Just for Christmas Night

by Lisa Marie Perry

Yeah. This time he’d been there when she needed him. But how many times had she needed him, only to find a hole in her life where he used to be?

  The man couldn’t be relied on. No matter the good times, his apologies and their cat-and-mouse games, she had to protect herself.

  Martha sat on the floor near his feet, facing the fireplace. “Now that space has character. It’s how a fireplace should look, with personal touches on the mantel. It’s meant for a family. This whole house is.”

  “You’re going to hang up your dancing shoes and start a family?”

  “Who says I’d have to choose?”

  “Guess you wouldn’t, but I’m picturing you pregnant and doing that stripper dance you were working at Mandalay Bay and it’s—”

  Martha peered at him over her shoulder. “What, ridiculous?”

  “Concerning. And hot.”

  She snorted. “Right. Well, this is a fairy-tale house and someday I’ll have my happy-ever-after here. A wedding, a baby, eventually a puppy. Night after night of slow dancing.”

  “Slow dancing?”

  Martha scooted around and lay back on the rug, propping her polka-dotted feet on the cushion beside him. “Uh-huh. Don’t spill my secret, but I’m a hopeless eavesdropper. For years, up until I moved here, I’d spy on my parents slow dancing. One of them puts on music—jazz or Motown or opera—and they sway in each other’s arms. I watched them every chance I got. It’s what I miss most about not living with them anymore.”

  “They love each other.”

  “It’s so simple, the way you just said it. But what they have is… It’s like a storybook fantasy that transcended into real life. Almost too beautiful for our world—you know, for people like you and me.”

  “You have a shot at something like that,” he told her. Clearly he didn’t think he did.

  “Not yet, but someday.” She could hope for someone to bring to family photo shoots and someone to slow dance with at the end of the day.

  “Then what do you want now?”

  Martha closed her eyes, considering. “A foot rub.”

  Before her brain could compute what was happening, her feet were in his hands and he was shifting over to sit directly in front of her.

  She opened one eye. “What are you doing?”

  “Massaging your feet.” His big, firm hands flexed one foot and she sighed.

  Okay, he wasn’t her route to happy-ever-after. He couldn’t give her what she needed. But he was for damn sure her route to happy-right-now.

  The spike-heeled shoes had hurt, and within minutes he was able to relax the tension from her muscles and tendons.

  In fact, all over she felt…sated? Not quite. Warm, possibly. Aroused, definitely.

  The moment Joaquin rested her feet next to him, she placed them on his lap and slid them back and forth.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Massaging you with my feet.” She propped herself up on her elbows, watching her feet travel to his crotch. “Your thighs are so hard. But I think this is harder.”

  He groaned, rolling his hips, pushing a hand up his face to his scalp.

  “Mmm.” She caressed, quickening her pace, getting her first real impression of his length and girth. “Say my name.”

  His hands gripped her feet, guiding them over his erection. “Damn, Martha—”

  “That’s right. Just like that,” she said. “Now moan for me.” Her skin felt heated and her voice broke when she spoke, but she couldn’t stop when all she could presently think about was leveling their playing field. Years ago he’d seen her naked. Hours ago he’d made her come. Always he took control without apology.

  My turn now. I deserve this.

  Martha’s legs drifted open, and then he was down on the floor with her, kissing her, thrusting against her fully clothed…simulating what might happen if she relinquished control.

  “Get off me,” she said, breathless, moist between the legs. “I want to see you.”

  They stood and as he stripped, she tried to regroup. Leveling the playing field was one thing. Falling into complete, two-become-one sex was something else altogether. It’d be easy to pass off the reins to him. It’d be effortless to trust him in ways she shouldn’t.

  Loving him hadn’t been a choice. More like an inevitability. More like gravity. In the wake of it she’d wound up hurt.

  She was strong enough to take a stand against her own heart, and she wouldn’t let herself love him again or let him make love to her.

  Some mistakes even she wouldn’t make.

