I finally snapped in one of the kitchen aisles at the local IKEA.

“We don’t need a freaking orange peeler! Who uses an orange peeler? It’s ridiculous!” I was griping at him, waving the offending peeler in the air while he watched me in amusement. “People have been peeling oranges for hundreds of years, and they’ve never needed one of these stupid things!”

“Not sure why a ninety-nine cent peeler has got your panties in a twist, Sugar,” he mumbled at me quietly.

“Because it’s a waste! Ninety-nice cents here, two ninety-nine there—it freaking adds up, Asa! I’m never going to be able to pay you back for all of this!” I hissed in frustration as I willed tears of embarrassment to stop forming at the back of my eyes.

“I didn’t ask you to pay me back,” he told me, his jaw tight and his eyes angry. “Never once did I tell you that you were paying me back for a goddamn thing.”

“I know that,” I replied, “but you just keep buying things that I don’t really need and it’s making me crazy! I don’t need a coffee table. God, I don’t even need a couch! I can just sit on my bed when I’m home…”

His voice was still slightly pissed off as he reached up and grabbed my chin, lifting my face so he could look directly into my eyes as he spoke, “We need a couch because I wanna sit on the fuckin’ couch when I come home.”

“Home?”

“Yes, home. I might not be living there full time, but me and you? We’re making a fuckin’ home. With a comfortable couch, that we will not be buying here because these couches are too fuckin’ small, and a big-ass TV that I can watch Westerns on. And we’re gonna buy anything you need to cook and organize shit the way you like it. Because, baby? I’m gonna be gone a lot, and I want to know that when I’m gone, you’re going home to a fuckin’ comfortable house where you can relax and feel safe.”

I stared at him for a moment, sifting through everything he’d just said and trying to find an appropriate response, but the only thing I could think of was, “Westerns?”

“Really? That’s all you got?”

“Are you sixty-five?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Do we need to get one of those denture containers for you to put your teeth in at night?”

“Callie…”

“I think we need to go a few aisles back for something like that…wait, do we need to call AARP and make sure they’ve got your change of address?”

I squeaked as he moved toward me, trying to scoot around the cart so I could use it as a barrier, but I couldn’t escape him. He was too quick, and soon I was in his arms and he was tickling my neck with his beard.

“You think you’re so funny,” he grumbled into my throat, his chin digging into my shoulder.

“Westerns!” I hooted, pushing at his shoulder and gaining the attention of the shoppers around us.

My hoot made him redouble his efforts and we knocked into shelves as we scrambled into a position that left little room between our bodies. One of my arms had pushed up his chest and over his shoulder while the other wrapped around his trim waist, my fingers clenched into the back of his belt. I was breathing heavily, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to pull up on his jeans and give him a wedgie, like I would’ve done if he was Cody, or take the safer route of dragging the gray beanie from his head in an attempt to annoy him.

It was all giggling and growling until he opened his mouth against my neck and bit down playfully.

My breath caught in my throat and I froze mid-wiggle. I was suddenly hyperaware of every place our bodies touched, the scrape of his beard on my collarbone, and the heat of his breath on the side of my neck. I no longer thought anything was funny, and by the way his growl turned into a deep moan and he bit down harder and start to suck, he didn’t either.

Then I wasn’t thinking of anything.

His arms tightened around me as I felt my eyes falling to half-mast, barely registering a couple starting down the aisle only to quickly move the other way. He pushed his foot in between mine, never letting up on the suction at my neck as he positioned us so that I was just barely straddling his thigh. I was trying to find my balance in our new position, holding back whimpers in my throat and trying to remember why we shouldn’t be doing what we were doing in a very public store when he used the hand at my hips to rock me against him and the one on my back to catch my hair and tilt my head back.

I won the fight against whimpering and stayed silent—but I couldn’t stop my hand from sliding away from his neck and into his beanie, gripping his hair tightly in my fist as I took over the rocking motion with my hips.

I’m not sure what would have happened if an employee hadn’t interrupted us, asking us to cease and desist or she was going to call security. I stumbled back slightly in embarrassment, my face burning as I gaped at Asa’s smug face.

“No need to call security, ma’am. I think she’s learned her lesson,” he told the employee dismissively, grabbing a hold of our cart and sauntering away.

He freaking sauntered away.

I didn’t saunter. I shuffled … with my proverbial tail between my legs.

We were quiet as Asa grabbed the last few things he wanted from the store. I was still completely mortified, scanning the area around us for the employee who’d verbally bitch-slapped me from my Asa fog. God, I never wanted to see her again. How humiliating.