by Cari Quinn
She smiled faintly. “You don’t have to keep telling me it was incredible. I was there.”
“Yeah, but it took a while to convince you I wasn’t just trying to get back in your pants.” He nibbled along her shoulder through her sweater and nearly growled as he noticed her nipples poking through the nubby weave of fabric. She had a shirt on underneath the sweater, of course. Always discreet, that was Lila.
“You weren’t?”
“Well, duh, but that doesn’t mean I was lying about it being amazing.”
She laughed and bent to pick up the piece of paper, then held it to her chest. “I could’ve bought a guitar for myself.”
“You could’ve, but you wouldn’t have. Why, I don’t understand. Lila logic. Now you’re stuck. Politeness decrees you accept the gift and that you play it.”
“For you?”
He forced himself to break her stare. To reel back on the surge of emotions that kept trying to push their way through his veneer of Christmas cheer. “I don’t expect that. I don’t expect anything.”
Then he gave up. Lying to himself was easier than lying to her, and those perceptive big blue eyes.
“Actually, no, fuck that, I do expect something.” He reached into the bag and drew out a large square jeweler’s box. He swapped the paper she held for the box. “I expect you to trust me tonight. With you. And these.”
Frowning, she popped open the top and stared at the multi-strand black pearl necklace he’d bought for her at the jeweler’s that afternoon. She wore white ones all the time. These were her dark counterpart—and hopefully, she would be game to experience them with him the way he’d fantasized all day.
Her, wearing the pearls. And only pearls.
“I was told these are rare as hell. From some island or something. Card’s under there.” Nick flicked his finger at the sapphire blue bed beneath the necklace. “It’s a really long strand of them. You can wear them lots of ways.”
“Yes.” She licked her lips and damn if his cock didn’t lurch. “Why, yes, they’re lovely. Thank you so much.” She drew them out, and the strand kept unwinding. And unwinding. “Nick,” she gasped. “This must’ve cost a fortune.”
“No, a fortune is what you’re worth to me.” Before she could diminish his words, or try to tell him he was blowing their relationship out of proportion, he moved toward phase two of his plan. “Stand up.”
“More commands.” Surprisingly, she set aside the jeweler’s box and obliged.
“Move closer to the fire.”
“I’m not a doll.”
She glanced back at him, and he didn’t make a move to alter his position in the chair. Belt undone, legs spread, dumb ass Santa hat tipped sideways on his head. He let everything he was feeling for her burn in his gaze as she studied him, her uncertainty revealed in her stance.
“I want to see you naked, in the firelight,” he murmured. “Can you do that for me?”
She cast a quick glance at the staircase to the second level. Music was still playing on low, but the others hadn’t made a peep for a while.
“No one will interrupt us. They’re all wrapped up in each other.” He leaned forward and slipped the email into the sack, then put the bag aside. “Let’s get lost too.”
She hesitated only a fraction of an instant before drawing her sweater and cami over her head. She didn’t make it into a striptease. That wasn’t Lila’s way. Her sexuality seemed to surprise her as much as it slayed him. She toed off her boots and socks and shimmied out of her pants. When she wore only her bra and panties, she turned away and fumbled with the clasp. He sucked in a breath and laid a restraining hand on his lurching cock in a futile effort to ratchet back his desire.
It took everything he had to keep from rising to take her in his arms. All that creamy skin, warmed by firelight. Those curves. He wouldn’t survive this if he couldn’t touch her—soon.
She shrugged off the straps, letting them slide slowly down her arms. The satiny material pooled on the floor. She bent, long hair falling forward, and eased her silky panties over her hips and down her legs. Such long fucking legs.
Almost imperceptibly, he noticed her movements begin to change. She was settling into her role as seductress. Owning it. Owning him.
She kicked the panties aside and moved toward the fireplace, closer and closer. Beckoned by the fire that seemed to turn her into a torch right before his eyes. She placed her hands on the mantle and stared down into the flames, every part of her skin and blond hair glowing as if she’d been lit from within.
He couldn’t wait anymore.
Rising, he slipped up behind her and let his voice come out as rough as the sensation in his chest. All those jagged edges fitted together into something crazy and perfect and hers. “So goddamn gorgeous. You’re like a dream. No, screw that. My imagination’s not that good.” She jolted when his palm coasted up her bare back. His mouth brushed her earlobe and she leaned back. “I’m about to disgrace this Santa outfit,” he murmured, and she turned her head to laugh.
“Condom?” she asked, her voice just as uneven as his.
He frowned. Then she did too. “Damn Simon.”
“Does he buy your condoms for you?”
Nick snorted. “Hardly. The bastard likes to brag he doesn’t use them with Margo anymore. But normally, he buys me some for Christmas. This year, I got the frigging Led Zep boxed set and a painting of two nude chicks. And they weren’t even making out.”
She rolled her eyes. “Hello, I was here, I saw. That picture was a Van Renseleer. His work goes for—”
“I don’t give two shits. Just because Simon’s Mr. Model Dude now, he thinks I want art? No. I want frigging rubbers, so I can make my yuletides bright.” He nuzzled her neck until she finally gave in and grinned.
