You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology(101)

He knelt before her a second, when he had finally gotten them off, staring up at her. And then he surged to his feet, pressing her in one great rush of his body back into the wall, burying his face in her neck and shoulder, kissing her, nibbling her, devouring her, and then he surged up higher, until her face was the one buried in him, as he pulled her legs around his hips and cupped one hand under her bottom—and thrust into her.

He gasped when he did it. She didn’t, she just wrapped her body around him, closing all her muscles on him, more than ready. Tension ran all through him, a corded, angry, desperate energy. “Kai,” he said, as if he had to double-check. As if someone else might have snuck in and taken her place while he wasn’t looking. Or as if he had woken time and again to find himself making love to a succubus of her. Or a dream.

She’d done that sometimes, after a summer day spent hiking in the open air, focusing on trees and birds and sky and life, trying to become again someone with whom she could live the rest of her life. She would sleep well those nights and dream of old happy days, of making love outside in the grass, and wake to find herself cuddling a pillow to her, thinking it was him.

She’d even learned to come to peace with waking that way: to stroke the pillow, kiss it, set it aside, and rise to try to learn to embrace her day again.

“Kurt.” Her hands clutched him, loving how much harder it was to press into his muscle and bone than into any pillow. Loving his body’s resilience, its aliveness, and how very well she knew it. “Kurt.”

“Kai.” He pulled almost out and thrust into her again, sinking one hand into her hair, kissing her hard, too hard, while the water poured over them. “Oh, God damn it.”

Yes. Yes. God damn it, damn her, for everything. She sank her fingers into him harder, made him real. Wrapping around him, pulling him in. Yes, you’re real, you’re real, you’re real. Harder. You’re so real.

Oh, this feels so good.

The thrust of him, the life, the hunger.

Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.

But his thrusts grew too hard, too urgent, too fast to last. He forgot all about her. Taking her so fiercely, so intensely, unable to think about anything but taking.

He forgot all about her, and she didn’t even mind. Wrapping her arms and legs around him as he took her, holding onto him as tightly as she could, she gloried in it. She wouldn’t have let him go for anything.





Chapter Three





Afterward, both were very quiet. He handed her another towel as he dried himself, little married familiarities in the bathroom that seemed natural only in the way a great ballet was natural, such perfect, floating gracefulness in the dancers leaping around each other, and yet the slightest stumble revealed how many years of practice and work it had taken to reach that harmony.

Outside the snow had finally started to fall, soft, great flakes like feathers, insanely large and beautiful. She stepped out onto the deck outside the bathroom and stood looking up at them as they floated down onto her face to cling and melt. Kurt stood in the doorway for a moment watching her. Then he withdrew into the house.

When she found him again, he was standing looking down at the granite island, still a mess of sugar smudges from her body. She stopped in the archway, flushing. He studied her over that messy counter and then left the kitchen area for the couch that faced the window. His head disappeared from view, as if he had stretched out, and after a moment of trying to ignore the island, she finally cleaned it off, scrubbing at sugar, and then set about slicing onions and pulling broccoli out of the freezer, setting a simple soup going. A thread of pleasure twined through all the gestures, at the thought of him eating it. She had always liked to feed him.

Did they really have to talk? Could they not just move around each other in a silent truce until the roads cleared? Reluctantly, she left the pot simmering and came into the main living area, only to discover him fast asleep on the couch.

She had discovered that long body just that way any number of times during their lives together, fallen asleep in front of a film or on a lazy Sunday afternoon after a hard game. Kurt wasn’t a man who allowed himself much laziness. He was far more likely to mow the grass after a hard game than kick back and relax. She had been the one to teach him that she loved him still when he took a break. Sometimes, when she stopped to caress his sleep-softened face or pull a cover over him if it was chilly, his eyes would open, and he would smile, slow and sleepy and happy, and pull her down on top of him.

Oh, God.

Well, he had warned her. He had warned her of what might happen if they got near a hot shower together. She had known from the start that it might be more than she could handle.

But God, he was so gorgeous. She supposed he wasn’t gorgeous to everyone—she had had one friend who was always falling for dramatic, black-haired Latin lovers, and another who always went for the muscled blond—but he always had been so utterly perfect to her. She loved those high cheekbones of his, the slight hollow to his cheeks that made him so photogenic, the so-average light brown hair that combined with his reserve and a heritage of excessive perfectionism to make him never realize exactly how cute he was. She loved the way his face was so lean and controlled; even in his sleep it seemed controlled, just a trick of his bone structure. And she loved that his lashes were so long, this secret hint at a world of sensitivity and passion under that reserve. She’d been so lucky that no fun-loving girl had ever thought to take him on a hike before she did.