The Christmas Ball

by Lily Seabrooke

  She slipped my panties down slowly, and I rolled my head back, let out a groan to the world.

  “Don’t look away,” she whispered, trailing her fingers around the spot where I actually needed them. “I want you to watch me.”

  I bit my lip, felt myself blushing burning-hot as I looked down, met her eyes, and then—when she trailed her fingers along my slit, I gasped, clutching fistfuls of the blankets. She laughed, her breath hot on me.

  “You’re getting so worked up already. You’re more innocent than I am, aren’t you?”

  “I-I don’t know about that,” I mumbled. “I just—not used to this—”

  She ran her tongue over me and I bit down hard on my lip, my whole body shuddering with the sensation. She was so deliriously hot and wet and I…

  She ran her tongue along the top of me, dipping into me and running up to my clit, and I moved my hips with her. I clasped my hand to my mouth, desperate to cover up the gasps and the moans I couldn’t stop, but I couldn’t look away—couldn’t take my eyes off the beautiful woman between my legs, her mouth pressed up hot against me.

  I wasn’t going to last long like this. Her tongue against me melted everything away, and the sensation of her sucking my clit, slipping her tongue down and inside me, and those gorgeous brown eyes looking up into mine, I lost control. I felt an orgasm coming sooner than I could believe, and I pressed her tighter into me as it rolled over me, crying out muffled into my own hand.

  She pulled away from me leaving me trembling, my body hot all over, my toes curled as I clutched the sheets for support, and she climbed up onto me and pulled me into a numbingly wet kiss.

  She pressed me down, climbing on top of me still with her lips pressed to mine, and I felt her moving around on top of me, taking her pants off—before long we were naked together, Alice on top of me, and I felt my eyes travel over her body, taking in every inch of smooth skin.

  “I intend to get our money’s worth here,” she whispered. “And not with a lot of sleeping time.”

  “I-I don’t know if I’d be able to get a lot of sleep right now anyway,” I blurted.

  “Of course not,” she laughed. “Because I’m going to keep screwing you senseless.”

  She slid down along my body, grabbed one of my legs and lifted it up, slipped herself between my legs and pressed herself against me. I groaned, feeling her wetness against mine, my mind going staticky.

  I didn’t even normally like this position. But something about Alice made this the most mind-blowing thing in my life.

  She rolled her head back as she ground herself against me, and everything else faded away—nothing but me and her, our bodies joined together, hot and heavy and mind-numbingly sensual.

  I let her drive me long, long into the night.

  ∞∞∞

  I woke up feeling groggy and weak, and the first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t the bedroom—then next was that I was naked, and then that the arms wrapped around me and the soft breaths on my back all belonged to Alice.

  It all came back to me in fractured bits and pieces, and I felt myself burn. This wasn’t good. This was incredible—on some level I couldn’t believe Alice was a lesbian too, despite all the obvious proof—but it was serious bad news.

  Alice stirred, and I felt her face press into my naked back. “You know,” she mumbled, “you smell like home.”

  “What?” I looked over my shoulder at where she snuggled up against me. She grinned.

  “Good morning. This is a pretty good compromise for the one bed situation, isn’t it?”

  I couldn’t believe this woman. She picked up on my reaction, because she laughed and kissed my shoulder.

  “You’re getting embarrassed? I hope you don’t regret it…”

  I swallowed. “You—you’re incredible. Last night was… I’ve never felt anything like that.”

  “Mm.” She pressed her nose, small and cool, up into my neck. “You’re the best I’ve ever had. It’s because it’s with someone really special, I think.”

  I flushed. “Alice—”

  “Do you regret it?” She looked up into my eyes. “If… if you’ve changed your mind about me…”

  I blinked. Probably I should have lied, pretended it hadn’t been the most incredible night of my night. And not just for the sex. “I like you,” I heard myself say, turning around to face her. “A lot. I like you a lot.”

  “I like you too.” She ran a hand through my hair. “So what’s the matter?”

