’s head still warm and heavy in my lap. The fear had taken up so much space for so long that its absence left a kind of quiet I needed a moment to adjust to.

He wasn’t mad. He was worried. He was always going to be worried. But he understood me well enough to understand why I’d done it, and he loved me well enough to say so, and that was everything.

A knock sounded at the door.

I opened it to find Willa, Gabi, and Madden standing on the front step with the collective energy of women who had decided something was happening.

“We heard you need a dress,” Willa said. “For a New Year’s Eve party.”

“This calls for a shopping trip,” Gabi announced.

Madden was tapping at her phone. “There’s a boutique in Manteo that’s supposed to be good. I already looked up the hours.”

I stood in the doorway and looked at these three women who had pulled me into their orbit without asking and kept me there. Something tightened in my throat that I wasn’t going to examine too closely right now.

When had I last had this? Not colleagues, not the careful professional friendships that came and went with cases, but actual women who showed up at my door because I needed a dress and they’d decided to make it an event.

“Let me get my purse.”

Thirty-Seven

JACE

I slept better with Layla beside me.

That was the simple truth of it, and I’d stopped pretending otherwise somewhere around the third night we’d shared a bed. Something in me that usually ran a low-level scan of the room quieted when she was within arm’s reach, which made no operational sense and was apparently happening regardless.

Convincing her to stay at Sutter House on Christmas Eve had taken some negotiation. She didn’t want to intrude. I insisted it wasn’t intruding. She was used to her own space. I pointed out that Sutter House had plenty of space. She’d given me the look and said, fine, and I’d counted it as a win.

I woke before she did, which was unusual. Though it wasn’t yet light out, I recognized the pre-dawn hush when all the night creatures went to bed in advance of the day. Layla snuggled warm against my side, her hair loose across the pillow, her breathing deep and even. I lay still and looked at the ceiling and thought about the woman asleep next to me and the seventeen things I would rather be doing than lying here thinking. They all seemed like fantastic ways to start Christmas Day. A gift to both of us.

So thinking, I lightly trailed a finger along her arm. She stirred a little. I knew there was a fine line between seducing her awake and risking her coming up swinging. There’d be no sneaking beneath the covers to feast her awake. Someday. Maybe. In a hazy future I wasn’t letting myself imagine. For now, I was content to touch and stroke her skin, along the lines of the tattoos it wasn’t yet bright enough to see, but that I’d memorized all the same.

A low hum rumbled from the back of her throat, and she shifted toward me, her pebbled breasts pressing into my chest, my already hard cock notching between her thighs. I couldn’t stop myself from arching, shifting myself higher as my hand slid from her shoulder, down the curve of her back to her firmly muscled ass. As my fingers cupped the shape of it, her hips canted toward me, her legs widening just enough that my erection slid through her wet folds.

On another hum, she opened her eyes.

“Merry Christmas,” I murmured.

“Merry Christmas.” Her voice was rough with sleep, thick with fresh desire.

I dipped my head to take her mouth. On a sigh, she melted into me. Neither of us shifted to change the angle or speed up, though I ached to be inside her. We just kept at the easy, patient rocking back and forth through her wetness, just over her clit. I felt the tension gathering in her body and wanted to draw it out, take her up again⁠—

The thud of footsteps pounded down the hall, and Willa’s voice rang out, “It’s Christmas!” at a volume that suggested she’d been awake for some time. “Jace! Layla! Wake up! It’s Christmas!”

With a groan, I buried my face against Layla’s shoulder. “It’s not like Santa came.”

Her laugh started somewhere in her chest and worked its way up. “No, but if Sawyer woke up in the same mood as you this morning, Willa might have. She might feel that’s reason to celebrate.”

“Hush, you.” I lifted my face. “I’m trying very, very hard not to think about the fact that my sister has a sex life.”

She was laughing properly now, her hand moving through my hair with an easy affection that I felt all the way down. “Later, sailor. We can always slip out to my place to finish this later.”