Just for Christmas Night

by Lisa Marie Perry

  “Now, outside these doors are too many guests who haven’t seen my mistletoe.” Pointing at the bag on the desk, she added, “There’s a gemstone globe inside. Pick a location, because I’m sending you on an after-play-offs couple’s vacay.”

  “Oh,” her mother said softly. “Martha…”

  “Thought I’d try dipping into my trust fund for something other than beautiful things. And, underneath my antics and tendency to make you worry, I accept that your business and marriage come first.”

  “We took you to task, and a vacation gift still stands?” Marshall asked.

  “The vacation’s a vacation.” Opening the door, she also opened the floodgates to a tidal wave of brilliant music. “The gift is understanding. Should you run out of gift ideas, that’s on my wish list.”

  So was a Bugatti, but understanding mattered more.

  *

  By normal standards and definitions, Martha considered herself a sexual adventurer. Not quite an Indiana Jones, but she was inclined to experiment with the men she trusted and respected enough to engage in naked games.

  But there were hard limits that included role-play that required safe words—because it only dragged her back to a bad night in New York when no words had made her safe—and PDB: public displays of banging.

  Judging from what she’d narrowly escaped getting an eyeful of when she’d passed the third-floor loft of her parents’ house and almost been struck with a red scallop Valentino pump, a pair of someones was indulging in frantic party sex.

  Taking the spiral stairs fast, she’d almost dropped her candy cane and lost her balance, but arrived unharmed in the bustling gourmet kitchen, where only a handful of guests inelegantly devouring chips, sodas and store-bought cookies were in the catering staff’s way.

  “Schnapps?” asked her sister Charlotte’s friend Joey, lifting a glass. Joey was a narc who’d been shot, rocked the hell out of a cane and owned a badass shoe collection. She was also the agent who’d blown the whistle on Al Franco’s gambling ring and NFL misconduct.

  “Pour!” Then Martha changed her mind. “Just give me yours. Keep the bottle.”

  Joey slid over her glass and turned up the bottle. “Ay dios mio. Over thirty, bumming Christmas dinner from my friends and drinking Schnapps straight from the bottle. Somebody call my mother, tell her she was right.”

  “Aren’t you seeing someone?”

  In answer, Joey turned up the bottle again. “Dish. I know you’re packing gossip.”

  “Sort of. Someone was having sex in the third-floor loft.”

  “You saw ass?”

  “No, but I know sex when I hear it.” She pretended to fan herself with the candy cane. “And a red scallop Valentino almost beaned me on the head.”

  Joey twisted her mouth and checked her shoes. “I’m clear.”

  More guests squeezed around the counter for predinner junk food.

  A prosecutor who’d become a national news celebrity during a highly publicized murder trial was delivering the punch line to a raunchy joke when Danica walked in.

  “Because Christmas is the perfect time for a disturbing image like that,” she said sarcastically over the laughter, rushing over to cover Martha’s ears. “My innocent sister.”

  “I did give them a choice,” the man said. “G-rated or X-rated. Unanimous vote for X.”

  Martha patted her sister’s hands and told him, “The version I heard involved glitter, not Tabasco sauce.”

  “Innocent, right.” With a wink for Martha, he hugged the woman beside him close. “The dance floor’s calling our names.”

  “That’s one big candy cane,” Danica commented.

  Martha tried to reach around it to set down her glass, but bumped it, propelling it off the counter.

  She and Joey craned their necks to see it land on the floor in front of Danica’s red scallop Valentino pumps.

  Gasping, Martha knelt to grab the cane before her sister could. “Oh, my God.”

  “You’re the loft-banger?” Joey snorted, then went back to seducing her Schnapps.

  “The uh—um—”

  “Sex at a party, Danni? A family party? Isn’t sex the reason you and your man couldn’t be reached this morning?” Martha picked up the peppermint carnage. Really, it had a few fractures and was still edible.

  Danica sighed. “I’m sorry you saw—”

  “And heard.”

  “—and heard what you did.”

