“Wouldn’t matter if they came out burnt. As long as they came from your hands, they’ll be fucking delicious.”
Smirking, I reply with, “You say that now, but let you bite into a burnt red velvet cookie. You’ll be pissed.”
He turns to me with a half-grin. “You’re probably right. Don’t mess them up,” he teases.
I roll my eyes and wave him off. “Need some help?” It’s the third time I’ve offered. And again, for the third time, Neil informs me he’s got it.
Only this time, I believe him, when he finally rises from his feet, stepping back and allowing us both to stare at the beautiful tree standing before us. The tree remains bare, but images of what she will look like with the ornaments and lights Neil brought down from the second floor dance through my mind.
“She’s going to look fabulous once we’re done,” I say, coming to stand beside him.
He wraps his arms around my waist as he moves behind me. “It’s perfect.” He kisses me beneath my right ear, and I shiver.
Turning to him, I allow him to see the look of need in my eyes.
“I’m sorry for the awful things my mother said last night.”
Neil drops a kiss to my lips. “Don’t ever apologize for someone else’s actions. As long as you trust me, that’s all I need.”
There’s a pang in my heart. Trust. Something I used to give willingly and easily. I feel as if I’ve lost that ability after Deirdre’s death.
I lift on my tiptoes and bury my face between his head and shoulder and nod.
“C’mere,” he murmurs. “I want you to try a new seat.”
Lifting to look up at him, I wrinkle my forehead. “New seat?”
He chuckles at my mystified tone but doesn’t say anything as he pulls me over to the long couch across from the unlit fireplace. Sitting, he spreads his legs, drawing my body in between his thighs. His hands move to my waist, undoing the button of my jeans and the zipper before pulling them down. Leaning forward, Neil plants a kiss on my mound, which is still covered by my silk panties.
I allow my hands to rest comfortably on his shoulders as I watch him undress the lower half of my body through half-closed lenses. I assist when he gets my jeans and panties to my ankles by lifting my feet, allowing him to remove them. His hand moves in between my legs, making initial contact with my flesh.
Letting out a ragged sigh, I squeeze my hands, intensifying the hold I have on Neil’s shoulders.
“Does that feel good, baby? Do you like my hands on your pussy?”
I swallow at the blatant terms he uses to describe my body. “Yes,” I manage to eke out when his thumb begins circling my clit.
“Good. Now, it’s time for you to meet your new seat.”
He leans back against the couch, bringing my body with him. Within a handful of seconds, I find myself straddling Neil’s face as he pulls my pussy to hover above his mouth.
Oh gosh! I think to myself, naively, realizing what this new seat of his is. As soon as the realization comes to mind, Neil pulls me down onto his waiting mouth.
“Ohhh,” I hum out, feeling the searing heat and pleasure from his tongue race through my body. My head grows heavy, and I have no choice but to let it fall backward as I grasp at the edge of the couch for leverage.
“Watch me eat you out,” he murmurs against my pussy lips before diving back in to continue driving me insane.
I fight with everything in me to raise my head and stare down at him. His gaze is a fiery mix of lust, passion, and emotion I refuse to name. Not out of fear that I’ll be wrong, but because if I give a name to what I spot in his direct gaze, I might be dumb enough to yell the words out loud, admitting my intensifying feelings. I do my best not to blink or look away. However, between Neil making a whole meal out of my body and the purity of his gaze, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed.
I couldn’t even name all of the emotions that swell up inside of me if I tried. Thankfully, I don’t have to when my physical body takes over, washing me in the onslaught of pleasure that is my orgasm.
A deep moan starts in my toes, moves through my legs, core, chest, and finally, out of my mouth. I swear, the entire cabin shakes with the fierceness of my orgasm. Or maybe, that was the Earth beneath us, tilting on its axis. I’m sure something vast and significant has changed within this short period.
I’m speechless. Hell, I’ve forgotten what words are. There are only emotions and the intense pulsations that continue to move through my body. Remnants of my orgasm that refuse to go away.
“Wh-What’s that?” I gasp as a ringing sound goes off somewhere in the background.
Neil glances up and then smirks. Sitting up, he says, “The cookies.”
What cookies?
“Don’t move. I’ll take them out of the oven. And don’t put your clothes back on,” he orders when I reach over to the floor for my jeans. “I’m not done with you yet.”
Swallowing, I drop the jeans and eagerly watch as he saunters off to remove the cookies from the oven. In the back of my mind, I know I should get up and ensure the cookies have come out right. I wanted to place them on a cooling rack and then ice them with the leftover cream cheese filling I made, but all of that will have to wait. The buzzing in my ears from my orgasm is too prominent, my legs are too shaky, and the last thing I want to do is defy Neil’s command.
My desire to please him wells up in me whenever he uses that tone. My body hums in anticipation of what he has in store next. Decorations and cookies be damned.
Chapter 12
“Are you sure we have to leave tomorrow?” I whine as Neil and I sit on the floor, in front of the couch, staring at the burning fire. To the left of us is where the decorated and lit tree stands. The fire and the lights from the tree create the only illumination in the entire cabin.
