“The Ministry of Defence. For the Chief Scientific Adviser on science and technology, involved in directing science and technology research for the armed forces. Shit.” Hugo felt ill. What had the man seen and reported on during his career? And what could his father have achieved if— He gave a huff of bitter laughter. “Mother never liked Jeremy Greene. Always said he was a dreadful little man. Seems she was right.”
“She sounds sharp. I’d love to meet her. Hugo…” Alessa swallowed. “I’m so sorry about everything you went through. When I saw that I’d dug into the rawest nerve you had, then knocked away that prism through which you saw the world, I understood. And I’m sorry for how things ended with Amanda. I would never do that to you. Keeping things from you this last week or so has just about killed me.”
“I should have sorted things out with her a long time ago, been less indulgent. But that was the guilt talking.” He shrugged. “But I’ve started. And I know the therapy will help me see everything through.”
“I’m so glad. Hugo…will you give me another chance?” Alessa asked, wringing her hands, looking startled when he laughed.
“I was just about to ask you that!” Hugo could hardly breathe through the relief and hope flooding him. He couldn’t put into thought, never mind words, what he was feeling. He hoped Alessa understood, though, and also realised she wasn’t leaving. Never again, if he had his way. Which recalled him to his manners. “Let me take your…coat…” He stared at what was revealed.
“I wanted to dress up for once. You must be sick of seeing me in jeans,” she muttered.
“You mean, you wanted to tempt me!” Hugo gaped at her little black dress. He hung up their coats without looking at what he was doing, unable to take his eyes from her. Tiny black dress would be a better description, he thought. It had thin straps over her shoulders and clung to her figure, finishing above her knees. Sheer stockings and high-heeled black shoes with delicate ankle straps completed her outfit. “Come here.”
She did, and he kissed her thoroughly. She darted her gaze to one side and, following it, his eyes widened to see a riding crop laid on the table.
“I’m not going to stripe your arse in punishment,” he told her.
“Not even because I want you to?” Alessa’s grin told him more than words ever could that she was returning to her usual cheeky, wonderful self. His heart leapt, knowing that—while they had a long road to travel—they were on the right path, and starting together.
“Not tonight. My emotions are all too mixed.” And there was him, being honest and open. Huh. “Which is not to say, I can’t punish you another way…”
Alessa’s eyes were the size of saucers as he led her upstairs to his bedroom, and her breath hitched after he kissed her again, enough to excite her and enough to leave her wanting. Her dress was a stretchy fabric, he discovered, peeling it over her head, leaving her hair the wonderfully tumbled mass he loved to see it. Removing her dress showed him the stockings with garters were all the underwear she wore beneath it. “Oh, you little minx.” He nipped her ear, making her squeal.
She tried hard not to squirm when he produced silk ropes to tie her to the bed, but her thumping heart and shallow breathing gave her arousal away as he fastened the knots. He let her writhe, picture perfect in her sexy stockings and sexier shoes, before approaching.
“What’s that?” Alessa eyed the small bottle in his hand, one of a set he placed on the bed, her face wary.
“In the spirit of the season…cinnamon drops,” he answered.
“For… Oh.”
She writhed more as he applied a few drops to each nipple, touching the tip of the applicator to each perfect strawberry-pink peak, biting back a grin. In a minute…
“Oooohhh!” Alessa cried, squirming. “Ahhh!”
Her nipples crinkled into tight points at the stimulation, peaking high on her creamy flesh. He let her pant and moan her way through that, then, when she tried to rub her thighs together to relive the ache, he retracted her clitoral hood with a swift, sure hand and dripped a fat drop of liquid onto her clit. As the bud swelled and engorged, Alessa fought against the ropes binding her and screamed out her climax.
“I didn’t know you knew language like that,” Hugo commented after Alessa had finished shaking and called him every name under the sun and sworn vengeance on him. She tried to turn away when he approached her face with a silk square, and he waited, but she said nothing, so he tied it around her mouth. “I smudged your lipstick,” he said, harking back to their first encounter, distracting her from his actions—taking up a vibrator and the small bottle of drops.
