A Climax for Christmas (A Holiday Romance Novella)

by Chris Genovese

  I made toys. I started out giving them to random kids in the neighborhood who had very little. I made wooden dolls and horses and carriages and figurines. The kids loved them. I took Agatha to church with me and as we listened to the stories of Christ and what he did for the world, I was hit with sudden inspiration.

  I would give to the world too. I was so excited about it. I would spend the year making toys whenever I wasn’t working on something to trade in town. Then, on the eve of Christ’s birth, I would set out with Agatha to deliver the toys to the town’s children. It would be fantastic.

  Where I’d been filled with sorrow for my lack of ability to give my wife a child, I suddenly felt that it had happened for a reason. We weren’t meant to have one or two children. We were meant to have them all, to give to them all, to surprise them all, to see their little faces light up with joy.

  The first year was the roughest. Agatha didn’t have the same enthusiasm that I did. She wasn’t so thrilled about spending our free time giving to children that weren’t ours. I dragged her with me on Christmas Eve, hoping she’d understand once she saw the poverty many of these kids were living in.

  But she didn’t get it. Instead, she reminded me of the poverty we were living in. She started to tell me how her family was right and how she should have listened to her parents. I was hurt. I was heartbroken. But I still loved her.

  It was my fifth year delivering gifts when I was visited by an angel. I was alone in a small workshop I’d created at the back of our home when he came to me. Yes, I’d been drinking, but he was as real as the dirt floor beneath my feet. He has never told me his name but I took to calling him Nathaniel. I don’t know why. He just looked like a Nathaniel.

  Nathaniel told me that I was giving selflessly and for this I would be greatly rewarded. I would be blessed with everlasting life, a wonderful home, a team of helpers, and a means for delivering my toys to the world’s children, not just the kids from my hometown.

  And that’s how it really started.

  ***

  I drain what’s left of my glass and feel the familiar burn and tipsiness that accompanies such a strong drink. Marlena coughs at my side and I dab the specks of blood from her lips before tucking her handkerchief back between the cushions at her side. It’s where she always keeps the old rag.

  Outside the elves are still playing and the Christmas lights on my window blink, shining multicolored globes across my paper. The lights. So lovely.

  ***

  Agatha.

  In a Christmas world, our North Pole gift from God, a snowy world that never was short on joy or happiness, my Agatha struggled to find the peace I’d quickly come to know. She missed her family. Sure she had good times. We were too old to have children by this point. And she seemed to loathe the time of the year when the elves and I put in extra work.

  Agatha was the first Mrs. Claus. She had servants to cook and clean, elves to build the toys, me to make her laugh, but even with all that she was distant. She’d become an empty shell. This wasn’t the life she’d married into. This was not the life she was meant to have. It was my life and I’m afraid I dragged her into it with little care or worry about what that might mean to her.

  I suppose I was an asshole. But, God, I loved that woman.

  She got sick, very sick with the flu. I did everything I could to help her and I prayed and begged for God and Nathaniel to do something to help her. She’d taken my hand as she spoke her last words.

  “Do you think I don’t want to leave this world behind?” she’d asked.

  I nodded.

  “I do,” she said.

  The night she passed, I sat with my face in my hands, and I sobbed. I bellowed. I was devastated that she’d been taken from me but even sadder that she’d wanted to go. The loneliness set in so quickly and unexpectedly. It was like I was being locked in solitary confinement.

  Finally, as I shriveled up in my bed and cried, Nathaniel came to visit me.

  “Why?” I asked. “Why would you put me in this wonderful place with the woman I’ve always loved and then let her leave me like this? Why would you take her away?”

  Nathaniel’s face was blurred out with light. It always was. I have never been able to clearly make out his features. He explained once that I wouldn’t be able to handle it. My eyes weren’t meant for looking upon a light so powerful.

  Even without seeing his face I can tell that he’s always smiling. Always at peace.

  “You were blessed with everlasting life,” Nathaniel said.

  “I remember, trust me,” I replied.

  “You have given selflessly and have been rewarded with longevity.”

  “And Agatha?”

  “Nicholas, I’m afraid we both know the truth about her. She never gave of herself. She was selfish.”

  “You take that back,” I spat.

  Hearing her spoken about in a negative manner tore at my soul. I hated Nathaniel for that.

  “Nicholas, you are a saint. You are one of God’s chosen vessels and that comes with great sacrifice sometimes. You will feel great love and you will feel great loss. For that I am sorry.”

  “I’m old, and overweight, and my bones ache. What way is this to live?” I asked him.

  “Oh that,” he said with a bit of a snicker.

  I didn’t see him make a move but I felt the change instantly. My gut sank in, my beard disappeared, and my skin hardened. I looked at a silver teapot on the kitchen counter and saw my reflection.