  Joaquin pushed his underwear down and Martha gasped softly. The size of him was…intimidating. How her inexperienced body might’ve accommodated him if things had gone the way she’d planned some years back, she had no idea.

  She rushed him, laying her body against his, opening her mouth under his. “Can I—please?”

  Crap. There she was being vulnerable again. Something about him caused her guard to slip every time. But in a matter of weeks, his fight would be over and he’d be gone again. Back to Miami or somewhere else entirely.

  For tonight, this moment, she had America’s sexiest fighting champ naked and ready to bang her to oblivion.

  Joaquin eased back, swept up his pants and produced a condom from his wallet. “Here.”

  Martha took it and flicked it aside. “Won’t be needing that.”

  He wrapped her hand around his shaft, moving it roughly up and down. “I’m not putting this in you without a condom.”

  “Fine, because I thought we’d do things a little differently,” she whispered, tightening her grasp, slowing her stroke. She glided her other hand up his abdomen to his chest. Everywhere were firm bulges and ropey veins. He was flesh, bone and steel—she was certain of it.

  Settling her lips on one nipple and exploring the other with her fingertips, she let his groans fill her. “Liking this?”

  His hands snaked into her hair. A swear, then a muttered, “You know I like it.”

  She unwound his hands from her hair and started to lower. “And if I sucked you off? Would you like that, too?”

  “Open up,” he snarled.

  “With pleasure.” On her knees, she clasped him and traced a raised vein with her tongue before closing her lips over him. Earlier tonight he’d taken her by going a bit deeper every time. She now took him in the same fashion.

  Rewarded with the feel of his body shuddering in reaction, she kept worshipping him with her mouth.

  “Martha…” he said, easing out.

  She scraped her teeth lightly over the tip of his flesh before letting him go. “Can I confess something?”

  Joaquin dragged a palm over his damp forehead. Oh, yeah, she could definitely make him sweat. “What?”

  “I’ve got my own selfish reasons for doing this.” She trailed kisses down his shaft. “I like the weight of you in my mouth…the texture of you on my tongue. I like knowing that what I do can break you down. It doesn’t matter how savage you are in the ring, because my touch can make you weak. It reminds me that you’re human underneath it all, and I need that reminder.”

  Joaquin’s fingers dug into her shoulders when she grasped him again and firmly pumped. “Where do you want it, Martha?”

  The harsh whisper sent an arrow of delicious shock down her spine.

  “The couch? The floor?”

  Martha was close to panic for a split second. She certainly wouldn’t ask the cleaning staff to return for a touch-up, and though she had club soda stored somewhere in the house, she wasn’t going to spend the next hour scrubbing a rug. “No…”

  Crouching for a kiss, he said, “Your pretty red sweater?”

  “Favorite sweater, so that would be a no.” Martha reached up to touch her lips to his jaw. In the hotel she’d wanted to kiss him sweetly like this, and now that she’d found her chance, she felt a half step closer to fulfilled. But she was still hungry.

  And dropping down to welcome him back to the heat of her mouth, she loved him with to
ngue and lips until, with a yell and a tug on her hair, he poured into her.

  She swallowed, draining him, stripping him down from a fighting god to an imperfect man, yet he was still strong enough to draw her easily up into his arms. Hugging her with affection disconnected from the dirty rawness of what they’d shared tonight, he stunned her.

  Because she was reaching out to him, and she—Martha Blue, the woman who never came back to any man for seconds—realized she wanted another night like this with him, and soon.

  Bad idea.

  Squirming free of his embrace, she pushed away the messy emotional aftershocks. Just because she was sensitive didn’t mean she wanted to be. She’d gladly trade emotions for something useful and less problematic, such as cooking prowess. “Now we’re done.”

  “Done?”

  Martha circled him, smacking his ass. “Get dressed, champ.”

  “What the hell—”

  “Okay, okay. Everything I asked for that night, you denied me. I wanted to kiss you and taste you and be made love to. Denied, denied, denied.” She licked her lips, swollen now and still stinging from stretching around his flesh. “But tonight I got that kiss, that taste—”

  “I didn’t make love to you the way you wanted.”