“These were all your Christmas present,” he told her. “What?”
She was shaking her head, so he loosened the gag for her to instruct him, “Not that. You.”
“You want my hand? You want to ride my fingers, fuck yourself on them?” He loved the way her eyes went wide at the dirty talk. “As you wish.” He thrust inside her with shocking speed and force, knowing she was well-lubed for him, her juices spilling onto her thighs. She’d just come, but that had been a quick, hard climax. Hugo made sure this one was longer, drawn-out, as hard as the first, but more fulfilling. Words and sounds leaked out through the gag, and he bent to catch them all, sealing his mouth over hers and the gag as he finger-fucked her to completion.
When Alessa lay gasping, her body softened from the stiff bow it had formed in the throes of orgasm, Hugo unfastened her gag and undid one wrist and one ankle. He sat next to her, letting her decide what to do. Still panting, she went for the row of small glass bottles, using her teeth to secure one, while she used her free hand to unscrew it. She wrinkled her nose at it, and repeated her actions with a second, which seemed to please her. She curled onto his lap and unzipped him, her movements as swift and decided as his had been.
He was hard, raring to go—he’d almost spilled, watching her turn into a slave to her passion. The drops Alessa applied to his cockhead were strawberry, the scent mixing with his pre-cum, and she helped herself to him, swirling her tongue around his more-engorged-by-the-second head, licking and sucking, tickling her tongue into the nerve-rich bump on the back. Then she started sucking in earnest, and, Christ, if the sight of her treating his cock as a lollipop and the strawberry flavour she’d used didn’t give him a vision of her dressed like a naughty schoolgirl. Little minx is probably doing it on purpose, he reasoned before most thought fled under her expert tongue and clever throat.
She raised her head, keeping her lips at his very tip, to let out a huge, “Ohhh,” of satisfaction. “Don’t come for a while. I want to really taste you before you flood my throat.” And just like that, Alessa turned the tables again, her words and the image making his balls draw up tight, and him shift under her to hold back. The glorious sight of them entwined in his bed, him dressed, her nude, curled into him, delighting in pleasuring him, undoing him, didn’t help his staying power. A peal of bells sounded from across the fields. Church bells.
Alessa laughed, the sound vibrating around his cock, almost making him climax in a second. Thank God she pulled her lips free to ask, “Don’t they say, what you’re doing at the stroke of Christmas, you’re doing for the rest of the year?” She tightened her fist around him and began an up-and-down motion designed to unman him in a heartbeat.
“I think”—Hugo took a breath, fought for composure—“that’s New Year.”
“Oh.” Alessa took a tormenting lick of his cockhead and wiggled her tongue tip into his slit. “In that case, I hope you have plenty of flavours.”
“Enough to last until the spring,” he managed to pant out.
She stopped and stared into his eyes. “Spring. Hugo, I have to confess I was initially concerned about the age difference between us.”
“Initially? And now?” he queried, searching her face.
“Now?” Alessa grinned. “I just hope I can keep up with you!”
Hugo scoffed. “More like the other way around. And we’ll have plenty of pr
actice when we’re—”
“What?”
“Together.” His voice was firm. “And…what are your thoughts on a spring wedding?” He was pushing it, he knew, but, as he stared into her eyes, a light shone in their sapphire-blue depths.
“I sort of like the sound of that,” Alessa confessed, her voice low. “A spring wedding from winter sparks.”
But Hugo didn’t have time for the massive jolt of elation shocking through him because the minx got the upper hand—literally—again, bending to him. “And I like the feel of this. And the taste…”
An undignified, barely human noise was all the response he could manage for quite some time.
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Happily Ever Austen:
Pride and Pancakes
Ellen Mint
Excerpt
Why isn’t the car spinning out in the snow? Nothing dramatic that’d require an ambulance or the jaws of life, just a minor hiccup in her travel plans. Anything to delay her from this coming storm. But, no, Beth couldn’t be that lucky.
