“Are you being naughty again, baby boy?” I follow Lily’s infectious laughter and find her with my shoe in one hand. The other hand scratches Samson’s wiggling belly. His tongue lolls out of his mouth as he glances over, and I swear the little fucker is laughing at me.
I glance at Stella and Snowflake, who are curled up on the rug in front of the roaring fire. “Shouldn’t you two be teaching the new guy some manners?”
Snowflake wags his tail and gives a soft woof. Stella, being Stella, closes her eyes, ignoring me completely.
“Aw, he’s just learning.” Lily gives him one final belly scratch, then orders him to go lie down beside his better-behaved canine siblings. I fight the urge to snarl when he does so without hesitation. Damn dog only listens to her and Zeke. It’s like he’s deaf to all voices that aren’t theirs, especially Xander’s and mine. “I got your shoe back.” She holds it out to me, a devious grin on her beautiful face.
Disgusted, I scowl at the slobber dripping from the sole. “I’ll buy a new pair.”
That makes her laugh harder, and she places the offending item on the floor. “I’ll clean it off later. It’ll be fine.” She wipes her hands on her red flannel pants.
My eyes roam her perfect body, hardly any of which I can currently see thanks to the aforementioned red flannel. “The fuck are you wearing, princess?”
“My Christmas pajamas.” She smiles brighter than the Christmas lights surrounding her.
I brush her dark curls back from her forehead. “You’re fucking adorable, you know that?”
A sweet pink flush stains her cheeks. Despite how she’s turned into an even bigger brat than Xander and all the filthy ways we fuck her, she still blushes so innocently when I compliment her. “You’re not really mad at Samson, are you?” She flutters her eyelashes.
I glance over my shoulder at the snoring Saint Bernard mix she brought home six weeks ago after someone left him tied up outside her building for an entire day. He wasn’t chipped, but I was convinced someone would claim him. Now I know why nobody did. He’s a menace.
But he’s our menace now. “No.” I sigh. “Who can be mad at that giant ball of slobber and fur?”
She giggles, and I sit on the floor beside her. Leaning back against the sofa, I pull her onto my lap. “Just please tell me you don’t plan on filling our gorgeous home with dogs.”
She bites down on her lip and looks up at the ceiling as she hums softly. Six months ago, we bought a house in the Hamptons, right on Wainscott Beach. We wanted somewhere we could switch off from the city on the weekends, but we’ve spent almost all our time here since. There’s something about having all four of us here that makes it feel like home in a way that nowhere else ever has. “I’m not sure I can make such an insane promise,” she finally says with a shrug. “I mean what if I find another poor stray who has nowhere else to go?”
“Wrong answer, princess.” Tickling her and nuzzling her neck, I soak in the music of her laughter. Who am I kidding? Our girl could bring home every stray in New York and none of us would do a thing to stop her.
She squeals and squirms in my arms, and I stop torturing her in favor of relaxing with her in my arms. Peace envelops me the way it so often does when she’s near. I glance at the twelve-foot fir near the fireplace, decorated in red and gold. “The tree looks beautiful.”
“Thank you. Xander and Zeke helped.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Zeke?”
She laughs. “Mostly Xander.”
I drop a kiss on her forehead. “Where are they?”
“I left them fooling around upstairs about fifteen minutes ago.”
“Oh?” I nip her neck and slide my hand beneath her pajama shirt. “So I have you all to myself?”
“Seems like,” she whispers. “Those two were super hot for each other.”
One of the many things I love about her is that she’s never threatened by our relationships with each other. “You didn’t want to join in?”
She shrugs. “The dogs needed feeding, and they seemed to be doing just fine without me. So I finished off the lights on the tree. Anyway”—she tugs on my tie, pulling me closer—“you’re home late, Mr. Archer.”
I run my nose over her sweet-smelling throat. “I was tying up a lot of loose ends so I won’t have to work until after the new year.”
Her eyes widen. “Really?”
I shake my head. “I won’t so much as open my laptop.”
Rolling her eyes, she swats my shoulder. “Liar.”
Flipping her over, I position her across my knee and spank her. The dogs glance over at her squeal, but immediately go back to ignoring us. They’re used to their mom getting her ass spanked and squealing like a brat. “Did you just call me a liar and roll your eyes, princess?” I smack her ass again.
“You two having fun without us?” I turn my head and grin at Zeke. Xander ambles in beside him.
When I pull Lily back up to a sitting position, her cheeks are as red as her pajamas. “Well, I was about to.”
“You bring our gifts?” Xander asks me with a knowing smile.
“I did. They’re in my briefcase in the hall.”
“But all the gifts are under the big tree in the living room,” Lily says as Xander rushes out, practically skipping.
“We got more.” Zeke gives her a grin that rarely made an appearance before she entered our lives. He’s always let Xander and me see the softer side of him, but that side was never truly soft. Watching him settle into life in this house with Lily and our dogs has brought me immeasurable joy. Before Lily, Xander and Zeke were the only two people in the world who truly mattered to me, and I would have done anything to make them happy. Who would’ve thought that one woman could be the answer for all of us?
“Thanks to your obsession with everything Christmas, we have four trees. Seemed like we needed more presents to go under them.” I place a kiss on her forehead.
Xander comes back with my briefcase and pops it open. “We are doing this tonight, right?”
“Yes. No more waiting.” Zeke sits on the couch behind Lily and me.
The spot between Lily’s brows pinches together. God, she’s so fucking beautiful. “No more waiting for what?”
Sitting on the floor next to us, Xander places the black bag in his lap and unties the gold ribbon. Lily watches him, probably assuming it’s a gift for him, and she isn’t wrong. There’s a gift for each of us in there.
“Yours is the blue box. Zeke’s is black. Lily’s is green.”
He grins at me. “And yours is gray.”
Lily glances between Xander and me as Xander takes the four ring boxes out of the bag and passes them out.
Lily runs her fingertip over the soft green velvet. “W-what are these?”
I shrug. “Open it and see.”
“Are these a gift from you?”
“From all of us, to all of us.”
Her frown deepens.