An Innocent Halloween (Holiday Heat Book 1)

by Katy Kaylee

  It was late, though. Tabitha would be asleep. And all parents, including Alex, deserved to have fun. I didn’t begrudge him that.

  What I did begrudge him, just a little, was being at this party.

  What the hell had Pippa been thinking!? She was meddling, I just knew it. She thought I should have a fling with Alex so she’d invited him and then she’d shoved me into this sexy outfit and had probably helped him with his outfit too, dammit.

  I hated that the outfit was working for him. The Peter Pan costume before had been sexy in showing off his body but it had also pushed it a little too far, and it had been more suited for a college frat boy trying to show off and be humorous at the same time.

  This, though… It took me a moment to realize who he was—Zorro. The mask, the sword, the cape. It suited him. He looked mysterious, and a little dangerous, but the kind of dangerous that made your blood boil. The kind of dangerous where he would be a problem to bad guys, to those who crossed his path, but with you—with you he’d be sensual, the epitome of sinful passion.

  I swallowed hard. It was far too easy to imagine him taking me in his arms, to dive into a ridiculous flight of fancy where he had just finished sword fighting his foes and was now sweeping me into his arms and carrying me to his bed.

  Dammit, I wasn’t a schoolgirl anymore! I wasn’t some thirteen-year-old with her daydreams about a handsome hero. I was an adult and I was not about to—

  Alex’s head turned, and I registered the moment he saw me. He stood up a little straighter, and even across the room I thought I could see his eyes light up, his mouth twitching like he was struggling to contain a smile.

  Well. I wasn’t going to go over to him. he could just come over to me. So there.

  I turned away and pretended to admire the spooky portraits that Pippa had put up. She went all-out for Halloween, it was her favorite holiday, and that included these portraits that had eyes that seemed to follow you as you walked along, or changed from ‘normal’ images to disturbing ‘horror’ images depending on what angle you stood at to look at them.

  No dice. I could feel the heat of him as Alex approached me. My body wanted to sway into it, into him, but I held firm. This wasn’t one of my ridiculous dreams or one of my fantasies as I touched myself alone. Those were safe, they didn’t mean anything, I could just—just indulge myself and then be done.

  This was real. And that made it that much more dangerous but also that much more intoxicating and inviting.

  “Enjoying the party?” he asked. His voice was a low gravel that I had only heard from him once before, when we’d been kissing. When he’d been basically challenging me to admit that I didn’t want him.

  “What’s it to you?” I asked.

  Alex chuckled. “Feisty one, aren’t you?”

  Of course I was. He knew that about me.

  Unless…

  “Sure, you could say that,” I replied.

  “Friend of the hostess?” Alex asked.

  “Yes. You?”

  “You could say that. We’re acquaintances, really, but I was glad she invited me. Especially now that I’ve met you.”

  Oh my God.

  Alex thought that I didn’t know who he was. And I supposed that was a fair assumption to make. His face was almost entirely covered and it was surprising how much covering even part of someone’s face could prevent you from guessing who they were—I had seen it with doctors who had surgical masks on. One time one of my coworkers had tried to flirt with her husband while she’d been wearing the mask and he’d mistaken her for a younger resident so he’d told her sternly that he was married and she ought to know better.

  His wife had ripped off her mask and started laughing so hard I’d thought she would keel over.

  So yeah, a dark room in a party full of people, his face covered, wearing a costume instead of the suits I was used to? I could see why Alex thought I didn’t know him. I wasn’t wearing a mask, so obviously he knew me. I wasn’t hiding.

  Was he trying to hide from me? Why? Was it because—because of how I had rejected him before, told him we couldn’t be together? I’d been giving him a pretty big cold shoulder lately. Did he want to try and get around that? Prove that our chemistry was too strong to resist?

  “You can’t be glad you’ve met me,” I replied. “It’s too soon to tell if it’s worth it or not?”

