Ignoring the little voice urging him to stay, he extracted his arm, praying she didn’t wake. They were going to have to have a conversation about last night at some point, but he sure as hell didn’t want it to be now. She stirred a little, muttering something nonsensical before turning away from him, rolling in the opposite direction, exposing her back and her naked ass to his view.

Grady’s dick twitched, and he shook his head. Get your butt out of bed, man.

Now!

All but leaping off the mattress, Grady was out of Suzanne’s room and in and out of his, dressed and ready for work, in ten minutes flat. It was still dark outside, but the house was fully lit as he paused in the archway to the living room, grimacing anew at the assault to his senses from the Christmas overdose. The room blazed with light, from the wagon-wheel chandelier to the epileptic blinking of both the lights on the Christmas tree and the ones wrapped around the outside of the cabin, flashing like some giant fucking bat signal.

But the lights weren’t the only thing that had been neglected in their rush to bed last night. Trays of unfrosted dick cookies sat on the kitchen bench, and the pile of ash in the fireplace reminded him he hadn’t even banked the fire.

“Christ,” he muttered, shaking his head at his careless behavior.

The whole goddamn cabin could have caught alight and burned to the ground in minutes, what with all the goddamn tinsel acting as an accelerant.

A noise to his right distracted him, and Grady glanced over to find Zoom taking a swim. “Hey, Zoom.” He took the two paces to the tank, reaching for the pellets as he made eye contact with the turtle. Zoom bobbed around, his head above water, his beady little eyes fixed firmly on Grady. Eyes that seemed to say, I know what you did last night.

That would teach them to make out on the kitchen bench in full view of an impressionable turtle.

“Give me a break, dude,” he said as he dropped in a handful of food. “I didn’t plan it.”

Zoom made no attempt to go after the food, just kept staring at Grady with what he swore was a little turtle lip curl. “Hey, man, don’t judge me. She was making dick cookies.”

Grady’s stomach grumbled at the thought. Ordinarily he’d have had two cups of coffee by now and made himself some eggs and beans on toast with a side of hash browns. But, ordinarily, he’d have woken an hour ago. Alone.

This was no ordinary morning. Hell, nothing about these past two weeks had been ordinary.

Zoom, however, didn’t stop with the judgment, and they stared each other down for long moments. “What? Just because she’s fed you occasionally, she gets a pass?”