Wringing her hands over the rented Civic’s steering wheel, she glared out at the stark white landscape. It’d started muddy and drab, dawn hours away when she’d left New York City. Six hours later, deep in Vermont’s snow-capped mountains, the azure skies did nothing to evaporate the dread in her heart.
The road was little more than dirt and snow packed down by wide wheels, increasing the throbbing headache Beth knew wouldn’t vanish once she reached her destination. At the sign for the Honeymoon Cabin—charming—she turned right to follow an even thinner trail. The tiny car barely made it into the ruts dug out by a monstrous SUV, Beth listening to every chunk-chunk of snow splatting out of the wheel wells.
As a twist of smoke pierced the snow-peaked horizon, her editor’s parting words rang through her skull. ‘Land this damn interview, Cho. If you don’t…’
He didn’t need to finish his threat—everyone in journalism was well aware of the always-looming cutbacks. It didn’t matter how much money their website pulled in, it was never enough for investors. And the easiest way to line their pockets was by sending yet another reporter to the breadlines.
While the six-hour-plus drive in inclement leaning to suicidal weather didn’t endear her, it was the subject of the interview that had Beth chewing glass. If it had been a fickle actor known for being handsy, she’d have brought her friend Bruno as an assistant. If it had been a mealy-mouthed politician—not that her employer cared about politics beyond if one was caught without pants—she’d have kept a slew of previous soundbites at the ready.
But this? This was…
Her thought snapped away when the ever-rising ground finally leveled out and she emerged before a picturesque cabin. It looked like a Victorian Christmas card had come to life. The cabin of massive red logs boasted a single chimney puffing perfect clouds of smoke into the air over snow-capped shingles. Quaint green shutters hung off the three windows she could make out. There was clearly a picture window for the living room, but it was frosted over from the encroaching cold. Pine trees lined the driveway, each one dusted in white snow as if a designer had painted them.
It’d be a lovely place to vacation or hide away in for a week while trying to hammer a book out. But that wasn’t what awaited her inside.
Pulling a cleansing breath into her lungs, Beth snatched up her purse and laptop and struck out into the cold. Her leg sunk a foot into the snow, the freezing air punching into her chest and a gasp escaping her mouth. Cruel, frozen water tumbled into her shoes.
Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!
With each step she took to the cabin, more plummeting snow filled her ankle-high boots. They were cute for the city in winter but pointless this deep into the wilderness. It was doubtful anything short of a whole bearskin would keep someone warm up here. Thanks to her having turned up the heat in the car, the snow quickly melted to slush, seeping up her socks and leaving her crankier.
Despite dreading what awaited her inside, Beth dashed for the cabin. At least it’d be warm and snow-free. She grabbed onto the wooden railings with their woodland animal carvings and leaped up the three front steps. The door was a firehouse red with a wreath of cedar and holly hanging from it. Breathing in the smell of hamster bedding, she pushed on the handle and let herself in.
A flash of lightbulbs from by the fireplace interrupted Beth’s entrances. Orange flames danced inside the stones there, three stockings without names dangling off plastic greenery above the fire. And standing beside it, an arm lazily draped over the mantel, was what had had her grinding her teeth for six hours.
“Tristan?” the photographer called the stone man glaring through space. “Can you turn and raise your chin?”
If he raised it any higher, all her shots would be directly up his nose.
Tristan Harty. Once a teenage heartthrob sporting floppy hair that dusted over those striking blue eyes, he’d climbed the charts with a handful of songs plucked out on his guitar. The trajectory of his career followed the majority of those who began in the same way. He’d grown older, teenage girls had moved on, his star had faded. Now, he was trying a comeback thanks to the rise in ’90s nostalgia and his PR team had finagled an exclusive interview with her magazine.
