Mistletoe'd!

by Cach, Lisa

  In the light and shadows atop the Space Needle I couldn’t be sure, but I thought there was a crease of pain between his brows. And then his hands tightened on me so hard that it hurt. “I swear it,” he said, and his mouth came down against mine. Hard. With a pressure that said I was no longer the seductress; I was instead the one who would be taken.

  One arm went around my back and held me close, his other hand sliding back to cup my head. I abandoned my control to his, closing my eyes and letting him show me what it was to be desired beyond all reason. He backed me against the rail, his thigh parting mine and pressing intimately against me. I tilted against him, the wide, hard muscle of his thigh rubbing against my sex. A moan slipped out of my mouth and into his.

  His mouth moved to the side of my neck, hungrily sucking and biting lightly, finding the tender places and sending shock waves through my body. I tilted my head back and opened my eyes, seeing the glow of the Christmas lights strung from the roof to the very top of the tower, then turned so that I could see the lights of the city.

  He opened the neck of my coat and laid his moist mouth over my breast, sucking my nipple through the silk. His thigh was replaced by his hand pulling up my hem, and he laid his palm against my naked sex. He moved his whole hand lightly over it, grazing its folds as he sucked at my nipple, flicking the tip with his tongue. His hand moved deeper, the tip of one finger touching the slit of my opening, finding the moisture there and dragging it upward to wet the path for his caress.

  I heard approaching voices, and Ian quickly dropped my skirt and closed the top of my coat. A group of revelers came around the curve of the deck, talking loudly.

  “Let’s go home,” Ian said.

  I didn’t answer, grabbing his hand instead and dragging him with me to the elevator.

  Chapter Eleven

  The moment we stepped through my front door, a sense of awkwardness overtook me. The shadowed living room with its familiar battered futon and old rocking chair were reminders of daily life; the dining room beyond, with my desk and computer; the fluorescent light burning above the kitchen sink, the white glow stretching across the linoleum and spilling out into the dark dining area. It was all too real to me, even with the lights out, whereas the magic of night atop the Space Needle had been another world. An imaginary world, where there were no rules and no tomorrows.

  Ian closed the door and came up behind me, his arms going around my waist. He pulled me back against him, bending his head down so it was next to mine. “Second thoughts?”

  I laid my hands over his on my waist. “This feels unreal.”

  His arms tightened around me. “Tell me now if you’ve changed your mind.”

  I closed my eyes, feeling the warmth of his breath against my neck. The fine hairs at my nape stood up, a shivering tension washing across my scalp. He dusted butterfly kisses down the bend of my neck, then reached up and pulled the top of my coat open, exposing my shoulder to his lips. “Tell me if you’ve changed your mind,” he repeated.

  “Don’t ask me that,” I said, my desire coming back full force. “I don’t want to think. I just want to feel.”

  His answer was to unbutton the rest of my coat. His hand slipped inside and cupped my breast, thumb rubbing over my nipple. Want to start in the shower?” he asked, one eyebrow going up wickedly. “We have about fourteen hours until I have to leave, but there are at least twenty different things I’ve thought of doing to you. Six of them can be done in the shower.”

  “I don’t know if I have the energy for twenty,” I said. “But maybe nineteen.”

  He kissed me lightly on the lips. “We will never see each other again after these fourteen hours, but I will make you remember me, Tessa. I’m going to give you such pleasure that you can never forget. I’ll even spank you, if you want.”

  “Merry Christmas to me,” I said, and smiled, refusing to think about the fifteenth hour, when I’d be alone again.

  A girl could ask for worse than a Scotsman for Christmas.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was the end of the fourteenth hour when I looked disconsolately into the empty paper box, as if staring would refill it. “We should have ordered more spring rolls.”

  “There’s a little pad thai left,” Ian said, nudging a container toward me.

  “No, thanks. You can finish it.” We’d ordered Thai food delivered, our exertions through the night, morning, and afternoon having created a calorie debt that nothing in my kitchen could repay; not even the cookie dough ice cream in the freezer, the last of which had been devoured as sex fuel around ten a.m.

  I glanced at the clock. Four p.m. The taxi we’d ordered should be here within fifteen minutes. “It’s strange, but I don’t feel as if you’re really leaving.”

  He swallowed his mouthful of noodles and washed it down with a sip of India pale ale. “I know I am, and I hate it.”

  I raised my brows in question.

  He smiled wryly. “Part of my mind is already trying to check in at the airport, and worrying about whether I’ll find a place to stow my carry-on luggage. What I’d rather be thinking about is whether or not I can muster the energy to do you one more time.”

  “Then thank heavens for carry-on luggage!” I laughed. “I think I’d have heart failure if we did it again. I think it’s going to take my body a month to recover.”

  He smiled, although there was something sad in his eyes as he looked at me. “I think I’m going to miss you, Tessa.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  But you won’t miss me enough to make you want to stay. “Remember your promise.”

  “No phone calls,” he said, and there was a wince of pain between his brows, there for a moment and then gone. “No e-mails. No asking Lauren how you are.”

  “And you will never see me again.”

