The Sweetest Gift

by Scarlett Cole

  “Merry Christmas,” she gasped as he pressed against her.

  He nudged her back up because, before he took her in that exact position, there was something else he needed to do. “Babe, those green and white striped elf pajamas are doing little to minimize my growing need to fuck you.”

  Jenny laughed. “You know you like them.” She shimmied from side to side, and without a bra, he could see her erect nipples through the fabric.

  “Yeah, a bit too much right now. Who knew I had a cos-play elf fetish?”

  “Want me to put the hat back on?”

  “No,” he said. “Don’t distract me. I have something else I wanted to talk about.”

  Jenny stopped squirming around, which was a good thing for his now hard cock. “What’s up?”

  “I want us to be a family,” he said, carefully. “A real family.”

  Lines of confusion appeared on Jenny’s brow. “We are a real family.”

  “No,” he said, reaching for the bedside table drawer. “I know you said you didn’t want a fancy engagement ring like the other women. And that you’ve been working on your career, and building the halfway house, and now we have the boys. But I want to be married to you, Jen.”

  He flipped the box open and inside were two simple wedding bands. “I don’t need a fancy wedding. City Hall will be fine. We don’t even need a party. I just want us, and the boys, and I can’t even explain why I suddenly need a piece of paper to say that you and I, and us and them, all belong together, but I do. So, I want to know if you’ll marry me as soon as we get back to Toronto.”

  “Nik,” Jenny gasped. Her mouth was open, her eyes wide. Her fingers reached for the rings, but she stopped halfway. “For real?”

  “For real, Jenny. Marry me.”

  Jenny nodded. “Yes. Yes, Nik. Of course, I’ll marry you.”

  He slid the wedding band on her finger, mercifully relieved it fit. Jenny moved her hand around, admiring it. “It’s beautiful, Nik.”

  “So, are you.”

  “I don’t think I should leave it on today,” she said, sliding it off her finger. “I don’t want to steal Lia’s thunder.”

  Nik took it from her hand and put it back in the box with his own, the one he’d hopefully be able to proudly wear next month. “I was going to suggest the same thing. To be honest, I just want it to be simple for us. This,” he said, gesturing around them. “All these people traveling in and days of events, just sounds exhausting.”

  Jenny nodded in agreement. “It’s just not us.”

  She’d hit the nail on the head. “Yeah, it’s just not us. Come here,” Nik said, buzzing from their conversation. “I think we need to have getting married sex.”

  Jenny began to inch the elf pajama top up over her stomach and Nik bit down on his lip as she started to edge it over her breasts. He fucking loved them and couldn’t wait to—

  “Nik, Jenny, quick. Come look out here. Santa came. He came. He came.”

  Jefferson’s voice was a cold splash of water, and Nik groaned as he flopped his head back onto the pillow. “Fucking cute little cockblocker,” he whispered.

  Jenny slammed her top down and scrambled off his lap just in time for the door to burst open and Jefferson to barge in. Charlie was holding Jefferson’s hand, his cat in the other.

  “There are lots of presents,” Charlie said. “Are any of them for me?” The sound of wonder and curiosity and hope, tinged with an acceptance that they might not be for him, tugged at Nik’s heart.

  Discretely, he adjusted himself under the covers, then swung his legs out of the bed. “Why don’t we go see?” he said.

  As the boys ran back into the living room, he turned to face Jenny. “You, me, and that exact position we were in after the boys are in bed tonight.”

  Jenny’s cheeks were pink. “Can we get housekeeping to install a lock on this door while we are out?”

  Nik laughed. “Probably not, but if it makes you feel better, I’ll drag the dresser over. Because I want to strip you out of those pajamas, which should not be getting me aroused, and watch you grind on top of me.”

  He followed the boys into the living room.

  “Is this my name, Nik?” Charlie said, holding up a present.

  “Well, let’s see. What letter does your name start with?”

  Charlie’s brow furrowed and he pressed the paw of his cat to his nose. He studied the tag long and hard. “Uh-huh. It’s a letter C.”