  “If you were like this with your ex-husband, you hid it really, really well.”

  “Love’s different for each person you’re with. I was married for ten years and never loved that man this way. Dex and I, we want to be together every chance we get. It’s passion you can’t understand until you live it.”

  “On that note,” Joey said, “I’m going to find out how many eligible men Tem put at my table.”

  As Martha had assisted with seating arrangements, she knew the answer was seven, but figured she’d let the woman make that discovery for herself.

  “Aside from almost being bopped with a shoe, how’s your Christmas?” Danica asked.

  “I thought it’d be merrier than this.”

  “The mistletoe didn’t garner enough kisses?”

  She’d lost count of how many people had stopped for smooches, but she knew Joaquin hadn’t been one of them. If he wanted her, he’d search for her.

  “Martha, your candy cane needs a cast.”

  “It’s broken.” Metaphorically, it’d probably been broken from the beginning.

  “It’s salvageable. Just not perfect.”

  After a minister’s prayer and a twenty-five-recipe dinner—Martha’s favorite dish being steak au poivre—guests dispersed to roam with drinks in hand, mingle and gossip, and dance in the ballroom.

  She fled to the staircase with her salvageable candy cane and a goblet of white chocolate mousse.

  “Yo, brat.” Charlotte, draped in a revealing black gown, waved. “Danica, she’s on her perch, making assessments.”

  The naughty lady in red came rushing around the corner, and the two joined Martha on the staircase.

  “You’re not bored, are you?” Danica asked. “A bored Martha usually introduces a bad Martha.”

  Bad meaning a trending, scandal-attracting, trashed-in-the-tabloids Martha. At twenty-three, she wasn’t burnt-out from the party-every-night lifestyle. But since she’d enrolled at UNLV’s business school, she had begun to crave a life spiced with variety. Quiet and leisurely days in between nights of fast, loud parties.

  “Lottie’s the designated pretty-trinkets gift-giver, so I try to go for unexpected.” Opening her silver clutch purse, Danica retrieved her smartphone and scrolled the photo album.

  Bugatti, Bugatti, Bugatti…

  When Danica held out the phone, Martha almost moussed the front of her dress.

  Charlotte took the dish, and Martha was too stunned to demand it back.

  It wasn’t a Bugatti—or anything with four wheels. Instead, it had four itsy-bitsy paws and long ears and a fuzzy cottony tail. “A bunny?”

  Explaining that her best friend, the daughter of a matchmaker, had raved about rabbits’ tranquility-boosting abilities, Danica said she’d enlisted her to find a rabbit that would be compatible with Martha’s zodiac characteristics. “If you want someone to love and some companionship in that house…”

  It wasn’t the fairy tale, wasn’t the exact way she wanted to bring companionship into her house, but she believed in ways that were intuitive more than logical that the rabbit belonged to her. “It’s going to be Martha and Rabbit, Rabbit and Martha.”

  “Someone to love. Someone to love you,” Charlotte said. “Want to come down to the ballroom? Ma and Pop are slow dancing. It’s incredible to see.”

  Martha reclaimed her goblet, took a spoonful of mousse. “I have seen it, about every night for years. If there’s anything they cherish above success, it’s each other.”

  “Marshall and Tem…they’ve got secret
s and hidden agendas, but don’t we?” Danica turned to Charlotte, while Charlotte spied Martha, and Martha stared knowingly at Danica.

  Were any of them ready to reveal?

  Charlotte cleared her throat. “Nate and I should go. There’re Christmas presents at his place with my name on them.”

  “And I,” Danica said, “want to get out of this uncomfy dress.”

  Imagine how uncomfy you’d be if you’d actually kept it on all night?

  Off they went, like ritzy mice scurrying to their hidey-holes.

  “I found you.”

  Joaquin, in a tux with satin lapels that waited for her hands to caress slowly then grip with savage necessity, approached the staircase.

  “And now that you have,” she said, “what do you want to do?”

  “Unravel you.” One stair closer. Another. “Unleash you.”

