by Ellen Mint
A moan rounded his lips, his eyes squeezed tight as he too gave in to the slow slip of himself inside of her. Each push knocked loose the old cobwebs, Nadire gasping as she tumbled into every animalistic urge in her body. The first thrust was shallow, barely sucking half of his cock into her.
But, as his radiant eyes beamed into hers, she pulled herself as deep as she dare. Strong hands dug into her hips, fingers clawing as the pair moaned in symphony. Nadire tipped her head back, her body rising higher to search for the perfect position.
No voice begged her to slide this way or that, no want told her to be perfect for someone else. Only the man’s puffing breath guided her as she too savored in watching him come undone.
“Oh God,” Nadire gasped, heat rampaging from the pool in her loins. It swarmed across her body, bringing with it a lightness as if she was floating. As if every weight, every concern, every worry vanished into thin air. When her legs tugged her lower, his cock bounding into her, the freedom transformed into eternal fireworks.
Incoherent words dripped from her tongue, Nadire’s mind lost as it too ensnared itself in this perfect moment of orgasmic bliss. She lost sight, hearing, every sense but the tingling pleasure sparking through each vein in her body.
“Engel,” Emeric whispered, his soft voice tethering her back to the real world. She sputtered, air filling her aching lungs, her sweat-soaked body nearly tumbling forward when she felt the supporting hand caressing her belly.
“Did you..?” Nadire muttered, before wincing. She shouldn’t have to ask that, she should know. But she was so far gone into her own trip she missed all the cues.
Mercifully, it was a smile that crossed Emeric’s face instead of a glower. “Yes,” he nodded, his hands brushing against her dangling breasts before landing back on her thighs. Nadire bared down on the cock still inside, feeling the pulsing that should have been her hint.
“Watching you was…” A blush crossed the grown man’s face. “…better than I could have imagined.”
“Perhaps you need a better imagination.” Nadire shrugged, easing off the candy cane colored pole slick with her lubrication. Panting to fill her nearly emptied lungs, she landed on her side beside the man who seemed content to lay upon his back post-coital.
Emeric turned his head, his arm twisting around so he could trace down her face as if he’d never seen her before. “Usually it’s highly accurate, but…”
As his hand slipped down between their spent bodies, Nadire noticed a tattoo encircling his bicep. Merciful Lord, she didn’t even have time to take in his arms, which looked as if they could pick up a small car. Trying to swallow down the lust that should have been slacked, she traced her finger along the letters. R-E-C-H-T
Emeric watched, his fingers combing her sex-tossed hair. “It means…”
“Law,” she translated, her eyes darting up to his. For a moment they showed surprise at her knowing german, then a slow smile.
“I prefer justice.”
An interesting interpretation, though it was doubtful even with his impressive physique that gerechtigkeit would have fit. Emeric sat up, finally removing the candy cane condom he then expertly knotted. Nadire watched the C and H of his tattoo pulse as he did so, her brain offering up how amazing it’d feel for those biceps to strain as he held her wrists over her head.
What was wrong with her? They just finished and one mind-blowing orgasm barely made a dent in her interest.
Emeric glanced over his shoulder, catching her staring through space at nothing. “Something wrong?” he asked as if he was the one capable of reading people’s thoughts.
“I was simply thinking hair of midnight, eyes of silvery blue, a body that’d make the old Italian masters weep with pride…”
That brought a blush to his cheeks, but she noticed he happily accepted the compliment.
“And ‘Justice’ tattooed to your arm. You’re not Batman, are you?”
A laugh rolled through Emeric’s chest, drawing her attention and fingers back to the forest of hair. “Even if I were Batman,” he asked with an accent growing stronger, his body rising above hers, “would I tell you?”
Greedy to be pinned below him, Nadire dug her naked ankles into the dimples above his buttocks. Emeric grazed his forehead against hers, warm breath darting from his lips as the answer hung in the air. “That,” Nadire whispered, “is just what Batman would say.” Before he could laugh, she pulled him to her for a kiss.