  His lips tightened, and the rims of his eyes pinkened, a glossy sheen of moisture appearing. “Never.”

  I swallowed against the tightness in my own throat. I will not think about him leaving, I told myself. Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think! But something inside me knew how to feel, even without the conscious thoughts. I bit the inside of my lip, forcing it to stop trembling.

  “Tessa, I—”

  A horn honked right in front of the house, making us both jump.

  “He’s early,” I said, silently cursing the taxi driver. I went to the door and called out to him that Ian would be just a minute.

  Ian put on his coat. His things were already stacked beside the door. I stood in front of him in my bare feet and jeans, my hair mussed from his lovemaking, the feel of him still aching in my loins. He himself needed a shave, and his hair was only slightly less mussed than my own. There was no polished perfection to him at this moment, and it made me want to slip into his arms and stay there forever.

  “What were you going to say?” I asked.

  “I… wanted to thank you,” he said, and I knew it wasn’t what he had been about to say at the kitchen table. “And I don’t mean for last night, as much as enjoyed it. I mean, thank you for letting me into your life these past few days. You’re unlike anyone I’ve ever met, and I will never forget you.” He touched me lightly on the cheek and traced the shape of my jaw, his gaze following the movement of his fingertips as if trying to lock the lines of my face into his memory. “Whoever you marry someday, he’s going to be a very lucky man.”

  I grasped his hand and turned his palm to my lips, kissing it tenderly. “I hope you find who you’re looking for someday.”

  We hugged, and he kissed the top of my head. A moment later he was gone, jogging lightly down the front stairs, his luggage slung about him. I watched him load it into the trunk with the help of the driver, then turn around to smile at me and wave.

  “Don’t call me!” I said.

  “I won’t, I promise!”

  The driver scowled at us and got back into his cab. Ian climbed in, the door shut, and the reflected gray light of th
e day made it impossible to see more than the dim shape of him behind the window. The cab pulled away from the curb, and I shut my front door.

  I was alone.

  *

  I sat down at my computer to check my e-mail, hoping for something to distract me from the quietness of the house. I’d already cleaned up the kitchen and had a load of laundry running. I’d thought about scrubbing the bathroom, but then decided there were better ways to distract myself.

  My e-mail program pinged with new messages. One of them was from the hostess of the Christmas party, and there was an attachment. The note was brief, explaining that she was sending everyone pictures of themselves that her hired photographer had taken. I love the look on your face in this picture! she wrote.

  I winced and scrolled down, dreading my first view of the fight photo. But when the picture came up, it was not the fight scene at all. It was a picture I didn’t even remember being taken, of Ian and me talking and laughing. I was looking up at him with blatant adoration in my eyes, and he had one hand on my shoulder, his head bent down to hear me. He looked as intent upon me as I had been upon him.

  My eyes stung, and I quickly shut down my computer.

  No, no, no, don’t think about him!

  How long had he been gone? I looked at the clock. Twenty minutes.

  I put on my shoes and coat and went for a walk around Green Lake. It was dark, and Christmas Eve, but still there were dozens of strollers and joggers on the paved path around the lake. I forced my mind into distracting thoughts of tomorrow morning at my parents’ house, and then looked across the lake at exactly the right point to see the Space Needle in the far distance, its Christmas lights aglow.

  Dammit. The one bleedin’ landmark you could never escape in Seattle was the Space Needle, and now the damn thing was going to make my heart ache every time I saw it. Dammit, dammit, dammit!

  I stomped home and started throwing clothes and toiletries into a bag. I didn’t want to be alone any longer tonight. I’d drive to Snohomish right now, and burrow under the covers of my childhood bed.

  Bag packed, I ran upstairs to my sewing room to gather up the gifts I’d made. I stopped when I saw them, though: sitting on top of the pile of neatly folded garments was a small gift in gold paper, a red velvet bow tied around it. I approached slowly, heart thumping.

  There was a card tucked under the ribbon. I pulled it out and opened it—it was one of my own Christmas cards that he’d swiped.

  Dearest Tessa,

  I’ve laughed more with you these three days than I can remember doing since I was a kid. You’ve made me look at myself with clearer eyes, and you’ve made me see that you yourself are far more than a beautiful face and sexy body. Not that you’d know I was thinking of anything more than that, given what we’ve been doing today.

  You’re a smart, funny, exciting, and kindhearted woman, Tessa. You deserve to be treated well, and to treat yourself well. Indulge in the silk panties once in a while.

  You once said that you didn’t deserve an antique garnet necklace. The truth is that you deserve more than a garnet necklace: You deserve every happiness that the world can bring.

  With love,

  Ian

  P.S. You deserve better than Kevin, too.

  I carefully tore open the gold paper and lifted the lid of the square cardboard box within.

  It was the garnet locket. I turned it over, and behind the small pane of glass was a snippet of dark hair.

  I slipped the necklace over my head, the heavy pendant falling perfectly into place halfway down my sternum. The weight of it against my skin reminded me of how Ian had touched me there, and I closed my eyes and cried.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Oh, now, isn’t this wonderful?” Mom said, opening the box with her new bathrobe inside.

