You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology(134)

“Hey,” he said, smiling at her.

“Hey.” She smiled back.

He ran a finger down her nose. “I remember you.” The fondness in his voice made her feel so special, so wanted. So cared for.

No person had ever made her feel this way.

It was like taking a first hit of something very addictive.

“You are vaguely familiar to me, too.”

They stood so close that when she took a breath, their bellies touched. Her knee brushed the inside of his leg. His breath in her mouth tasted like coffee.

It was nearly, so very nearly, too much. And she stood there in this wide puddle of longing and desire and melancholy and happiness and pride and she tried to handle it all. She wasn’t good at that and she started erecting sandbag walls and levees, drainage ditches to divert the feelings she didn’t know how to handle.

“You angling for more hot monkey sex?”

“The memories are a bit hazy. They could use some clarification.” She ran her hand over his chest, the waffle print of his shirt both rough and soft against her palm. “I’m so glad for you,” she whispered. Inexplicably, she felt tears in her throat. “That you’re doing exactly what you wanted to do. That you’re happy.”

“And what about you?” he asked. “Are you doing exactly what you want to do?”

“At this minute?” She got lost in the blue of his eyes. “Yes.”

“I missed you, Trina,” he breathed. “A lot. It’s weird going years without a best friend.”

Instead of answering him, she stood on tiptoe to press a kiss to his lips. Chaste, nearly. Friendly, sort of. It was a kiss with a promise, an edge. And they both leaned hard on that edge, as if savoring it.

Because this will never happen again. Not ever.

It was funny how touching Dean, kissing him, felt both entirely new and like she’d been doing it for years. It was a strange kind of magic, the stretch and pull of time. The quality of her fantasies given heft and weight. A wild sense of real.

Tell him. You need to tell him.

And she would. In a minute. When she’d gotten her fill of this kiss. This moment.

Her hand slid up from the edge of his denim onto the warm bare skin under the hem of his shirt. It was so soft. So tender. He worked day in, day out in the weather, but that little patch of skin, right where his spine curved and dipped, that was hidden skin. Secret skin.

My skin.

His hand brushed her cheek, slid into her hair. His fingers were thick with calluses and her hair got caught and pulled. It stung. Just enough. Just right.

“Last night.” He was looking at her, watching her so hard, she could feel his eyes on her and she didn’t quite have the guts to look at him. To see him. Let him see her. “I never thought I would see you again. And you walked into that bar…”

“I know,” she sighed.

“No,” he told her. “You don’t. Not really.”

His words seemed to imply too much and she didn’t want to press him further, or try to figure it out, because they were running out of time.

She pressed her face to his wide chest. Breathing in the scent of him, of sweat and sex, but under that he smelled like warm sheets and cold wind. Winter and fire, all together. And somehow, under that, pencil lead.

He always smelled like pencil lead.

The familiarity of it, of him, broke her. She was like that dried cedar, only needing a spark—and he was exactly the right spark. She put her fingers in his hair, clenched the silky black strands in her fist and pulled him down to kiss her.

It was like last night all over again. Friends to lovers in no time. She was breathing hard into his mouth, standing up on her toes. Running her hands over as much of his body as she could touch, she cataloged all his textures: soft, silky, rough, sharp. He had scars on his forearms from countless run-ins with barbed wire and scared calves, and for some reason she couldn’t leave those scars alone.

They were so entirely him.

Groaning, he lifted her by her waist and spun, shoving her against the plate drying rack. She pushed it into the sink. Consumed by his mouth, by his heat, she didn’t even flinch when something broke. He pulled her sweater up and over her head, his lips leaving hers for the barest second before he was back, licking into her mouth, tasting her like he’d tasted her last night. Completely.

There was no hiding from him like this. He meant to see and taste and touch all of her. And she’d never in her life had sex with someone like him. No restraint, no careful apologies. Just an impossible and delicious instinct.

She pulled him hard against her, until their teeth knocked together. Until they couldn’t breathe. And she didn’t want to. Because they would do this, one more time, and then she had to tell him. She had to.

His hands lifted to her breasts, holding them gently in rough palms, and she loved it. For years the moment when she took off her shirt and her bra was always a loaded moment.

Ha! She always thought. You got suckered by a push-up bra.

But Dean didn’t even pause. Didn’t seem to even notice. They were breasts and they were in his hands and that was all he needed. All he wanted. She arched against him. Wanting more. Wanting every opposing force inside of him. He growled and kissed her harder, touched her harder.

“More,” she breathed, and she fumbled with his belt, pushing past leather and denim to hold him in her hand. Hot and hard and soft.