My body relaxed into his and I shared, “I miss them every day.”

His eyes moved over my face as he murmured, “Yeah.”

“Thanksgivings suck. I either go to Florida, where it’s just Mom and me and that’s okay but that isn’t like having a full table with kids being loud and wondering what girl your philandering brother is going to bring to dinner. Or she’s in Australia and I have to find a friend close to mooch dinner from. Those are worse.”

The skin around his eyes went soft and he muttered, “My poor Tess.”

I moved my face a half an inch closer and my fingers tensed into his neck for a second before I said quietly, “I guess what I’m saying is, all this seems like it sucks but it doesn’t. It’s all based in love and history and loyalty so really it’s kind of beautiful because the alternative would be not having any of that and then where would you be?”

Brock didn’t answer. No. Instead, his eyes looked into mine for long moments before his hand slid up in my hair, his body rolled me so I was again on my back, he was again on me, and his mouth had captured mine, and he was delivering a hard, deep, wet kiss that took my breath away.

When he lifted his head, I fought for my breath as well as control of several areas of my body and he asked, “You hungry, babe?”

“Yes,” I breathed because that was the truth. I was. But I was happy to eat later, as in, lunch the next day.

Brock grinned and the sight of it with his handsome face close, his hard body pressed the length of mine, and my lips (and other places besides) still tingling from his kiss, I again lost control of those several areas of my body.

Therefore, to move my mind from him and what he was doing to those places, I blurted, “I think I’ve got Popsicle juice on my back.”

“I’ll pay for the dry cleaning.”

“That’s okay. I kick ass with hand wash.”

He grinned again.

Then he asked, “Snickerdoodles?”

From the look in his eyes I knew that he knew I’d marked they were his favorites.

Therefore, I shrugged and said, “The first time I made them, you ate, like, seven and you gravitate to cinnamon. It doesn’t take a mind reader to figure out you like them.”

He shook his head, still grinning but now muttering, “No games, no lies, no bullshit.”

What could I say? This was true.

So I didn’t say anything.

He did and this was a murmured, “Let’s get you fed.”

He knifed off me, grabbed my hand, pulled me off the couch and into the kitchen.

Then he fed me.

Then he ate three snickerdoodles.

Then he took me to bed.

* * *

Oh God. Oh my God.