by Joey W. Hill
SNOW ANGEL
An Ellora's Cave Publication, DECEMBER 2003
Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.
PO Box 787
Hudson, OH 44236-0787
ISBN MS Reader (LIT) ISBN # 1-84360-734-4
Other available formats (no ISBNs are assigned):
Adobe (PDF), Rocketbook (RB), Mobipocket (PRC) & HTML
SNOW ANGEL © 2003 JOEY W. HILL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. They are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.
Edited by Sheri Ross Carucci
Cover art by Darrell King.
SNOW ANGEL
Joey W. Hill
“So what do you want for Christmas, little girl?”
Constance Jayne Bradwell looked over her shoulder, startled and then amused to find Santa looking directly at her.
The Children’s Home Benefit Party was one of the city elite’s most popular Christmas Eve events. The organizers had wanted some of the hands-on volunteers here tonight to mingle with the wealthy attendees and answer questions about the shelter. She was told she had a pleasing appearance that would fit in well. She’d done her duty, mixing, mingling, making conversation, all the while wondering if any of them had the slightest inkling what it was like to face Christmas alone in the world, belonging to no one but yourself.
She hated this holiday, with its pounding messages of family, love and togetherness, a scream so strong there was no escaping from it. Another hour and she could go home, put a pillow over her ears and sleep until it went away. She tried not to watch the dancing couples, one woman’s elegantly manicured hand resting on the shoulder of her husband, his hand around her waist. What would it be like to have that casual intimacy? Any intimacy at all?
It had been a long time since she’d had sex, and she was lonely enough to long for even the artificial intimacy it could conjure. Wouldn’t it be nice to find a safe guy to take her home, let him inundate her with mindless physical desire, and make her forget what she really wanted? What would it be like to have a man guide her to the dance floor with a protective, possessive hand to the small of her back? Get an aspirin out of the medicine cabinet if she had a headache, rather than having to stumble there by herself, blinded by the pain? What would it be like to have someone else hold the reins for awhile, not because it was his job or volunteer shift, but because he’d made a willing commitment to make her his, to cherish and care for her?
It was a confusing yearning, as if she wanted a parent and a lover both. She’d always been terrified to let go of control of her life, and yet tonight she had an overwhelming desire to do just that.
“You can’t tell me a pretty little thing like you doesn’t want anything for Christmas. Come here.”
Santa held out his hand. On an impulse, she set her rum punch on a nearby table and took his offered hand to help her up to his throne. Some of the wrapped packages around his feet had gotten scattered, so she had to pick her way carefully through them with her heels. Santa’s other hand touched her waist to steady and guide her, then she was up the step. He sat back down, using their clasped hands and the hand on her waist to guide her onto his knee.
Well, they always said “knee”, but it was really a man’s thigh you sat upon, a very intimate posture. There was no doubt the person on whose leg she sat could feel the shape of her bottom, the division of her thighs, perhaps even the small apple-sized area of vulva and labia, the dress being a typical formal, thin silken cloth that hugged her curves and sparkled.
“Let me guess.” She arched a brow. “It’s getting late, so you decided to make a play for the only other person at the party without a date.”
His lips curved into an appreciative smile. Hazel eyes tipped by dark lashes looked at her from the framework of the curly white wig and beard. Putting that together with the muscular thigh that felt capable of accommodating her as long as she wanted to sit there, Constance realized with some surprise that this Santa was in his late thirties.
It made sense. Ironically, there were no children at this event, so his efforts were geared toward adults, exchanging quips with the men as he handed out presents, and encouraging ladies young and old to take his knee for a moment’s flirtation.
“Not necessarily. You looked sad, and I thought you might like to tell the one person at the party who’s supposed to grant wishes what would make you happy.”
He had a compelling voice, with the smooth, rich tones of a late night radio talk show host. It was a voice that inspired confidence and comfort, and Constance felt something in her chest tighten, as if his words had the ability to wrap around her heart and squeeze out thoughts she would normally have no intention of saying out loud.
“So, is this like a confessional? Nothing I say will be repeated?”
“What’s spoken in this ear,” he tapped it with one finger, cocking his head, “is only repeated to elves and angels.”
She’d asked it half joking, but his response was serious, and her attention clung to those beautiful eyes. She had an urge to reach out and touch his mouth, and decided she needed to go home before she embarrassed herself.
But the shallow, harsh noise of two hundred impersonal voices pressed against her, and his touch, kind and strong against the small of her back, his expression attentive, steady, roused things in her she couldn’t ignore.
He was Santa, and she had a very special wish. Maybe wishes whispered into the ears of a symbolic Santa would get to the ears of an angel and, if she’d been very, very good, some small part of her desire would be answered. She’d believed it once.
Constance leaned back, her shoulder pressing into his chest so she was speaking into his ear, not to any party guests standing too close. He tilted his head closer and when she spoke, she inadvertently brushed his ear with her lips, her jaw line pressing against the silky cotton sideburns of the beard.