CHAPTER FOUR
A GENTLE TWINKLING that could only be her phone punctured through Nadire’s hazy dreams. She mashed her eyes deeper into a bleach-scented pillow but the noise wouldn’t cease. Nor would it until she rose to answer to her father’s summons.
Her soul’s groan tumbled around with a yawn as she moved to slide out of the hotel bed, only to have a stranger’s hand cinch to her stomach. Panic gripped her body, confusion pounding fists upon her brain, until she glanced down at the masculine arm and the soft black hair peppered across it. Warm lips breathed life against the nape of her neck, Emeric not caring if he aspirated her hair in the process. He slept like he was hibernating, a protective hand thrown over the stranger in his bed the entire night.
Strange. Nadire usually thrashed in her sleep, often accidentally kicking or elbowing whoever dared to share her bed. Maybe she exerted herself so thoroughly she too fell dead to the world. A smile flitted about her lips at both stark and hazy memories of their overlapping times through both the night and early morning. Each time as they lay panting in the other’s arms, their bodies flushed and spent, she was certain it’d be enough. And each time the other would caress an arm, glide a thigh over a hip, or bite a lip and it was back to the thrusting and begging.
Even with the man deep into slumber behind her, Nadire’s skin sparked where his chest pressed to her back, where his thighs cupped her buttocks. To flip over on her side, gently thumb through that mane and wait for those burning ice eyes to waken tempted her soul.
Another round of the twinkling piano music doused that fire before it had a chance to take. With a sigh, Nadire extricated herself from both the warm bed and warmer man. She sucked in a breath, anticipating the floor to be cool, but…that was foolish. This was summer in the south. Why did Emeric make her dream of frostbitten nights in a solitary cabin with snow flush to the door?
“Yes, fine,” she breathed, fumbling for her purse. Nadire tried to not eye up the pile of condom wrappers left scattered on the dresser as she pressed the demanding phone to her ear.
Forget you’re naked, and that there’s a strange even more naked man in the room. Be forceful. “What is it?” she asked curtly as the line picked up. After that long of a lag time, this could only be coming from one place.
She braced herself for her father’s rolling baritone, but a high squeak pipped up instead. “Naddie, bless the stars.”
“Tin?” Nadire spat out in surprise. The naked man in the bed snorted at the sound but didn’t stir. Lowering her voice and cupping a hand around the receiver, Nadire tried again. “Why are you calling me at…?” She had to yank the phone away to groan at the time. “Five in the morning.”
Over the line, Nadire could hear Tin chewing away at her thumbnail. That was the only one she’d bite, the poor digit always looking like a wolverine gnawed upon her cuticles. “It’s…it’s about the business.”
Of course it was. What else would the head of labor have to call her over if not the business? At least with this panicking voice while Nadire was at a conference. “Tin, whatever the issue is… It’s the damn northern supplier again, isn’t it? I swear to God’s toenails if he pulls the same stunt he did last year—”
“No,” Tin interrupted, her concern rampaging up. Tinsela was, in general, the worrying sort which worked to their advantage. She started in QA and moved her way up, now overseeing a massive scale of the workforce and chewing her thumbs to the quick to keep them all safe.
“Nadire, it’s the big man.”
Groaning, Nadir
e wrapped a hand around her chest and rose higher. It was a power pose that looked absolutely ridiculous when she caught sight of her naked body in the mirror. “What’d my father do now?”
“We…can’t find him.”
“It is June.” Nadire sighed, glancing towards the window where an overbearing sun was about to beat down upon beachgoers and pool hogs.
“I know, I know,” Tin answered, everyone aware that the big man often needed a month-long vacation which he preferred to spend all across the globe. No one worried until he wasn’t spotted after Bastille Day. “It’s just he needs to be here. Now.”
“Why?” Nadire’s eyes narrowed, goosebumps erupting down her arms. There were few things she wasn’t at least CCed about in the company. If her father was hiding something…
“It’s…I can’t, find him. Okay. Get him to-to get up here. Fast!”