  My stomach churned. “I… how are we going to hide it? This? Us?”

  She laughed. “It shouldn’t be too hard. I’ve been flirting with you this whole time and no one noticed.”

  I flushed. Thank god I wasn’t the only one. “I mean, aside from Rhys.”

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “Oh, so that’s what that was? She picked up on us? I kind of felt like she did…”

  “She promised to keep it a secret, but…”

  “I trust her.” She ran her hands idly along me, laid kisses softly along my collar. “As far as everyone else… I think they’re so stuck in their ways I could make out with you in the ballroom and they’d be like, what good friends they are.”

  “How much are you willing to bet on that? Your tuition? My… my tuition?”

  She frowned. “I mean… I’m willing to risk it. It’s not like we’ll be doing anything out of the ordinary. Dancing, spending time together—”

  “Sneaking out to a hotel room for a night of earth-shattering orgasms?”

  She laughed. “We don’t need to bring anyone else for those. I’m not into that kind of thing.”

  “I just—someone is bound to catch us.”

  “Catch us doing what? Holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes? We’ve been doing that all this time and we haven’t had any issues.”

  “Kissing?”

  “Technically, I already kissed you in front of everyone.”

  “Oh my god, why are you like this?” I laughed despite myself, remembering the feeling of that one swift kiss on my hand. “Look, I’m trying really hard to be reasonable. Obviously I want to…”

  She quirked a smile. “Be unreasonable?”

  “I guess you could call it that.”

  “I’m extremely unreasonable.” She pushed me onto my back, crawled on top of me, kissing me passionately on the lips, her hand slipping down to my thigh. “My vote’s on being unreasonable,” she breathed after parting, hovering just over my lips.

  “We should really get back. What are we even going to tell them?”

  She laughed. “I guess the whole thing about narrowly avoiding car sex and just barely getting to a hotel before I tore your pants off isn’t okay? What about saying we went out to pray?”

  “Pray?”

  She shrugged. “I mean, I got down on my knees and did a lot of loving.”

  I stared at her. “Alice, how does your mind even—fuck,” I blurted when she slipped her hand between my legs.

  “How does it fuck? Probably slowly, pinning you down…”

  She demonstrated, and I didn’t have the presence of mind to fight my body begging for more.

  Chapter 11

  Alice

  We told them we’d just gone out early for coffee, and no one even blinked an eye. We led the dance rehearsal, and god the way it felt so charged and so alive dancing with Lisette after I’d felt every part of her last night. It was incredible, it was colorful, it was beautiful, but it came with the minor downside where I kept wanting to kiss her every time we stopped moving.

  Rhys and Rose were really getting the hang of the dance, too. I swelled with pride every time I saw them dance. Like Lisette and I were their moms.

  Maybe I was getting a little ahead of myself with thoughts like that.

  We practiced singing together after, too, after her mom had harangued her into a violin recital. I was still embarrassing myself every time I joined Lisette in singing, but she insisted I sing with her, and Rhys and Ro
se loved it when we all sang together.

  It was after singing practice, and after Rose’s mom had come along and collected her and left me and Lisette alone with Rhys, that Rhys folded her hands at her waist and looked between us.

  “Hey, Miss Lisette,” Rhys said.

  “Oh, stop it. You don’t have to call me Miss.”

  Rhys looked down. “Mom said you’re my teacher, so I should call you Miss Lisette.”

  Lisette shook her head. “I don’t like Miss. It’s such a stuffy distance and it makes it sound like I’m above you. Alice tells me you’re very intelligent and competent, too.”

  “O-okay.” Rhys nodded. “So… Lisette.”

  Lisette looked over at me, and I beamed. She blushed a little, looked back at Rhys and said, “Yes.”

  “Yes?” The way Rhys’s face lit up was the absolute most precious thing I’d ever seen.

  “It’s a secret,” I said. “If you tell anyone, really bad things could happen to us.”

  Rhys’s face fell. “Like what?”

