Season's Greetings (5 page)

My hand closed around his cock, stroked it. I bit down hard into my bottom lip, watched his eyes darken. “I have things I want to do. Actions speak louder than words, you know.”

His perfect ruby lips parted as though to protest, but he shrugged and nodded. “Did you like my gift?”

“This is the best gift I’ve ever received,” I assured him.

He shook his head, stubble scraping lightly against my cheek. “No, the other one.”

The sleek toy flashed through my mind. I froze. What to say? “Oh, that one. Um. I think I might like it.”

Chuckles. “You might?”

“Maybe. If you don’t mind waiting for a while. You know I don’t adjust well to new concepts.” The heat on my skin was as much embarrassment as arousal now.

His lips skimmed over my cheek to my mouth again, and I parted my lips in anticipation. The kiss as much as anything else was something I had waited for. A scant minute of regret for my neglected winter lip regiment, and I automatically tilted my head to the angle that would provide the most intimate contact. I let my eyes drift closed as Cris sucked my bottom lip into his mouth and traced it with his tongue.

A sigh of pleasure escaped as I relaxed even farther into the mattress. The warm spicy flavor of Cris seeped into my mouth. This man, this feeling, was home. Sharp teeth nibbled lightly, tugging gently, and then Cris’s tongue slid inside, rubbing silkily along my own. I cupped the back of his neck, holding him in place while I responded freely with all the hunger the separation had stored up. No toy could compare to this.

A low groan swiftly followed Cris’s muffled laugh as I refused to let him back out of the kiss. The press of heated flesh on heated flesh, the weeks of pent up want pushed desire quickly into flagrant need. I didn’t just want Cris, inside, now. I thought I’d die if he didn’t move things along.

At the same time, he was going to have to figure out how to deal with me not releasing his mouth. I missed the kissing as much as the fucking and I wasn’t giving up the luxurious heat of Cris’s mouth any time soon.

Cris was suddenly more urgent, grinding against me, leaking slick drops of pre-cum. “Now,” he ground out, pulling his mouth from mine. “I can’t hold back anymore.”

I wanted that too, the raw brand of Cris’s cock buried inside, claiming me for his own. Loving Cris was the only thing that would assuage the fire of need that raged through me. Using both hands, Cris pushed my thighs farther apart, breathing harshly as he paused to admire the view. The expression on his face alone nearly sent me over the edge. I had no doubt in this moment that Cris found me beautiful. In his eyes I wasn’t interestingly pale, slightly built, or passably good looking.

I looked down to see what he saw, my cock curving hard and thick to leak against my flat stomach. He dipped his head down, blocking my view, and I whimpered as his broad tongue swiped roughly across me. “Oh God,” I moaned. “Don’t…”

“You don’t want me to kiss you?” He suited action to words, pressing his slightly open mouth to my tip, caressing my sensitive flesh with lips and warm breath.

“I want you to.” I shifted restlessly. “Later. I want to come this time, with you inside me. Please.” My back arched, my cock brushed his mouth again.

Cris licked me, then sat back up. “Later,” he promised, his eyes a heated caress. I stared into those passionate green depths, licked my lips, and pushed upward.

“I want you to make love to me.” I didn’t even think my wording through until the words echoed in my head, and Cris’s eyes drifted shut, blocking me from reading his thoughts.
Make love
. I should have said what I always said before. I should have said I wanted him to fuck me. I didn’t though. And who cared if he knew it? We’d been talking about love for years, so what if he knew I meant it for real?

“Condom?” He opened his eyes, peering toward my nightstand. He knew that was where they were. I stretched a hand out across the mattress and snagged the new bottle of lube from the nightstand surface. I tossed it to him and fumbled the drawer open.

I focused my attention on opening and applying the condom while Cris pressed his lubed fingers to my hole. I inhaled sharply as they stretched the muscles, sliding deep. My hands shook so badly I couldn’t tear the packet, and I ended up gripping it between my teeth and tearing it open. It wasn’t sexy or cool looking, but it got the job done. It rolled down Cris’s cock with less grace than I would have liked, but his fingers nudging against my prostate made it hard to give a damn. As soon as it was securely in place, I transferred my hands to his shoulders. “Now, enough playing around.”