  Nik followed the pattern for the rest of the letters until a look of pure joy filled his features. “It is for me.”

  He snatched it back out of Nik’s hand and plopped his butt down on the floor to open it.

  “Oh my. Are all of these for me?” Jefferson was looking at tag after tag.

  Jenny put her arm around his shoulder. “It sure looks like it to me. Want to start opening them?”

  “YES,” Jefferson shouted.

  “Okay, well, grab that pen and pad from next to the phone. When you open a gift, I want you to write down what it is and who it’s from, and then, tomorrow, we can write some letters to say thank you. Do you think you can do that?”

  Jefferson nodded and Nik watched how the kid responded to Jenny’s instructions. Yeah, Jefferson was going to be just fine. One child was missing.

  Henry.

  Nik left Charlie in the middle of opening his present and wandered to the kids’ room.

  Henry was wide awake, his head still on his pillow.

  “Hey, Champ,” he said. “Want to come and see if one of these piles of presents out here is for you?”

  Henry shook his head. “They won’t be.”

  His voice was barely loud enough for Nik to hear.

  Nik walked into the room and sat down on the edge of Henry’s bed. When he placed his hand on the kid's waist, it was cool to the touch… all that time in an air-conditioned room and no blanket.

  “I’m pretty certain I just saw a pile next to the tree with tags that have your name on.”

  Henry sniffed. “There’s no point.” Tears threatened to spill over the kid’s inexplicably long eyelashes. “When we leave, we’re not going to be able to take it all with us.”

  The hurt that laced Henry’s words pierced Nik’s heart. Without any shadow of a doubt, it confirmed what Nik already knew. It was his job, he was put on this planet, to help heal this young boy's broken heart and spirit. They’d already made leaps and bounds. When he’d first arrived, he wouldn’t speak to them. All three children were severely behind the learning curve after years of abuse and being deprived of schooling. Their dad was long-since out of the picture and refused to take over their care, their mom in prison on drug charges.

  “I’ve told you how I was a foster kid and then ended up in a long-term group home, right?”

  Henry’s eyes looked at him. “Yeah. So?”

  Nik bit back a smile at the tiny show of rebellion. “Well, so was Jordan. And Dred. And Lennon. And Elliott.”

  “I thought you were brothers.”

  Nik nodded. “We are. Not like you and Jefferson and Charlie. You all have the same mom who gave birth to you. Ours is a bit different. Our parents were basically our social worker, Maisie, and Ellen, the person who ran our group home. They are married to each other and looked after us. They always said we had the benefit of deciding who our family was.”

  “My mom thinks women shouldn’t get married to each other. That it’s an abdominal sin.”

  Nik sighed. “It’s abominable sin. And no offense to your mom, but she’s talking garbage. In our family, it’s cool to love whoever you want.”

  “Why did nobody love us?” Henry asked.

  Nik took a deep breath. Charlie’s squeals as he found a second cat like his own, and Jefferson’s constant shouts of glee, filtered from the living room into the bedroom. Such a contrast between the three children.

  “That’s such a hard question to answer, Henry.” He took hold of the kid’s hand. “I think everybody who has ever met you, lo
ves you. How could they not? You’re smart, thoughtful, and want to plan ahead. But I don’t think all the people you’ve met up until now knew how to best take care of you. How to love you and how to make you feel safe.”

  Henry squeezed his hand. “Do you know, Nik? Do you know how to do that?”

  “I’d like to think I do, but you tell me… have you felt safe since you got here with us?”

  Henry thought for a moment. “I haven’t felt hungry in ages. And I like my bedroom. And you play with me.”

  “Does that make you feel safe?” Nik asked. The idea of a child going hungry when he had so much sat like a weight in his gut.

  Henry nodded. “And Jenny gives the best hugs. And I love your pancakes and the way you don’t shout at Charlie when he does something dumb.”

