Full hart, p.23
Full Hart, page 23
Brock nodded. “Brother and sister.”
Thea seemed satisfied with that reply.
All the mothers, including Heath’s, were very vocal in educating the children—boys and girls—about human rights, women’s rights, and democracy. They all had copies of the children’s book I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsberg Makes Her Mark in their households, and it was read to the kids multiple times a week.
Zoe nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah! Cocoa Bader Ginsberg!”
“I guess that’s settled,” Krista said, joining her husband and children as they all sat down on the floor and started petting the puppy.
“Well, that was a lot of excitement, wasn’t it?” Heath’s mother said, standing up from where she’d been sitting in her chair and bending down to grab a present from under the tree.
She began handing them out around the room until everyone had a present.
Rex had a hold on Diesel’s collar just in case he got the inclination to run through the crowd to go introduce himself to the latest canines in the family.
Nobody was worried about how Diesel would be with the puppies, just that he was big and his tail had a mind of its own. Once the excitement wore down, they’d take the dogs into the backyard so they could meet each other properly.
“Everybody got a gift?” Heath’s mother asked.
They all nodded.
“Okay, then … and … open,” she announced.
Heath’s gift was from his mother. It was a nice sweater. Each of his brothers got ones similar.
Heath murmured out of the side of his mouth to Rex. “Have Mum and Brock spoken yet today?”
Rex shook his head. “They got here after we did, and it’s been awkward. They’ve just been avoiding each other. At least it’s easy enough to do with a houseful of people, but still. It’s Christmas.”
Heath nodded and let his gaze wander over to where his big brother was rubbing Cocoa’s belly and smiling as he did it. His wife lifted her head, and Brock and Krista exchanged looks, then she rested her hand on his bulky shoulder and squeezed.
What was all that about?
Slowly, but efficiently, they made their way through the heaping pile of gifts until only a few remained.
Heath and Pasha hadn’t exchanged at home, but he also wasn’t sure if he wanted her to open and explain her gift out loud.
Another gift was placed into his wife’s lap—his gift.
She recognized his handwriting and lifted an eyebrow at him in curiosity.
He grinned back at her and mouthed, “Open it later.”
She replied with a nod and then set the gift aside. He’d already opened his gift from her, which was sweatpants, T-shirts, and food. So, in other words, the best fucking present ever.
“Grant!” Heath’s mother exclaimed, drawing all their attention. “What is the meaning of this?”
The room fell silent.
Grant, ever the calm, cool, and collected presence among their incessant chaos, actually appeared a little flustered. What on Earth had he given their mother?
“You said it’s been forever since you went away on vacation, Joy. So this here is an all-inclusive of your choice. I’m not taking no for an answer. I’ll fly us there. You just pick the place—within the continent, of course, because I can’t fly a helicopter to Tahiti. But if you want to go to Tahiti, I’ll book us a flight. No place is off-limits. But I can only fly us where I can fly a helicopter from Victoria.”
Heath’s mother’s eyes welled up with tears. “You bringing my boys home for Christmas was my gift. That’s all I wanted. This is too much.”
A throat cleared behind them all. “No, it’s not,” Brock said quietly. He’d stood up and was standing toward the back of the room.
Their mother’s gaze narrowed, and everyone turned to face Brock.
He glanced down at Krista, and she gave him an encouraging nod from her spot on the floor, reached for his hand and squeezed it.
“It’s not too much, Mum, because you deserve it all. You deserve happiness. You deserve love and companionship. You deserve to feel the kind of love that I feel for my wife. That we all feel for our spouses. You had that, and it was robbed from you too soon, and you shouldn’t be punished and denied that love again because Dad died and your son is a jackass. You deserve to be treated the way Grant treats you and to be taken on a vacation. You gave up so much for us as kids. And you deserve to have the fun you sacrificed for all those years.”
Heath’s oldest brother stepped forward between all the adults, children, dogs, gifts, and wrapping paper scattered across the living-room floor. He held out his hand for Grant.
“I’m sorry I was such an asshole—to both of you. Grant, you literally saved Christmas, you make my mother happy, and because my brothers and I are here today with our families, you’ve made it impossible for me to hate you.”
Tears streamed down their mother’s face as she laughed at that last bit.
Grant stood up and took Brock’s hand. “Joy’s lucky to have such protective sons who love her as much as you four do.”
“And she’s lucky to have a man who loves her as much as you do,” Brock said in his own grumbly way. “I’m sorry for the issues I’ve caused.” He pinned his gaze on their mother. “I’m sorry for what I said, Mum. All of it. You know it wasn’t true.”
Brock and Grant released their hands just as their mother lunged from her chair, wrapped her arms around Brock’s neck and tugged him down for a hug.
Several of the women were sniffling, but leave it to Heath’s son Raze for comic relief. He walked up to Heath and very loudly exclaimed, “I go poop!”
Pasha closed the bedroom door with the baby monitor in her hand. She’d just managed to get Eve down for a nap after nursing for what felt like forever. She was pretty sure the kid had drained both tanks well over forty minutes ago and was just using Pasha’s tits as a pacifier.
