Her Naughty Holiday

by Tiffany Reisz

  “What?”

  “I’m old.”

  “You rest. I’ll row,” she said, taking the oars from him.

  “Or we could fuck in the boat.”

  “I’m not putting my bare ass on an aluminum boat bottom,” she said. “It’s too cold to have sex outside.”

  “Not even oral?”

  “There is a man and his two sons on the shore fishing right over there.”

  “So that’s a no to boat oral?”

  “That is a no to boat oral.”

  “Give me those oars,” he said.

  Clover refused and she started rowing the boat back to the cabin. She wasn’t as fast as Erick but slow and steady wins the race, and with sex being the prize for this race, she rowed, certain of victory.

  “Ruthie would be proud of me for letting you row,” he said. “Men are supposed to be willing to give up the reins in a relationship. I guess oars are similar to reins. We’ll pretend they are.”

  “Do I have the reins in this relationship, then?”

  “Absolutely. Your wish is my command. Command me.”

  “Here’s a serious command. I need to figure out what to do with the nursery so I command you to help me.”

  “What to do about it?” he asked. “What’s the problem with it? I thought you were going gangbusters.”

  “We are. That’s the problem. PNW Garden Supply wants to buy us.”

  “For how much?”

  “Five?”

  “Five hundred thousand?”

  “Five million.”

  Erick’s eyes went wide, his mouth dropped open. It was the reaction she was hoping for. “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah, that was what I said. But we’ve been turning big profits the last two years. I invested it all back into the company after putting a chunk in my retirement account. Five million’s a good offer but reasonable for what the nursery’s two locations pull in.”

  “Too reasonable? You want them to up their offer?”

  “They already upped from four-point-five. The price is good. I’m not going to haggle. What’s hard is figuring out if I want to sell or not at any price.”

  “That is a hard decision, but whatever you go with, that’s pretty incredible. I’m so proud of you. I’d high-five you but my palms are bleeding.”

  The left oar fell out of Clover’s hand and she nearly dumped the boat over while retrieving it from the lake.

  “Crap, sorry,” she said, fishing the oar from the water.

  “Hey, you okay there?” Erick asked as he dragged her back into the boat. She’d gotten her sleeves wet but that was the extent of the damage. “Clover? Babe, what’s wrong?”

  She swallowed hard and smiled at him, feeling incredibly pitiful and yet happy at the same time.

  “Nothing,” she said softly. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “You’re crying. Something is wrong. Are you sad about maybe selling the business? I would be. You put a lot of work into it. It’s kind of your baby except the sort of baby you can legally sell.”

  “It’s not that. It isn’t. I can start a new business. It’s just...”

  “What?”

  “You’re the first person in my life who’s ever said that to me about the nursery.”

  “Said what?”

  “That you’re proud of me.” Two hot fat tears rolled out of her eyes and down her cheeks. Hastily she wiped them off.

  “Clover... I didn’t mean to make you cry. It’s a dad thing, saying, ‘I’m proud of you.’ Can’t help it.”

  “It is a dad thing. But Dad never said that to me. You said it to me. The guy I’ve been dating for three days said it to me, but my own parents who have known me for thirty years haven’t. Not once. Never a single, ‘Wow, you know, Clover, we were disappointed when you quit school but you really proved us wrong. We’re proud of your success. Great job.’ It just meant a lot to hear that from you.”

  “I am proud of you. You started this business only five years ago and you’re already getting a multimillion-dollar buyout offer from a competitor? That’s something to be proud of.”

  “It is. It really is. I just wish they would...you know, give a damn about something other than my personal life. It’s like nothing I do matters if I’m not married and breeding. And if I’m not married and breeding, at least I could be doing something respectable like teaching. Something that doesn’t involve dirt, worms and blisters.”

  “You don’t need your parents to tell you they’re proud of you. You know why?”

  “Because you’re proud of me?”

  “Because you’re proud of yourself. Aren’t you?”

  “Well...”

  “Aren’t you, Clover? I would be. I’d have already called every person in my phone to crow about it. You are allowed to be proud of yourself.”

  “I am proud of myself.”

  “Hell, yes, you are.”

  He held out his hand for her to slap it in a high five, and she saw he hadn’t been kidding about his bleeding palms. He had a blister on his hand that had broken open.

  “Oh, my God, Erick. You really are horny.”

  “It’s fine. One blister. Put a little alcohol on it and a Band-Aid and I’ll be good to go.”