  Any moment someone on a higher or lower level of the house could step onto the staircase, could see her arched back and his body almost, almost sheltering her.

  It was terror and thrill intertwined, and she wondered if this was what Danica and Dex had felt, escaping to a loft in hungry, risky urgency.

  “Give me a spot where no one else touched you tonight,” Joaquin said in the softest yet harshest demand she’d ever heard. “Give me a spot to make mine.”

  Risk it. Make him be quick. Take what moments you can steal.

  No. She couldn’t do that. Because they needed to be alone. She needed him to take his time.

  “I sat here in plain sight. The only way I could’ve been more in your face was if I’d wrapped myself in lights.” She eased out of his shadow. “I made it too easy, but that’s my habit, isn’t it?”

  “Where I come from, easy isn’t the same as complicated and confusing. Every night since you climbed into my ring and let me touch you, I’ve been chained up in hell.”

  “Keep sweet-talking me like that and I’ll fall in love,” she said with an exaggerated eye roll. “Fact is, if something’s too easy to claim, you don’t respect it. You forget it. So, Joaquin Ryder, I’m not going to be your easy victory tonight.”

  You’re going to be mine.

  *

  Escape was in the darkness. Joaquin’s gated Promontory Ridge estate was set in shadows. No lights, no entourage, no delusions of celebration.

  He’d left that behind at the Blues’ place. All his house offered were a Christmas tree—trimmed but unlit—the scent of pine in the air and cranberry vodka.

  Yeah, he thought, walking through the silence, shrugging off his tux jacket in one room, leaving behind shoes and socks in another, discarding his cuff links someplace else.

  The blue LED flare of the wine refrigerator silently urged him to it. Grabbing a bottle of Smirnoff, he twisted the cap and drank.

  Right now he wasn’t Las Vegas’s prince. Right now, he wasn’t even a fighter.

  Setting the bottle down, he shifted into his stance and threw a tight jab into the darkness. He kept his chin dropped, extended his shoulder, put his weight into the offense. Speed and power were there, but it lacked grace.

  Loosening his shoulders, popping bones throughout his skeleton, he tried again. Better, more disciplined, but short of perfect.

  Failure.

  Damn. Neither liquor nor the late hour could be blamed. In top form, he could spring out of a deep sleep and fight with immaculate brutality. In the rain, his technique was creative and his assault unstoppable. In a ring, with a championship on the line, he was undefeated.

  Alone, with no opponents and no obstacles, he was flawed. Not a beast, but a man.

  Because some part of him had stayed behind at Marshall and Tem’s party: his concentration or his heart, he didn’t know.

  He did know who held his attention—and nothing about her was “easy.” Tonight there hadn’t been a place or time for them. Could be for the best, but his tense body disagreed viciously.

  Joaquin carried the Smirnoff to the Christmas tree, crouched to plug in the lights.

  The twinkling brightness soared twelve feet, illuminating the rock walls and dark furniture, but it didn’t breach the blackness of his mood.

  About to take to the stairs, he paused at the sound of his phone vibrating on the kitchen counter. Probably one of his cousins wanting to talk him into rolling out to an after-party somewhere.

  Snatching up the phone to silence it, he got a look at the display. Oh, shit.

  “I opened my gates for you,” Martha said when he answered. “It’s only fair for you to do the same for me.”

  Reciprocation? That’s what she was after?

  “Why are you here?” His voice echoed throughout the kitchen…or had frustration hollowed out his mind?

  “I have a question.”

  If the gym was his territory, then his house was his sanctuary. Right now it was untouched, free of their knotted history and the hurt they’d inflicted on each other.

  Maybe that’s why he hated being here tonight. Maybe he needed that, the poison—or elixir—of their attraction.

  He opened the door, sat at the base of the stairs and waited for the sugary fragrance he’d detected on her skin earlier.

  She had smelled like the sweetest sin, looked like the most tempting dirty deed.

  Easy? God, no. If things were easy, he wouldn’t be wishing that he could give her what she needed—be what she needed.

