by Amelia Wilde
We’re three steps inside the suite when she pounces.
Literally pounces, leaping onto me, crashing into me. I catch her in my arms and kiss her.
The world is gone. It’s lost in a soft explosion of her lips and her tongue and even nips from her teeth. In the sounds she makes when I test the inside of her mouth with my tongue, the way I’ve always wanted to. Always.
I’m furious at my coat, and more furious at hers. Why did we put these on again? The coats are the reason I have to put her down so we can both wrestle ourselves out of them. When we’re finished she rises on tiptoe and kisses me again, her hands working at the buttons of my shirt.
“We could ease into it,” I say into her mouth. “There’s no reason to rush this, El...”
“Shut the hell up.”
Message received.
Teamwork is always better when it comes to taking clothes off, and she’s quite skilled at freeing me from mine. I take off the sweater she’s wearing, the tank top and bra underneath, and then I get down on my knees and tug her leggings down over her hips. Lower. I’m not a human man anymore. I’m an electric charge of want and the only way I can survive is to fuck her.
It’s so wrong, to want to fuck your best friend. It’s so wrong.
I don’t care.
She’s wearing red panties.
I run my thumbs over the fabric. She’s been wearing lacy, taunting things like these panties all the time and I never knew. She probably wears them while she sits at her desk at her library job, her glasses on when she doesn’t want to wear contacts.
“Ry, what are you—”
I’m very rude. I don’t give her time to finish the sentence before I lick her through red lace.
Her knees wobble.
I do it again.
Part of me wants to be a gentleman and lay her back on the floor—or, Christ, a bed—but the other part of me isn’t willing to stop this for anything. Certainly not chivalry.
On the third lick her legs shake so hard I have to catch her ass in my hands to keep her upright. I’ve got my palms full of her and she’s barely hanging on, her nails digging into my shoulders.
“Not fair,” she gasps. “Not fair.”
I press a teasing kiss to that lace and look up at her. “What’s not fair?”
“I’m going to fall over if you keep doing that.”
“Fall, then.”
It takes surprisingly few licks after that for it to happen. Ellie comes in a burst of little moans and she really does start to sink to the carpet. I catch her on the way down.
Now for the chivalry.
A king-sized bed waits for us in the main bedroom and I tip her onto it.
She reaches for me.
I don’t know what I’ve been so fucking nervous about all these years.
I strip her panties off, and for the second time in the last hour, my thoughts skip a beat.
Jesus Christ.
She’s perfect.
Every inch of her is perfect. Intellectually I’ve known this for a very long time, but now, seeing it with my own eyes—it’s a goddamn revelation.
“Well?” Ellie arches back on the bedspread, wriggling her hips like she can’t stand the wait. “What are you waiting for?”
I was waiting for you, I want to say, but that’s not entirely accurate. I should have gone after her years ago. I should have admitted it during any one of our thousands of phone calls and video chats. I should put a stop to all this right now and confess everything.
My cock demands otherwise.
I crawl between her legs and dip my fingers into her folds. Wet. Ellie watches me while I suck my fingers clean, her pupils blown out and her cheeks pink. I lean down and kiss her where she’s blushing. I’m mid-kiss when her hand on my cock freezes me in place.
“Now. God, Ryan, don’t make me wait.
So I don’t.
I notch myself against her entrance and drive in and in and in until Ellie’s squirming beneath me and I’m balls deep in paradise.
She’s so tight. So wet. So soft. Perfect perfect perfect. There’s never been another woman on the planet who fits me this well. Goddamn it, I’m going to need more time. A lot more time. How am I supposed to leave this place and go back to my life? Best not to think about that. The thought short-circuits when she bucks her hips up against mine.
It’s every dream I’ve ever had about her. Our bodies pressed together, mine poised above hers. She’s soft and I’m hard and she yields to everything I give her. In this waking dream I recognize that I am going to come immediately. Too fast. Too soon.
I kiss her again. It does nothing to take my mind off the incredible rightness of being inside of her. I must make some kind of frustrated noise, because Ellie’s hands curl around the back of my neck and pull me in close.
“Am I wrong?”
“Fuck no.” I look her in the eye, which is a feat considering I am still fucking her. I cannot stop stroking in and out of her. I won’t. It’s driving me right to the edge of the tiniest, best death and I don’t care. “You’re too good. I’m trying not to—” My balls tense, and I use the most intense focus of my life to stop myself from spilling inside her.
“Come inside me?”
The tease. The vixen. She knows exactly what she’s doing. I’m about to tell her so when she clenches around me, her eyes fluttering shut, and damn.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” I growl into her ear.
“You dared me.”
“You dared me.”
I can’t argue beyond that. I can’t do anything, because all the pent-up desire from the last decade plus of my life comes roaring out of me. I can’t hold it back any more than I could stop one of my container ships out in the ocean. An object in motion stays in motion until it’s spent. I come so hard the suite disappears. Ellie disappears. Everything but her hands on my neck and her sweet pussy still gripping me and the shivers and shakes of her coming again. With me. Around me. Everywhere.
It takes some time to resurface.