  I was me. The young twenty-five year old stud I’d been when I was first brought to the North Pole. My white hair had turned back to dirty blond. I was disheveled a bit, with blonde whiskers on my face, but nothing one of the elf barbers couldn’t fix.

  I touched a hand to my chest and felt the strong pecs I had so many years ago. In fact, I was in better shape than I’d ever been. I was lean and strong.

  Nothing would replace the sorrow I had in my heart and the sadness that was ripping me apart, but for a brief moment, I was in awe. Shocked by my transformation.

  And then Nathaniel was gone. And I was left with my pain and suffering.

  Chapter 2

  Many years passed before I decided to give love a second chance. To think that I was in full shifter Santa mode when I met her. Nathaniel’s blessing of being forever twenty-five took a temporary vacation at each holiday season. From December 1st until the 26th, my belly rounded out, my cotton-like beard and hair returned, and I felt old.

  The world knew my look and it would do me no good to show up looking like a book cover model to deliver presents. I’d probably get pegged as an intruding burglar and get shot. I’d broken bones and had injuries that healed quite quickly but I was in no rush to find out if I could survive a shotgun blast.

  So I was decked out in red and white when my sleigh landed outside her home in the outskirts of Dublin, Ireland. I went in as usual, with my sack full of toys, and was about to slip a couple of presents under the tree when I was her.

  She was unbelievably gorgeous. She was asleep at a small dinette table, her blue pajama gown draped down to the floor and her face resting on the table, providing a paperweight for some sort of letter. Her long red hair hung down like drapery waiting to be pulled aside to allow a glimpse of her stunning face.

  Her Christmas tree was small and bare. Only one present sat beneath it.

  I crept closer to her, careful not to wake her, and glanced at the paper beneath her chin. It read: Dear Santa, I leave you tree cookies but I get hungry so mama say I eat one. So now I give you too. Love, Madison.

  And there were the two cookies on a small dish set apart from the letter.

  I looked beyond the dinette and saw a small wood-burning stove and atop it was one pot. A quick glance told me they didn’t have much money to eat. Oatmeal had been dinner. Oatmeal with some kind of crushed nuts sprinkled in.

  My heart melted.

  Madison had gone to bed hungry just to give me two cookies. I ate them because to
leave them would be a sign of disrespect, especially after a little girl had gone without just to leave me a gift.

  As I snacked on the second cookie, the woman opened her eyes. And even in the dim lantern light I could see her sparkling green eyes, like emeralds that had been kissed by the sun. They glowed. And they were fixed on me.

  She gasped.

  “You’re him.”

  We talked for a few minutes. She never told me how difficult her life was and that was what won my heart. She was a proud woman and even when she knew I could help her, she never begged or let me know how badly they were struggling.

  Her name was Kathleen Flanagan and she was a single mother. Her husband had taken a drunken walk off a cliff one night. She knew pain. As did I. And I knew that had to mean something.

  I told her I’d come back to see her on December 27th but she should be ready for a shock.

  When I knocked on her door that afternoon, she opened it wearing a green velvet dress, laced in the front to show a little bit of cleavage, and her hair was brushed out nicely. She just stared at me.

  I wore a simple brown suit, a hat held at my chest, with a single rose in my outstretched hand. I was so nervous, much like I’d been the night I’d met Agatha at the ball.

  Kathleen held a shaky hand to her mouth and I realized she was seeing me in my younger form for the first time. I’d warned her to be ready for a surprise, but most would assume that meant showing up in a fancy carriage or maybe giving her an elaborate gift.

  Shedding pounds and years overnight wasn’t normal and the look on her face reminded me just how abnormal it was.

  She’d asked her mother to watch Madison for the weekend. So I spent time at her house. I bought all the food I could in the town market and made her a spaghetti dinner, one of my favorite meals. I hadn’t cooked in a long time but I’d practiced two nights in a row back at the North Pole and the elves never seemed to grow tired of my pasta.

  Kathleen loved it. We talked for hours by the fire, sipping wine, and enjoying each other’s company. I liked her tremendously and even though a part of me was hesitant to go through the pain that would come later just to feel the love that would lead there, I couldn’t help but fall for her. I’d been alone too long.

  As I held her hand on the rug-covered floor, I told her my story the best I could. We didn’t have time to go through all the details and I didn’t wish to go into much about my first wife but I told her all about the North Pole and what it was like to live there.

  “It’s so far away,” she said.

  “It is, which is what makes it so amazing that I stopped to stare at you that Christmas Eve. I usually enter and leave so quickly. I have a lot of houses to visit and I can only make time stand still for so long.”

  “Time stands still?” she asked.

  “A little,” I admitted.

  I couldn’t tell her all my secrets but time freezing was one of the perks. Without it, I wouldn’t possibly be able to deliver all the presents. Forwarding myself was another. That’s the process of speeding myself up to the point that I’m like a blur of light whipping through homes, dropping off gifts.

