by Zoe York
Ben followed her, his cock twitching deep inside her, then dropped his weight on top of her body. “Open your eyes, beautiful.”
She lifted her head and blinked. Somehow she’d gotten turned to the side, and now she was facing the foot of the bed—where an overflowing Christmas stocking hung on the corner of the footboard.
“Ben,” she breathed. “What did you do?”
“Woke up in the middle of the night again and had an idea.” He dropped a kiss on her shoulder, then let her up.
As he dealt with the condom, she dove for the foot of the bed. The stocking had an oversized name tag on it. Chels, scrawled in handwriting she knew deep down she would be seeing for the rest of her life. This was the start of their own holiday traditions. Just the two of them, starting over. New and fresh and all their own.
Sticking out the top was a DVD box she already owned, but when she lifted it up, there was something notably different about this copy—it was signed by the stars of the TV show.
Confused and delighted, she looked over at Ben. “What is this?”
He gave her his sweetest, most lopsided boyish grin. “There’s a story behind this. The night I moved in, I lay on the floor in my bedroom and listened to you watching this series. It echoed through the wall—all night long, it felt like.”
She buried her face in her hands. “I was grading,” she mumbled.
He peeled her fingers away. “I didn’t catch that.”
“I was grading tests. It was the night before the last day of school. I worked late, then got up early the next morning to check my work. I have a whole routine.”
“You watch Navy SEALs be badass while you do your grading?”
She couldn’t stop the blush crawling down her neck. “Yes.”
“Chels?”
“Mmm?”
“This Navy SEAL thinks that’s freaking adorable.” He kissed her softly. “I didn’t mention it sooner because at first I wondered if you might have a thing for SEALs. And then I didn’t want to bring it up?”
She closed her eyes. “Oh yeah, that would have been mortifying. I don’t, by the way. I just have a thing for you.”
“It’s okay. I know that now.”
She kissed him back. “I’ve never dated a soldier before.”
His lips twitched in amusement. “Sailor.”
“The mortification continues.”
But he just pushed her stocking back into her hands. “Open the rest.”
She wasn’t ready to move past the surprise. “But I want the whole story about how you have a signed copy of this DVD.”
“Oh.” He gave her the most innocent, nonchalant look. “They came to the base and did some training with us.”
Her stocking was immediately abandoned. She threw herself on top of him and kissed him not-at-all softly. “Tell me everything.”
He tucked her into his side and tangled his free hand in her hair. “It was a couple of years ago, before they filmed the pilot. They came down, and we put them through a Hollywood version of Hell Week. So once the show came out, they sent us a couple of gift baskets, including signed copies of the first season DVDs for the whole team.”
“Okay, I have a present for you.”
“You haven’t finished with your stocking!” But he let her go, and she scampered out of the bedroom.
Ben thought his heart might not be able to grow any bigger than it already was, having surprised Chelsea with her stocking, but he was wrong.
When she reappeared in the doorway holding a cardboard tube, he had a good idea of what was inside.
“I wanted to get this framed,” she murmured as she crawled back onto the bed and handed it over. “But there wasn’t enough time to get it done properly.”
Ben carefully extracted the rolled-up sheet of delicate sketch paper. He had an idea of what he might find in the tube.
He was both right and wrong.
It was a sketch of him, from the life drawing sessions, he was sure of it. But the body part she focused on surprised him.
Chelsea curled up against him, her fingers wrapping around his arm. One hand soft and sweet against his biceps, the other on his forearm.
The same arm drawn in perfect detail on the sheet of paper.
The rest of his body was nothing but blocked out lines, his head turned away. But his arm popped off the page as if he were actually flexing.
“It took me the whole final evening,” she murmured.
Ben’s voice was full of gravel when he finally found words again. “This is incredible.”
She traced her fingers over the lines on the page, down to the tight squeeze of his hand around the corner of the platform he had been sitting on. “Your hand,” she whispered. “This is what I feel when I look at you. This tight anchor to the earth, like if I catch a hold of you, you’ll be a tether point. I see your strength and unwavering calm. I know we’ve just met, but you’re so special, Ben. I—”
She cut herself off.
He turned so they were face to face, nose to nose. “I…too, Chelsea. Right from the first moment we met, I knew there was something special about you.”
“I don’t believe in love at first sight,” she whispered. “But…”
“Do you believe in Christmas miracles?” He caught her lips with his. Those perfect, strawberry pink lips he saw across a room while he was bare-assed naked.
“I’m starting to.”
“Good.” He breathed her in, kissed her again, then gently eased her back in the direction of her stocking. “Finish opening that. Then we have to water our Christmas tree one last time and hit the road.”
They left San Diego in jeans and long sleeve t-shirts. By the time they were past San Bernadino and onto Highway 395, it was noticeably cooler outside, and Chelsea dug a scarf out of her tote bag and wrapped it loosely around her neck.
Ben grinned at her from the driver’s seat of his truck. “Where did that come from?”