  I knelt next to her, dropping my voice. “Well… most of our family doesn’t believe women can love other women. If they find out, they’ll make us leave one another, or they might take me out of the family and I wouldn’t be your aunt anymore.”

  Rhys looked crestfallen. Lisette knelt next to me, and whispered, “Alice, don’t talk about things like that, you’re going to scare her.”

  I squeezed Lisette’s hand. “Rhys is a smart woman. She can understand. And it wouldn’t be nice to lie and hide things just because she’s young.”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” Rhys said. “But does that mean you have to keep it a secret forever?”

  I shook my head. “Just until I graduate. That’s two years from now. And I don’t have to keep it a secret from everyone, just the families.”

  Rhys pouted. “That’s not fair.”

  I nodded. “I know, Rhys. You’re right, it’s not fair.”

  She smiled a little, looking between us. “So, is Lisette my aunt too now?”

  I laughed, jostled Lisette’s shoulder. “Not quite yet. We’re going to wait a while longer before we talk about marriage.”

  “Can I tell Rose?” Rhys fidgeted. “She can keep a secret.”

  I swallowed, looking over at Lisette. “We’ll tell her ourselves at some point, probably,” I said. “Maybe. We’ll have to be careful.”

  Rhys looked down. “Okay… I won’t tell anyone.”

  I let out a long breath. “Thanks, Rhys. I know I can trust you.”

  She hugged me, which came as a surprise, because Rhys didn’t normally do hugs. I’d first gotten on her good side at a family visit when her mom told her to hug me, and when I saw she was hesitant about it, I told her she didn’t have to hug anyone she didn’t want to. But here she was, some years later, a little bigger, and making her own decisions about who to hug. “Thanks, Aunt Alice.”

  She turned and hugged Lisette too, and that one really threw me for a loop. Lisette squeezed her softly.

  “You too, Aunt Lisette.”

  I laughed. “Are we already married in your head?”

  “I just want to call her that,” Rhys laughed.

  “Just not when anyone else is listening,” Lisette said. “I don’t want to give anyone else any ideas.”

  I pulled Lisette into a quick embrace, whispered into her ear. “I’d love to give people plenty of ideas about us. But I’ll be good.”

  No matter how hard it might have been.

  ∞∞∞

  The days passed peacefully. There was something different about Christmas with Lisette, something about family gatherings where I got to sit next to the fire under the same blanket as Lisette, my hand tangled with hers under the blanket, running little shapes on her palm with my fingertips and sneaking glances at one another, holding myself back from kissing her.

  When I got to bake cookies with her, laughing as I dumped flour into the mixer and sent a cloud up to cover our faces, getting into pointless arguments over whether the cookies bake for eight or nine minutes when they actually went for fifteen, sharing cookie dough off the beaters—I saw the appeal of all the Christmas cooking that had always annoyed me.

  It was something different in the way we’d go out on ladies’ socials, and Lisette and I would sit together at the café and hold hands under the table—or when I was feeling impish, run my fingers around her knee. And we’d keep slipping away to “do some shopping” together, which usually did involve shopping for the kids, but also long dates in little eateries or coffee shops, or my personal favorite, going clothes shopping, where we’d get to go into the fitting rooms together and share the sweet kisses we never got to have in the open.

  And the times spent sitting for Lisette’s violin performances, where Rhys always sat next to me, were part of the package, too. It was all Christmas magic, which I’d just never believed in before this Christmas miracle we’d had on the lake. And the subsequent Christmas miracle we’d had in the hotel. Miracles, plural, maybe.

  And of course, it was the way Lisette and I could barely wait until we were back in our room at the end of each day before we had our hands on one another, always kissing her like she was my oxygen. I’d learned just how quietly I could have sex, and even though trying to be stealthy didn’t match what we’d had in the hotel, it still really didn’t leave much to be desired. We’d snuggle up together after we finished, and talk the absolute nerdiest things about music technology. Or, you know, sometimes just little things like our dreams, what we were doing after college, places we dreamed of living, what our dream careers would be like. How many kids was the right number to have. Little things.

