“Ok, maybe also your ass. You have the hottest ass I’ve ever seen.”
I giggle at the way Dylan says that and Robyn intervenes.
“Don’t forget her tits, dude.”
Allan agrees with his bestie.
“Yeah, I dream about those tits pretty much constantly.”
Dylan’s dark chuckle makes me look up at his eyes again.
“What we’re trying to say, cutie, is that we’re yours if you want us. We’re all in: hearts, bodies and souls.”
Allan and Robyn step closer and the latter is the one who speaks first.
“I’m sorry if I walked away from you earlier. But Onyx, I freaked out. And I knew that the only way to fix things and to get you to see how we feel about you, was if we all showed you. Together.”
Dylan chuckles again.
“And of course, he couldn’t help but be ... theatrical.”
Robyn protests his innocence.
“Hey! If I recall correctly, this was your idea.”
Dylan doesn’t skip a beat and retorts.
“Yeah, like it was my idea to stop your stupid pact and get close to Onyx and use our energy to make her happy rather than to make each other miserable. So you’re welcome, bro.”
Allan looks at the two cousins and rolls his eyes.
“Can you see what I have to deal with, pretty much constantly? I’ll tell you what, baby. While these two finish locking up and decide whose idea it was to come here tonight, I’ll drive you home.”
He wraps a protective arm around my shoulders and I don’t even notice that I left my coat and purse behind.
14.
Twelve Days Of Christmas
Onyx
“CUT! CUT! ALLAN, THE Ghost of Christmas Present has to touch Scrooge on her chest, not grope her. Seriously, keep your hands in an appropriate place or the principal will force me to rewrite that scene. And the ghosts have to look a little scary, not make eyes at Scrooge! You can look at her that way when you play the ex-boyfriends, not when you’re the ghosts. Are we clear? Let’s call it a day, shall we? Hopefully tomorrow you’ll be more focused.”
“Yes, Miss Devlin. Sorry.”
Allan doesn’t look very repentant when he apologizes to our drama teacher and winks at me.
I have to stifle a giggle because Miss Devlin is right: we’ve been distracted and it’s been hard to keep our hands off of each other.
After the boys surprised me at the cafe, telling me that they’ve had feelings for me way before I made that wish at the Magic Spring, Allan took me home and kissed me good night on my doorstep.
It was a hot, passionate kiss, one of those kisses that are hard to break and I’d have totally invited him into the house but with Mom at home on bed rest, that wasn’t an option.
And as soon as I stepped into the living room, any plans of sneaking out to Allan’s house when Dad could be at home with Mom vanished into thin air as I was informed that Dad had to fly to Europe for a ten day business trip.
So my father arranged for Mom’s sister to come and check on Mom when I’m at school or rehearsal and I’m on Mom duty the rest of the time.
The boys have been coming to the house bringing gifts in a sweet and kinda funny twelve days of Christmas fashion.
Allan began by bringing me a basket of pears and a stuffed animal resembling a bird: his version of a partridge in a pear tree.
Mom has been watching them with amusement and tried to explain to them that the twelve days of Christmas are a religious tradition and they actually start on Christmas Day and end right before the epiphany but the boys kept bringing me gifts inspired by the famous song.
So I’ve been spending time with them but with Mom always around, there’s been no chance for any physical intimacy and this is why we just got in trouble with Miss Devlin.
Of course Valentina didn’t miss the opportunity to highlight how she’d be the perfect choice for the lead role and how I’m gonna ruin the play.
She’s been circling around me like a vulture, trying to badmouth me with Miss Devlin at every mistake and whispering into the boys’ ears that I’m cheating on all of them because she doesn’t know about our arrangement.
We decided that while we aren’t going to hide our relationship, we won’t particularly advertise the fact that I’m seeing all the boys.
So life has been good but challenging as I try to balance school with the approaching finals, the play, my job at the cafe, looking after Mom and finding the time to steal a few kisses from the boys.
“Miss Devlin, we have less than a week before our premiere and how don’t you see that Onyx is a disaster? She spends all her time trying to dry hump the ghosts rather than working on her non-existent acting skills. If you let me tryout as Scrooge, you’ll see that I’m the better choice—”
While our teacher tells Valentina that she has no plan to review the cast of the play, Allan grabs my hand and walks me to the girls changing room, sneaking in with me and crushing his lips on mine as soon as the door slams shut behind him.
There’s something to be said about stolen kisses: they taste dangerous and exciting and as I open my mouth to let Allan taste me, my hands run through his blond hair, pulling him closer to me.
“God Onyx, I—”
His hands find the hem of my nightie, skimming up my hips as he whispers with his lips against mine.
I can’t help but think about what happened between me and Robyn the last time we were alone in this room and my body reacts by tightening and throbbing everywhere under his touch.
One of my hands finds the taut skin of his abs, skimming over the rippling muscles that his thin cashmere sweater can barely hide and I’m surprised when Allan stops me by closing his fingers around my wrist.
“No, baby. Not here, not this way. I want our first time together not to be a stolen quickie where someone could walk in on us.”