“I’m sure,” he says, planting a kiss on my temple.
I let out a disappointed sigh and take another sip of my wine. I’ve grown more comfortable drinking alcohol around him. He never makes a big deal out of it and even offered to pick me up the bottle of the kind I liked when we went to the town store the day before.
“We can come back here for Christmas,” he suggests. “My parents, sister, and her family will be in town then.”
I turn to glance at him over my shoulder. “Really? Your whole family will be here?”
He nods.
“And you want me to come?”
“Why does that sound strange to you?”
I turn away from him and stare at the stockings we’ve hung on the mantle of the fireplace. There’re stockings with his entire family’s name, including his mother, father, younger sister, her husband, and their four-year-old son.
Neil surprised me as we were decorating by adding a stocking with my name to the mantle.
“It’ll be our first Christmas … together as a …” I hesitate and turn to look at him again. “Are we a couple? As in officially.”
“We better be. You’re part of the family now.” He gestures toward the hanging stockings.
I smile, but there’s a warning feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Your sister was good at lying, too.”
My mother’s scornful words rush back to me. They’ve been playing on rotation off and on, the entire three days we’ve been here in the mountains. I do my best to ignore them, but they sneak up, especially in moments like this when my heart is telling me to go all in.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
“Christmas. And Dierdre. This was her favorite time of year, too.” I sit up, placing the glass of wine on the wooden and concrete coffee table.
Turning to Neil, I say, “She loved Christmas and the holidays almost as much as I do. When we were kids, we’d spend hours in the kitchen with my mother, learning to cook, bake, and make homemade gifts.
My mother taught us that homemade gifts were the best because they take more time and effort than going to the store and buying something.”
He nods.
“Sounds a little like my mother. She isn’t much of a cook. Never was. Our holidays were always prepared by a chef or catered by a local restaurant, but starting in September, she’d spend hours in her studio, painting pictures to give out to friends and family during this time of year.”
“She inspired your love of art?”
“Yeah. Ever since I was five years old, she dragged my sister and me around to museum after museum on our holidays or school breaks. I can’t tell you how many summers I spent learning the ins and outs of everything from oil painting to sand painting.”
“Sand painting?”
He nods, grinning. “It’s a thing.”
I laugh, but eventually, I sober, my lips frowning. “I bet your mother didn’t expend energy on telling you everything you did wrong.”
He shakes his head. “Is that what yours did?”
I twist my lips, recalling memories of my childhood. There’d been many occasions where the three of us got along well. “Not all the time, admittedly. But you’ve been around her, a little. You see how she rarely misses an opportunity to critique what I’m wearing, if I’m slouching too much, how I pin up my hair. She did the same with Dierdre.”
“And you believe that’s why Dierdre turned out how she did?”
Lifting my eyebrows, I ask, “What else could it be? We had a mostly idyllic childhood. My father was one of the few black professors in our college town and is well respected. We lived in a safe, middle-class community and spent our summers at expensive day camps. My mother stayed home with us until I started first grade.
That rearing doesn’t make for drug addicts, right?”
Neil chuckles, but not condescendingly so. “You’ve met my parents. My mother grew up wealthy and spared no expense when it came to my education or social activities. The legacy started by my paternal grandfather with the clinics also afforded me just about everything we could want. With that background, why did I turn out as a drunk?”
I cringe. “Don’t call yourself that.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not doing it in a self-denigrating way. It’s what I am. A recovered drunk, but a drunk nonetheless. Or, if it makes you feel better, alcoholic. Whatever.
What I’m saying is, there’s no one reason, no one thing we can pinpoint that is the answer to why one person becomes an addict and another one doesn’t. You grew up in the same house as Dierdre, and yet you can drink wine without needing to finish the whole bottle.”
He dips his head toward my half-finished glass, all but forgotten, on the table.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I say, running my hand across my forehead. I’ve wracked my brain, trying to discern why Dierdre turned out the way she did. Heck, I started doing it long before she died.
“It probably never will. It’s not helpful for you to torture yourself by trying to figure out what happened or where things went wrong. In truth, you’re trying to figure out where you fell short, aren’t you?”
Inhaling deeply, I turn my body to face Neil. “How’d you know that?”
He grins and leans in, kissing my lips. “Lucky guess.”
“You have experience with it.”
He nods. “Aside from going through my recovery process, I have worked with hundreds of others and their families. Both through my work and personally. I think I have a little bit of experience in the matter.”
Lifting from my knees, I adjust my legs so that I’m now straddling Neil’s outstretched legs with my arms around his shoulders. He begins moving his hands up and down my back. For a long moment, I don’t say anything. I simply stare into his eyes, searching for anything deeper that resides there.
In return, he doesn’t look away or shutter his gaze. He stares at me directly in the eye, allowing me to see him in his entirety.
“I knew you’d be at the cemetery that morning.” His voice is so low, but it fills the space between us.
“What?”