“Magical road trip tote bag.”
“Is that where the trail mix came from earlier?”
She’d dug it out while he was getting gas. “Yep.”
“You’re very prepared.”
“Doyles take their road trips seriously.”
“So what else have you planned to make this drive as smooth and comfortable as possible?”
She thought about it for a second. “Extra charging cables and a battery pack. Snacks galore. And an old iPod loaded with the best driving playlist ever, just in case we get out of radio station range—although the number one rule of road trips is the driver is in charge of the music, so that’s entirely up to you.”
“What power I have.”
“How about you? What are your top rules for a road trip?”
He squinted in concentration. “Don’t drive through mine fields. Always have back
up. Know your alternate escape routes?”
“So, slightly different.”
“A little, yeah.” He reached across the console and squeezed her knee. “This is fun, though. And I want to hear that playlist.”
She dug out the iPod and hooked it up to his truck. But he could tell she was thinking about the differences between them still.
So when a quieter song came on, he laced his fingers through hers and tugged her hand to his mouth so he could kiss it. “I like that we come from two different worlds,” he said firmly. “I need a little normal in my life.”
“I mean, I can’t promise I’m normal,” she teased.
He smiled against her knuckle. “Any chance you could use some excitement?”
“Definitely.”
Less than sixty seconds after she said that, a dust cloud appeared ahead of them, and then the truck in front of them slammed on its brakes.
“Hey there,” Ben muttered, checking his rearview mirror and the other lane in both directions quickly before making a split-second decision to go wide. He pulled out just as that truck made a crunching impact with another large vehicle, a violent crash that
made Chelsea scream. The car that had been behind Ben kept going straight, and the last thing he saw before hitting the gravel on the far shoulder was another vehicle behind that also slamming into the shit show.
They were now facing the wrong way into oncoming traffic, but they were clear of the collision, and the approaching cars had all slowed.
“We’re okay.” He quickly turned to Chelsea, touching her face to make her look at him. “Yeah? You okay? I gotta go see if they need help. Stay here. Call 911. Don’t get out of the vehicle no matter what.”
twelve
Chelsea dialed 911 in surreal shock as Ben dashed back across the highway. Other cars had stopped as well, and a few other people followed him toward the line of mangled cars and trucks.
The operator came on the line with crisp efficiency. “911, what is your emergency?”
She gave her best guess for their location, and described the crash, choking up as she counted the number of cars involved.
“I’m going to ask you to stay in your vehicle,” the operator said before pausing to relay information to the first responders en route.
“My boyfriend is helping the people trapped.”
“I would ask him to come to the car, ma’am.”
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. Chelsea didn’t bother to explain that Ben was a SEAL. She wasn’t sure she’d explain it properly, or if it would come off sounding weird, but she knew he was going to help as many people as he could, if he could, and that was the end of that. “The traffic is backing up in both directions.”
“The highway patrol is on the way. ETA is two minutes.” As the operator said that, sirens became audible in the distance.
“Okay, I hear them. I’m going to hang up now. Thank you.” Chelsea’s hands shook as she put the phone down and tried to see where Ben was in the chaos. There were people staggering away from the crash site, and other people milling around, getting closer.
Then she saw him, gesturing furiously for people to get back.
She pushed the truck door open to go and help him with crowd control when the truck behind him burst into flames, sending a bright orange fireball into the sky and making the crowd panic.
Chelsea included. Her heart was in her throat. Her boyfriend was in danger. And those sirens were approaching, but not fast enough.
“Was there someone in that truck?” she asked a person running past.
They didn’t answer.
Across the mayhem, Ben’s gaze found her face, and the panic got a little more manageable. She held her breath as he turned around, gesturing for another man nearby to help him, and together they got the driver out of the other truck, carrying him away from the fire just as the first California Highway Patrol car drove up on the other shoulder.
Ben was in the thick of it until an ambulance arrived, and then after that she watched him talk to a California Highway Patrol officer for a few minutes before he made his way back to the truck.
Instead of coming back to the driver’s side, he came straight to the passenger door, opened it up, and gave her a tight hug.
“Are you okay?” They asked each other the question at exactly the same time.
She nodded and whispered that she was.
He kissed her kind of roughly, with an earnest urgency, then exhaled. “Good. Me, too.”
“That was so scary. Was there— The driver of the truck—”
“Both drivers are okay. The one that went up in flames, he got out the other side. The one we got out is going to the hospital, but he’ll live.”
“What about the other cars?”
“I didn’t see any other really bad injuries, but we’re going to be here for a while as they clear the wreckage. I’m sorry about your Christmas adventure.” His expression was tight with tension. “Chels, this is not how I saw today going.”
She clung to him, not caring at all that he smelled like smoke and grease and was more than a little sweaty.
“It’s okay.” She smoothed her fingers over his face. “Do you want to find a place to get something to eat, or maybe a trail or a lake to look at?” Anything to break the stress circuit of what had just happened.
