"You see there's a reason, not one I'm very proud of, for my state of undress."
"You don't have to explain."
"I'd like to anyway. I need to tell someone." A moment's hesitation. "I want to tell you, Rachel."
*****
And he did.
Reluctantly at first, fearing she would fault him for his adultery. Then, once he had gotten over the hump of telling her about his wife (her smile dimmed at that), he plowed straight ahead, relating more than he intended to about his sins these past twenty years, about the not-Santa that had plagued him and the lust that had tainted his giving.
Rachel was the perfect listener, condemning him for nothing, accepting him completely and returning unconditional love—in her encouraging nods, in the softness of her questions, in every gesture of head and hand. The impact of her presence amazed him. He wondered if an encounter with any mortal woman might tend the same way. Then he understood that Rachel was indeed special: free of guile, open, caring, lovely in her bones.
"Did Wendy see you with the Tooth Fairy?" Rachel's face registered alarm.
"Of course not," Santa assured her. "We kept the magic time strictly to ourselves, just as we did with you twenty years ago."
Rachel smirked. "I saw everything then."
"You didn't!"
She nodded. "Of course I had a child's understanding of what went on. And no recollection of it afterward, none. But now, I see it again as clear as can be." And she proved it, giving an exhaustive blow-by-blow of what she had witnessed as a child.
Santa felt odd listening to her. It was as if her account sanctified the lustful acts he had performed with the Tooth Fairy, honeyed over their vileness, and recreated them as acts of love. Beneath the clothing bunched upon his lap, there burgeoned an erection, and it felt good and pure and brimming with righteousness. When she was done, he said, "You were awake all right, though I don't understand how that could have happened. All I can say is that I think Wendy remained in normal time. You could always ask her in the morning."
Rachel chuckled and shook her head. "Unless she brings it up, I'll just let it slide. Didn't do me any harm."
"You're sure about that?"
Rachel shrugged. The way she did it made Santa break into laughter.
"Ooh, I like the way you laugh," said Rachel.
"It's my stock-in-trade," he replied, chuckling again at his own joke.
She had propped her pillows up and was leaning against the headboard, knees bent before her. Now she smiled at him and a sigh escaped her lips. A hand picked absently at the buttons that held her nightgown closed. Santa's flesh stirred again in his lap. Hackles rose at the back of his neck.
"Well, I suppose I ought to be going."
Her smile never faltered. She continued to toy with her buttons as if she hadn't heard him. When the top one popped open, her hand drifted lazily to the next.
God in heaven, thought Santa, this will never do. He had enough explaining ahead of him as it was. "Maybe next Christmas we can talk again."
Another button gave way.
"I want you, Santa," she said, "and I don't. Stop me if you like. I'll understand. But I feel so much love for you. And from you. This seems right as can be. I know I should be thinking about Anya, but the rules seem so pointless with you here. And me here."
Santa saw the smoky gleam in Rachel's eye, her moist tongue moving in her mouth, a moonlit V of skin at her sternum, her breasts straining at cloth, a tantalizing hint of nipple beneath.
Her fingers moved lower, ever working.
*****
Rachel was in love. She had known mortal love, the hurt, the longing, the fulfillment. She had known puppy love, adolescent gropings, a full range of relationships. And with Frank she had known the mingled joys of marital love. But everything paled beside Santa Claus. Santa beguiled, provoked, warmed her and completed her.
Had she stopped to reflect, her seductive ways would have seemed uncharacteristic. But with Santa before her, reflection was pointless. And so, her hands moved to free her breasts, fingers dallying there to entice this elf-man who had so swiftly captured her heart. "Help me undo this button?"
"Really we shouldn't."
"Put your hand here. Please."
"But, Rachel. What will I tell my wife?"
"I am your wife and you are my husband," she said, seeing clearly how things stood between them. "Tell your wife you love her. Do it right now. And do it again when you return to the North Pole."
He started to speak, then smiled and leaned toward her. When his fingers touched her throat and glided along the open flaps of her nightgown to finish the unbuttoning, Rachel closed her eyes and shuddered.