Our eyes met as Cris pressed the tip of his sheathed cock against my hole. Our breaths caught in unison as he pushed forward, stretching me around him. Pure, dark pleasure spread through me as he slid home. He fell to his elbows over me, still staring deep into my eyes. No more hiding whatever he’d been thinking earlier.

“I love you.” He punctuated each word with a wriggling little thrust that made me whimper.

“Mmm,” I moaned, pushing up, pulling him closer, rubbing my aching cock against his smoothly furred belly. I shuddered. It wouldn’t take much, and he knew it. I kissed his neck, the plane of shoulder, anything I could reach, urging him to move on, to race for the finish with me.

I shifted again, seeking more friction on my cock, when the sudden surge of sensitivity, the tightening in my belly signaled imminent release. Cris groaned.
Beautiful. Fucking beautiful.
His knee slid a bit on the sheets, and the angle of his penetration changed just enough to make that final thrust a direct brush over my gland. The sights, sensations, of making love with Cris were overwhelming.

I drew my nails down his broad shoulder and back as I arched forward, shooting streams of pearly cum between us. “Yes,” I hissed.

Cris collapsed completely, pressing me into the mattress as he stilled. I could feel the throb of his cock as he released inside me. I savored the bliss on his face as his eyes drifted open again.

“Now can we talk?”

Chapter Seven

I blinked. I could barely think, and he wanted to talk. There was something seriously wrong with this picture. “Umm…” I shoved him off me and slid out of bed.
What the fuck?
“You sure you wouldn’t just like to roll over and go to sleep?”

The sweet image of Cris lying in my bed, waiting for me, gift wrapped as it were, was fading fast. What was so fucking important he couldn’t let me enjoy the afterglow? Snuggle a bit?

Cris shoved the blankets away and sat up. He pulled the condom off and knotted it, aiming it at the wastebasket near the desk. He missed of course. He always missed.

“Look, Ben. I don’t know what the fuck just happened here, but I told you before, I have things I want to say.” He rose determinedly from the bed and proceeded to stalk me around the room as I retreated in the face of his glare.

“So talk. Who’s stopping you?”

He scowled, neatly trapping me between his arms and the closet door where I’d intended to find a pair of shoes and jeans. “No one, I guess. It’s just kind of hard to say what I need to say when you’re acting like this.”

I narrowed my eyes, crossed my arms over my chest, and waited.

He sighed, tried to pull me forward. “Ben, this isn’t how I wanted to do this.”

“I swear to God if you say it’s not me, it’s you, I’ll knee you in the groin without a second thought.” I don’t know on what planet it was considered acceptable to fuck someone before you break up with them, but at this point I was contemplating buying Cris a one-way ticket there.

“Ben. Listen to me. Quit getting all dramatic. I don’t know what it’s not me, it’s you is supposed to mean. As far as I’m concerned, it’s both of us. Remember a few minutes ago, I said I love you.”

I remembered. “Men say all kinds of things during sex that they don’t mean. I say all kinds of things during sex that I don’t mean.” I tacked on snidely.

“Fuck you, Ben. I don’t, and you know it.” He stopped, drew in a few deep breaths, his chest swelling to press against me. I caught myself nearly leaning into that contact, pressed back against the door again.

“So.”

“So. I meant it when I said I loved you. I don’t know what you’re thinking. I never know what you’re thinking. My brother says it should be easier for me to understand you, ‘cause you’re a guy and I’m a guy and we should be on the same fucking page. Right now, I don’t think we’re even reading the same fucking book.”

I wasn’t sure I was reading anything. The words swirled around in my head, but damn if any of them made sense. I closed my eyes and pictured Cris wrapped in ribbon on my bed. That was the memory I’d keep when he was gone. Love shining in his eyes, his delight at surprising me plain to see. My heart stopped beating for just a moment. I stopped reacting and started thinking. “Cris,” I ventured into the taut silence.

“Yeah?” He sounded defeated. I skimmed my hands up his sides and rested them on his shoulders.

“I love you. Thank you for the Christmas gift. Now, can you tell me what you want to talk about before my agile mind leaps to any more unfounded conclusions?”

He rested his forehead against mine, and I caught the twitch of his lips and his exhale of relief. “I’m taking a job here in town. It’s a full time live-in position. The pay’s not as great as my previous job, but there’s less travel and I’ll have a great boss.”