But whatever.
The baby was napping, and that was all that mattered.
Raze was off with his cousins, getting up to holiday mischief, and Pasha was going to take this rare opportunity of being alone in a house full of people to open the gift from her husband. She wandered into one of the other empty bedrooms and sat down on the bed.
It wasn’t a very big gift. About the size of a brick. It also wasn’t very heavy.
He’d done a horrible job of wrapping it—like he always did with presents. The man could do a lot of skilled things with those fingers, but wrapping presents did not seem to be one of them. His tape was all twisted; his corners were bunchy and crinkly.
It made her giggle and smile at the thought of him trying to wrap the thing and the grunting and swearing that must have taken place.
Once she got the tape free, she ripped the paper and set it beside her on the bed.
It was a booklet.
A handmade, or better put, a professionally designed—by a graphic designer—coupon book. And she just so happened to be married to a man who moonlighted as a graphic designer.
In addition to fighting bad guys and guarding A-list celebrities, Heath had a graphic design side hustle. He mostly made book covers for romance authors, but the man could do anything if he put his mind to it.
And it appeared as though he had put his mind to a coupon book.
Was it for blowies and butt sex? Because if that was the case, he could go sleep in the garage.
For a moment, she allowed herself to appreciate the beauty of the book. Mandalas and lotuses, ornate sketched designs she knew he had probably done himself. He was so talented in so many different things.
The fact that he was complete shit at wrapping presents actually made her feel better. He wasn’t perfect.
She knew he wasn’t perfect already, but the fact that he was actually really terrible at something just humanized him all the more. Made her love him even harder.
She turned the first page of the book.
This coupon is good for: One back rub.
Page two. This coupon is good for: One night where the sex is ALL about you. Sit on my face all night if you want.
She giggled at that last bit. That coupon was as much for him as it was for her. He loved it when she sat on his face.
Page three. This coupon is good for One sixty-minute foot massage.
Oh, Mama. Yes, please. Where was this coupon three months ago when she was massively pregnant with Eve?
She flipped through the rest of the book. It was many more of the same, with a few more creative things thrown in. There were also a few girls’ nights and weekends away where he had the kids. All just really thoughtful things that she knew she would never need a coupon for, she could just simply ask, but the fact that he knew she needed these things was what mattered.
The last page of the book was the big one though. This coupon is good for: A weekend away with your husband. No kids. No distractions. Just us.
A shiver ran through her at just how perfect the gift was. At just how perfectly perfect for her Heath was.
As hard as the wait had been for him, he never pressured her.
He waited until her body was ready.
Until her mind was ready.
Well, now they were both ready. They were both more than ready.
With the coupon book in her hand, she left the bedroom, found Krista, handed her the baby monitor, told her to make sure Raze stayed alive, then went on the hunt for her husband.
Chapter 24
Heath & Pasha
Heath was in the garage grabbing the gravy his mother had made yesterday. She had gotten in the habit of cooking the turkey, stuffing, and gravy the day before and then just reheating everything. That way, she wasn’t stuck in the kitchen nonstop preparing the food, and the house didn’t overheat with the oven on all day.
She was a smart woman, his mother.
One of the smartest.
Bent over and sifting through all the containers and covered bowls, he barely registered the garage door into the house being opened.
But he did hear the snick of the lock being set.
Normally, deadbolts were on the other side of garage doors. But for security purposes, Brock had installed a lock on the inside of the garage. In case an intruder entered the house, their mother could run to the garage, lock herself inside, then escape that way.
“I opened my present,” came Pasha’s voice.
He grinned and let go of the container, stood up to his full height, closed the fridge door, and turned to face her. “Yeah?”
She bit her lip and slowly, provocatively walked toward him.
Instantly, his cock twitched in his dress pants and his heart rate picked up speed.
“And?” he asked, knowing that look in her eyes and feeling a pang of melancholy over how long it’d been since he’d seen it.
She wanted him.
Finally.
She wanted them.
Together.
Finally.
She reached him and stopped when they were toe to toe. “Coupons didn’t have an expiry date.”
“Because neither does our marriage.”
That made her grin.
And her grin made him hard.
Her smile faltered slightly, her gaze left his, and her hand slid to cover the slight swell of her belly. Her fupa, as she called it.
What a horrible fucking term.
If Heath wasn’t preparing to give his wife her present right now, he’d go off and find the idiot that coined that term and given them a real ass-kicking.
But he had better things to do.
Better people, and a better woman to do.
“You have a lot of dirty one-liners collecting dust in the queue?” she asked, having seemed to slightly rally her mood and toss on another smile.
He nodded emphatically. “But I won’t hit you with all of them.”
She placed her hand on her hip and lifted a brow in a sassy challenge. “Gimme a few.”
Giddy like he’d just been told he was going to have a threesome with his wife and his wife from another dimension, he nodded. “Knock knock?”
“Who’s there?”
“Ice cream.”