Like a sunbather watching her eyelids redden and feeling upon her skin the wholesome heatlight of a cloud-emergent sun, so Rachel felt Saint Nicholas's face draw nearer. When she opened her eyes, his heavenly visage filled her sight. He was all there for her. There were no dark corners or ulterior motives as there always were with even the best of mortal men.
"I love you, Rachel," he said.
She gave a slight cry at that and gasped out that she loved him too. His hand slid beneath the cloth and found her left breast. Her nipple grew hard and urgent beneath his fingers. She cupped the back of his neck and drew his lips down to hers.
It amazed her—the part of her mind that had room for amazement—that when she thought she had reached the height of sensuality, another plateau waited just above. Their kiss made her body surge up and explode anew. Yet every moment they prolonged it, the last explosion was but prologue to the next. Santa guided her through a land of ever-renewing orgasms, each more wondrous than the one before.
He tossed back the covers. His hands flew up the sides of her body and the nightgown vanished. Then he laid her down and she eased her legs open. Even with Frank, there had always been a residue of fear in that vulnerable position. But Santa was as gentle and all-caressing as a warm breeze, as loving as sunlight itself. Rachel opened everywhere, a flower heavy with dew.
He touched her first with his hands, those great expressive hands that gave without stint and gilded her every pore and orifice with the smooth and supple surety of a craftsman's love. Then he wrapped his hand about the barrel of his loveshaft and touched its hot moist tip to her, beginning at her toes and traveling by degrees up her supine body, lingering at her nipples, warming her neck with its radiant warmth, caressing her cheeks and chin and forehead, and at last brushing it to and fro over her mouth until its heady taste and aroma made her lips fall open around it. He lingered there to please her, stiff and undemanding; and when her jaws ached with the giving and she was ready to move on to new pleasures, he withdrew and brought his tongue into play. The gossamer of his beard acted as thrilling harbinger to his tongue, which darted down and licked her as if he painted her in healing and immortality. And when all of her had been licked clean of the mundane save her vulva, Santa swooped down upon it and made a divine meal of that drenched pouch of flesh, tonguing the folds of her labia and licking like life itself at her clitoris. Wave upon wave of divine love rolled through her until at last her hands insisted him up and around and he was inside her with his hot stiff goodness and she could taste herself on his lips and his heavenly flesh quite covered hers and they rocked and rolled and bucked and heaved their way into the shared joys of concupiscent release.
*****
"Rachel, darling, you're so lovely," Santa said, lying beside her, unwilling to lift his hands from the evanescence of her skin. So delicate, so smooth. Hard to believe he and Anya had been like this once, possessed of a heart that must one day stop, lungs whose allotment of breath was recorded in God's logbook.
She touched his cheek. "You're crying."
He pressed a knuckle to his eyes and wiped his vision clear. "It's because you make me so happy," he said.
"Ohhh," she said. Moving full against him, she rested her arm along his back and snuggled her nose into his beard.
With one finger
, he traced a line along the daring curve of her hip. He knew one thing only. He wanted the nightscape of that hip beside him in his bed always; not just here and intermittently, but back home in his cottage every night of every year for all eternity. He wanted to bend down and tongue the elemental epicenter of her lower depths whenever the urge took him after a long day in the workshop with his colleagues, a look-in at his reindeer, and a fine dinner prepared by Anya.
Yes. Anya. That was the sticking point. He loved her no less than before. He loved her fully and deeply, with all the love and affection a husband ought to feel for his helpmate. But he loved Rachel now as well, and he loved her just as much as Anya, though Rachel's uniqueness called forth that love in a different way, as the twist of a kaleidoscope tumbles the same bits of colored glass into new patterns of brilliance.
He despaired of Anya's ever understanding that, she whose reaction to his affair with the Tooth Fairy had been so unreasonable. But this love was different. The Tooth Fairy had been the antithesis of Anya. She drove all thought of Anya out of his mind, and when he did think of Anya, it was in a resentful way. But Rachel, lying warm in his arms and redolent of sex, paradoxically sanctified and made stronger his love for his wife. They were, these two women, multifaceted gems which juxtaposed reflect one another's beauty and so become more beautiful themselves.