When I do, Ellie’s hands are in my hair and her brown eyes are soft on mine. Soft until my eyes meet hers and my cock twitches, still inside of her. She’s slicker now, courtesy of yours truly.
There are a thousand things to say in this moment. A thousand things we could go over. Talk about. Process. Discuss. She can take her pick.
Ellie tilts her hips toward mine. “Again,” she says.
6
Ellie
There’s no reason to ever leave this bed.
For one thing, it’s possibly the nicest bed I’ve ever slept in. The pillows are the perfect mixture of soft and firm. The sheets are a fancy microfiber blend that’s gentle on the skin when we’re sleeping.
Ryan is in the process of abandoning the sheets for his phone. “I have to take this.” A wry grin. “Ships still sail on Christmas.”
We have not spent much of the last thirty-six hours sleeping but you wouldn’t know it from the way he sounds on the phone. A few minutes later he ends the call and opens the curtains.
“Was it about the Somali pirates?” I close my eyes against the light coming in through the window.
“It was another kind of pirate.”
“You work with pirates?”
“If you don’t want your shipments stolen by Somali pirates, there’s only one person who can guarantee the job. Poseidon does all my important shipments.”
“I didn’t know you could trust a pirate.”
“Just this one.”
There’s a long silence during which approximately a million questions crowd into my brain. Questions about pirates, yes. Such as—who hires pirates to do shipping for them? Do they draw up the contracts in blood? We’ve never gone into the specifics of Ryan’s business too deeply. Obviously a mistake. I want to know now.
But more than this pirate business, I want to ask him other questions.
About us.
And what happens after we leave this hotel. I keep my eyes
closed so he doesn’t see how much I want to ask these things, and also how afraid I am to say the words.
To be extra sure he won’t notice, I pull the pillow over my head and the blankets up to my shoulder.
“You can’t hide from this, El.” His voice comes around the bed until the mattress dips. Not very much, because it’s nice as hell, but enough so that I know he’s there before he strokes a hand over my blanketed shoulder. “It’s the best holiday of the year.”
I make a noncommittal noise.
“You want to go back to sleep?”
“No.” Not really. Really what I want to do is have sex with him again and then never return to any semblance of my normal life.
“If we leave in the next two hours, we’ll make the parade.”
I pull the pillow off my head. Ryan’s blue eyes are sincere. It squeezes at my heart.
The Mistletoe Christmas Parade is my favorite Christmas event. Nothing tops it. People come out of their homes for an hour on Christmas Day to gather together on Main Street and watch holiday floats go by. The City Council gives out free hot chocolate. Everyone is in their most festive outfits. It feels like world peace is possible.
“If I get out of bed...” I swallow hard. “If I do that, then we might not come back.”
“Why would we not come back?”
“Because. You have your company to get back to. I have my life to get back to. They’re on opposite sides of the country and we obviously can’t live in this suite forever and you know how holidays are, Ryan. One thing leads to another.”
He gives me a small smile. “I know how holidays are with you.”
I sit up and kiss him. He uses the opportunity to trace around my nipple with a fingertip, and a new shiver of arousal works its way down my spine. “You can’t do that if you want me to get out of bed.”
“Who says I want you to get out of bed? I just don’t want you to miss the best part of Christmas.”
It makes me laugh, a knot near my heart releasing. “The parade is not the best part of Christmas. It’s only the best Christmas event.”
“What’s the best part, then?”
“You.”
This is not a fib, or an exaggeration. He has always been the best part of Christmas. In high school he’d call me late at night when it was all over. That was the best part of the day without exception.
And now he’s sitting here, all handsome and tousled in black boxers that look more expensive than all the bras I’ve bought in the past five years.
“Same to you.” Ryan takes my hand and rubs his thumb across the back, then looks me in the eye. “You know, I really am sorry. I should have told you that I love you a long time ago.”
My breath catches. “Love me?”
“Yeah.” A momentary flicker of guilt shimmers in his eyes. “I should have been honest about it in the beginning. When it first happened.”
“When was that?”
“Do you remember those little classrooms they had at the school when we were in the fifth grade?”
“Yes.” Of course I remember them. The school had been undergoing renovations, and two of the fifth-grade classrooms had to be moved to a sturdy portable building by the playground. The teachers dolled it up for us with Christmas lights that year. I loved it. It felt like we had our own school, apart from everyone else.
“Remember that day we were waiting in line for the drinking fountain, and Katie Phillips was taking a million years?”
I laugh out loud. I haven’t thought of that day in years, or Katie. The last I heard she had left town and gone to another city. Something very hush-hush that no one in Mistletoe wanted to talk about. She’s the reason Ryan and I were standing there together. “It was the first time I ever saw you.”
Ryan smiles again, wider this time, silent for several beats.
“You’re kidding,” I say into the quiet.
“I’m not.”
“Fifth grade?”
He shrugs one shoulder. It should actually be against the law for someone to look that sexy doing something as mundane as shrugging. “Fifth grade.”