“Tin, swear to me no one’s on strike,” Nadire spat out.
“No, nothing like that.”
Shaking her leg in thought, Nadire continued, “No workshops are on fire.”
“Nope, no big fires, just the usual little ones.” Tin was trying to be funny. God did it worry her when Tin was trying to be funny.
A heart-wrenching thought crossed Nadire’s mind and she snapped up to ask, “And the staff?”
“Is still in his office. It’s not a holiday canceling problem. Not yet, anyway.”
“Bloody hell,” Nadire muttered to herself, her head sinking to her chest. “Fine. I will try to find my father and get him into the office ASAP.”
“Bless you,” Tin chirped, but Nadire had no idea how she was going to do it. While finding her father wasn’t hard. They put GPS on his phone which he couldn’t shut off no matter what button he pushed. It was talking him back in that could be impossible. No one, not even the devil himself, could get her father to go against his wishes. The rock and a hard place never met a man as stubborn as Santa Claus.
“But if I can’t…?” Nadire continued, only to hear the northern end fall dead. So much for her contingency plans. Exasperation rattled in her lungs, Nadire folding in half as she massaged her temples. What could possibly have Tin on such an edge?
It was Tin. Maybe she spotted a soot smudge on a festive banner and panicked. But to not tell her over the phone about it. Nadire eyed up her cell, a few years out of date, and not the most secure thing on the planet. They always kept real business vague just in case anyone was listening who shouldn’t, but not even a hint?
None of it mattered. Nadire dropped her phone back into her bag. She had to find her father and get the truth from him, preferably before anyone up north did start a large fire. Whoever dreamed up the idea of fairy creatures addicted to shiny things working in factories should be punished. When automation came to the North Pole, they risked so many tiny limbs torn from bodies until stumbling upon the simple idea of sunglasses knocking off that biological urge to touch glitter.
As her head swiveled around the room to hunt out her lost clothes, her eyes landed not upon the wrinkled trousers or the bra hugging the tv. Emeric’s left leg hooked outside the blanket, giving her a breathtaking view of his naked slumbering body. Every taut curve and hard line, every resting muscle that she ached to sink her teeth and claws into.
No. She had a job to do and returning to bed wasn’t part of it. Thank the Lord he didn’t wake from her call, his dreams too potent to break. If those stark eyes darted through her, she’d have been helpless against the call in her blood.
Shaking off the foolish idea of random sex with a stranger being any more than that, Nadire dressed quickly. She focused all her thoughts on where her father would most likely be, and how to finagle him into doing his duty. Only for a flicker did they dart to the naked man she was about to vanish upon.
Should she leave a note? “Had fun last night, but got to run.” Her number? Don’t be stupid. How would that even work? A night of passion was fine, even a few weeks of it, but if a chance encounter became a relationship it grew harder and harder for her to hide the truth. Which was why she picked the easier answer of remaining alone.
No. Let him sleep off his exertions, he deserved it. Doubtful he’d even remember her beyond her perfume on the pillow. It was nothing more than a one-night stand, destined to be forgotten. Certain in her decision, Nadire—dressed in the same clothes as the night before—walked crisply to the door. She didn’t leave a goodbye for Emeric, but she did provide an apology note for Penny along with a gift basket of spa vouchers and a bottle of wine.
As Nadire walked over the wooden dock, she stared across a picture-perfect postcard. Snowcapped mountains enshrined a lake so still if one stared too deeply into the water a fear of falling into the sky overwhelmed the mind. Prickly green broke apart the blues and whites, pine trees of the upper Yukon shoring away what would transform into permafrost if she traveled any further north. Luckily, she spotted was she came for camped in a grey, rusting boat resting in the middle of the lake.
“Father,” she shouted, her hands cupped around her mouth to amplify her voice. The distant silhouette glanced up from his sentinel over the fishing line.