  “It is?” Alex raked his eyes over my body and I could feel myself heating up. He looked like he wanted to spend hours eating me alive and I… I couldn’t deny that I wanted that. “I’ve long been waiting to meet the famous Claire, everyone talks about you.”

  I flushed, looking away. “I’m not sure that you’d want to know the famous Claire if you really got to know her.”

  The alcohol from my drink was getting to me, clearly. I wasn’t usually this open and honest.

  “I think I would.” Alex took a step closer. “But I have to say, naughty nurse? Not what I would’ve expected. I hear you’re a doctor who has great respect for her work.”

  “This was what my friend had handy. I didn’t come prepared with a costume.” I gestured at myself. “Cliché, I know.”

  “Gorgeous, you mean.” Alex fingered a lock of my hair, his knuckles just barely an inch from my neck, and I shivered. I could tell that he’d noticed, because his eyes darkened. “Tell me, would you be able to help me if I said I had a… a burning sensation, like my body was on fire… would you have something to help me with that?”

  He stepped even closer to me, his fingertips hovering just under my chin, like he wanted to lift it up and keep hold of it. My breathing became harsh and shallow, my underwear starting to get damp with slick.

  “It’s terrible,” Alex whispered. “I get these awful urges, nurse, and I can’t control my body. I’m being driven mad.”

  “What are those urges?” I managed, liquid courage thrumming through my veins. I wanted him to grab me and pin me against the wall. I wanted him to work me over and over until the only thing I knew was ecstasy.

  “The urge to touch… the urge to devour…” Alex’s gaze searched all over my face, and then lower. My costume felt too confining, and I wanted to rip it off.

  “I could prescribe something for that,” I whispered. Me. I could prescribe me. And sex, sex until we passed out, sex until I was begging him, until I couldn’t handle one more orgasm and he coaxed another one out of me anyway—

  “Mmm, like that?” Alex asked, stepping back, and I nearly fell over. He had a shit eating grin on his face like he knew exactly what he was doing, the bastard, and he was pointing at…

  Oh for crying out loud, at Pippa’s stupid smoking shots.

  There were two thousand kinds of shots in the world and I swore sometimes that Pippa was determined to have every single one of them at her parties. These in particular were alcoholic shots that she put into various beakers and other sorts of glass containers you’d expect to find in the lab of a mad scientist, shots that smoked and bubbled and, well, frankly I wasn’t brave enough to drink one of those.

  “Would you say those have been sanctioned by the medical establishment?”

  I laughed, surprised at the change in tune, and frustrated. I had thought that Alex was about to kiss me, take me right in front of everyone, and honestly I wouldn’t have stopped him. Now he was backing off and teasing me, keeping me on edge.

  His words from my office floated back to me—words about how he would know how to take his time with me and treat me right. Was this his attempt at showing me that? His way of showing me that he wouldn’t just be a two pump jump but that he could draw this out, nice and slow, bring me to the edge and back again, keep me guessing?

  If this was, in fact, his plan, then dammit—it was working.

  “As a nurse,” I said, adding a coy little pout that I normally never would’ve been caught dead doing, “I can assure you that those are one hundred percent unsafe and that you shouldn’t drink any of them.”

  “Mmm, and here I was
thinking you were the most dangerous thing in the room. Guess I was mistaken.”

  I laughed again. “Oh, there’s plenty of deadly stuff in this room,” I promised him, feeling like… well maybe it was just that damn strong drink talking but it felt like it couldn’t hurt, just this once, to play along. After all, what was I doing, really? Just talking. Nobody could fault me for that.

  “C’mere.” I took him by the hand and led him through the room. “So Pippa always wants her decorations to have a theme, a narrative. She takes Halloween super seriously, it’s her favorite holiday. This year she’s all about witches.”

  A few years ago it had been serial killers, and last year it had been demons. You could always count on Pippa to have some interesting take on things. I pointed out the various pictures were all named after supposed famous witches from the coven, and the bubbing cauldron in the corner made using dry ice, and the quotes from Macbeth and other places about witches that were stenciled onto the walls.

