You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology(119)

I do love you, she told him with her hands, shaping those beautiful cheekbones of his, that mouth that hardened so much when her fingers stroked over it. I do. She petted the words over his hair, which had gotten just a little too long, as if he just could not bring himself to care about getting it cut.

Shut up, his finger said, spearing her deep, holding her impaled. When she wriggled against it, the heel of his palm firmed on her pubic bone, holding her down, and all her body’s effort to adjust had to go into the squeeze of her inner muscles around his finger, into the heady release of all tension, the softening.

She dragged her hands over those gorgeous arm muscles of his, all lean and hardened now. You don’t understand. I really, really do.

I’ll make you shut up, his thumb said against her clitoris. I’ll make you. She shivered with the pleasure and the invasion, aroused more and more every time she tried to twist and failed to twist free. The arousal pressed at her, almost brutally fast, the edge coming up so quickly . . .

Please, Kurt. She tried to beg for more, for release, and she couldn’t. Only with her eyes, and yet when she tried to catch his eyes, tried to beg him, his own eyes glittered, ungentle, dangerous. Please just—do it, she tried to plead with a buck of her hips.

But he wouldn’t let her hips buck. He eased his thumb up from her clitoris and twisted his finger in her, slow and deep and relentless, when they tried.

She began to pant, wanting to kiss him so desperately, wanting to fling herself at him and wrap herself around him and drag him into her. But his hand pressed down on her lips unyieldingly, and the line of his mouth was bitter-hard.

Please, please, please. She dragged her hands down his arm, pressing his thumb back against her.

The edge of his teeth showed at that, something cruel and fierce, and he took his thumb and drove her toward her peak while he watched her, that torturer’s merciless regard, as if her orgasm was her confession or her punishment.

Kurt, Kurt, Kurt, she tried to cry out his name as the waves hit her, to be saved by him, to be held by him, to find her solace in the wild, rocking pleasure of it. But she couldn’t do that either. She could only come, clutching to his wrist as he made her do so, lost and unable to speak.

He made her come and come and come, as if he wanted to torture her with her own pleasure, and she couldn’t speak to stop him, he wouldn’t let her.

Then he took her, in long, deep relentless thrusts, his hands at last slipping to either side of her head to brace himself while she came apart again at the pleasure of being so used. Oh, God, use me. Please use me. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” she scrambled out as the waves of pleasure mounted again, driving her madder and madder with each slow thrust.

He kissed her this time to shut her up, thrusting his tongue into her as if in his head he was thrusting something else, and brought his thumb back into play, driving her mercilessly with each thrust of his body and the deep, relentless, silencing kisses, until she was caught everywhere in him, unable to think or speak or do anything but yield, shattering for him over and over, until his fingers dug cruelly into her butt with his last thrust as he came, too.

It was a long time before he rolled away. He lay still on his back on the rug for a while, and eventually rolled back on his side to look at her. His hand came up to stroke gently over her mouth, and then he leaned closer to kiss all around the edges of her lips, which still felt crushed.

“I’m sorry,” he said low. “The last time I thought you loved me, you left me in the morning. I didn’t mean to let it out in quite that way.”

She nodded. I’m sorry. “I did love you. Too much. And I just couldn’t—I couldn’t—” Her voice broke, and he took her hand, holding it securely. “I couldn’t love anymore. I just couldn’t. Not then. You know?”

She had tried to tell him this the day before, and yet no matter how many times she said it, it seemed so stupid, so worthless, to say she couldn’t. Couldn’t love him, of all people. Can’t never could, her dad would always say cheerfully when she was a kid balking at some challenge. You always could, if you tried hard enough. Some days it had felt as if she was trying with everything in her. And failing. She had hated those days. She had not wanted to try. She had just wanted to curl up in the snow and die.

“No,” Kurt said. “I don’t know. But I read about it. I can try to understand.”

“You—you’ve never reached the point where you couldn’t love me?” How could that possibly be? The screaming, weeping woman she had turned into, out of all that life and fun and laughter he had married?

“No, Kai. I never have.”

“It just hurt so much, to love,” she whispered. “It was like my heart had been shattered into all these shards of glass and it pierced me every single time it tried to beat. I had to hide.”

He said nothing, lying on his side in the firelight and Christmas lights, stroking her knuckles as he watched her.

“And I was hurting you. I couldn’t keep hurting you that way. I had to get away.”

“Kai. I could take it, you screaming. It was the least I could do.” He shifted back to her until the length of their bodies touched, covering her belly with his hand. “Because I couldn’t do this. I could only watch as it—broke you.” The lights shimmered across the sudden sheen his eyes. “Shit.” His hand left her belly to dash across his eyes suddenly, and then he rolled away to lie on his back, lashes pressed firmly down on his cheeks, as he breathed long careful breaths.