  I’d just come down from a forwarding moment when I’d entered Kathleen’s house. That’s the only reason I was still enough to actually see what was going on inside the home. I tried to be still at least once in each country to get a sense of the people there and how they appreciated the Christmas season.

  “And you stopped to look at me?” she asked as she tucked a strand of her fiery red hair behind her ear.

  The light from the fireplace lit up the left side of her face and left the right shrouded in mystery. Her lips were wet with wine and I wanted to sip it from her mouth.

  “I did,” I said. “I couldn’t resist. I’d never seen anything so lovely. You were calm, peaceful, and beautiful. I knew from the worry on your face as you dreamt that you lived a harsh life, but the way your lips curled up at the corners in a sort of half-smile, told me you remained a good person despite the cruelty of the world.”

  “Wow, you see a lot in a short time, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “And you liked me?”

  “I like you.”

  With that, I reached out, took her face in my hand, and kissed her. I took her bottom lip between my lips and licked the wine from it. She moaned into my mouth.

  “I want to take you home with me,” I whispered. “I want to give you and your daughter everything your hearts desire. No more hunger, no more sorrow, no more tears. Come with me.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Take me.”

  “Come for me,” I added as I lowered my mouth, pushed her back onto the floor, and lifted her dress.

  I’d learned something about myself earlier that year. I loved to eat pussy. And I was good at it. Really good. Like I said, when I was between wives, I went a little crazy. Let’s just say I was a connoisseur of cunt. Ugly word, cunt, I know, but connoisseur of cunt rolls so easily off the tongue.

  Kathleen pulled her dress up to her stomach, giving me full access to her. I ran my head up her leg, letting my damp lip streak across it as I lifted my face to her cloth-covered crotch. I put my face to her panties and inhaled, loving the scent of her, wanting to taste her so badly.

  I took her pussy in my mouth and sucked on the fabric, dampening it with my tongue, and feeding it into her pussy as I pressed my mouth against her lips. She arched her back, letting me know I was doing just fine.

  I tongued the spot where her hole was, soaking the panties, and teasing her. She wanted me inside her but she wasn’t getting it yet. I needed her to know that if I took her back to the North Pole, she was going to have to be okay with me eating her pussy whenever I wanted. And that was often.

  I liked pussy with my coffee, pussy after my morning jog, pussy on work breaks, and pussy after dessert. If she liked to come, she’d have a happy life ahead of her. After all, I am and always was, the master of toys.

  “What you’re doing,” Kathleen said. “I like it. Yes, that.”

  That was when I pushed my tongue hard against her. And as she arched her back again, I slinked my tongue to the side of her panties, and let the wetness of my bare tongue reach the spot between her thigh and her pussy. I touched her skin there and licked upwards with my wide tongue.

  Her legs shook. She reached down and grabbed the waistband of her panties. She tried to shove it down but I stopped her.

  I let my tongue drift from the crease between her legs and lips and swiped it over her trimmed pussy so that it just nudged her clit and passed down to nip at her pussy lip.

  “Oh shit,” she said in her adorable Irish accent.

  Thinking back, even if she wasn’t gorgeous, her voice would have done me in.

  “Oh yes, take me, do whatever you want with me. I am yours.”

  She was saying all the things I liked to hear. I would take her and I would do whatever I wanted with her. She was mine. And to drive this fact home, I reached beneath her, gripped her ass in both hands, and pulled her roughly into my mouth. She slammed her elbows down and pushed up into me.

  “Now take them off,” I said.

  She fucking ripped them off. She didn’t pull down at the waistband, she found some sort of internal hidden strength, reached down, and shredded those panties.

  Her pussy came to life in front of my face. In the candlelight I admired the wet mound in front of me and the way it dripped from between her wrinkled, sopping wet lips. I leaned in and sipped, actually drank the juices flowing from her. And she tasted incredible.

  I dug in with my tongue, tasting her warm pussy like hot pie baked for my pleasure. My nose, lips, teeth…all were soaked and I kept licking her. She wiggled and writhed on the floor, trying to buck her hips and fuck my face. She cried and yelled and moaned and groaned.

  And she grabbed my short bangs and pulled, driving my face into her. The harder she pulled, the more pain I felt, and the rougher I got, wagging my tongue back and forth, ea
ting her swollen pussy.

  “Blooooooody hell!” she howled as she bucked once more and came.

  Her legs clamped over my face and shook. She yelled and I yanked away from her fast. I was planning to flip her around and fuck her from behind, but I didn’t move quickly enough and she was faster to her feet, shoving me onto the couch.

  She lifted her arms and pulled the dress from her body and for the first time I saw her tits. They were small, barely visible, but that was such a fucking turn on. Every different female form holds such great mysteries and such intense joy for me. I loved them. Fuck, writing this, as bad as this is, I’m getting a hard on.