Whispers of Winter: A Limited Edition Collection of Winter Romances

by Nicole Morgan

  “Hugo.” Please, Alessa wanted to add.

  “Or when, on leaving the army, I learned my wife had only married me for my money and position, and had had a string of affairs that only ended when she got pregnant by other man, the reason I knew the child wasn’t mine being I can’t have children? Or the emotions that came with her lying to me, trying to blackmail me, getting me ostracised by my friends when they believed her side of things?”

  “I—”

  “Or the emotions involved in leaving that life and starting over in a new place, alone, at my age?” Hugo ignored Tom’s attempt to intervene. “Do you any idea how any of that feels, Alessa? And do you understand that some people might need more time to come to terms with the utter crap they go through, but that you can’t force them into it, make them into something you want? That you have to trust they might finally find the strength to start seeing a specialised therapist, to deal with all of that, to get mentally healthy enough to be in a relationship?”

  “A therapist?” Alessa flashed to the woman she’d seen Hugo with, their postures, their expressions. “In that new building in King Street? You weren’t—”

  “Sleeping around? No. I would never do that, and especially not with you. I thought, I hoped, that we had something. I thought you…” He sighed. “Oh, what’s the point? Please excuse me.”

  “Alessa?” Tom looked from the sound of the door closing behind Hugo to her. “You fool! I cannot believe all this, this project, was you trying to cure, no, to force…” He ran a hand through his hair. “Go after him. Fix this. Fix it now. If you leave that man hurting like that, I’ll never speak to you again.”

  “Tom? Tom!” Distraught, confused, Alessa had no choice but to walk through the door he held open, grabbing her holdall bag as she left. It wasn’t a question of catching up with Hugo—his silver Merc sped past the gate as she reached the step. She could hardly overtake him, flag him down. But she wanted to go to him, to be with them. Because the thought that she’d ruined everything, would never be with him again, was like trying to move without a heart.

  St Aidan’s Christmas service and concert was the last place Hugo wanted to be, but reneging on his obligations, his promises, was unthinkable. And painful though it was to be with his fellow parishioners who were full of festive cheer, it meant he wasn’t thinking about Alessa, and what could have been. He escaped the festivities as soon as he could, well before the midnight service, needing space.

  The weight of loss and sorrow pressed on him and must have made him mentally slow, he rationalised, because when he got into his house and went to turn off the alarm, it was already off, meaning someone had got to the house before him and he hadn’t noticed. And when he turned around, half afraid to breathe in in case Amanda’s sickly scent assaulted him, Alessa was there.

  “I’m sorry,” she began. “So sorry. I was a total idiot. You’re right. I was trying to research and write and force things better. But people aren’t things. Feelings…they don’t have a set schedule. I didn’t realise.”

  “You were trying to right weighty, heavy wrongs all by yourself, like with the corrupt councillor.” That still rankled with him.

  Alessa looked at the floor. “Yes. That was…similar. But this isn’t. Tom—who’s a friend—is setting up a meeting with the Times Investigative Reporting Team. This needs people with wider reach and stronger…resources. But they’ll take him on as a researcher and credit me with additional reporting. Because this has to be done, Hugo. I’m so sorry, but the story is big. We think your father’s manager at Harrington-Baxter, in Lantborough, was the real traitor. And after, he failed upwards, went to work at—”

  “The Ministry of Defence. For the Chief Scientific Adviser on science and technology, involved in directing science and technology research for the armed forces. Shit.” Hugo felt ill. What had the man seen and reported on during his career? And what could his father have achieved if— He gave a huff of bitter laughter. “Mother never liked Jeremy Greene. Always said he was a dreadful little man. Seems she was right.”

  “She sounds sharp. I’d love to meet her. Hugo…” Alessa swallowed. “I’m so sorry about everything you went through. When I saw that I’d dug into the rawest nerve you had, then knocked away that prism through which you saw the world, I understood. And I’m sorry for how things ended with Amanda. I would never do that to you. Keeping things from you this last week or so has just about killed me.”

  “I should have sorted things out with her a long time ago, been less indulgent. But that was the guilt talking.” He shrugged. “But I’ve started. And I know the therapy will help me see everything through.”

  “I’m so glad. Hugo…will you give me another chance?” Alessa asked, wringing her hands, looking startled when he laughed.

  “I was just about to ask you that!” Hugo could hardly breathe through the relief and hope flooding him. He couldn’t put into thought, never mind words, what he was feeling. He hoped Alessa understood, though, and also realised she wasn’t leaving. Never again, if he had his way. Which recalled him to his manners. “Let me take your…coat…” He stared at what was revealed.

  “I wanted to dress up for once. You must be sick of seeing me in jeans,” she muttered.

  “You mean, you wanted to tempt me!” Hugo gaped at her little black dress. He hung up their coats without looking at what he was doing, unable to take his eyes from her. Tiny black dress would be a better description, he thought. It had thin straps over her shoulders and clung to her figure, finishing above her knees. Sheer stockings and high-heeled black shoes with delicate ankle straps completed her outfit. “Come here.”