I half smile, half groan because while my body couldn’t care less if the whole school saw us right now, I don’t blame him for wanting to avoid another embarrassing moment like when we got caught in his car by my dad.
“When’s your dad back?”
I smile softly at the intense heat in his brown eyes and tell him that Dad should be on his way back home as we speak.
“Awesome. My parents are going Christmas shopping in New York for the weekend, so my house will be all ours. Can I cook you dinner tonight?”
I nod, running the back of my hand down his cheekbone and feeling the very slight hint of stubble starting to appear on his jaw.
This is where Allan is different from the other two boys: Dylan and Robyn are more impulsive and wouldn’t have even tried to rein their desire in, like the hot moments I shared with each of them outside Vee and in this very room prove.
Allan doesn’t shy away from spontaneous, but he’s a planner by nature so he’d rather wait until he knows we can have time alone rather than rush things between us.
I tell him that I’d love to eat dinner with him tonight and our lips meet again but it’s fleeting as now all we can think about is to get out of here so that we can truly be alone.
I quickly change into my street clothes and I’d be lying if I said that I don’t feel a little shy when Allan doesn’t turn but looks at me with a hungry gaze that promises a hot evening and makes my body react with a wave of hot desire that makes me feel a little dizzy.
“Goddam, Onyx. You’re so fucking beautiful! Let’s go check on your mom and then I’ll be selfish and keep you all to myself all evening.”
His lips brush against the sensitive spot behind my ear and I take the hand he offers me, following him out of the changing room.
As Allan opens the door, we find ourselves face to face with Valentina who was about to come into the room.
Her face contorts into a snarl but rather than attack me as she usually does when none of the boys is around, she tells us that Miss Devlin wants to see us all before we go home.
I feel her eyes burning holes
in my back and I squeeze Allan’s hand tighter, anxious to put distance between me and my self-declared archenemy.
Miss Devlin informs us that the principal has agreed to add a third evening to our show after all the tickets sold out in a matter of hours when they went on sale at the weekend.
“So we agreed on a final afternoon show on Christmas Eve. We’ll be done by four pm, so everyone will be free to follow their own Christmas traditions but it’s exciting to see how the whole town wants to see our play. I have it on good authority that our mayor Christina Jones will be here on the twenty-fourth.”
Everyone’s excited about the amount of attention our little school production is getting but I can’t lie that the idea makes me a lot more anxious about it and about Christmas in general.
I’ve been trying to listen to my mom that nothing bad will happen this Christmas but I can’t relax because we all know how I feel about Christmas.
Miss Devlin’s voice distracts me from my musings:
“Oh, drat! I forgot the lights are on on stage. Can one of you be a darling and turn them off and could someone also check that I locked the props room? Other clubs use it to store their own equipment and I don’t want anything to be accidentally damaged or misplaced.”
The teacher is looking in my direction but Valentina precedes me offering to turn the lights off.
“Onyx, could you take care of the props room while I get the guys to take a look at a last minute change that I was thinking to make on their lines for the final scene?”
While the guys all huddle close to our teacher to read their notes, I go to check the storage room, finding it locked.
After, I cross the backstage area to walk to the other side of the stage where the five steps to leave the stage are located and I don’t even see the huge spotlight crashing down on me with a deafening sound as its light smashes into the stage’s wooden floorboards.
I hear the guys yell to be careful and the only reason why I’m not injured by the heavy spotlight is a swish of air that literally pushes me out of the way.
The boys run on the stage where I’m lying mere inches away from the now destroyed spotlight.
Valentina comes from the opposite direction and reaches me first, crouching down to whisper in my ear.
“You’re one lucky bitch. Next time I press the release button rather than the off switch, you might be standing in the right spot.”
But when the guys reach me, she acts concerned and helps me back onto my feet.
Miss Devlin wraps me in a maternal hug and asks me several times if I’m okay and then she sets her dark brown eyes on Valentina.
“What happened?”
My understudy shrugs, looking remarkably innocent when she says that she might have pressed the wrong button.
“I’m so sorry, Onyx. Luckily you’re ok. If you were limping the only role you’d be fit to play would be Tiny Kim and we’d have to swap ...”
Valentina looks at me with a smile that doesn’t reach her blue eyes and I know then that I really need to watch my back.
15.
Together
Allan
WE DON’T TALK MUCH during the short car ride to my house: I keep stealing glances at her while I drive and she looks troubled.
I guess the accident with the spotlight must’ve really shaken Onyx.
If it was even an accident ... I need to speak to the guys to make sure that we keep an eye on Valentina.
I suspect that losing the lead role in the play to Onyx started some kind of ill feeling toward our girl but the fact that the guys and I haven’t hung out with her anymore in the last few weeks might’ve exacerbated the situation.
And I wouldn’t put it past Valentina to try and hurt Onyx in a bid to take back what she sees as rightfully hers.
But any thoughts that aren’t related to me finally being alone with Onyx literally evaporate when I pull into my driveway.