Why that urgently required my attention, I didn’t know. I nodded. “Sounds awesome, Cris. I’m so happy for you. The interview went well then.”

“It was beyond my wildest dreams. I had no idea you’d put me through the ringer like that.”

I blinked and swallowed. “Me?”

“Ben, will you marry me?”

My knees went weak, and I leaned on the door for support because I needed it, not because it was the farthest I could get from Cris. “Marry?”

“I want to spend the rest of my life, here with you. I want to live with you, to love you, to fight with you.” His lips twisted into a wry grimace. “Though not right now. Now, I’d like to just know that you feel the same way I do and all this plotting and planning isn’t going to be wasted.”

“Plotting and planning?” I rolled my eyes. “I’m a little lost. Your new job is going to keep you here more, and you want to get married.” The idea was warming on me. “That’s kind of a huge step, from open relationship to ball and chain, isn’t it?”

He growled. Literally, actually growled. “Open relationship? I don’t know about you, but I stopped seeing other people so long ago I can’t remember what sex with anyone else is like. You’d better just nod and agree with me, because if you have been seeing other people, I don’t really want to know about it.”

“I haven’t. I haven’t wanted to, either. But, you know…you could just move in here, we could take things slowly.” My head was speaking but my heart demanded to know if I was crazy. I’d just been bemoaning my boyfriend who didn’t want to commit twenty-four hours ago. Why couldn’t I just accept this and run with it?

Cris wrapped his arms around me, spun us both around and settled me against his chest as he leaned on the door. “Look around you, Ben. What do you see?”

“Our room.” I played along.

“Your nightstand, our bed, my nightstand. Your chest of drawers, my chest of drawers. Your side of the closet.” He emphasized that with a thump of his heel on the door. “My side of the closet. I already live here. The only thing of mine that isn’t here is my mail. I’ll just give up the apartment. It’s a little pricy for a mailbox, anyway.”

It was true. Seen from that perspective, it wasn’t as much of a leap as I had imagined. The problem wasn’t that Cris was skipping steps, it was my habitual aversion to change. Not all change was bad, though, as I had learned through my playing with Cris’s gift. If Cris was going to be home more, then things would be changing anyway. I made a snap decision. I’d do it. “Yes. Yes. I accept. Get rid of the mailbox, have a yard sale. My mom is going to freak. She was just telling me about how she approved of you.” The other shoe dropped. I’m always waiting for that to happen, and this time it dropped with a tremendous thud. “They were in on this, weren’t they? Knew what you were going to do?”

“Yes. I couldn’t have done it without them. Later, I need to call and thank them for all the help. For now, does that mean I got the job, boss man?”

Slow on the uptake, that was me. “Yeah, you’re hired.”

His eyes lit up and his arms tightened around me. I’d never felt as secure as in that moment. Except…I didn’t make a lot as a librarian, and the old story about two could live as cheaply as one? I didn’t think that was true. I could barely survive on my salary, let alone support Cris. “Cris? You’re not really unemployed, are you?”

More mellow chuckles. “Nah. I’m being transferred to the regional office. I’ll be working an hour from here, coordinating promotional efforts for the local stores instead of setting up new stores. The MBA paid off, like you said it would.”

Epilogue

I was grateful that my mom hadn’t used her key. We at least had the two minutes of warning that the doorbell ringing and loud voices calling greetings gave us. Just enough time to throw on those pajama pants and a T-shirt plus get the door to the bedroom closed.

I opened the front door to find not only my parents and brother on the doorstep, but also Cris’s parents and his brother as well. My face literally burned. Greeting my mom in Grinch pajamas was one thing, greeting my future in-laws in pajamas of any sort seemed a bad omen.

“Umm, hi?” I stood in the doorway, blocking the entrance to the house while Cris rushed around the living area cleaning up the mess of cookies and eggnog and wrapping paper and whatever else we’d left behind the night before.

“Merry Christmas! We were all up and thought, you know…It’s such a shame for Ben to be alone on Christmas morning, so we came right over.” Mom shoved a box at me. Dad pushed gently at the door. Cris’s parents stood with stoic expressions, though I noticed his mom’s eyes seemed a little bright and his dad’s lip twitched erratically.