I smack him on his sexy shoulder. “You’re the worst. Do you know that? You kept that secret from me for fifteen years. I don’t know where you get the nerve to—”
He takes my face in his hands and kisses me, long and deep. It makes the air seem thin. It makes the world seem bright and clean. Back in the fifth grade, he was just another boy with a look in his eyes I wouldn’t recognize until years later. He was hungry. And he was in love.
With me.
Ryan breaks the kiss just before I need to breathe.
Oxygen feels good, but not as good as kissing him. “I guess I can’t be too mad at you.”
He runs a thumb over the line of my jaw. “Why, because I saved you from that hellish party?”
“Because I loved you too.” I drop my head back and let the old feelings come. “I had such a wild, intense crush on you. It was ridiculous. I thought it was fake.”
“Fake?”
“Yeah. And then you transformed.” I motion in his general direction. “Into this. And I knew then that I’d have to be content with a friendship.”
“About that.” He runs his fingers though my hair. It must be a mess. “Are we still playing our game?”
“The game where we have sex for another thirty-six hours and forget about Christmas?”
“Truth or Dare.”
I let out a breath to lessen some of the pressure around my heart. “We’re still playing.”
He raises an eyebrow at me.
“Dare.”
Now it’s Ryan’s turn to take a deep breath. “Hang on.”
I flop back on the pillow with a sigh and throw an arm over my eyes. “What you’re doing is very wrong,” I call after him while he rustles around in one of his bags. “It’s not nice to make a person wait to hear their dare. I know other people might do that, but—” The bed dips. I’m going to have to get the name of the mattress from the hotel. It’s that good. I roll over on my side, toward Ryan, and open my eyes.
There’s a ring box.
In front of my face.
In Ryan’s hand.
It’s open. The ring inside looks like a diamond on platinum.
“I triple-dare you to marry me.”
I scramble upright, knowing what I must look like. Thirty-six hours of sex interspersed with showers haven’t made me into a goddess. “You’re serious.”
He says nothing. It’s all in the eyes with this guy. He is serious.
“You had a ring?”
“I had a ring, and I have a confession.”
“Tell me right now.”
“I’ve had a ring for seven years. Not this one, but...” He looks down at the box in his hand, a smile playing over his face. “I was going to propose right after we graduated. Propose dating, anyway, and then work up to the ring. I never got the chance. And after college, when things were taking off for me, I picked out a new ring. One that was worthy of you.”
There’s nothing I want more than this. People might say it’s reckless to get engaged to a guy you’ve only been dating for thirty-six hours. Those people can shut up.
I look Ryan in the eye through a sheen of tears. “I accept your dare.”
He takes me in his arms, dropping the box in the process, and I don’t put the ring on until we get out of bed again.
Epilogue
Ellie
In the end, we make it to the parade.
We make it early for the parade, actually, because Ryan insists on using the valet parking for the town VIPs. “You just want them to see you doing this, right?”
He grins. “Hell yes I do. They’ll be talking about it for the rest of the day.”
Everyone in downtown Mistletoe is in a good mood. We join the flow of people heading toward Main Street, and someone’s hand comes down on my shoulder. “Ellie, is that you? And Ryan!”
It’s Rachel, a girl I knew back in school. She’s b
eaming at us like we were all close friends, and for a moment I’m speechless.
“It is Ellie and Ryan,” Ryan says, and Rachel laughs, and then we’re all laughing together. The people around us are smiling too. Calm and happy. One couple has on matching Santa hats. Rachel gives us a thirty-second update and wishes us a Merry Christmas and then she’s gone, walking quickly to catch up with her sister.
“We should have gotten hats,” I tell Ryan.
“I would wear a Santa hat for you, if you were into it.”
“Would you?”
“Totally. I love you.” He leans down and kisses me, and somebody nearby lets out a whoop like they’re at a basketball game. I do not pull away from him. I’ll never pull away from him.
“I love you, too.” I start to turn left at Main Street to go find and empty stretch of sidewalk but Ryan steers us in the opposite direction. “Where are we going?”
“Up there.”
“Ry, we can’t stand behind the VIP platform.”
He looks at me as if I’ve descended from another planet. “Why would we stand behind it?” Ryan sticks a hand in his pocket and pulls out two paper tickets. “We’re sitting on the platform. I got the double hot chocolate package, whatever that means.”
I take one of the tickets and hold it close to see the silver print on dark paper. “Are you kidding? These sold out in October.”
“I know.” A pause. “How do you know?”
“Because I follow the Mistletoe Holiday Committee Facebook page. Wait. You were watching these in October?”
“September, more like. I think we have tickets four and five.”
There are only eight spots on the platform.
“Ryan.”
“Yeah?”
“You had to plan this well in advance.”
He tugs me in closer. “My best friend loves the parade. I could have bought out all the seats if I wanted, but that didn’t seem like the kind thing to do.”
We’re at the platform now. It’s the same viewing platform they use for the Fourth of July parade, only now it’s decked out in holly and tinsel and a huge red bow in the front. As we climb the stairs the seats come into view. Each pair of chairs comes with its own little table. All of them have a full view of the parade. Individual heaters create pockets of warm air around each of the tables.