  “How’s your other hand?”

  “Don’t look. Please. I’m trying to get laid here.”

  “You’re still going to get laid. The thing you suggested we do last night doesn’t require hands. Well, it doesn’t require your hands. Your hands are supposed to be tied up to the bedpost.”

  “Row faster, Clover. Row like the wind.”

  Clover had never rowed faster in her life.

  11

  ERICK WOKE UP on Wednesday morning to the prettiest sight he’d ever seen in his life. The first hints of dawn had started peeking over the trees and spreading sunlight across the lake. And there was Clover, her pale hair down and around her shoulders, kneeling on the edge of the bed with a white sheet wrapped around her, watching the sunrise through the wall of windows in front of their bed. As she watched the sunrise, he watched her.

  A long slant of light slid across the dock and slipped into the bottom set of windows. The white sheets turned gold, and like a cat, Clover stretched out into the light, lying on her side and facing the lake. Erick crawled over to her and without a word spooned up behind her, kissing her naked neck and shoulders. They were leaving the cabin in a couple hours so they should make the most of the bed and the view and each other while they could.

  “You’re in the manly way again,” Clover said.

  “Am I? Sorry. It’s all the cedar,” he said, and she chuckled.

  She started to roll over to face him and he stopped her with a hand on her hip.

  “Stay where you are,” he said. “Don’t miss the sunrise. First good one we’ve had all week.”

  Clover stayed on her side facing the windows and Erick kept kissing her back and running his fingers through her hair. No doubt about it, he was hopelessly addicted to this woman. He’d been relieved to an embarrassing degree yesterday when Clover said she wanted to keep seeing him after this week. He congratulated himself on playing it cool, but he’d been dancing with happiness on the inside. As long as he could get through Thanksgiving without doing something spectacularly stupid like calling all her immediate family assholes to their faces, they could maybe, just maybe, have something very special here.

  Erick ran his hand over Clover’s soft stomach and her hips and thighs. She breathed softly and with pleasure at his touch. He’d done everything he could to help her make up for lost time this week. There wasn’t an inch of her body he hadn’t touched or kissed, a sexual position they hadn’t at least attempted or a fantasy they hadn’t talked about. He couldn’t believe she’d actually tied his hands to the bed yesterday after they got back from rowing. Most women he’d dated had been uncomfortable with that sort of thing, which he told Clover. She’d replied, saying, “How will I know if I like it or not unless I try it at least once?” And sin
ce he didn’t have a good answer to that question, they’d blissfully decided to try it all.

  But this morning all he wanted to do was make love to her while the sun rose and the lake woke up all around them. He lifted Clover’s leg and draped it back over his thigh. With his fingers he tested her wetness, making sure she was ready for him. They’d had sex late last night and she still felt damp and open. She took his fingers inside her easily and with a soft moan of pleasure. He rubbed the head of his cock against her outer lips as he teased her clitoris with his fingers. Just as the sun flooded the room with light, he entered her deeply and with a long slow thrust.

  He groaned as he went into her. Her heat was pure bliss wrapped around his cock. In this position he couldn’t thrust hard or fast, which was fine by him. He thrust gently and leisurely instead, taking all the time in the world because he could do this the rest of his life as long as it was with Clover.

  “You’re so hot inside,” he whispered into her ear between sucks and nibbles on her earlobe. “I love your pussy.”

  “It loves you,” she said.

  He slid his other arm under and around her and took both of her breasts in his hands and squeezed them as he pumped his hips into her. Clover moaned, arching her back to take more of him. Erick loved how much she loved his cock and wasn’t afraid to show it and say it and enjoy every inch of it. As the sun showed its full face over the top of the tree line and the glorious peak of Mount Hood glowed in the distance, Erick rolled onto his back, dragging Clover with him and on top of him. He licked his two fingers and rubbed her where they joined. She was so wet, wet and swollen, swollen and throbbing. With his other hand he pinched her nipples lightly, caressed them, pulled them, anything to keep Clover breathing like that, like she was on the edge of coming and wanted to live on that edge. They both were at the edge of something terrifying and beautiful like that ancient active volcanic peak rising up over the lake. Erick rolled his pelvis to deepen the penetration and Clover gasped, a sound of unbridled ecstasy. He felt her orgasm on his fingertips as a thousand nerve endings exploded all at once. Hearing it and feeling it was too much. His head came off the bed and his stomach tightened to the point of pain. He lost all control and released inside her, flooding her until his own semen dripped out of her and back onto him. It was dirty and sexy all at once and he doubted Clover had any idea how much it meant to him that she let him come inside her body, how much it meant that she didn’t simply let him, that she wanted him to, that she liked it no matter how messy it was. Life was messy and he wanted life with this woman, a long and messy and happy one.

