“Maybe it’ll be even better,” I suggest hopefully.

“Only one way to find out,” he says.

Right before he kisses me yet again.

Seventeen

Amelia

I breeze into Sweet Dreams as if I don’t have a care in the world. Wait in the tremendously long line that would usually send me into a tailspin of frustration. Instead, I stand there happily humming along with the overly cheerful holiday tunes playing overhead, smiling at everyone who passes me by.

They smile in return, and I realize everyone is smiling and happy this morning like me. Do they have the Christmas spirit? Or are all of them in such a good mood because they had the best sex of their life last evening?

Because that’s why I’m smiling.

I bow my head, my smile growing for no reason. Well, there is a reason. I’m thinking of last night. With Isaac. He was insatiable. Then again, so was I. We used up every one of those condoms in my bedside table—thank you, Candice, for providing them. We also did things that didn’t involve condoms, and that was fun too.

He reluctantly left my bed at five in the morning, the poor baby.

“Gotta get home and change and go to work,” he told me as he slipped on his shirt, hiding all of those glorious muscles from my view.

Such a disappointment.

“So early?” I asked.

He nodded, just before he grabbed his jeans and tugged those on, stumbling around in the semi-darkness of my bedroom. “I’ll text you later and we can get together. Cool?”

Of course I agreed. He grinned happily and delivered a searing kiss to my lips that left me tingling everywhere. I shoved him from me before we got too carried away.

A sigh leaves me. That’s the perfect way to describe me and Isaac. We get too carried away.

It’s wonderful.

“You are way too happy this morning,” Stella says when she spots me standing in line. Only two more to go until I can make my order. She’s working the espresso machine as per usual.

“Christmas is almost here,” I call to her, beaming. “Shouldn’t we all be happy?”

“Some people hate Christmas,” Stella says, getting a few grousing words of agreement from other customers. “And some don’t celebrate it at all.”

“True,” I say, bouncing on my toes. I’m not going to argue with her. She’s right. Why, just yesterday I hated Christmas. It’s a horrible, commercial holiday created just to push people into spending too much money they don’t have buying unnecessary gifts for the ungrateful people in their lives.

But that was the Amelia of yesterday. I’m a new person today. Reborn. Sexually alive and sparkling with vitality, damn it. I’ve had an awakening.

It’s all thanks to a certain man named Isaac.

Isaac with the sexy hands and the sweet smile and the sinful mouth.

Oh God, I’ve got it really, really bad right now.

“What’s your deal?” Stella asks me.

I startle when I realize she’s standing right next to me. “Why aren’t you behind the counter?”