“I’m still trying to figure out why you’re mad Simon got you a Christmas gift that cost actual money rather than a cheap box of drugstore latex.”
“I’ll give you a hint.” He slipped a hand down Lila’s belly, not stopping until the tips of his fingers brushed the juncture of her thighs. The extremely wet juncture. “This, right here? The center of my fucking universe. The altar that I worship on. As a matter of fact...”
Her breath stuttered as he drew her back from the fireplace and moved around her to kneel at her feet. Eyes on hers, he lowered his head to where she was already soaked and arrowed his tongue inside.
A tremor went through him not only from the act, but from what it meant. For this moment, this night, she was his again.
Her head fell back and he gripped her hips and drew her closer, desperate for more. “Better than I remembered,” he rasped, his mouth already moving against her for another taste.
She shoved the hat off his head and sank her fingers into his hair, pulling him against her while he slid his tongue up and down her cleft, drinking down every bit of wetness she gave him. He circled the hard bud of her clit, lapping at it with the flat of his tongue until she rose up on her tiptoes and started to squirm. Slipping downward, he teased her entrance with his tongue, flicking in, darting out, before adding a finger. She groaned and swayed, making him wrap his arms around her thighs to hold her still while he took his sweet time making her mad. Every time she cried out, he sucked and licked harder, faster, crazed to cause her to tumble over that peak so that he could hear it. Taste it. Breathe in her scent.
Growls and groans left his throat, muffled against her flesh. They still couldn’t compete against the roar in his ears. He’d become a vessel with a sole purpose—to bring her the kind of pleasure that would buckle her knees and make her beg. Maybe, just maybe, if he accomplished that, he wouldn’t lose her again.
He couldn’t lose her again.
His lips sealed around her clit and she shattered in his hold one more time, her body tensing before turning lax as she trembled through her orgasm. Much as he wanted to prolong it, he needed to be inside her.
Now.
He was shaking so hard he could barely make it t
o his feet. Christ, his cock was like a steel pike, quivering with the urge to burrow deep.
Somehow he managed to circle behind her to brush his mouth over her bare shoulder. She was still shivering, or else they both were.
“You distract me so much that I forget myself.” He started to remove his clothes, and she reached forward to grip the mantle. “I’ve always been so careful. But I can’t be with you. Even knowing you could ruin me.” He dipped his forehead against her back to try to rein himself back in line. “I almost want you to, because then I’d know it could be done. That I could want someone that much to risk everything. Even myself.” He moved back to the jewelry box and removed the pearls, then returned to her and let them dangle between his fingers as he gripped her hip. “I want you to wear these, and only these.”
She nodded.
For a moment, he gaped. She’d said yes that easily?
Perhaps she didn’t realize yet what exactly he wanted. Despite her marriage, her sexual education was not nearly what his had been. But God, he loved showing her new things. Knowing that they belonged solely to the two of them.
This would be one more.
He slipped the necklace over her head. They slipped into the valley between her breasts, but there were more, still more, flowing down her back. She turned her head and started to speak, but he silenced her by drawing her arms up and tugging her wrists into the small of her back.
She was starting to get the picture, he was sure. That didn’t mean he didn’t have to ask. He wouldn’t make another move until she’d given her okay to proceed.
“May I?” he asked against her hair, tensing his fingers around her wrists. One more subtle sign of his intent.
“Yes,” she whispered, stretching her arms out behind her.
His exhalation of relief burst against the damp hair at the nape of her neck. He wrapped the extra-long strand of pearls around her wrists, keeping them loose, but tight enough he could tug her back against him with a rough pull that cinched the pearls at her throat.
Fuck, he wished he could see her from the front. From above. He’d need mirrors on every wall to do justice to this moment.
“In my purse,” she mumbled. “I have one condom left.”
Thank Christ.
He had never had sex without a condom—not even once, because that was all it took for accidents to happen—but tonight would’ve severely tested his resolve. Luckily his girl was always prepared.
After dropping a quick kiss to the back of her neck, he went to her purse to grab the foil packet. He fumbled it open and managed to get it on, feeling about as sure-handed as he had the very first time he was with a girl as a teenager. Hell, he’d been suaver back then.
He returned to her, reveling in the way she quaked as he approached. He wasn’t the only one on the edge. Without hesitation, he drew his latex-covered cock along the seam between her legs before levering back and driving home.
Finally.
Her moan exploded inside his head. She cut it off, but it didn’t matter. The sound reverberated as he turned her toward the sofa and pushed her down gently on the wide, padded arm, sinking as deep into her as he could go. She startled and he kept his pressure firm but tender, letting her know he had her and it didn’t matter if she couldn’t brace herself with her hands. He would never let her go. Even if she asked him to, he never would.
That was the one thing she could beg for that he couldn’t give.
He drew back and plunged again, working himself deep as he carefully tightened the tension in the pearls. Pulling her back up into an arch as he fucked her, slow and hard. Knowing she could take so much more than she gave herself credit for. He kicked her legs apart and did it again, bearing down, letting her get used to the weight of him. To his mouth hot on the back of her neck. Kissing, sucking, sliding his lips to her ear so he could whisper the kind of filthy things she would never tolerate from him when she wore her regular pearls and her prim little business suits.
