You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology(109)



With a little sigh, she nestled her cheek against his kiss. So he rubbed more snow over her lips, and she winced from the cold and opened her mouth to protest—and he kissed her there, too, drinking the snow all away, slipping into the heat of her mouth, until cold held them in its grip everywhere except for the meeting of their mouths, their tongues, the way he took and took and took from her and tried to give back.

She liked it so much more than he expected. Even after yesterday, on her granite island and in her shower, he still didn’t believe in the way she warmed to him in a rush of grateful hunger, her mouth opening and taking, her hands climbing up to press cold gloves into his neck, frustrating him beyond belief. He wanted her to just strip those gloves off and press her ice-cold fingers straight into him.

Anyone would think he would have had the good sense to do this with the snow right by her hot tub, but no, here they were, deep in the woods with no recourse against the cold all around them but each other. Their bodies, their warmth.

And lots and lots of icy snow.

Let’s make it melt for us. Let’s kiss it all away.

I love you, Kai. Are you ready to love me just a little again?

He pushed her up on his thigh against the tree, thrilling to the power in his hands, how easily he could handle her body compared to every other thing he had had to handle in their lives. Something visceral and animal surged through him at the power, fed by the scent of pine and the cold hush. “I could take you right here,” he said, guttural.

Her hips surged up against his, still such an unexpected hunger for him that he nearly toppled them in the snow right there. “Oh, God, I love it when you say things like that with that perfect, perfect accent of yours,” she said, petting his head frantically with her clumsy gloves and pulling herself up into him.

What? Didn’t he talk like a normal person? But he couldn’t check because her mouth had tangled with his, as if she was starved for him.

No, she couldn’t possibly be as starved as he was. He devoured her mouth to prove it, a battle of starvations. God, all that hunger in the shower had been nothing. A greater hunger swamped him, as if yesterday’s attack had just been some tiny signal to his body that it had the right to an appetite again. Oh, God, she tasted so—he wanted so much more—he—

“If I could take you right here—” His voice sounded harsher than the tree bark under his palms. He lowered it. “I would rub snow all over your breasts.” She flinched at the thought as he cupped them through her thick jacket. His voice dropped until it was almost as soft as the hushed woods: “And then suck it all off.”

She shivered, from cold or heat or maybe the battle of both.

“I think I’d even rub it here.” His hand massaged into the V of her jeans, thorough and when he felt the hot hint of dampness, harder. “And then make that melt, too.”

“I’d freeze,” she protested, even as she climbed into him, seeking warmth against that idea of freezing, seeking it from him. Rubbing herself against him, oh, shit, yes, God. “Kurt, you wouldn’t do that to me. I’d freeze.”

Maybe. His brain had exploded into that place of arousal where it didn’t really matter what made sense, what might actually work. “I’d like to try it, though,” he breathed, rubbing her jeans harder. Hunger and power leaped in one great glorious surge in him when her head arched back, when her body grew pliant to him. God, he loved it when he shut her brain off, shut off all her ability to take action, as if her whole self just yielded to the need to be his. He loved how the harder he got, the more he wanted to take her, the softer she got and the more she wanted to be taken.

“No,” she managed to whisper, shaking her head. “No way.”

“Let’s get back to your hot tub.” He grabbed her wrist and pulled her from the tree. “Damn it, why did we hike so far away?”

“Kurt, I swear to God, if you try to rub snow on my chacha, I am wrapping one great bit fistful of it around your dick,” she told him, even as she let herself be dragged along after him. He nearly stopped dead, and it wasn’t from the fistful of snow image, which, granted, was hideous—maybe that whole snow against her sex fantasy wasn’t one he should actually do—but because she sounded—well, she sounded like the woman who had once dropped snow down his collar and dodged laughing behind trees until he caught her.

“Just wait and see if you like it first,” he said soothingly, while the fact that he was teasing her ran through him giddily. He allowed himself the daring, long-lost privilege of a smirk at her. “You never know, you might beg for more.”

She scooped up a fistful of snow and lobbed it at him.

Good God. She had actually done that. Just thrown a lopsided snowball at him, as if laughter and teasing had surged past these terrible years and broken out again. He grabbed his own fistful and threw it back at her in a wild burst of so much testosterone and so much hunger that he accidentally aimed it with his full competitive skill and hit her straight in the face.

Her jaw dropped in pure indignation—Kurt never hit her straight in the face in snowball fights, and he had a second’s guilty relief that he hadn’t taken the time to pack his snow into a proper snowball, before she jumped up, grabbed the branch over her head—and jerked all her weight down on it, leaping to the refuge of the trunk as snow dumped on top of him.

He burst out laughing as he shook himself, so much happiness pressing suddenly through him that it threatened to split his skin, and at the same time this dominant greediness, so that he just had to catch her, take her, make this moment all his.

Karina Bliss's Books