  She did, and he kissed her thoroughly. She darted her gaze to one side, and, following it, his eyes widened to see a riding crop laid on the table.

  “I’m not going to stripe your arse in punishment,” he told her.

  “Not even because I want you to?” Alessa’s grin told him more than words ever could she was returning to her usual cheeky, wonderful self. His heart leapt, knowing that—while they had a long road to travel—they were on the right path, and starting together.

  “Not tonight. My emotions all too mixed.” And there was him, being honest and open. Huh. “Which is not to say, I can’t punish you another way…”

  Alessa’s eyes were the size of saucers as he led her upstairs to his bedroom, and her breath hitched after he kissed her again, enough to excite her and enough to leave her wanting. Her dress was a stretchy fabric, he discovered, peeling it over her head, leaving her hair the wonderfully tumbled mass he loved to see it. Removing her dress was how he discovered the stockings with garters were all the underwear she wore beneath it. “Oh, you little minx.” He nipped her ear, making her squeal.

  She tried hard not to squirm when he produced silk ropes to tie her to the bed, but her thumping heart and shallow breathing gave her arousal away as he fastened the knots. He let her writhe, picture perfect in her sexy stockings and sexier shoes, before approaching.

  “What’s that?” Alessa eyed the small bottle in his hand, one of a set he placed on the bed, her face wary.

  “In the spirit of the season…cinnamon drops,” he answered.

  “For… Oh.”

  She writhed more as he applied a few drops to each nipple, touching the tip of the applicator to each perfect strawberry-pink peak, biting back a grin. In a minute…

  “Oooohhh!” Alessa cried, squirming. “Ahhh!”

  Her nipples crinkled into tight points at the stimulation, peaking high of her creamy flesh. He let her pant and moan her way through that, then, when she tried to rub her thighs together to relive the ache, he retracted her clitoral hood with a swift, sure hand and dripped a fat drop of liquid onto her clit. As the bud swelled and engorged, Alessa fought against the ropes binding her and screamed out her climax.

  “I didn’t know you knew language like that,” Hugo commented after Alessa had finished shaking and called him every name under the sun and swore vengeance on
him for tormenting her. She tried to turn away when he approached her face with a silk square, and he waited, but she said nothing, so he tied it around her mouth. “I smudged your lipstick,” he said, harking back to their first encounter, distracting her from his actions—taking up a vibrator and the small bottle of drops.

  “These were all your Christmas present,” he told her. “What?” She was shaking her head, so he loosened the gag for her to instruct him, “Not that. You.”

  “You want my hand? You want to ride my fingers, fuck yourself on them?” He loved the way her eyes looked so shocked at the dirty talk. “As you wish.” He thrust inside her with shocking speed and force, knowing she was well-lubed for him, her juices spilling onto her thighs. She’d just come, but that had been a quick, hard climax. Hugo made sure this one was longer, drawn-out, as hard as the first, but more fulfilling. Words and sounds leaked out through the gag, and he bent to catch them all, sealing his mouth over hers and the gag as he finger-fucked her to completion.

  When Alessa lay gasping, her body softened from the stiff bow it had formed in the throes of orgasm, Hugo unfastened her gag and undid one wrist and one ankle. He sat next to her, letting her decide what to do. Still panting, she went for the row of small glass bottles, using her teeth to secure first one, then a second, while she used her free hand to unscrew them. The second seemed to please her. She curled onto his lap and unzipped him, her movements as swift and decided as his had been.

  He was hard, raring to go—he’d almost spilled, watching her turn into a slave to her passion. The drops Alessa applied to his cockhead were strawberry, the scent mixing with his precum, and she helped herself to him, swirling her tongue around his more-engorged-by-the-second head, licking and sucking, ticking her tongue into the nerve-rich bump on the back. The she started sucking in earnest, and, Christ, if the sight of her treating his cock as a lollipop and the strawberry flavour she’d used didn’t give him a vision of her dressed like a naughty schoolgirl. Little minx is probably doing it on purpose, he reasoned before most thought fled under her expert tongue and clever throat.

  She raised her head, keeping her lips at his very tip, to let out a huge, “Ohhh,” of satisfaction. “Don’t come for a while. I want to really taste you before you flood my throat.” And just like that, Alessa turned the tables again, her words and the image making his balls draw up tight, and him shift under her to hold back. The glorious sight of them entwined in his bed, him dressed, her nude, curled into him, delighting in pleasuring him, undoing him, didn’t help his staying power. A peal of bells sounded form across the fields. Church bells.

  Alessa laughed, the sound vibrating around hi cock, almost making him climax in a second. Thank God she pulled her lips free to ask, “Don’t they say, what you’re doing at the stroke of Christmas, you’re doing for the rest of year?” She tightened her fist around him and began an up-and-down motion designed to unman him in a heartbeat.

  “I think…” Hugo took a breath, fought for composure, “that’s New Year.”

  “Oh.” Alessa took a tormenting lick of his cockhead and wiggled her tongue tip into his slit. “In that case, I hope you have plenty of flavours.”

  “Enough to last until the spring,” he managed to pant out.