"Rachel." He had to chance it.
"Mmm?" She toyed with the curls at his ears.
"I want you and Wendy to come live with me at the North Pole."
Good lord, what are you doing?
I'm asking the woman I love to live with me, that's what I'm doing. Any complaints?
Can't think of a one, except her name be Anya.
Yes. Anya. A formidable bridge to cross. But this felt right to him, just as Rachel had said it felt right to her. She was his wife indeed and he would not live without her. This time, he would be totally above board. And Anya would simply have to come around to his way of thinking.
A stiffening of Rachel's spine, an intake of breath, a still finger encurled. Then she pulled back to look him square on. "You're not serious."
"Never more."
*****
A thousand thoughts raced through Rachel's mind. To give up her home, her job, all her friends was out of the question. She had no winter clothes. She hated cold weather with a passion. What of Wendy's school, the car payments and the mortgage, all the things she owned and loved? Then there was the question of Santa's wife. The image of a wronged woman clutching a carving knife loomed before her, red-eyed hordes of faithful elves glaring out from behind the woman's skirts at Rachel and a terrified Wendy.
"Does your silence mean yes?"
She rested her head upon her hand. "I need . . . it's not an easy decision, you know . . . I need some time to think." She laughed. "God, I can't believe I said that. Santa Claus invites me to the North Pole and my mind spins off into fear, uncertainty, and doubt. But what about Anya? How will she react to this?"
Santa lowered his eyelids in thought, then looked up at her. "I don't know. There could be some difficulty at first. But I think, once she meets you and has a chance to adjust to the idea, everything may work out fine. We can hope so, anyway."
Rachel read serious doubt on his face. She let her eyes laze and glide over the fantastic fat man in her bed, knowing from the sheer corporeality of his flesh that she wasn't dreaming. Or if I am, she prayed, let me never wake. Her senses, gently orgasmic still at the look and feel and sound and smell and taste of Santa, trumpeted like red brass their Yes and Yes and Three Times Yes I Will. But there were other considerations: the thousands of annoying encumbrances that went with modern life, the call of her profession, the ties of friendship reluctantly broken; but over all, there loomed the face of Wendy, whose love sustained her like no other love she had known and whose welfare was her chief concern. This was not a decision Rachel could in good conscience make on her own.
"You're beautiful when you ponder." Santa softly chuckled. His hand moved on her arm as he bent his great white head to kiss her shoulder. His soft beard brushed her left breast. Inside, the light of passion brightened by a lumen or two.
Touching a hand to his neck, she said, "I'm already taking next week off from work, and Wendy has no school until January third. Could we try it for a week? See how it goes? Subject, of course, to Wendy's approval."
He kissed her throat, her cheek, her lips, which opened to welcome his tongue. She curved a hand along Santa's rotundity, knuckling the riotous curls of his private hair and taking in hand the thick rod of his love. Caressing it, she broke their kiss and pulled back to murmur her question once more. "Just for a week?"
Santa's fingers nippled her left breast. "I think," he said, "that a one-week trial period is a great idea."
She sensed that his thoughts were more complex than his words, but for the moment none of that mattered. There were rising urgencies in both of them that called for their immediate attention.
And attend to them they did.
*****
Perched not at all precariously on the second-story ledge outside Rachel's window, the Easter Bunny drooled invisible drool down the windowpane. Below on a modest patch of front lawn, Santa's reindeer stood stolidly in the Sacramento night, snorting and stamping on the grass, eager to resume their night-journey. He wondered what Lucifer and his antlered friends would think if they could witness their beloved master in action, betraying Mrs. Claus first with the Tooth Fairy in the bed of an innocent child and now upstairs with the child's mother. Hours of magic time the jolly old bastard had spent in this house, a juicy two or three with the Tooth Fairy, twice that much with Rachel McGinnis. If his count was correct, Santa had climaxed three times with the immortal, seven so far with the mortal woman, and the rutting swine showed no signs of letting up.