  Martha picked up the condom and his pants, and shoved the condom into a pocket before tossing the pants to him. “Got the impression you would’ve, if I’d allowed it.”

  She couldn’t possibly look her best now, disheveled and flushed with mussed hair, but she offered her most radiant smile as he yanked on his clothes. Attractiveness was a formula comprised of sex appeal, perception and confidence. “Go now. I have work to do.”

  “After what we… You’re going to work?”

  “Yes. If I’m going to be an indispensable Slayers employee, I can’t leave any slack. Your unwanted advice penetrated. Well, your advice and other things.”

  Joaquin laughed, taking her all the way back to a night four years ago that had ended so differently. The sound rocked her almost as thoroughly as his touch had.

  A tinny rap song pierced the laughter, and Martha turned toward the kitchen, where she’d left her phone. “My friend’s flying out to DC. This late, she’s probably bored numb and dialing everyone in her contacts list to see who’ll pick up,” she said, jogging off to nab the phone. “A sec, okay?”

  Plopping onto a stool at the counter, she plucked her phone from her purse and saw Leigh’s name on the display.

  She wanted to check up on her friend, whose comic relief she’d come to depend on…but she also wanted to say good-night to Joaquin.

  It wasn’t that she had expectations, or even hopes of a repeat of tonight. She just wanted another private moment before he returned to his world and she returned to hers.

  She practically ran to the living room—but Joaquin was already gone. The mug he’d drunk from was on the coffee table, traces of his cologne in the air and his touch imprinted on her, but he’d walked out.

  “He left.” She wanted to be glad. She had to be glad. Because another electrically charged glance, another brush of his skin on hers, another tension-slicing laugh between them, and Martha would’ve asked him to stay.

  Chapter 6

  The evening crowd had already surfaced, throwing Las Vegas into nightlife mode in the middle of the afternoon. Pre-Christmas traffic had given Martha barely enough time to scoot home from the stadium, freshen up and get back on the road by four. The pizzeria where she’d agreed to meet her friend for an early dinner was located downtown, but nudged just off the Strip. Finding a place to tuck her Audi was an adventure she hadn’t needed.

  The day had been stressful enough, highlighted by drafting press releases about the team’s divisional play-offs promo, sweet-talking a casting director and a record label into encouraging their big-name clients to attend the team’s January celebration, and enduring a long-winded marketing and PR pitch to feature the Slayers’ active roster in a PSA for safe sex practices. The pitch had wrapped up after devoting over twenty minutes to debunking sex myths. It had ultimately been decided that the Slayers—several of whom were young fathers and had at one time or another been the center of baby-daddy drama—weren’t the best candidates for a PSA that emphasized the value of “No glove, no love.”

  Afterward, it had been hilariously appropriate for Martha’s friend Chelle to suggest that they hit up the best naughty pizzeria in the city. Soixante Neuf was owned by a pair of Parisian artists who’d set up their restaurant below a tattoo parlor, decorated the walls with erotic paintings—available for purchase with the right attitude and at the right price—and applied a delectable French influence to Italian cuisine.

  No one patronized Soixante Neuf for a family dining experience. Martha was peachy with that, because she’d be spending most of the evening in a PG-13 environment at Faith House. The youth center kept its doors open later during the winter holidays and summer months, which must be when Vegas’s teens found themselves with more opportunity to dive deep into trouble.

  Idle hands and all that, she supposed. Whenever she’d landed in a particularly sticky situation, her parents would blame boredom, and just like that she’d be plunked into a new hobby—until, of course, she’d bored her way out of it. Archery, horseback riding, oboe lessons—oboe!—and that painfully tedious etiquette seminar taught by one of Tem’s debutante friends. The only enjoyment Martha had found in being schooled into a proper young miss was having her mother near, even if Tem had been more interested in spotting faults than supporting her daughter. But Martha was neither graceful nor inherently polite, and Tem had soon dazzled her to distraction with luxury-hunting.

