Page 42 of Mistletoe Mistake
“What else do you need?” I asked her when I had finished.
Gemma shook her head, her eyes full of warmth as she watched me. “Nothing. I feel great. I'll just rest a bit, if that's okay.”
“Of course. Take as long as you like.”
I lay down beside her, still feeling completely content until a new thought occurred to me and I turned to look at her.
"You would tell me if I pushed you too far, wouldn’t you?" I just realized that we had never really discussed how far we would take this and if she had any limits. Perhaps I should have asked her earlier, but it had all just kind of happened naturally. I hadn't preplanned any of this, and I’d never done anything quite like it before so I didn't have any experience to draw on.
Gemma rolled over onto her side to face me. "Of course. You haven't, so far."
I noted the 'so far'. "Maybe we need a safe word or something?"
Amusement sparked in her eyes, giving them that twinkle that I found so damn sexy. "I've never chosen one before. What do you think of 'finial'?"
The word was so unlikely that I couldn't help smiling. "Are you just choosing a random architecture term, or do you find finials unsexy?"
"Hmm, good point. Finials can actually be very sexy. That might not make me want to stop." She pursed her lips as she thought it over. "Maybe 'cantilever'?"
I couldn't help putting my arms around her and pulling her to me. Her sense of humour and her intelligence made her even more sexy to me. "Whatever you want, Gemma."
We were silent for a moment as she lay with her head against my chest, neither of us speaking until she raised her head to look at me curiously. "A safe word would only be necessary if we were doing this again, wouldn't it?"
She had a point there. What exactly was I suggesting? I didn't know, other than that the idea of not having her in my bed again was even more unthinkable now than it had been the night before. I felt like there were still a million different things I wanted to try with her. To dotoher. To have her do for me.
I decided to be as honest as I could be. "I want to do this again but I still need to have some kind of parameters on it."
When she didn’t say anything in reply, I hoped I hadn't offended her and I tried to clarify my statement.
"It's got nothing to do with you personally, Gemma. I'm just not comfortable with something that's undefined."
"What parameters are you suggesting, then?" Thankfully, she sounded merely curious rather than upset.
"Well, I'm only in town for ten more days. Jackson and I go back to New York next Friday.”
Gemma nodded slowly. "Okay. So, what's your plan?"
"Why don't we extend our deal to cover that period? I'll give you my schedule and you can fill in any events that you want for when I'm available. Afterwards, you can spend the nights here with me. The whole night, I mean. You can bring your clothes and whatever you need from home. It's close to your office, so it shouldn't be inconvenient for you.”
I felt like I was rambling, the words coming out of my mouth before I'd even thought them through, and I had no idea what she would think of my offer. Was it too much? More than she'd been looking for?
To my relief, however, she smiled. "I can agree to that, on one condition."
"What's the condition?" Though I would agree to pretty much anything at that point, I'd been in business too long to not at least ask the question first.
She propped herself up fully onto her elbows, so she could look directly into my eyes. "You have to answer a question for me."
That seemed too easy, so I tried to figure out what the catch was. "What's the question?"
"Why do we have to have a deal? I understand that you do, but I want to understand why. I don't need anything from you, Cole, so why do you need to give me something?"
~Gemma~
I hadn't planned in advance to ask Cole to explain himself, but my curiosity got the better of me. Obviously, it mattered to him that he didn't ‘owe’ me anything, but on the flip side, I had never asked him for anything. Why did he automatically assume that I eventually would? There had to be something behind it, something that had happened to him to make him so insistent on this. Now that he knew nearly everything about me, it only seemed fair that I had some understanding of the things that drove him.
He sat up once I'd asked the question, rubbing his face with his hands, so I sat too, placing my hand gently on his back.
“What difference does it make?” His voice sounded quiet and almost uncertain, not at all like his usual confident self.