  “It’s flannel on the inside, quilted on the outside,” I said from amidst a pile of wrapping paper on the floor. “I dare you to get cold in it.”

  “It’s just lovely!”

  A piercing shriek echoed from the hallway, and then my four-year-old niece, Meggie, ran into the room, followed by her six-year-old brother, Jayden, both of them in the costumes I’d made them, both of them stuffed to the gills with sugar and excitement. Meggie threw herself on me. “Help me!” she cried, her small hands gouging into my skin with surprising strength.

  “I will kill you!” Jayden growled, a plastic sword in hand. He took up a ninja stance in front of us and slashed the air, the blade coming dangerously close to my face.

  I grabbed the blade mid-slash and locked eyes with him. “Bring this near me again and I’ll throw it in the river.”

  He tugged at the hilt. “You can’t do that!”

  I kept hold of the blade. “Try me.”

  Something in my voice seemed to get through. “Okay, okay!” he said. I released the blade and he let the tip fall to the floor; then he kicked his sister. “Crybaby!” he shouted, and sprinted from the room and out of my reach.

  Meggie scrambled off my lap and chased after him. “You’re the crybaby!” she screamed. “You are! You are!”

  Stern adult tones and strident child complaints drifted in from the kitchen as my brother sought to tame his wild offspring. The back door banged open and then shut again. Even in cold weather, the kids zipped in and out of doors with more frequency than an incontinent schnauzer.

  “Honey, are you all right?” Mom asked. “You seem down. And you were so quiet when you got here last night. Is everything okay?”

  “It’s nothing,” I lied. If I told her even a little about Ian, she’d want to know more. And how could I tell more without telling her that I’d spent a long night with a man I’d known only a couple days, and whom I’d made promise never to speak to me again?

  She’d think I was insane. Or a fool.

  I was voting that I was a fool.

  What lies I had told myself, saying it wouldn’t hurt to give myself to Ian if I knew there was no hope for a future. I’d imagined that I’d be able to look at our time together as a naughty, exotic interlude in my otherwise tame life, and would keep it my own little secret, perhaps spilling it only forty or fifty years hence, when a granddaughter came to me for advice about her own love life.

  Such lies I’d told myself.

  I hurt. I hurt because I’d fallen in love with him, and then made sure I could never have him. I hurt because he’d made sure that I could never forget him.

  He wasn’t perfect. He had streaks of immaturity. He was a cynic and a sybarite. He was a womanizer.

  But he had also made me feel beautiful, and funny, and fun to be around. He made me feel like his world revolved around me. He made me feel worth nice things, and worth being pampered and pleasured. He was generous and self-deprecating, and didn’t care if he made a fool out of himself.

  He wasn’t perfect, but I thought he was perfect for me. I was happy when I was with him.

  A door opened and slammed shut again, and then there were the running footsteps of children.

  “Aunt Tessa!” Meggie shouted, skidding to a stop in the doorway, her cheeks red from the outdoors. “I have a present for you!”

  “I have a present,” Jayden said, coming up behind her and shoving her aside.

  “Do not! I do!” Meggie gave him a good elbow to the gut and pushed him over.

  I blinked in surprise. Strong girl.

  “I get to say it,” she said, kicking her brother while he was down. He groaned loudly and covered his head, curling into the fetal position. “I get to!” she repeated.

  “Jeez, let up on him, will you?” I said, although I could see he was laughing and not truly hurt. “I think you made your point.”

  She kicked him once more for good measure, then planted her hands on her little hips. “I have a Christmas present for you. I found him outside.”

  “Oh?” Thoughts of earthworms and snails slithered across my mind.

  “Will you come see?”

  I shrugged and got up, then
followed her to the front door, planning to go no farther than the front steps in my slippers and pajamas. She opened the door.

  Ian stood on the other side, a look of cautious hope on his handsome face. “I finally thought of an appropriate song to sing.” He brushed his hand through his hair and lowered his chin, looking up at me from under his brows. “Return to sender,” he started to sing in a bad impersonation of Elvis. “Bright and early next morning, it came right back to me…”

  I gaped, not believing my eyes. I was hallucinating. “I’m not a fool; I’m insane,” I whispered, and felt my knees start to buckle.

  He swooped inside and caught me up in his arms. “Tessa!”

  Meggie laughed and hit me on the rump. “He told me to say he was a present! And I did!”

  “Ian? What are you doing here?” I asked, as I was dimly aware of my sister-in-law appearing and dragging Meggie away. “Did you miss your flight again?”

  “I made my flight. I even found a place for my carry-on luggage. But then I realized that I was about to miss my one chance at something far more important: you.”

  “You got off your plane?” I asked, bewildered.

  He nodded. “Rented a car. Went to your house, but you were gone. I waited outside for half the night before figuring out that you must have come here. I had a devil of a time finding this place. I wasn’t even sure I had the right Shore residence until I saw your niece and nephew running around in those costumes you’d made.”

  “But… why?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” he asked, running his fingers into my hair and tilting my face upward.