“On the anniversary of your sister’s death. I knew that’s where you would be.”
“How?”
“I saw you there last year and the year before that. I felt drawn there for some reason. Unfortunately, I know more than one past client of our rehab that is buried there. On occasion, I’ll go to visit them. On the first anniversary of her death, I went to visit her. You were already there, seated in front of her headstone. The same way you’ve been there every anniversary since.”
I swallow, not knowing what to say next, but a question slips from my mouth before my thinking mind can decipher it.
“How come you didn’t approach me then?”
He shakes his head. “You needed more time.”
“More time for what?”
“For what I wanted with you. And to mourn your sister.”
I sigh. “Then what Jackie said is true.”
“Depends on what she said.”
“That you had a thing for me for a while.”
He pauses before nodding.
I exhale, feeling strangely relieved. “Me too,” I confess. I’d crushed on Neil since the first time I laid eyes on him.
“I remember the exact day I met you. It was right before our first family therapy session with Dierdre. Both of my parents and I attended. I was two years out of undergrad and entering my second year as a teacher. Life felt like it was happening so fast, and Deirdre slipped deeper into her addiction.”
“I came out of one of my group sessions,” he finishes.
I nod.
“You weren’t CEO then.” I run my fingers through his long hair, tossing aside the hair tie he used to hold the bun together. “You still had this long hair.”
He chuckles. “I wanted to blend in. Not as Neil McKenna Senior’s son, but as just another counselor. I rebelled against taking on the CEO position for more than a year.”
“Why?”
“Because my main focus has always been to help people who’re like me. I thought I could do that by working directly with them and not by taking on a role that has me stuck behind a desk for most of the day.”
“But you would be helping more people in higher positions. You’ve been able to make McKenna Rehab so much more in such a short span of time.”
Sighing, he rubs his chin with his hand.
“What’s that look about?”
“I sometimes wonder if I did the right thing. If I’m doing the right thing.”
“With the expansion?”
He nods.
“We took McKenna from five clinics to fifteen, spanning from the West Coast to the East Coast. So far, we’ve been able to help thousands more, but my fear with this next move is that it will come back to bite me in the ass. I don’t want to get so big that we become just another impersonal rehab facility, rotating clients from one month to the next but never really servicing them.”
Leaning down, I kiss his soft lips. The earnestness in his gaze pulls me to kiss him again. He’s so genuine and sincere. I wonder how I could’ve ever let my mother’s accusation cast doubt on my feelings for him.
“You are helping them. Just like you did that time you went out in the middle of the night to help that guy.”
He frowns before recognition dawns on his face.
“I bet that’s not the first time you’ve done something like that.”
“It’s not,” he confirms. “He needed me.”
“How’s he doing now?” Neil hadn’t told me much about the guy who called that night. All I knew is that he’d been working with Neil and had been doing fine but had a relapse.
Neil shrugs. “Not bad. He’s doing the work required. I think that last time scared the shit out of him, and he decided to take his recovery seriously. But time will tell more than anything.”
There’s skepticism in his voice, but a lining of hope accompanies it.
“You’re still deciding on whether or not to take this deal?”
He pushes out a heavy breath. “Yeah, but I don’t have much time. If we go through with it, the board wants to make the
announcement at the annual holiday party, which is only a few weeks from now.”
“Sounds like you need to decide soon then.”
“I do.”
The worried expression on his face tugs at my heartstrings. I know he intends to do good and help as many people as he can. There’s an enormous amount of stress that comes with that desire for someone in his position.
“Let’s see if I can help take your mind off of things for a little while,” I say in a husky voice before lowering and pressing a kiss to the side of his neck.
His hands, which continue to remain on my waist, move underneath the sweater I have on. His fingers roam up my torso, cupping and squeezing my breasts.
Meanwhile, I undo the belt buckle and button holding his jeans together, before lifting my hips to pull him free of his pants. For the rest of the night, we pleasure one another until falling into an orgasm-induced sleep.
Chapter 13
“No, no, no,” I groan as I resist the urge to kick the oven in front of me.
“What’s wrong?” Neil questions, coming around the corner from the living room, a concerned expression on his face.
“My oven,” I cry out, gesturing toward it with both hands. “It’s acting up, and I don’t have time for this mess.” Sighing, I rip the oven mitt I had on off, tossing it onto the counter.
“I thought you finished the cookies last night.”
“I did,” I say. “But, I have orders I need to get started on tomorrow if I’m going to ship them out by Thursday. I’m already planning on being late to school that day because I need to drop the cookies off at the post office first thing in the morning.”
“Aren’t you still using that delivery service you told me about?”
“Yeah, but I only use them for special orders. These cookies are going to a couple of local customers and some more to Jackie. She’s working long hours, and I thought I’d send her a tin to make her feel better.”
Neil’s face softens, and he enters the kitchen, taking me into his arms. “You’re so damn caring. Jackie will love those. She often talked about how eating one of your cookies or pastries would brighten her mood when she was stressed.”
A Holiday Seduction: A Holiday Novella Page 10