She closed her eyes, shutting out reality, giving herself the same courage that the screen of the confessional provided. A safe place to voice her sins, her fears, her deepest wants. His hand tightened on her waist, holding her to him, and the words tumbled out of her mouth.
“I don’t want to be here. I want to be home with someone who cares about me. I want to wake up tomorrow with someone’s arms around me. I want to hear someone whisper ‘Merry Christmas’ in my ear, and be able to believe, if just for that moment, that I’m the most important person in his life. I want to be swept away, taken over. For one night, I want to believe I can trust my happiness in someone else’s hands.”
She straightened up, looked into those golden green eyes. “Pretty tall order, hmm, Santa? Bet you don’t have anything in those little boxes at your feet to cover that.”
She pushed off his lap before he could respond and walked away, already feeling like a fool.
* * * * *
For the next half hour, she was caught in a conversation with the owner of the city’s pro basketball team and his wife. When she dared a look around, she saw she’d finished off Kris Kringle, because the dais had been removed, the packages cleared to make more dance room. Poor guy. Paid to do a Santa gig and got a load of crap dumped on him.
She made her good-byes to the hostess and then stopped in at the restroom. With only a small twinge of guilt and a relieved sigh, she flipped the lock to keep everyone out. It wasn’t the main restroom, but a two-stall facility so the party attendees wouldn’t have to walk down to the main foyer. She just couldn’t take the risk of one
more conversation. It was ridiculous, she knew. She worked with children who’d come from the most horrible of circumstances, who had a wide range of emotional and physical problems, yet tonight’s glittering party easily qualified as the hardest volunteer task she’d worked all year. Next year she was taking the children’s Christmas party, even if she had to bribe someone to get it. Or maim them.
“Would it help if we nailed some boards over it? It’s soundproof, if you need to let out a primal scream.”
A man stepped out of the second stall. He wore jeans and was sliding a shirt over his broad shoulders. The Santa suit hung on a rack on the open stall door. The beard and wig were gone, leaving dark hair raked back by his fingers and a smoothly shaven jaw. A jaw she recognized.
“They…they pay you to be Santa?”
Her Santa was S. Coble Whitney III, or Sam Coble as he’d preferred in high school when she’d last known him fifteen years ago. Now he was a wealthy manufacturing CEO, recently divorced. She’d tutored him in math through her junior year, and had had the kind of heart-aching crush on him only an awkward, geeky foster kid could have for a boy who was handsome, funny, and kind to her when others laughed at her unpolished table manners or the way she dressed.
Sam smiled, and she found it could still bump her heart up a few beats. “They’re predicting a slump for manufacturing first quarter, so I figure it would be good to rack up a few extra dollars at Christmas.”
The last thing she wanted tonight was to see someone from high school, someone who remembered her.
“I’m sorry about the Santa thing. I just…it just…” she stopped short, baffled when he took two steps forward, caught her nervous hands in his.
“It’s the best request I’ve had all night. One I think this Santa is going to handle personally.”
His hands moved to her hips and Constance found herself trapped between a warm, solid body and the cool surface of the door. “Sam, what are you---“
“Going on impulse,” he said. “If you’re going to stare at a man’s body with that much hunger in your eyes, you’re going to have to take the risk of being eaten yourself.”
Heat overpowered shock and mortification as he moved in, pressing her body against the door with the strength of his. His lips touched hers, opened them with insistent demand. A shiver swept up from her knees, like an electric shock passing through her muscles and nerve endings. Locking her bones into a paralysis she couldn’t shake as his mouth explored hers, his tongue teasing hers to play with him. His fingers dug into her waist, her hip bones. His cock, leashed in the tidy, civilized constraint of his jeans, swelled against the denim, pressed between their thighs in blatant invitation.
Her body ignored all rational protests to this astounding turn of events. She was kissing back, perhaps too greedily. One of his large hands captured her nape, controlling her movements, his fingers caressing the back shell of her ear, the dangling earring.
The sensitive pressure points of her neck screamed in response, and the reaction rippled outward, tightening her breasts, her loins, her buttocks.
She’d never had the feeling of safety a parent could evoke, and knew when she was too old to continue hoping she’d be adopted into a family. About that time, she’d gotten hooked on romance novels, transferring her desire for parents to a desire for the protective alpha males within their pages. The emotional and physical yearnings the characters stoked to a fever pitch had grown so excruciating she’d submitted to the eager gropings of a slew of boys happy to find someone upon whom they could relieve their own overwhelming glandular urgings.
It had taught her that sex didn’t come with the emotional fulfillment it promised. Like the best sales force, her hormones would tell her anything to get what they wanted.
Now she maintained a careful understanding of what was sex and what was more, and had indulged in lukewarm relationships that dwindled into tepid friendships. She was an adult, beyond the need for the parental bond, but she knew she yearned for something indefinably similar in a lover, a sense that he was in control but with her best interests at heart. A fantasy. No. A fantasy suggested something exciting, whimsical. What her heart ached for was a miracle.