  “She really does go all out, doesn’t she?” Alex mused.

  “I don’t think Pippa’s ever half-assed anything. She’s a work hard, play hard kind of girl.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I was always just the work hard part,” I admitted, pausing outside of Pippa’s bedroom door.

  This felt like a moment of truth. I could lead Alex into the kitchen and point out all the food that Pippa had laid out, and we could eat something and I could keep playing coy and leave it at that.

  Or…

  I could give into what I wanted, just this once. At a party, with his mask on, who was to say that I knew who he was? That I knew he was related to a patient of mine? Nobody could really prove it. And who would want to tell on me, anyway? Pippa wouldn’t, she wanted me to go for this.

  “There’s one last place to show you,” I said, my voice coming out quieter and breathier than I had intended.

  Alex’s eyes locked with mine. That was one thing the mask couldn’t take away. Those eyes that trapped me, bore into me, those eyes that sparked and set me aflame faster than dry kindling.

  “Lead on, nurse,” he murmured, and I felt myself getting wet again at the dark promise weighing down his words.

  I grabbed hold of the door handle. “Right this way.”

  Pippa’s bedroom was the only place that she hadn’t decorated for the holiday or the party. There were clothes strewn around the floor in front of the closet, a sign of her frantic digging for her nurse costume to give to me, but otherwise it was neat. You’d think it would be a mess with all the getting ready going on, but Pippa always cleaned the apartment right before she decorated for a party and so she made sure her bedroom was neat because….

  “If I have to go to bed without cleaning up the party and my room is messy too I’m just going to feel like crap, Claire, but if I have a nice clean room to go back to it feels like a sanctuary and I feel more ready to face the mess outside.”

  I’d always thought that there was wisdom in that.

  And so other than the pile of clothes the whole room was very neat.

  I opened the door, stepping inside, knowing that this was probably my last chance to back out and say no. But I felt that buzzing sensation from the alcohol, like I was starting to float, and I never did anything fun or reckless, not once in my life, and I wanted to try it. I had never wanted someone as badly as I wanted Alex. What could one night hurt?

  Alex followed me into the bedroom, and I knew I was probably lost—but I didn’t care.

  13

  Alex

  I loved this new side of Claire. She was so relaxed and playful that I almost couldn’t believe it. I spent the first few minutes waiting for the other shoe to drop, my breath held in anticipation of the punchline. But there was none. She wasn’t about to turn on me and drop some sarcastic line and push me to the curb. She was genuinely spending time with me. Pointing out all the decorations and the theme, obviously enjoying it and proud of her friend’s enthusiasm and imagination.

  This Claire was—she wasn’t a different person from when she was at work, but she was more. There was a lightheartedness to her that I had hoped for but hadn’t expected. A fun, flirty side to her that I had yearned to find but had suspected would take a lot more work to get out of her.

  Now was my chance. She was having fun with me, she liked me, and now I could show her who I really was and she would see that we did have things in common after all, that we could be compatible, that we could do this.

  I closed the bedroom door behind us and walked up to her from behind. Perhaps this was bold of me, but faint heart never won fair lady, and I was known for being bold my entire life, especially when it came to romance—why the hell would I stop now?

  Wrapping my arms around her waist, I was shocked in the best way to feel Claire relax against me with a shuddering sigh. I ran my lips up her neck and she gave a small, wordless whimper. “You know… I’ve been keeping a bit of a secret from you.”

  Claire turned around, flashing me a grin that was nothing short of wicked. “I don’t suppose it has anything to do with your sword,” she noted, and she wasn’t quite winking at me but she might as well have been for the look in her eyes and the smirk on her face.

  I had never heard Claire sound like this, never seen her look like this. I wanted her to be this way with me, knowing it was me. I wanted her to be this way all the time. It added so much more to her, brought out new dimensions to her. The way she was at the hospital was wildly attractive, of course it was, but this was even more so. This was like realizing I’d only been seeing part of the painting instead of the full glory of the entire thing.