  Sophistication, precision and often a private jet made the difference between pedestrian shopping and Tem-style shopping. Day visits to Vancouver, weeklong antiquing trips across Europe, holidays spent roaming London for fashion inspiration or Mumbai for home decor. Gilded storefronts offering extravagant window displays, and store after store of shiny gadgets, sparkling jewelry and glamorous clothes had fascinated Martha.

  But Tem’s words had made a deeper impression. My pretty girl. Nobody’s perfect. Some can get close, but others fall far behind, like you. If something can improve you—can make you feel more beautiful—make it yours.

  And Martha, the quick study that she was, had taken fast to the hunt. She didn’t have idle hands while swiping credit cards and balancing her checkbook. Shopping had become therapeutic and as a stress-reliever, it was a favorite. Not the favorite—that title she awarded to the after-dark sex play she’d had with Joaquin a few nights ago.

  You’d think that knowing the man’s hands were dangerous would’ve warned her that they might threaten her common sense. That they could turn any spot on her body into a pleasure point.

  That they could confuse her into thinking she wanted more than a little wild fun, a bit of light risk.

  Martha tugged open the heavy door to Soixante Neuf, comforted to be in a situation where she knew exactly what she was after. “Belgian Red,” she said to the waitress who always greeted her with a chipper “’Sup, cher?” Avoiding the door traffic and the busy bar, she decided to wait for her beer at the plate-glass window that offered a view of the kitchen staff.

  “Scootch over, Vine. You’re hogging the window.” Playfully she nudged Chelle, who was pressed up against the plate-glass and ogling a man with dark olive skin and slicked hair.

  “Could be a matter of opinion, but there’s something pervy about the way Enzo’s fixing my pizza.”

  Martha looked on as the man finished spreading Soixante Neuf’s signature sauce on a thin wheat crust.

  Slathering sauce on a crust wasn’t something she would normally call sexual, but if anyone could make a routine task seem like a sex act, it was Enzo.

  “I wouldn’t say pervy—” Martha started, only to be mesmerized to silence as Enzo sprinkled mozzarella, then arranged pepperoni slices in the shape of a penis. “Oh. Definitely pervy.” She glanced at her friend.
“I can also say the same about how your décolletage is pressed against this window.”

  Chelle staggered back. “You’re all buttoned up now, but your office getup was a step away from hoochified.”

  “It’s not hoochified if it’s couture.” Martha’s jeggings and asymmetrical sweater were positively wholesome compared to the slinky number she’d worn earlier.

  Nervously pulling her micro braids over a shoulder, her friend said, “Is it a crime to be interested in how my food’s prepared?”

  “No. Except I’ve never seen you plastered over the sneeze guard at the deli. Are you into him?” She returned to watching the staff, but could feel her friend’s hesitation. “Really?”

  “Could be.”

  “Just the other day I overheard you describe your type of man as black and bald. Our friend here doesn’t fit that criteria.” She didn’t add that Chelle’s type changed daily. Thin, tattooed, short, muscular, sensitive, abrasive—any and all men appealed to her. Or so she advertised.

  Chelle shrugged, teasing, “Black and bald, sure. But Marshall’s taken.”

  “One, you’re right. He is, and always will be, taken. Two, don’t even joke about having a crush on the boss, especially in front of the boss’s daughter. Three…when are you going to give up lying?”

  “Lying’s easier.”

  “Chelle, what are you afraid of? Our franchise takes discrimination seriously. Marshall and Tem will have your back.”

  “I promised my folks things would be different—I would be different—in Las Vegas.”

  “But you’re not. You’re making yourself miserable pretending you are.” Shortly after Martha had been given an office in S-Dubs, she’d found Chelle crying in a supply room, desperate for someone to confide in.

  “I’m not like you, Martha. I can’t not care what my family thinks.”

  Martha cared, all right. Only now she needed to show it, if she intended to cross over to the front office—or stay employed with the Las Vegas Slayers at all.

  “Just think. Guy after guy, and not one has changed you. Because you can’t rewire yourself—”

  “Stop.”