  Then there was sweetness, but it was only her perfume. Because there was anger and accusation in her stomp as she walked into his house, shut the door and searched until she spotted him.

  “Why’d you give me this?” She dropped the beaten but still wrapped candy cane onto his lap.

  “Um. It didn’t look like that when I gave it to you,” he said. “Did you break ice or kill a bug with it?”

  “It fell off a counter.” Her sigh was a whisper in his ears. “Why, Joaquin?”

  “For a reaction. Even the tears.” He picked up the peppermint cane, threw it an indeterminable distance and heard the faint sound of it skidding across the floor. Rising to his feet slowly, he watched her throat undulate as she swallowed.

  “Tears that don’t cross the waterline don’t count.” Superciliousness spiked her voice.

  “Liar.” Backward, he edged a few steps higher and she advanced, maintaining their proximity. How high up these stairs, how far into his home, how deep into his life would she go? “I caused them. They count.”

  “So it’s ‘get the edge off in Reno then entice Martha with candy canes and car rides’?”

  “What edge?”

  “Jules told me about Reno.”

  “You talked to my uncle?”

  “At the gym this morning. We didn’t say much. He wasn’t acting like his normal Jules self. Sort of jumpy. He made off with a dozen doughnuts and the washer repair guy was over.”

  “TV guy.”

  “No, washer, according to him. Do you always have to be so contrary?” She scrunched her face. “Anyway, before you go after him, try to remember there are such things as Twitter and Google.”

  A man who wanted discretion wouldn’t have ridden through Reno in a procession of limos, Hummers and pimpmobiles, but that didn’t matter. “You think I went to Reno and substituted you with another woman?”

  “I think you tried.”

  “I didn’t. I can’t.” One step higher, and she countered the move. “An edge? Nah, Martha. An edge wouldn’t get in my head, touch my concentration. An edge wouldn’t make me obsess about kissing you.”

  “Mistletoe gave you clearance.”

  “Clearance? No,” he denied, solemnly shaking his head. “Not to do what I want.”

  Joaquin leaped down to where she stood. The limestone-walled staircase was wide and curved slightly in its tunnel-like ascent to the second floor. But sharing her step, her space, he knew he crowded her.

  “You’re holding me, know that?” He breathed in her scent, said her name on an exhale. Another night of teasing and tantalizing might end him. “Yo
u’ve got to release me.”

  “At the hotel we said—”

  “We lied. We were wrong.” He splayed his hand on the limestone, scraping the pads of his fingers on the rough surface. “We didn’t know.”

  Martha reached up, circled his wrist. “Want the kiss? Work for it.” And pushing against his wrist, she loped down the stairs.

  The sight of her swaying hips torched him. Joaquin didn’t rush—he could take his time with her, and fully intended to. He knew exactly how he’d take that damn shimmery dress off…had plans for that mistletoe.

  On the bottom step, she flirted with the jewel straps of her gown. Then he reached her, making contact this time, taking her hand and skimming his lips over her knuckles.

  Biting her index finger, he groaned to hear her stunned little gasp.

  Withdrawing, she told him, “I did give you a spot to kiss,” and sauntered deeper into the house.

  His feet touched the floor, and soundlessly he hunted. This time she had made things easy, because he could track her fragrance and the sound of her footsteps. Aside from that, she stopped in front of the glowing Christmas tree.

  A present, for him.

  “Show me,” he coarsely demanded. “Show me what I can make mine.”

  Martha grabbed his neck, leaned into him and fitted her lips to his. “No one touched my mouth tonight, except you.”

  He swore against her soft, soft lips. Traced their shape with his fingers. Pushed the middle one into the wet heat of her mouth.

  “Moan on it.” He was reduced to whispers, his control weakening by the minute.

  Boldly catching his gaze, she closed her lips and sucked.

  “God.” Martha Blue was going to break him. Damned if he wouldn’t enjoy it.

  A playful nip, then she let him slip free.

  “This isn’t going to be the perfect candles-and-flowers night you’d wanted from me.” He’d felt compelled to give her a choice, a chance to change her mind about this. About him.