The Easter Bunny's pride still smarted from Anya's rebuff two weeks before. He had opened her eyes and she had treated him like slime, not even offering a word of thanks. He'd gone back to his burrow and stared at the walls, feeling emptier and emptier, eaten up with envy at the thought of Santa enjoying two lovers while he bore his lonely lot with the likes of Petunia.
Now Santa had added a third woman to his stable of lovers. He appraised her, as much of her as he could see beneath Santa's fat frame. A compact little slip of a thing, tawny and lithe and fully into the rhythm of the hump. This Rachel wasn't some passive Petunia suffering fleshly intrusion. She welcomed Santa into her body as if she needed him for completion. Her hands roved freely.
He liked that in a woman.
He liked it very much.
A dangerous confluence of concupiscence and anger swept his thoughts in bizarre directions. And out of those swiftly flowing waters surfaced an idea, fully formed, that bobbed and held and rode the thudding rapids through the black night. The idea caught hold of him, thrilled his heart, made him turn unthinkably away from the sacred acts of copulation unfolding before his eyes and hie himself westward out of Sacramento, moving swift as darkness out over the ocean.
10. Invitations Accepted
Needling his way in and out of an immense gloom-gray blanket of cloudcover, the Easter Bunny strained to pick out the tiny island from the vast wash of ocean. It had to be close by. There was no mistaking the ill winds weaving fiercely for miles now, nor the blind rage that shot through those winds, a rage whose precise counterpart he had seen spill out of Wendy's bedroom when the Tooth Fairy reared up and blasted Santa Claus above the child's bed. Banking low out of the clouds, he saw, no more than a mile ahead, the unmistakable sliver of land rising like a rude welt on the bare buttocks of the ocean.
She squatted upon the sand at the island's northern extremity. Near her hunched a cedar tree. Tattered strands of seaweed hung from the twists of its limbs; broken seashells lay like shattered bone about its base. At its top he saw the torn half of a starfish, as blue and lifeless as the hand of a dead Morlock. The Tooth Fairy's elbows locked her knees rigidly together. Her arms shot
straight out, ending in tight claws turned up to the sky. Her eyes, shooting dread far out to sea, burned into a wall of gray that seemed continually to be thudding down upon the horizon.
With caution and cowardice, the Easter Bunny touched paw to sand fifty yards off and hopped closer on a zigzag, pretending to sniff curiously at the stiff dune plants, at driftwood, at strewn clumps of seaweed which marked the limits of the last tide. Her stillness spooked him. Were it not for the nearly imperceptible rise and fall of her necklace of teeth and the dreadful in-out-in-out of her belly, he might have thought her transfixed into statuary.
But despite her apparent calm, there was something unsettling about this ravishing creature's vital signs. Being near her had set up resonances in him, echoes from some dim time, the time before God made him the Easter Bunny, the old time when he had been more in control of his life, and perhaps of the universe itself. His brain hummed dangerously. He suddenly wished himself safe and snug in his burrow with Petunia, whose passivity covered not some smoldering fireball of fury but more passivity, passivity pure and simple.
His heart nearly gave out when she turned her head and demanded: "What do you want?" Leaping straight up, he collapsed into a heap of confusion and cowered in the sand, emitting a faint high-pitched squeal like a cornered piglet. She watched him with cobra eyes, waiting for an answer.
Swallowing his fear, the Easter Bunny hopped closer and sat back on his haunches. "I watch at windows," he began. "I watch acts of copulation. It excites me." He fell silent, though his jaws twitched, wanting to go on.
"Is there a point to this?"
He shut his eyes for a moment and forced his neck to bend forward. When he opened them, he was looking at the animal perfection of her midriff, tight and smooth-haired and kissable where it disappeared behind a muscled arc of upper thigh. "I watched you tonight with Santa Claus. After you—"
"You did?" Rising inflection and a razor-thin edge to her voice.
"Well," he said, losing air, "yes I suppose I did. It's harmless really. Just something I do. At windows. But when you—"
Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups Page 13