“That’s it, baby. Twist that tight pussy. Don’t hold back. I want to feel you gush on me.”
She bucked against him, her hips rising to the pace he set. No matter how fast he urged her, she kept up, squeezing him so strongly that that the separation between them seemed to disappear. Not just physically. Emotionally too. Here in this space, with her hands flexing in his hold as he used her body for their joint pleasure, he didn’t doubt her feelings. He couldn’t. There was sex and there was love, but somewhere in the middle, they’d found themselves.
And each other.
He thrust into her one more time, angling just right to hit that spot that made her legs shake and her pussy flood his cock. She let out an aborted scream, more breath than actual sound, and broke around him, her body bowing under his relentless strokes. Going from instinct, he tightened his fingers in the pearls at her neck, drawing them shorter, his mouth pressing to her neck as he bottomed out inside her and finally gave in to the flare of heat at the base of spine.
Lost, mindless, he shouted as he came, unable to temper the reaction. That his release jolted her into another climax of her own was an unexpected bonus. Bliss radiated out to every pore as he pulsed into the condom. His hips kept pumping, his body on autopilot. He would just keep fucking her until the world disappeared.
She was his oasis in every storm, and he never intended to let her go again.
If he had to wait forever and a day, he would. As long as there was breath in his body and blood in his veins, he would wait.
When he returned to his senses—sort of—he realized she was whimpering and squirming on his dick. Hell, she was even biting the couch. He’d have to preserve that imprint later. Maybe get it casted to hang over the mantle. Or…bronzed. He’d earned every one of those marks.
“Bed, Li.”
He smiled fiercely as he unwrapped the pearls from her wrists and let them hang freely around her neck. Then he scooped her up, holding her close for the extra moment it took for him to bury his face in her hair.
Mine. All fucking mine.
Shifting her in his arms, he kissed her temple. She pressed her face to his neck, her lips curving into a smile he felt against his skin. And fuck, he could’ve lifted the roof off the building just from the power of what she’d given him.
He’d pushed her, pushed himself, and she’d offered him more than he could have ever dreamed.
Carrying her upstairs and tucking her into his bed felt like another kind of gift, worth more than anything he might’ve found under the tree. She moaned when he tugged the cool sheets over her flushed body and he laughed as he pressed his mouth to hers. Before she could rouse enough to argue, he slipped into bed and drew her against him.
The glittering bulbs on the Charlie Brown tree he’d snagged off the nearly empty lot the previous day cast multi-colored light over her skin. The scents of apples and cinnamon wafted between them, reminding him of a weekend spent in an orchard where he’d believed nothing could ever touch them. And she murmured in her sleep, his name on her lips.
If he’d ever known contentment before, it hadn’t been as sweet as this. Nothing could be.
He slid his arm around her waist and gave himself a moment to savor her warmth and solidity in his arms. He wouldn’t let go of his Christmas miracle, no matter what.
“Bulletproof, baby.” His whisper against her cheek was for him more than her. She couldn’t hear him. But maybe he could reach her just the same. “Together, we’re bulletproof.”
Swallowing hard, he grabbed the TV remote off the nightstand and turned on a DVD he’d made a couple of years ago of various holiday specials. So he liked them. No one else had to know, right?
Somewhere between Garfield purring on grandma’s lap and Frosty melting into a puddle—which always made him sad, truth be told—he drifted off, remote still in hand.
Even the best holiday stories had to come to an end eventually.
GIFTED
PART I
PART I
NICK
“I look like fucking Scrooge.”
Nick Crandall stared at himself in the mirror and rubbed his unusually scruffy jaw. His fine blondish-brown hair didn’t lend itself well to a beard. It was growing in, but the chin pubes look in the meantime wasn’t really cutting it. Especially on anyone past puberty.
Which he was. He was firmly in his mid-twenties, with all of the forthcoming mid-life crises and shit to look forward to.
Not that he was looking forward to much at the moment. He was officially in a holding pattern in more ways than one.
But he wasn’t thinking about any of that tonight. Or tomorrow. He wasn’t naïve enough to think that Christmas was going to grant him some kind of miracle and heal the fucked up mess that was his life. He hadn’t been a child for a long time. Still, he wasn’t going to spend another holiday sulking in a cloud of cigarette smoke. He’d had too many days like that in recent years, and it had gotten old.
He’d actually begun to hope that this year might be different. That perhaps he’d get to spend the holidays with his family—part of it anyway—and maybe even a girl.
His girl. Even if she really wasn’t, he was good at pretending.
Then everything had imploded, and he still hadn’t begun to pick up all the pieces. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to.
He picked up the can of shaving cream and the straight razor and blew out a breath. Hipster lumberjack types might rock the bearded wonder deal, but he was a currently under-employed rock star.
Clean-shaven it was.
Half an hour later, newly de-bearded and clean in body if not mind, he climbed out of the shower. He quickly dried off and slung a towel around his waist, then opened the bathroom door and leaned out of the doorway. “Jazz, you around?”