Onyx looks around as I lead her into the kitchen through the living room: she’s been here once four years ago for that Christmas party.
“So, what are you making me? I didn’t know you cooked.”
Her smile is so cute that I have to tell myself that there’s no rush and I don’t want her to think that the only reason I brought her here is to jump her as soon as we’re in the house.
“My mom loves to cook and it’s become our thing since I was little. She’s very busy with her law practice all week but at the weekends we choose something decadent and time-consuming and we cook together. Right now though, I’m not gonna go for anything complicated because I want to spend time with you. So I think I’ll make pasta with vodka sauce.”
I open the fridge and as I pull out bacon, cream and Parmesan cheese, I feel her gaze fixed on me.
“Can I help?”
I ask her if she wouldn’t mind slicing some vegetables for a side salad and I’m impressed and a little mesmerized at how efficiently and precisely she uses the chef knife I gave her.
“What?”
Shit! I need to stop staring at her with my mouth hanging open like an idiot.
“You’re really good at making salad.”
You’re really good at making salad?
Really Allan? God, I’m so fucking excited to be alone with her that my brain turned into mush.
Or to be honest, my little head is taking control because I can’t take my eyes off of her and all I can think about is that I wanna touch her.
Onyx gives me another one of her soft smiles and explains that she grew up hanging around her grandma’s kitchen.
“When your grandma is ‘Nana Mancini’ you learn how to cook almost before you learn how to walk. I’m an only child and my gran was my best friend. She’s the first American born in her family: her parents came here from Italy sixty years ago. She learned how to cook from her mom and she was adamant that I needed to learn because ‘the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach’. I know it sounds old fashioned and a little chauvinistic but—”
I close the distance between us with one single stride and take the knife out of her hand, placing it back on the chopping board.
My lips are a breath away from hers as I murmur:
“How can you be so fucking perfect? You’re everything I’ve ever dreamed about. But let’s put that knife down, I don’t think that knives and kisses are a good combination.”
She giggles as my lips finally touch hers and I’m surprised by the heat in her reaction to my kiss.
Her mouth opens to let me in and she matches the strokes of my tongue with her own while her arms surround my neck and our chests touch.
Our kiss goes from hot to frantic as I grab her hips and grind against her while my hands find their way into her sweater as if they had a will of their own.
She gasps when I touch her tits through the thin lace of her bra and tugs my shirt out of my jeans, exploring the planes of my stomach with her soft fingers.
I’m so hard that it almost hurts, I’ve never been so excited in my entire life.
“Baby, I want you so much ... but if you’d rather have dinner before we—”
“Fuck dinner!”
She pants now tugging at the buckle of my belt and that makes me totally lose it.
I lift her in my arms and take her up the stairs and into my room, lowering her gently onto my bed.
I kiss her again, hard, pressing my lips against hers with a bruising intensity and my tongue tangles with hers while her fingers make quick work of the buttons of my shirt.
When I have to break the kiss to take her sweater off, it almost hurts as if I needed to kiss her more than I need air.
Before I know it, we’re naked and I look down at her beautiful body thinking how I’ve been dreaming about looking at her like this for as long as I can remember.
“I’ve been dreaming about you too, Allan.”
Shit, did I say it out loud?
I realize that it doesn’t really matter: I’ve had a huge crush on Onyx and I’ll go as fa
r as to say that I’ve been in love with her for years.
But that love was for her beauty and the kindness that transpired in everything she does, for the image of her that I built up in my head.
Now I love the real her: her sense of humor, the irony she uses to look at life. And the softness and the sensitive side that she hides from the rest of the world but that she showed me when she was worried about our love being real and not the result of some kind of magic.
What she doesn’t know is that love is always a little magic because it makes you start to care for another more than you do for yourself and that there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.
I love the way her skin feels against mine and I trail soft kisses down her neck and shoulders, all the way to the swell of her breasts.
I use my lips, my tongue, and my teeth to explore her and I relish the feeling of her hands tracing the muscles of my back.
My hands follow my lips in a wondrous journey and I stop at the apex of her thighs, tracing the soft, bare skin in search of her most sensitive spot.
She gasps when my fingers find a little bundle of nerves and her breathing rate increases as I tease and stroke that little nub, wetness coating the tip of my fingers.
She’s so beautiful that I can’t wait any longer, I need to feel her around me, to plunge deep inside her soft heat.
“Onyx, I —”
She grabs the base of my shaft guiding me toward her opening and wrapping her thighs around my hips, pushing me inside of her until our crotches are flush together.
I’ve never felt anything so warm, silky and tight and I have to breathe slowly or I know I’ll embarrass myself and let Onyx down.
I move my hips slowly, giving her time to adjust to my size and trying to gain control over my greedy body but she feels too good and I’m in too deep, so I whisper into her ear.
“Baby, bring your legs down, close them together.”
She does what I ask and fuck! It’s still too good.
Like this she feels tighter but the shallower penetration helps me to keep myself in check and I know that as I thrust into her, the base of my shaft rubs against her center.
Onyx (Jewels Cafe Book 10) Page 9
