Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(80)

Now I want his skin, I want to see more of him, not just his beautiful hand slicking up and down, that crazy-making strip of skin.

I grab the edge of his sweater and yank it up, just to see his muscles bunching, where’s he’s gone rosy, the hair on his body, and he bucks when I do, when I decide to use both hands in my eagerness to see more of him.

He stops and helps me get his sweater and T-shirt all the way off, and God, it’s like I’ve never seen a guy before, and I don’t even know where to look—those curving shoulders, the lean muscles of his arms, the hair in the furrow bisecting his chest.

I press over myself with my whole hand, just looking. His erection is so naked and awesome against his skin, I want to touch him.

I do, softly, he’s hot, so hard.

When I look at him, it’s impossible not to kiss him.

Our kiss is open, soft, breathless. His tongue leaves my mouth to kiss over my neck and throat, and the way he does it makes me move against my hand again, little pushes to keep myself from going crazy, that just end up making me crazier.

He pulls off my pants and my underwear at the same time, and then his hands are over me, searching and shaping and making me crazy. His touch is firm when he smooths over my legs, and then firmer over my inner thighs as he drops to kneel on the floor.

“Oh, okay,” I whisper.

He kisses my knee, grabs my calf, and hikes one leg over his shoulder. “Yeah, oh.”

He grabs my other knee and pushes it wide, and I close my eyes, my face hot, everything hot, his mouth kissing my hips, licking them.

“Touch your breasts,” he says, and I pull off my shirt, pull down my bra cups, squeeze and curl my toes when he licks through me, his voice, a hum, in his throat, one of his hands around the leg at his shoulder, the other circling my clit.

And it’s like this, in this circle of light, the snow falling fast through the window I can see over his shoulder, his mouth insistent and unhesitating, this is how I fall apart.

He lets me find my breath again, and then I need him closer. “Come here,” I tell him, but he’s reaching behind him, for his coat, then pulling out condoms.

He sits next to me on the sofa, almost sheepish, crazy-aroused, his skin flushed, warm, all against mine. “I mean, if you want to.”

“I like your hopeful condoms.” I turn in his arms, hike my leg around his.

“You make me feel hopeful.”

I kiss him, smiling, because he says that like he’s both happy and in pain, trying to please me. We kiss, slow, until we can’t kiss slow, and then we just kiss any way we can, rubbing and touching.

He backs me down into the sofa, bracing over me, letting me watch him put on the condom, stroking over himself. Then he drops his forehead to mine and slicks through me, not really trying to enter me, everything going slow.

“Wait,” he whispers.

“Okay,” I say. “You are.”

“Give me a minute,” he says, kissing my neck.

I buck a little, the buzz only a little desperate, but it feels good to let him play, and kiss. “Take a minute.”

He puts his mouth over my ear.

Then his movements slow more.

“I love you,” he says. “I love you.”

Then he moves inside, and I can’t breathe, his hands tight at my nape and shoulder, his thrust sure, and it opens everything, everything, and there is so much to see, I can’t even speak, or even name everything I am looking at.

He’s still telling me he loves me, soft, almost to himself, the way he moves, for once, doesn’t have any grace in it.

And it’s that breathless lack of grace that yanks me over, sensitized and raw, the light from the lamp too bright, and before I think he can even understand what it is I’m saying, I tell him, “I love you, too.”

But he hears me, his arms tight around me, his laugh perfect, both of us coming all over each other.

Once we catch our breath he pulls me to sit, and I drape in his lap. He gets the throw from the back of the sofa down around us.

I reach over and turn the lamp off, and the ambient light from the windows halos into my vision, distorted from all the darkness around it.

We watch the snowfall.

“What did you bring?” I ask, just before I start to feel sleepy—I remember the paper bag he came here with, still on the porch.

“Oh, I forgot. I made you a pinhole camera.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. From a cereal box. I was hoping you’d like that.”

I do like that. I turn and look at him, and he touches over my face. “We can go take pictures later?”

“When the snow lets up.” He yawns. “What does f/16 mean?”

“It was the setting on my camera when I took the last picture of my mom.”

I snug my arms around him and feel him eventually relax into sleep.

It’s so quiet, I think I can hear the snow.

I close my eyes.

Listen harder.

Between Evan’s breaths, I can definitely hear it, the sound of snow.

I listen so I know the very moment it lets up.





Christmas


“Okay,” Evan says. “I’m hanging it up.”

I can barely hear him over the bathroom vent, and I have my nose pressed against his shoulder blade because of the horrible chemical smells, but when he reaches up to unscrew the red lightbulb and turn on the bank of lights over the vanity, I stop his arm.