  Nik’s heart melted that Henry cared so much for his brothers. “You know, me and my brothers look out for each other in the exact same way.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, all the time.” Nik thought about the way they’d all lived in the house that was now Elliott’s home so that Jordan would feel safe, the way he’d taken a bullet to make sure Dred’s family was kept safe, the way they’d rallied around Lennon, waiting to make music again until he was able to join them.

  “Will we have to leave you and Jenny?” Henry’s words were almost a whisper, as if by saying them he might make them come true.

  Nik reached for Henry and pulled him onto his lap. Henry’s small body curled into his. “Not if I have anything to do with it,” he said. “We’d love for you to stay with us forever. But I can’t promise that because it’s not our decision to make. A judge will have to decide that. However, I can promise you this. Jenny and I will do everything in our power to keep you with us. And, if for any reason, the court decides you are safer somewhere else, I’ll make sure I always know where you are and that you have a way to contact me if you need me.”

  Henry put his arms around Nik’s chest. “I love you, Nik.”

  Nik’s heart cracked wide open. He’d once thought that the only person in the world that he needed to hear those words from was Jenny. And for reasons he knew she would understand, he realized that he needed to hear them from Henry more.

  “I love you, too, Henry.” He pressed a kiss to the top of Henry’s head. “Now, do you want to go see if any of those gifts outside have your name on them?”

  Henry bounced off his lap with a wide grin on his face. “Yes, please.” He turned and ran out of the door.

  Nik ran his hands over his face. “Merry Christmas,” he said out loud to himself.

  And for once, he actually understood what the words meant.

  8

  Ignoring the fact he was completely naked, Lennon opened the doors to the hotel balcony and took a deep cleansing breath of sea air. The sun was just breaching the horizon in a dazzling array of oranges and purples. Waves shushed gently onto the shore, the only sound in an otherwise devastatingly peaceful morning.

  Yet, despite its beauty, despite the morning’s ability to bring some semblance of quiet to his thoughts, none of it was as glorious as the woman he’d just left in their hotel bed.

  He looked back into the room where Gia lay sleeping. Her long dark hair lay messily over her face and the pillow. One of her long arms hung off the bed. He followed the curve of her back to where the white, crisp linen just blocked his view of her butt. She slept like the dead and he admired her ability to simply close her eyes and drift away. Once, she’d told him it was nothing more than an ingrained habit after years of med school and residency, where sleep was a luxury.

  His heart twisted in his chest.

  Fuck, he loved her more than anything else in the world.

  More than the band.

  More than his drums.

  More than music.

  He could give all of them up in a heartbeat, had even considered doing so when he’d woken from surgery to find his arm gone. But not the pain of his injury, or pain from his loss, could hold a candle to the pain he’d felt when he thought he’d lost her.

  Leaving the balcony doors open, even though it was still cool outside, he returned to the bed and sat down next to her, the warmth and proximity to her easing the turbulence of his mind.

  They were meeting her brother for breakfast. Randall, the famed surgeon and Head of Neurology at a hospital in Atlanta, had a proposition he wanted to discuss with her, and Lennon knew it was going to be a job offer. Likely a better one than the one she had now, or he wouldn’t be offering it.

  He wouldn’t stop her if it was what she wanted, and he’d follow her to the end of the earth. But he’d miss Toronto. He’d miss the band. He’d miss Maisie and Ellen and seeing his bandmates’ kids grow up on a day-to-day basis. He’d miss Daniel, Elliott’s stepson, who had one day just started popping over when he knew Lennon was home. They’d sit and chat, watch hockey, mess around on his drums, and sometimes play video games, although Daniel’s interest in them was waning. Recently, their conversations had turned to girls. He found he liked being called Uncle Lennon, and despite Daniel’s assertion that Lennon gave great advice, he wondered how on earth he was able to deliver anything remotely close to sage wisdom given his own fucked up view of the world. Most importantly, he was grateful for the opportunity to try.

  Lennon ran his hand gently along Georgia’s spine, savoring the soft warmth of her skin. Replacing his fingers with his lips, he placed a trail of kisses from her shoulders to the curve of her butt.