  There were a lot of magical moments in those days. It was a kind of Christmas magic.

  In fact, it was magical enough I ended up making a stupid snow angel after all, no matter how much I hated the stupid cold snow.

  We’d run outside with a bunch of the kids, and after letting them loose to build snowmen and snow forts, I ended up sitting next to Lisette on one of the patio tables, sweeping off a good eight inches of snow before I could sit down.

  “It’s going to be hard after this, you know,” Lisette said, sitting in the one next to me. I reached over, laying my hand on her wrist.

  “After Christmas, after we go back?”

  She nodded. “I haven’t done… distance before.”

  “We’re not too far apart,” I said. “We can do weekends. That’s not too bad.”

  “It’s going to be hard,” she mumbled. “I… I will miss you a lot, and I know I’ll take that out on people around me.”

  “You’re thinking negative thoughts.”

  She gave me a sad smile. “I do that a lot.”

  “Why is that?”

  She looked down. “I don’t know. It’s just… I get so focused on the negatives. It makes it so hard sometimes to see anything else. I just see myself sitting in bed late at night… texting you and feeling lonely. I don’t want to be lonely again.”

  “We’re not going to be too far apart. Any weekend you need me, I’ll be there. Or you can come to me.”

  She sighed. “I wonder what I did to deserve you.”

  “Miss Alice!” one of the kids shouted, and I looked up to where one of the girls—Sophie, Lisette’s baby cousin—waving to us. “Miss Lisette! Come play!”

  I stood up. “Well, we can’t just not play with them. C’mon, baby-doll.”

  She snorted. “What?”

  “I wanted to try saying it. I have to find a pet name for you.”

  She shook her head, standing up close to me. “I happen to be fond of ‘Lisette.’ It…” She dropped her voice, leaned in and whispered. “It sounds really nice in your voice.”

  I flushed. “Lisette, don’t make me kiss you right now,” I whispered.

  “Oh, you’re one to say that. The biggest flirt of anyone.”

  I stepped away and laughed. “I wear my heart on my sleeve. Now—”

 
; I turned and ran into the group of kids, where they scattered laughing in every direction. I spun back to make sure Lisette was looking, winked at her, and fell backwards into the snow.

  Ugh. It was still too cold. I didn’t see why anyone would do this if it wasn’t to make their girlfriends laugh. Was that the only reason anyone did it?

  I heard a dozen kids around me all laughing and dropping down too, and I moved my arms and legs, making the stupid snow angel.

  I shuddered, got up from what was now a field of angels, sitting up before Lisette knelt and took my hand, helping me up. She laughed, her eyes sparkling.

  “So? Fun?” she said.

  I shook my head. “Cold and dumb. That doesn’t even look like an angel.”

  “I know, right?” She laughed. “Right now the only angel I see is standing in front of me.”

  I giggled, but someone else’s voice interrupted.

  “I swear, every time I see you, Lisette—”

  I cringed at the sound of Seth’s voice, and sure enough, he came striding out from the house behind Lisette. She frowned, too, turning back slowly towards him.

  “You’re closer than ever with my cousin. Ah, mi amor, why not spend just a little time with me?”

  He reached a hand to her and she ignored it. I remembered the time he’d taken her hand and kissed it—and I remembered the time ten years ago he’d kissed her cheek. I wondered how he’d react if I swept her into a kiss right now.

  “It’s not Christmas ball yet, Seth,” Lisette said, her voice tart. “Right now Alice is my partner.”

  “Lisette, I’m not as dense as you think I am. I can tell you’re not that traditional. You’re using the fact that it’s not Christmas yet just to avoid me, now, aren’t you? I’m here to convince you to give me a chance. I’ll show you something magnificent—”

  “I don’t think she’s interested, dear cousin,” I laughed. “Maybe if you tried shaving?”

  “Maybe if you let her talk, dear cousin.” He returned his gaze to Lisette. “It isn’t terribly fair to dismiss me without a chance to show you who I am.”