  Her fingertips trailed along my chest, like she was threatening to actually bring them low enough to test to see if my ‘sword’ was there, and I had to catch my breath for a second. She made me so hard I could barely think.

  “No,” I told her. “I meant this.”

  I reached up to take off my mask, to show her who I really was—but then quick as a flash of lightning, Claire was grabbing my wrists.

  “Leave it on, Alex,” she whispered. She sounded amazed, as if she couldn’t believe the things that she herself was saying. “I… I like it.”

  My heart was pounding. I hadn’t felt this surprised or this nervous around a woman since I’d been in high school, just starting out, fumbling my way through flirting and dating. “You knew who I was?”

  Claire laughed softly. “Figured it out almost immediately. Don’t worry, though, you played your part very well, you missed your true calling as an actor.”

  I chuckled, moving my hands down to settle at her waist. Claire shivered. “Well, well, doctor, you’re just full of surprises.”

  “Nurse tonight,” she reminded me.

  “Nurse,” I teased her. I slid my hands up, just barely brushing her breasts as I got them up to cup her face. Claire gave a small gasp and bit her lip, trembling, her hips rocking oh so subtly up against me.

  I was already so hard I felt like my dick could pound nails if you asked. I should’ve known that Claire knew who I was—she wasn’t the type to just flirt with a random stranger. She might be more relaxed in this party setting but that still wasn’t her style.

  The fact that she was flirting with me, that she had been spending this time with me knowing who I was, even after all that she had said… it gave me a rush of confidence and arousal. I cupped her face in my hands and leaned in.

  Before, when I had kissed her, it had been all wild heat and passion, it had been me trying to give her a taste of the wild, ecstatic abandon I could spend all night sharing with her. But now—now I wanted to be a little gentler. To show her that I would treat her right, that I had consideration for her and her feelings.

  I kissed her softly, and for a moment, it felt like time was standing still. Claire was frozen, like she was still wondering if she should back away, leave the room, change her mind. I tried not to push, just gently working my lips against hers.

  And
then she moved, surging up, kissing me back.

  I felt like I’d won a victory.

  Claire kissed me fervently, like she was chasing the passion I’d kissed her with earlier, and I groaned into her mouth. I could hardly stand how much I wanted her. The temptation to throw her onto the bed and shove her skirt up to slide into her was insane.

  I picked her up in preparation to do just that, but Claire wrapped her legs around my waist, still kissing me, her hands squeezing my shoulders. Fuck, her legs around me like this, her soft, sweet body rubbing all up against mine, was the best kind of torture. This angle was perfect for kissing down her neck and I couldn’t resist, nipping and sucking at the pale column of skin.

  Claire ground her hips against me restlessly, helplessly, like she was trying so hard not to move but struggling to keep herself still, unable to hold in her reactions as I found her sensitive spots. I got my hand in her hair and tugged, forcing her head back even more, and Claire whined, shaking in my arms like she’d fall to pieces.

  The door opened behind us and I heard it close again almost immediately, followed by a muffled apology and some laughter. The sounds of the party invaded for a moment before vanishing again behind the door—but it was enough for Claire to pull away and slide down to her feet.

  I wasn’t going to let her go that easily, though. Not this time. We weren’t at her office, and we weren’t at the hospital. We were away from all of that—and I knew that she wanted me. I couldn’t resist my attraction to her any longer and neither, I was pretty sure, could she.

  Tugging on her hand, I pulled her back into me and kissed her again. Claire sighed into it, pressing herself against me. “Alex,” she whispered greedily.

  I got my hand on her ass, using it to guide her into grinding against me. She gasped, and I knew she could feel how hard I was. That precious short skirt of her dress was so easy to get under as I rolled our hips together, and I could feel how wet her underwear was, making the fabric of my tight pants damp as I continued to grind with her.