It was Christmas, she was lonely, she wanted to be taken. If it was empty lust, so be it. She’d take lust over simple emptiness. Her body was so ravenous for a man’s touch, a man’s loving, that even if it was for five minutes in the bathroom, she’d accept it. She might even convince herself he cared, because Sam had always been a good person to her, the one boy who hadn’t taken advantage.
Only now he was a man, a gorgeous male specimen with a warm body and taut muscles that her hands were grasping just above his waist under the unbuttoned shirt. Her thumbs were at his waistband, feeling the curve of his back, the narrowing to his hips. The look in his eyes was pure primal dominance driven by desire, a male ready to sweep her off her feet, overpower her.
“Hold onto me, baby,” he murmured, and it was her only warning to clutch his shoulders before he turned them toward the sink counter. The edge pressed into her ass as his teeth scraped over hers, then he pushed her back, breaking the connection. He turned her so she faced the mirror and he stood behind her, those hazel eyes fired with desire. He slipped off the spaghetti strap of one side of her dress and caught her hand in his, holding it by her hip. He reached across her, his forearm pressing against her breasts, and dropped the other strap. She made a helpless noise, mesmerized by their images as he tugged gently at her waist, and the dress tumbled, pooling at her waist, revealing her curves, held up and together for display in the black strapless bra. The straps, lying loosely just above her elbows, held her arms to her sides unless she wanted to rip the dress.
“Beautiful,” he slid his thumb across the top of one breast, her flesh prickling with need at his lightest touch. “Constance, you have always had such lovely breasts.”
She wanted to tell him it was the clever engineering of wires and side pads, but anything more complicated than a whimper was beyond her just now. His hands moved back to her waist, then he was gathering the fabric of her snug skirt, inching it up over her hips. The palm of one hand pressed the small of her back, bending her forward so her cleavage was propped up on cool formica.
He’s going to fuck you like some feudal lord with a castle serving girl, her mind screamed. You’re going to feel degraded, cheap, worse than when you started. Remember the boys in the back seat, who wouldn’t even buy you a Big Mac when it was over? Cheapest little whore at school, that’s what they called you, because you never asked, never demanded more. You just wanted them to take care of you. But they never did. They didn’t care. You’re not sixteen anymore, Constance.
“No.” She started to rise, and found out how much stronger he was. His hands slid down her bare hips, and he grasped her thighs above the lace top of her stockings. He went to one knee and lifted her as she might lift a pillow, putting her knees on his shoulders, balancing her there, still facing the mirror. She rocked forward as he raised her hips just above the line of her shoulders, making her completely helpless. It was a terrifying, exhilarating feeling to be submissive to a man’s overwhelming strength. His mouth closed over her pussy, his lips separated from her flesh only by the black strip of the thong she had worn to avoid panty lines.
He wasn’t fucking her like some rutting beast. He was offering her pleasure like a gift.
“Oh, God…” It had been too long since she’d let her body feel this, and now suddenly everything was pressurized, like a bottle of soda that had been tossed around and now lay in his control to turn the top and let what was churning inside explode. She didn’t have the reins. He had simply plucked them away.
“Sam, I can’t…”
“Yes, baby. You can.”
His tongue licked, licked, pulled satin across swollen, wet folds, the friction rubbing again, again. His teeth closed over her clit, pressing down, urging her on. His nose was against her, nuzzling the enervated crease of her buttocks, his h
air brushing the inside of her thighs, forced open a fixed width by his head being there. Her feet kicked the air uselessly in her slender heels, her knees pressing into his shoulders as he worked her with his mouth and his arms banded over her thighs. He gripped each of her ass cheeks, spreading her open with his thumbs and moving the strap of her thong against the opening of her anus. As rhythmically and relentlessly as the passage of time, he licked her pussy some more.
“No, no…”
She threw her head back, saw herself in the mirror, eyes wild, moist lips parted, her breasts overflowing the bra, sliding against the smooth surface of the counter as he kept fucking her from behind with his mouth. Her hands caught the edge of the counter below her hips and pressed against it, instinctively seeking the rhythm to send her over, pushing her harder against his mouth.
As the orgasm descended upon her, she turned her head and tried to press her mouth against her shoulder to keep her screams from reverberating.
He caught her fingers, pulled them from the edge of the counter, his grip shifting to hold her arm behind her back in a way that increased the spiral of reaction in her belly. Her other hand lost its purchase on the counter. Now she had no anchor. Like foam, she moved on the ocean of his mouth, only able to travel where it took her.
“It’s soundproof, sweetheart. I want to hear you scream.”
He replaced his tongue working in her cunt with his thumb, sliding it down from where it had been busy at her anus with the thong strap, to rub her clit in light, perfect circles. At the same moment, he sank his teeth into the meat of her left buttock. The counterpoint of pleasure and pain sent her surging forward. Only his relentless grip on her arm and thighs kept her from slamming face first into the mirror as another orgasm exploded through her. She flailed, tossed ruthlessly on the tempest of her climax, the sensation rolling her psyche over and over, stretching every muscle and tendon to the breaking point. That explosive center he continued to manipulate served as a repeated detonation area, wringing every ounce of response from her straining body.
