You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology(110)
He lunged for her so menacingly that she squeaked with alarm and dodged behind the tree, then to another tree. And then they were weaving in and out among the pines. He wanted to catch her so damn bad and yet he wanted to toy with her, too, cat and mouse, make her squeal and tremble in terror of being caught and yet want it so much she forgot everything but him.
He surged at her, growling, and she threw a fast snowball at him, too unnerved to pack and aim it properly. He let her dodge away to a refuge behind a big oak where she couldn’t see his body . . . and then he stalked her around it, coming in close to the trunk, making her peek one way and another in vain, her tension ratcheting up a notch, and then another, until he lunged at her with a growl—
She screamed again, louder, freer, ever happier, and ran to the next tree, and the next, as he chased her and caught her and let her manage to wiggle free, taking his snow punishment as she tried to defend herself and then catching her again.
I love you, I love you, I love you so damn much, Kai, so much that he finally couldn’t stand it anymore, and he tackled her in one hard lunge, taking her down and cupping her head in the snow with his bare hands to protect it as he kissed her and kissed her.
“Is that hot tub any closer yet?” he groaned, rolling them over to get her out of the snow. Christ, she was cute. She looked just like she had the day he had proposed. Except for the thinner cheeks, but let’s just not think about those things right now, sweetheart. Let’s just be us, let’s just be happy. I think that might be how life works, that sometimes it takes all your happiness away and you just have to build it back, bit by bit. Or some people don’t build it back, but we’re not going to be those people. We’re not going to leave our lives in ruins; we’re going to put them back together again. He pulled her down to him and kissed her again, and again, in no hurry to ever let this kissing end.
In case he couldn’t get it started again.
“I’m never getting so far away from a hot tub in the winter again in my life,” he swore finally, pushing them to their feet again. “How much farther? A couple of miles?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll have forgotten all about it by then,” she said soothingly, patting him on the back like a small boy she was trying to console, with a little smirk.
“You’ve forgotten the persistence of my imagination, Kai Winters.” He dusted her hair off and pulled her hat back on her head, loving everything about this moment—her teasing, the way she had forgotten sorrow, even that reaffirmation of his name on her.
She grinned. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she said saucily, taunting him with the swing of her hips as she headed back to the trail. What a beautiful sight that swinging butt was. She still hadn’t remembered to be unhappy.
“Are you sure?” he murmured menacingly, as he came close behind her, enjoying being the hungry threat bearing down on her. “That you’ll need to see it? Are you sure I couldn’t blindfold you and still somehow manage to convince you how long my imagination can last, Kai?”
She darted a glance back at him over her shoulder, her eyes brilliant with alarm, but it was a fun alarm, she was loving every second of it, he could tell.
He caught up with her enough to grab her by the collar and run a little dusting of snow up and down her nape. She yelped and shivered all over, and he bent down and growled low in her ear. Her head arched back to him at that, her eyes closing, and he laughed, taking her hand and falling into step beside her. Fuck, this might actually turn into a good Christmas.
Chapter Seven
God, he felt so animal, so animal, so animal, sinking her into the hot tub naked, lifting her out just enough to rub her breasts with snow while she writhed and half-fought and entirely yielded, sucking the snow off her nipples, sinking her down again, wallowing in sensations until there was nothing left of them but senses. Until they were nothing but animals. Utter animals.
He did try the snow on her sex. He’d kept her in the hot tub a long time by then, until they were both much too hot, and he laid her back on the edge of it and watched her face and watched her sex as he rubbed a finger of snow up those intimate lips. She shivered and clenched and tried to fight it, and he parted her and slipped more cold snow with his finger deep inside her. She flinched, trying to get away—but not too hard, oh, no, she let him hold her down, panting and panting. God, she liked it when he controlled her. It always drove him crazy, how much she liked that. He bent and took her with his mouth again, sucking all that coldness away. She winced into it so much and she melted afterward so well that he did it over and over, even testing a snow-cold thumb on her clitoris, feeling vaguely, satisfyingly cruel, utterly, evilly delicious as she flinched and melted, flinched and melted, let him conquer all cold, let him make her come.
He loved taking her in that hot tub and snow. He did all kinds of things to her in that hot tub. He hadn’t thought he had so much animal in him. He hadn’t known that so did she—melting into him, rounding into him, arching into him, wallowing in him as if she never wanted to climb out of the sensuality of it enough to let her brain turn on ever again.
He put his mouth to her and sucked her humanity straight out of her. Made her scream. God, but he loved making her scream.
Loved the helpless, violent convulsions of her, how she became so weak and vulnerable in his hands, loved petting those out and driving her up into them again. He loved it probably past any kindness, because he drove her into exhaustion and then had to carry her to the bed.