“Ice cream, who?”
“I’ll scream your name all night long if you lick my cone.”
She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Oh man. Lack of sex makes your jokes even cornier than normal.”
He was inclined to disagree, but he didn’t bother to say that out loud. “You’re like the roads after a snowstorm.”
“Slippery when wet?”
Heath threw his head back and barked out a laugh. “I was going to say, in need of a good plowing, but yours is better.”
She merely grinned.
“Last one.”
“Okay, make it good.”
He stroked his chin for a moment, running through the long list of dirty one-line jokes he’d come up with in the last several months that just hadn’t felt right saying out loud to Pasha. “Okay, I got it. If you were a pumpkin, I’d pick you.”
A cute, sweet smile lifted one side of her mouth. But then her eyebrow lifted too. She knew this was too good to be true. “And?”
She knew him too well.
“And I don’t have to cut you open to feel your soft, wet insides.” He wiggled his finger in the air, stuck out his tongue, and bit it.
She lunged forward and swatted his arm. “That’s gross.”
But they were both laughing.
Fuck, he loved her laugh. Loved it so much.
“Which coupon would you like to redeem?” he asked as their chuckles ebbed. He took the coupon book from her hand and flipped through it. He held up the one where it said: Good for one “snack” anytime anywhere. “I am starving. I know that table of apples and snacks is loaded out there, but you know what my favorite meal is.”
She bit her lip again.
He flipped through the coupon book some more and stopped at another one. “How about this one? Good for one dirty quickie, no questions asked. I don’t even have to get off.” His eyes widened. “You ready for that?”
Slowly, her head bobbed. “I’m ready for all of it. I want my husband. I want him to eat me to within an inch of my life, then fuck me until we both come. Then I want us to go home and do it again tonight.”
Now it was his turn to smile wide. “Are you telling me you’re stacking your coupons?”
She lifted a shoulder, causing the wide-necked, billowy black sweater she was wearing to slip off one shoulder and expose her black bra strap.
He didn’t bother to hide his groan. Even his wife’s creamy, soft shoulder got him going.
“Didn’t say anywhere on there that I couldn’t stack my coupons.”
He glanced back down at the coupon book and made a “tsk-tsk” sound. “Whoever made this forgot to include some fine print.”
With a giggle, she lunged forward, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him.
He set the book on the workbench behind him and wrapped his arms around her waist, deepening the kiss, spreading her lips with his tongue to take full possession of her mouth.
She tasted like eggnog and gingerbread.
They kissed for a few minutes, but when she started to grind her pelvis against his very obvious erection and dropped her hands to his zipper, he pulled away, waggling his finger at her and saying, “Tut-tut.”
Her brows furrowed, and her nose wrinkled.
He took her hand and walked them both around his mother’s Corolla, stopping in front of the big full-length mirror on the wall. On warm summer days, his mother would pull her car out of the garage and do workouts in the shade and in front of the mirror. She had a treadmill in the basement and all her workout gear there, but she said she also liked the breeze and fresh air, so sometimes she worked out in the garage.
“Take off your clothes,” Heath ordered. Both of them were standing and looking straight ahead into the mirror.
Still facing the mirror, she flicked her gaze up at him.
“Trust me,” he said gently.
With her lips pinned tight and a slightly annoyed look on her face, she nodded and slid her dark gray pants over her thighs, removing her socks with them.
The garage floor was chilly, so he snagged a dark blue yoga mat he found in the corner, unrolled it, and folded it beneath her feet so she had some cushion and a barrier between her skin and hard concrete.
Her shirt was long enough that it covered the apex of her thighs.
He watched as she studied herself and her lips curled up in critical appraisal.
This would not do.
She needed to know how fucking gorgeous she was. How fucking gorgeous he thought she was. How badly he still wanted her.
“Now the shirt. And the panties and the bra. All of it.”
Another glance at him by way of the mirror. “When I came in here, this wasn’t what I was expecting, Heath. I just—”
“You’ve stacked your coupons. You’re getting the VIP treatment. And if you read the invisible fine print, you’d see that the VIP treatment involves one-on-one attention from the CEO himself. And that’s me. So just soak it up, woman.” He wiggled his fingers in the mirror to indicate she needed to get a move on.
With a sigh, she lifted the shirt over her head. Her nose instantly wrinkled again, and her lips curled up as she criticized herself.
“I want you naked, Pash.”
Her throat rolled on a swallow, but she complied.
First the panties, then finally her black maternity bra with the clip on the straps to bring the cup down so baby had easy access.
Once she was fully naked and standing in front of the mirror, he picked up her clothing, folded it all and set it on the hood of his mother’s car. Then he wandered around to stand in front of her, but slightly to the side so that she could still see herself in the mirror. The garage wasn’t cold, but she was naked, and he watched as gooseflesh raced across her arms and her chest until her body couldn’t handle it anymore and shivered.
“Heath …” she started to protest.
“Enough.”
Her mouth snapped shut.
“Tell me all the places on your body that you don’t like. Touch them.”
