You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology(118)

I can still make him happy?

I can, can’t I? I can still make him happy.

That was kind of a precious miracle in and of itself.

She kissed him, and he set the knife carefully far away from them as he kissed her back—which was so like him, that care and attention. She kissed him more for it, and then, and then—all the pain she had caused him rose up in her, and she pulled back, ashamed, knowing she didn’t deserve this. Damn it, would the weight of her guilt never go away?

Kurt must have thought her withdrawal was from another wave of grief for the miscarriages, because he squeezed her shoulder and pulled a feather out of her hair, going back to work on the potatoes without comment. By the time the ornaments were dry enough to let them decorate the tree, a plethora of scents filled the house to bursting: cinnamon, cookies, stew, the fir itself as it prickled over her arms, the fire Kurt started. Given that she was a food stylist who often did her work here, scents of food had filled this house ever since she had moved into it. And yet it was so different when the scents were shared.

So much warmer, so much more full. As if life was full. Not this great empty thing she had to get through.

She kissed him again, and he pulled her into his arms, squeezing her far too hard.

He couldn’t seem to let go. Even when she had to wiggle for freedom because her lungs started protesting, he couldn’t loosen his arms, and when she squeaked, he took them down onto the plush rug in front of the fire. The early winter evening was lowering by then, gray deepening toward night over the snow, and their fire and their tree lights glowed over their faces in the otherwise unlit room.

Kurt captured her wrists over her head as the only thing he seemed to know to do with his hands to keep them from squeezing her too tightly. When she tried to pull free, his hold tightened. “Kurt,” she protested, half-laughingly.

“In a minute.” The firelight gilded over his cheekbones, throwing them into relief, his face intense, severe.

Arousal washed through her. Of course it did. How could she help it? They had discovered a long, long time ago that sometimes she liked that game. And oh, so did he. But she said, “Kurt, no. I want my hands free.”

With some difficulty, he pulled his hands from her wrists and sank them instead into the thick rug, digging into it.

“I want to do this,” she said softly, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing him as tightly as he had her.

He let his body lower onto hers with the heavy voluptuousness of a man sinking into a bed after a long, brutal day. The warmth of him rushed from her fingertips to her toes. She ran those fingertips over him, seeking still more of that warmth, like an impossible addiction.

“I want to do this,” she whispered, unbuttoning his shirt and finding her way in to his skin. She shivered with the pleasure of it, as if she hadn’t just felt his skin that morning, as if it had been years.

The white Christmas lights sparkled over his strong, smooth back when she bared it. She chased them over his skin, fascinated, stroking them as if they were a dream she could capture. On the tree, the lights shimmered off the glitter of the snowflakes and brown bears and red cardinals, sparkling over this dream, this dream she could have.

Still.

He would still let her have him.

That was such an incredible thing.

He made love to her intensely, in the firelight and the tree lights, kissing her everywhere, being kissed everywhere, stroking her too deeply, gripping her too hard, and breathing in hard gasps of pleasure when she gripped and stroked him, too. He rolled her over him and sat her up astride him for what seemed to be the pure pleasure of seeing her there, of stroking the lights over her skin, maybe of believing in her. He rolled her under him again in a sudden, hard rush, as if he had to capture her beneath him before she disappeared.

“I love you,” she said suddenly, and he jerked, his hands spasming on her body.

“I love you so much,” she said, and he kissed her urgently, whether to shut the words up or to drink them straight from her mouth, she couldn’t tell.

She kissed him back, giving him the words through her kiss, through her touch. I love you so much. How could you love me?

I got so bogged down in what I lost, but I never lost you?

“I love you so much,” she whispered again to his shoulder, that strong, strong shoulder, the gorgeous bone and sinew and muscle of it.

He slipped his hand between her face and his body and covered her mouth, forcing her head down to the floor until she was pinned there by his hand silencing her. She stared at him over it. His face could have cut the air with its severity, his eyes glowing in the firelight, almost beseeching, as if she was torturing him.

But I do, she tried to say, the protest muffled against his hand.

But I really do.

His palm hardened, his other hand dragging fiercely down from her breast, over her belly, to take her sex, spearing her in one aggressive thrust of his finger.

She yelped a little, and that, too, got crushed by his hand on her mouth. She tried to twist her head back and forth, to shake him off her, but he held her, and her body yielded to his mastery in one helpless rush of arousal. Making itself ready for whatever he wanted.

Oh, God, she had always loved this game. And yet it was different now.

It wasn’t a game.

His eyes glittered, his touch so ferocious, so much anger in him suddenly, this wild beast of anger that bucked against even his control.