  With a sigh of contentment, Clover rolled off Erick and lay on the bed with her eyes closed and a smile on her face.

  “Okay,” she said. “I am now officially the happiest woman on earth.”

  “That’s a relief,” he said, then licked her nipple for no other reason than it was there, it was beautiful and he could. “I can call my weird kid again. She might ask for it in writing.”

  “I’ll write it down. I’ll write it down in triplicate and get it notarized. And you can go carve it in cedar—Here Lies Clover Greene, Happiest Woman on Earth.”

  “Carved in cedar? That’s permanent, Clover.”

  “My happiness is permanent. Nothing can bend it, break it or ruin it.”

  “I can ruin it.”

  “No, you can’t,” she said, looking at him through narrowed, suspicious eyes.

  “I can ruin it in one sentence.”

  “Try it. I dare you.”

  “Okay, here goes.” Erick hated to see her happiness dissipate but he had to do it. “Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and we have to go—”

  “No, don’t say it.”

  “I have to say it. We have to do it.”

  Clover groaned and this time it wasn’t the happy sexy kind of groan. It was a groan of misery, pure misery.

  “Say it,” she said. “Wait.” She grabbed a pillow and pulled it onto her face. “Now say it,” she said from underneath the shield of her pillow.

  “Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and...we have to...”

  Clover groaned again.

  “Go...”

  The groan got louder.

  “Grocery shopping.”

  Clover slapped both her hands onto the top of her pillow and pressed it down onto her face as if to smother herself. Erick easily lifted the pillow off her face.

  “It’s not that bad,” he said. “It’s early. We’ll get dressed right now and go immediately. We can get in and out before the crowds show up. How’s that?”

  “But I don’t want to get out of bed. Can’t we stay here until, I don’t know, Sunday?”

  “No, we can’t. We have to at least pretend to be grown-ups. I’m a parent. I’ve gotten very good at pretending to be a grown-up. You said your parents were leaving today. They could already be on the road to Oregon. They’re going to expect turkey, yams, cranberry sauce and you and me putting on a damn good show of being happy to see them. Right?”

  “You’re right. You’re definitely right,” she said as she slowly dragged herself out of bed, the sheet wrapped around her like a bath towel again. “We might as well get this over with.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  “But you better have sex with me after grocery shopping,” she said as she shuffled off to the bathroom, the sheet trailing behind her like a wedding dress train.

  Erick reached down and grabbed the end of the sheet, pulling it off her with her next step.

  Naked, she spun around and glared at him.

  “That was rude.”

  “You’re going to the shower and you can’t shower in a sheet. I was only trying to help.”

  Sighing and shaking her head, Clover turned around again and once more headed to the bathroom on the second floor.

  “You’re lucky I’m in love with you,” she said as she started climbing the steps, naked as the day she was born. “Or I’d be offended by this boorish behavior.”

  Erick rolled onto his back, smiling up at the ceiling. Knotty pine, beautifully finished, probably original. Wait.

  What?

  Erick sat straight up just as Clover disappeared through the bathroom door. He walked up the steps and tapped on the door.

  “Clo?”

  “What?” she yelled over the sound of the shower water coming on.

  “Did you say you were in love with me?”

  “Yes!”

  “Okay, just checking.”

  “Is that a problem?” she asked. He heard the sliding shower door open and close.

  He shrugged. “No. No problem. But you have to stop telling me stuff like this, you know, like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “First, you told me you’d never had sex before while my penis was literally already inside your vagina.”

  “You brought it up.”

  “And then you tell me you love me on the way to the bathroom to get ready to go grocery shopping? You’re kind of burying the lede here.”

  He heard more movement from inside the bathroom. The door opened and he stood back as Clover stood not only naked but soaking wet in front of him.

  “I’m in love with you,” she said. “I know we’ve only been together for four days but by my calculations we’ve spent over seventy-two hours in each other’s company since Sunday evening. If your average date is four hours long—dinner and a movie, for example—then seventy-two hours is the equivalent of eighteen dates. And eighteen dates is more than enough time to decide if you’re in