He caught her hand in his and twisted his head so he could kiss her palm. “I want to be alone with you.”
And they still had hours to go to get to the cabin. She stroked his face. “Why don’t I see if I can find us a hotel room somewhere closer than Tahoe?”
Two hours later, the highway reopened and they were back on the road. She’d found a motel an hour north that had vacancies, so that was their new destination for the night.
“That was amazing, what you did,” Chelsea said quietly.
“That was just training.”
“No. It wasn’t just anything. I’m so glad they weren’t badly hurt, but they could have been, and those trucks could have exploded, and you ran straight into that. It was…” She trailed off.
“Thanks,” he finally said. “I guess I don’t think about it like that. I just do what needs to be done.”
“Doesn’t anyone ever tell you how amazing that is?”
When he didn’t respond, she reached across the console, stretching her arm to gently stroke the bare skin at the back of his neck. “Oh, Ben.”
He gave her a half smile. “I’m a grown man, Chels. I’m fine.”
She thought of all of the military-themed Christmas ornaments. “Your mom is proud of you.”
He nodded. “I know.”
Maybe his mom’s love language was gifts or acts of service, and she didn’t say things out loud. The Doyle family was just so enthusiastically supportive of each other, Chelsea couldn’t imagine how lonely it must be to never be hyped up.
It took a long time for Chelsea’s pulse to slow down and to get back into the spirit of a Christmas Day road trip. Ben was very familiar with the highway they were on, though, and entertained her with stories that were at least seventy-five percent made up—by his own admission.
“I don’t know for sure that it’s haunted,” he said innocently pointing to an abandoned bank as they drove through another blink-and-you’d-miss-it small town, something straight out of the 1970s. Dusty and vintage. “But there’s a reason no business lasts more than a month there.”
“I’m a Cali girl, born and raised, and I can’t believe I’ve never been through here.”
“It’s a big state to explore.”
“Where have you not been yet?”
He grinned. “I haven’t gone up the coast north of L.A. When I’ve had time to do a road trip, it’s always either this or Vegas.”
“Do you go back to see friends?”
He shook his head. “No, no family or friends left there. It’s just a popular weekend getaway for some of my friends.”
“Do you gamble?”
That got a big laugh. “Hell no. My mom’s a dealer. I know the odds are not in my favor. You?”
“I’ve never been to a casino.”
“What?” He slapped the steering wheel. “We have to rectify that this trip.”
“I don’t think I’m a gambler.”
“Even better. We’ll buy twenty bucks in chips and take all night to lose them.”
Their conversation spiraled from there, and by the time they arrived at the motel, Chelsea felt like she knew so much more about this man than she had when they left San Diego that morning.
She knew he was brave, and funny, and deeply frugal. Stoic on the outside and soft and tender on the inside.
There were vehicles in front of half of the drive-up motel rooms. They weren’t the only people on the road tonight.
In the motel office, the clerk wore a red and white Santa hat and wished them a flat Merry Christmas, his attention mostly on the television mounted high on the wall.
Ben slid Chelsea a private look, and she smiled back. They didn’t need anyone else to make their holiday adventure special. They had each other. Chelsea gave her name, and the guy slid a piece of paper across the counter. “L
icense and credit card, please.”
After filling out the guest registration, Ben looped his arm around Chelsea and tugged her into his side, his hand warm and heavy on her outside shoulder. His thumb rubbed back and forth over the top of her arm, making her antsy for them to be alone.
The pressure of his grip on her increased when the clerk slid the room key across the counter and gave Chelsea an appraising look. It was idle curiosity, she was sure, but she still liked the possessive way Ben marked her as his.
The motel was another throwback to another time, and the room matched the exterior. Orange flowers on the bedspread, aging light fixtures casting a weak glow across the room as they stepped inside.
And then all of that faded as he unfurled her scarf and used it to tug her in the direction of the bed.
“What a day.” He sat on the edge and stripped her out of her shirt, then her jeans. “Do you need me to have a shower before I fuck you into this mattress?”
“Not at all.” She crawled into his lap wearing only her underwear, and kissed him softly, endlessly, until he was hard against her core. “We can shower together, later. It’ll all be a part of a Christmas to remember,” she whispered. “And it’s not over yet.”
But when she tried to undress him, he stopped her. “Time for that later. You make me hungry.”
“Hungry?”
His eyes hooded as he flicked a gaze down her body, then slowly dragged it back up. “Starving.”
“We haven’t had dinner yet, that might—”
He cut her off with a kiss, then spun her around and perched her on the edge of the bed before kneeling in front of her and peeling off her panties, then unhooking her bra. As he moved his mouth over her breasts, his hands traced the shape of her body, warming her up.
“Lean back,” he murmured against her belly. Then he lifted her legs up, one foot at a time, and arranged her so she was right on the edge of the bed.
He pressed her open, his hands warm and coaxing as he framed her sex, revealing her wet, slick core. Where she ached to have him.