  Her body flexed beneath his touch, a stretch that tensed every single muscle. Georgia lazily turned over and pushed her hair from her face with her left hand, the engagement ring he’d placed on her finger the previous year sparkling as brightly as Gia did when she smiled.

  “Morning,” she said, her words laced with slumber.

  This was his favorite Gia. Sure, he loved her when she was all capable and dashed out of the house in response to a medical emergency at the hospital. And he loved her when they were hanging around with his friends, the way she’d slid into their lives without a ripple. He loved it when she sang ever so slightly out of tune, when she closed her eyes and bobbed her head to jazz, or made him cookies for no reason at all. But he loved her most when she slowly woke up for the day, before all the responsibilities of her job filtered in, before she started to think about her to-do list. When she was still simply Gia.

  Leaning forward, he brushed his lips over her, a gentle touch of wonder that she was his and he was hers. “Morning,” he murmured.

  A sigh fluttered from her lips as her hand slid through his hair to the back of his neck. “Did you sleep okay?”

  The fact she always asked every morning, even though she knew about his sleep patterns, warmed his heart. “Better than usual. You?”

  “Like a log, as usual.” Her smile was as powerful as a caffeine jolt. Only she could wake him up, make him forget a crap night’s sleep, and make him think the day was packed with possibilities.

  Georgia pulled him closer, drawing him back in for a longer, deeper kiss.

  Lazily, his tongue sought hers, nothing rushed or hurried, a slow languorous connection. He ran his hand from her shoulder, over her breast, cupping it gently as his thumb brushed her nipple. Goosebumps broke out on her skin. Damn, it was a fucking miracle every day that he could turn her on so easily.

  “Make love to me, Lennon,” she said softly.

  Those words, softly spoken, turned him on more than he’d ever thought possible. He’d spent the early part of his life attempting to fill all the holes in his heart with mindless fucks and the attitude of a prick. And while he loved nothing more than having sex with Gia, it was when she asked him for something more that he found his heart and home.

  The vulnerability of it had once terrified him, but loving Georgia slowly and completely now filled every part of him

  Carefully, he pushed the sheet back, climbed onto the bed, and settled between her thighs. “I love when you say that to me,” he said, no
longer nervous about expressing his feelings to her. She never laughed. Never judged.

  With both hands, she pushed his hair back from his face. Her eyes locked on his. “Make love to me, Lennon,” she repeated.

  The words whispered down his spine, through his soul. His lips met hers and they kissed slowly, messily. He ran his thumb along her lower lip, opening it to him to suck on. Their tongues met in a passionate dual, and he inhaled Georgia’s sigh, breathing her in.

  Slowly, her hips began to undulate beneath him, and he could feel her wetness begin to spread along the length of his hard dick. It would take nothing more than an inch to slip back and slide deep inside her unsheathed, but given as children were not in their immediate plans, he knelt up and reached for the box of condoms he’d placed on the bedside table.

  As he rolled the condom on, he looked down at Georgia’s body. He’d once mocked Elliott for dating a woman of nearly forty, but as Georgia approached her thirty-ninth birthday, he realized he couldn’t have been any more wrong. He placed his hand by her throat and dragged it between her breasts, over the softness of her stomach, to the place reserved for him alone.

  She’d waxed before they’d left, he noticed, not that he minded.

  “Touch me,” Georgia gasped. Propped on her elbows, she was watching him intently, her eyes not leaving his as he did exactly as instructed. When they were fucking, he always took the lead. Hell, he’d lifted her onto the desk in their suite five minutes after checking in and unleashed his body on hers. But when it came to making love, it was like learning a foreign language… difficult to understand but wildly satisfying.

  “Fuck, you’re so wet for me,” he said, adding a second finger, dragging them out slowly, watching as they came out coated in her cream.

  His dick throbbed and he ached to squeeze it, but he needed his hand on her. As if reading his mind, she reached for him, slowly squeezing him from root to tip. Not enough to get him off, but enough to ease the ache.