She huffed a soft laugh. “I guess.”

“So we just have to hide out while these people stop by. We’ll keep the lights off, and I’ll just flip you on your stomach while I’m fucking you so you can scream into the pillow.”

Paige gave a lusty sigh and then shook her head. “Won’t work unless we hide my car. And change the locks.”

He pulled back. “They have keys?”

“A few of them. My two sisters do. And one of my friends. She won’t give it up though.”

“Your sisters might?”

“You don’t understand my mother’s powers.”

Actually, he kind of did. In his case, it was his grandmother, but he understood how manipulative a matriarch could be when she really put her mind to it.

“So what’s the solution?”

“I answer the door each time and convince them that nothing is going on and that I was making the guy up and that I’m just a bitch who doesn’t want to do art projects with her niece and nephew.”

He squinted at her.

She laughed. “You’re nice not to ask it out loud, but, yes, they will be able to believe that.”

“Your family will believe that you’re willing to lie to get out of family activities?”

She shrugged. “They think the fact that I like cats better than people is a huge character flaw and they mourn my lack of maternal instinct. They also think that I’m selfish when I don’t want to be Super Aunt. Especially because my other sister Josie is a super aunt. And she’s completely into romance and marriage and family. It took her until age twenty-five to find Mr. Perfect, but she was always hopeful and open to it. So they never gave her any crap about being single and nearing spinster age.” Paige rolled her eyes. “They secretly hope that if I spend time around my sister’s kids that it will flip the biological clock switch in me, but the truth is, I’m not that into kids. Even ones I’m related to.”

He was from a family where everyone helped raise all the kids, and the kids were as close to their aunts and uncles and grandparents as they were to their own parents. In his case, he was closer to his relatives than to his mom and dad. His dad had been a single dad and had happily accepted the help offered from his extended family. Mitch had been an only child but had essentially grown up with a huge family with cousins that felt more like siblings.

His Aunt Hannah had absolutely been like a mother with plenty of influence from his grandmother, her best friend, and his other aunts as well.

He had to admit, as much as he related to Paige not enjoying the nosiness of her family, he didn’t really understand her not wanting to be involved in their lives, at least to an extent.

But it didn’t matter. He didn’t need to know how Paige Asher felt about kids. He needed to know how she felt about incorporating flavored body lotion into foreplay. At most.

“So how’s this going to go?” he asked, focusing on her breasts and hips and the fact that it was awesome that she wasn’t looking at him as potential marriage material.

She rolled her eyes. “Various people will need to borrow something or drop something off, or they’ll claim I wasn’t answering my phone, and they had to know how I felt about something. So we can hang out and make out,” she said with a mischievous smile. “But I’ll have to stay somewhat dressed, and we won’t be able to get totally into it until my grandpa comes and goes.”

“Your grandpa?”

She nodded. “He’s always the last one. Because he’s the one I have the hardest time saying no to. Because he’s actually sweet and sincerely concerned about me. But once he leaves, we should be good.”

“So…” Mitch settled his hands on her hips and brought her close again. “Kind of like the ghosts in A Christmas Carol.”

She looked surprised, then laughed. “How so?”

“Visitors over the course of the evening trying to teach you something.”

She laughed again. “Trying to teach me what exactly?”

“About keeping secrets from your family?”

“Maybe.”

“That they care and just want to be sure you’re okay?”

She narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “Nope. You can’t get soft. If you start to side with them, you’re sleeping at Tori’s tonight.”

He wasn’t worried. He knew she wanted him in her bed. He shook his head. “Can’t. They dropped me off and left me. I’d have to hitchhike. And I don’t have a winter coat,” he added with a grin. “I’d freeze my nuts off. And you like my nuts.”

“I might like them less if you start to sympathize with my busybody relatives.”

He pressed said nuts—more or less—against her. “Nah. You’re addicted.”

“I’ve gone without them for six months.”

“Ridiculous to go without them any longer,” he said with a nod. “I promise not to say nice things about your family as long as you have your mouth or pussy against those nuts.”

Her eyes flared with heat. “Hmm… you drive a hard bargain.”

He pressed his cock against her. “Very hard.” He couldn’t pass that pun up.

She licked her lips and he swore that he got even harder. If that were possible.

“So you’re up for this?” she asked, emphasizing up.

“What I heard you describe was lots of foreplay and creativity with prolonged release,” he said. He dropped his voice. “Basically it means that you’re going to be hot and dripping and desperate by the time you shut and lock that door for the last time. That sounds like a fucking fantastic belated Christmas present with a big old red bow around it, sweetheart.”

She just looked at him for a long moment.

Sweetheart hung in the air between them.

He wondered if she’d call him on it. She didn’t seem like the type to like endearments. She wasn’t soft and sweet and romantic. She was sassy and sexy and fun.

And that’s what he wanted.

Never mind that he had a package of the pancake mix his grandmother’s best friend used in their restaurant in his bag. Just in case Paige would let him make her breakfast in the morning.

“Fine,” she finally said, her voice a little husky. “Then you can stay and help me… kill time… in between visitors.”

“It will be my pleasure.”

3

She was playing with fire. And it was so much fun.

Paige was grinning as she stepped in front of the mirror that hung in her office and straightened her clothes and ran her fingers through her hair.

Mitch was here.

It was going to be a pain now that her mother had smelled a secret, but it was also going to be fun. He hadn’t batted an eye at the idea of multiple relatives stopping by and repeatedly interrupting their naked plans.

Prolonged foreplay sounded pretty great. Frustrating, of course. But great.

They definitely hadn’t done it that way the first time. They’d pretty much made some stupid excuse why they both had to leave the alpaca farm at the same time—yes, they’d met at an alpaca farm—and had barely gotten through her apartment door before they’d ripped each other’s clothes off. They’d been fucking up against her door within five minutes. She hadn’t needed any foreplay. She’d been so, so ready for him.