Instead of the leather jacket overtop an expertly distressed T-shirt, they’d dressed him like Father Christmas. A black suit coat, tailored tight to his thin frame, lay unbuttoned over a crimson vest. A pocket watch, of all things, dangled off the vest. Does he intend to recite some Dickens to the photographer as well? Time had thinned the soulful mane of his younger years. Locks shorn to an inch revealed more of his forehead than any had seen in a decade.
While most men his age would have wrinkles piling up across that vast brow, the cold demeanor of Tristan Harty kept his face nearly as preserved as if he were a botoxed socialite. Somehow, his record company had convinced an entire generation of fifteen-year-olds that he was the deepest, most soulful man in existence. Beth wanted to laugh at the thought when the man in question focused away from his photographer to where she stood dripping at the front door.
Eyes bluer than a sapphire burned into her soul. She tried to swallow, but her throat constricted. Even turning her head was proving impossible as ten thousand watts bore down upon her.
“You!” a voice shouted, evaporating the confounding spell. Beth blinked, glancing back at the once bewitching man. With the glare broken, he transformed back into a snooty aristocrat hoisting up a guitar.
From the mess of photography equipment that claimed the cabin’s entire living room bustled a wide man. He wasn’t fat, at least not in that lovable oaf way, but his rectangular build easily fit into a doorway. He was the comedic opposite of the thin man pretending to play a song for the camera.
“Who are you?” he shouted at Beth.
She flexed her lips in a not smile. “The interviewer.”
What had to be the manager scoffed. “You’re late. What took you so damn long?”
“I’m afraid transporters haven’t been invented yet, so I had to rely upon the old-fashioned horseless carriage,” Beth snapped, in no mood to be shouted down by the reason she was in this mess. There were a dozen more interesting concerts and art house movies she could be reviewing at home instead of wasting an entire weekend in Vermont.
The manager pinged his beady eyes skyward. “What? You never heard of airplanes?”
She chewed on her tongue, keeping the caustic comment at bay. There was no chance of her company splurging on an airline ticket, seeing as how they couldn’t ship their reporters as freight.
“Barry…?” A voice of reason stepped into the fray as the very subject of the interview spoke up. “Let it be,” Tristan whispered. His speaking voice was soft and drifted in the tenor range, a surprise for anyone who knew his songs.
Barry the manager was in no mood to do such a thing. He was clearly incensed there was no underpaid intern to b
oss around and had to take all that anger out on someone. “Listen here…” Whatever derogatory term floated in his brain remained there, though he stared twice as hard at her eyes. “We ain’t got time to waste here. So get this little Q&A session done fast. Got it?”
“Mr. Barry.” Beth unlatched her purse, picking up her phone. “This little ‘Q&A session’ is part of the deal. I have full access to your…talent, and we host a release for his album.” She should have been surprised at having to remind him of the back-scratching contract, but it was a wonder sometimes that most managers had the wherewithal to work a bed.
His annoyance at her tripled in strength. Beth internally smiled at her barbs when Barry pointed toward an open room. “Fine! Set up in there. I’ll send Tristan in once he’s finished.”
“Thank you ever so much.” She hefted her bag closer to her side. Just before she turned her back on the primping and posturing, another cobalt glare burned across her sights. For a foolish breath, her cheeks burned.
So I’m to work in the bedroom? While grateful she wasn’t being forced to conduct her interview in the bathroom, she’d done worse. Once, she’d had to question a football player while crammed inside a food truck while an untended open fire singed an inch off her hair. Though, as she gazed around the room, a new unease settled in her gut.
While the living room and small adjacent kitchen were rustic and woodland themed, this was where the honeymoon adjective came from. The bed was gigantic, with four posters painted like birch trees, and a damn canopy, of all things. Red and pink silks hung off the posts and a shimmery duvet covered the bed itself. Perched between the ordinary pillows was one in the shape of a heart. There were no bottles of wine in a bucket on the nightstand, but a remote sat there instead. Beth was both curious and terrified to see what it was for.
Winter Sparks Page 11