  She stopped and stared into his eyes. “Wow. Just hope I can keep up with you.”

  Hugo scoffed. “More like the other way around. And we’ll have plenty of practice when we’re—”

  “What?”

  “Together.” His voice was firm. “And…what are your thoughts on a spring wedding?” He was pushing it, he knew, but, as he stared into her eyes, a light shone in their sapphire-blue depths.

  “I sort of like the sound of that,” Alessa confessed, her voice low. “A spring wedding from winter sparks.”

  But Hugo didn’t have time for the massive jolt of elation shocking through him because the minx got the upper hand—literally—again, bending to him. “And I like the feel of this. And the taste…”

  An undignified, barely human noise was all the response he could manage for quite some time.

  About the Author

  After having lived and worked all over Europe, Rebecca Fairfax is back in her native UK, bursting to share all the stories she's dreamed up and describe all the places she's seen and all the people she's met. Romantic suspense, light contemporary, urban fantasy—it's all on the way.

  Her life is not her own; it belongs to her demanding Old English Sheepdog and her bossy British Blue cat. Once she accepted that, things got easier.

  Follow her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorRebeccaFairfax/

  Subscribe to her newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/djNOmv

  Look out for Pier’s story in Rent-a-Gentlemen Three: Sweet Days and Roses, coming soon!

  Stranger in the Snow

  Jane Blythe

  About the Story

  Trust a stranger with her life or risk it in a blizzard

  Driving home through a blizzard, Paisley McCook sees someone standing in the middle of the road holding what looks like a human head. It causes her to crash her car, and when she regains consciousness, there’s a man there. Unsure if he’s the same person she saw in the road, Paisley will have to put her trust in him if she wants to survive the storm.

  To my fabulous readers, Amanda Siegrist, Sarah Murphy, Melissa Borsey, and Barbara Ann, who provided the prompts for the first few scenes of this story which were originally flash fiction scenes!

  Chapter One

  “Ugh, I hate snow,” Paisley muttered to herself as she drove home from the store.

  She wasn’t looking forward to the impending snowstorm; she’d already lost her heat, but at least she was prepared—canned food, candles, plenty of bottles of water—if she ended up being snowed in.

  It was nights like these that she wished she lived in town. At least then she would be close to neighbors and help should she need it during the storm. But if she lived in town, she wouldn’t be able to have her horses live with her on her property. She used to agist her two horses, Walnut and Hazelnut, on a property ten miles from her home, but between work and life, it was a struggle to make it out to see them more than once a week. Now she got to see them every day. It was worth the compromises she had to make.

  The wind howled, and a gust buffeted her car. If she didn’t drive an SUV, it probably would have pushed her right off the road. Snow was coming down hard and fast now, and she hoped it wasn't going to get any worse until she was home and settled—she didn’t want to have to lug all these bags inside through a couple of feet of snow. She couldn’t wait to be home, cuddled up with her dogs on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, in front of a roaring fire.

  Another gust of wind tried to send her car heading straight toward a ditch and Paisley had to battle the steering wheel to keep it on the road and going in a straight line.

  She was close to home, only a half mile to go when something caught her eye.

  It was mostly dark now and snowing, but she saw a figure.

  A man.

  He was standing in the middle of the road.

  He wasn’t moving.

  There was something in his hands.

  Paisley squinted, trying to see more clearly through the blur of the snow and the quickly darkening night.

  It looked like …

  It looked like …

  It looked like a head.

  A human head.

  That couldn’t be right.

  She must just be imagining things. It wasn’t like the light from her headlights really gave her a clear view of anything, so she was probably just mistaking something ordinary for something very unordinary.

  She was getting closer, and a bad feeling settled in her gut. She wasn’t more than a dozen yards or so from him now and quickly closing the distance between them, but he still hadn’t moved.

  He lifted a hand, and this time she knew that what she was seeing wasn’t her overactive imagination kicking into high gear.


  It was a gun.

  And he was pointing it directly at her.

  With a scream that she wondered if he could hear over the howl of the wind, Paisley turned the steering wheel hard to the right.

  Her wheels slipped on the ice, and the car spun wildly out of control.

  Still, the man didn’t move.

  As her SUV slid across the icy road toward a ditch, a loud crack shattered her back window and pain exploded like a bomb through her body.

  Paisley tried to move. She tried to drive. She tried to think.

  She found she could do none of those things.

  All she could do was gravitate toward unconsciousness as her car slid towards the ditch.

  It hit with such force, it tossed her against the steering wheel, then whipped her back against her seat. Pure, burning agony like nothing she’d ever experienced washed her away into its inky blackness, leaving her completely helpless and at the mercy of whoever had been standing in the road.

  Chapter Two

  “Ahh.”

  The sound of moaning caught her by surprise.

  Was someone here?

  Where was here?

  Paisley felt numb. Like she was floating. She was so tired. She wanted to let her mind go blank and drift away again, but something was niggling at her. A memory, but she couldn’t catch hold of it.

  She felt like she should be moving—like she shouldn’t be here—but she had no idea why.

  “Ahh.”

  There was that moaning again.