It would no doubt disarm people to find, instead of snowy white locks, a spray of peppery curls forever cut short to his widow’s peak hairline. There was no long tumbling beard of white, but a haze of salty stubble often left upon his cheeks after too many days in the workshop. And, most confounding to those who didn’t stop to think, deep brown eyes to match his sienna skin.
“Naddie!” He pumped his hand through the air, the long robe of a green and gold sliding to his elbow from the enthusiasm. “Child, what brings you here?”
“Come to shore so we don’t have to yell,” she shouted, the back of her neck growing hot despite the lingering chill of the far north. Even at so remote a location, campers and outdoorsmen were wandering around the docking bay. Quite a few kept glancing at her in confusion and concern. The man who ran the boat rental service asked if she was First Nation, which certainly explained the looks and an insistence he be paid upfront.
Ripples undulated over the blue-silver mirror, washing away the disquieting illusion as her father’s motor sputtered awake. Rather than tap her foot impatiently, Nadire stared at the enchanting colors of the world. Something in the cold air always amplified the saturation, the north home to the deepest blues and sharpest whites. Rather like those eyes set beside jet black hair.
She shook off the memory as if it was a decade in the past instead of her skin fresh with the scent of him. The memories would fade once she took a shower, there were bigger fish to fry, so to speak. Puttering through the heavy air, the motor drowned out whatever song her father sang, though she could see his lips moving to the melody. He was often doing that, a ditty or tune never far from his voice while standing in line, filling out paperwork, or simply standing at the top of the world and looking out.
As the prow of her father’s boat swung toward the dock, Nadire reached a leg out to help catch and guide it closer. Her dad laughed at the move. The roaring motor didn’t cut entirely but faded to a soft putt as he swiveled his head to hers and chuckled.
Once they got over the skin tone and lack of a beard, it was the size of her father that’d stop any Santa Claus lover stone dead. Wiry as a bottle brush, with spindly limbs far too long for the frame, he looked like a man who could slip down a chimney without any magic necessary. Nadire got the height, her brother the frame.
“Morning, kiddo. Here for the fishing?” He smiled, his cheeks ripe as apples from the wind.
“Father.” Nadire crossed her arms even as she kept a foot locked inside his boat. It would be like him to try and speed away if he didn’t approve of the conversation. And there was no chance he was going to like it.
“Great bit of luck today.” The wily old man hauled up a stringer from the side of the boat. Water sluiced off the scales of five trout, their mouths gasping in the foreign air as Nadire sighed.
“You know I didn’t come to talk a
bout the fishing.”
“Figured.” He let the trout return to where they spawned, at least until it came time for dinner. After wiping his hands down his cargo pants and not the antique silk robe that only someone like him would wear while on a lake, he laughed. “You never were one for outdoors.”
“I don’t hate the outdoors,” Nadire pouted. She’d been admiring its beauty but a moment before.
Her father placed a finger to his nose and winked. “But you hate the cold.”
“So do you,” she spat back.
“It grows on me,” he answered with a shrug while placing both a tackle box incapable of closing on the dock and two fishing poles. “Though, it’s hard to not miss the warm winds of home, ‘specially when your toes are tiny ice cubes in your boots.”
With that last laugh, he untied the stringer and hurled the mass of fish onto the dock. Nadire stepped back at the spray of trout, eyeing up the scales that glittered like victorian ornaments. “Here daughter, help an old man.” His hand flapped about in the air and Nadire sighed.
She gripped onto it, offering her support to raise him to the dock even as she groaned. “You’re not that old.”
A snort rolled in his throat. “One thousand, six hundred and forty-two years old, thank you very much.” He stretched as he got his heels under him, hands wadded at the small of his back. The old codger routine snapped away in an instant, the man who looked at most in his fifties spinning around to twinkle. “But who’s counting.”
Without a second’s pause, Nicholas snatched up the stringer of fish and his poles. “Can you get the box?”
“God’s nails, I have no idea how without impaling my fingers,” Nadire gasped, her fingers trembling at the mass of hooks and jigs prodding through every crack.