The Mistletoe Wedding

by Izabella Brooks

  Hating someone, or at least holding a grudge, is the easy part. Rage, anger, pain—they’re the worst until they’re all stripped away and then you realize that the hard part is actually the exact opposite. Now, instead of knowing where I stand with him, I feel like the worst kind of mess.

  We finally make it to the church. It’s decked out in all its Christmassy glory—nativity included. There are pine boughs everywhere, and the place smells like an enchanted forest. It’s a simple church, with red carpets, solid wood pews, and stained glass windows. Jake and Arla are well loved and it’s packed.

  I walk up the aisle, trying to ignore Karsyn, which is hard when his arm is through mine and he gives it an extra squeeze before we part our separate ways, just to tell me that he knows. No one else knows, but he does, and he’s watching.

  Jake and Arla finally make it up there to join us. I pretty much zone out completely through the readings and everything else. My legs are watery and I’m scared I’m going to pass out because all I can think about is Karsyn. Kissing me yesterday. On the beach today. How his big, powerful body felt trapped between my thighs. How he felt between my thighs in a completely different way in the women’s bathroom.

  Most of all, I can’t erase how he looked at me when he should have been disgusted. When I had a puffy face from crying. When I had snot on my nose and that space between nose and lips. He should have called me disgusting and handed a mop my way. Instead, he looked at me like I was freaking priceless. This on the heels of him paying off my massive student loan debt and dropping the bombshell of a lifetime. At least my lifetime.

  At least I’m not the only one rattled. Arla forgets to finish her vows and instead of saying I do, she throws her arms around Jake’s neck and kisses the shit out of him. He wasn’t expecting it, but amidst gasps and laughter, he kisses her back, then sets her aside gently and tells her to finish her sentence. Of course, she does, and everyone laughs again.

  Between signing papers and standing in line to receive hugs from strangers I don’t even know, to trying to avoid Karsyn, who is hell bent on frying me like a piece of burnt bacon with his sizzling gaze, to noticing how Cozzie and Bryn are also actively trying to avoid each other and Trell is trying to mediate, I’m exhausted by the time we’re all ushered back to the limo.

  The reception was planned entirely by Barbara, just like everything else. The hall is nice. Huge. Modern. It’s actually not far from the church, and while it doesn’t back or front a beach, you can see and hear the ocean in the distance.

  Jake takes Arla’s hand, muttering something about being starved and needing a drink. Trell keeps a watchful eye on Bryn while Cozzie trails after them. It leaves Karsyn and me alone. An oversight that everyone should have noticed, but no one does.

  I don’t know what to say to him, so I make a break for the front door, racing after Cozzie, my giant tote balanced on my arm. I can’t make him any promises. I’m not going to change my life for him. I carved out a life for myself, and I’m committed to it now. I actually like my job and I don’t mind Raleigh. I do miss my family, but I really don’t want to move back to San Diego and start all over again. The fact that I’m even having thoughts like this is frightening enough.

  I clear the front door and just about make it into the main portion of the hall, which is trimmed in even more Christmas splendor, when a warm, vicelike grip closes in on my wrist and tugs me backwards so hard I let out a yelp and just about land on my ass.

  Before I have time to right myself, I’m tugged through a side door, into pitch black darkness.

  A lock clicks into place and a bare bulb flickers to life above us, revealing a small mechanical closet complete with some furnace looking contraption and tons of janitorial supplies on shelves at the back of the room.

  “What are you doing?” I hiss at Karsyn.

  Of course he just tugged me into this shithole. Of course he just locked the door. Of course he’s blocking it, his arms over his chest so that even in his tux I can practically see the muscles rippling. He has a shit-eating smirk on his face that I’d like to wipe off.

  “What do you think?” He stares me down. “Oh. You think that thing in the bathroom was it?” He lets out a wicked sounding laugh, like he’s actually amused and my face heats up right along with the rest of my body. “That wasn’t it,” he needlessly clarifies.

  I dump my tote on the floor so I have better access to both hands. I figure I’m going to need one of them to slap him with, seeing as he’s still smirking at me like he knows he’s going to get his way.

  “I just have one question.”

  “What?” I ask, exasperated. I hate the tornado of feelings churning inside of me.

  This isn’t easy. It used to be easy, back in high school. We were friends. But even that wasn’t cut and dry, and when I remember the agony of all those nights spent wondering if we could ever be something more than friends, I realize it wasn’t easy at all. It was never easy. Those faltering next steps never are. I just don’t know if I want to take them. Just because I might be able to forgive Karsyn and actually pity what he went through in high school, and because I feel bad about everything I didn’t know about and for being too stuck up and self-centered to listen to reason or my friends and family, doesn’t mean that there are necessarily going to be next steps.

  It doesn’t mean that I feel anything at all.

  He’s practically a stranger. A really hot, sexy, dangerous stranger with a grin wicked and sensual enough to blind you, like looking into the sun, and a set of cobalt eyes that will make a person weak in the knees. Oh right, he also gives really, really good orgasms.

  “Why are you still wearing so much clothing?”

  I snap out of my internal debate real fast. “I can’t believe you just asked me that!” I cross my arms protectively, as if I could ward him off and keep him from getting to all the soft, squishy parts of me which are suddenly very unprotected and incredibly vulnerable.

  “Are you crazy? There is an entire hall of guests out there!”

  “Correction. There will be. We have a good half hour yet, an hour if things run late, which you know will happen. You’re fresh off a really good climax and I bet you’re craving another, because why the hell wouldn’t you be? Maybe you want the real deal this time. Maybe that was just a taste and you’re salivating now.”

  “Maybe you’re totally full of yourself.”

  “Me? Nah. Never was. You know that. I was never the dumb jock, popular kid type. I much preferred to fly under the radar.”

  “Is that what you were doing all these years? Flying under the radar?” It’s a sarcastic, snarky comment and I know it. The thing about Karsyn that I liked so much growing up was that he wasn’t afraid to call me and other people out on our bullshit. Apparently, he still isn’t, because he shoots me a bored look.

  “Nope. I was waiting for you to come back here, suck it up, get your head out of your ass and see reason.”

  “Get my head out of my butt? Excuse me?”

  “You’re excused. Now. We’re locked in this little room. No one knows we’re here. I think we’ve both waited a very long time for this. I don’t care if it’s hate sex, pity sex, makeup sex, any kind of sex, so long as it’s sex and it’s with you.”

  I roll my eyes like it’s the new national sport. “Seriously? Is that supposed to be romantic?”

  “No. Just brutal honesty. Trust me, I’m much better on paper. But this…” Karsyn takes two steps to me and grips my face in his slightly rough, scorching hot, gloriously manly palms. “This is.”

  He kisses me like he hasn’t kissed the living shit out of me already these past few days. He keeps going, kissing me like it’s the first, the last, the only time. He kisses me until my lips feel swollen and bruised all over again. Who needs limp plumping crap? I’m pretty sure my lips will be swollen for a month after this. He kisses me until my mouth aches. Until my jaw aches. Until all of me aches in all the wrong spots. Or all the right ones, if I wanted to loo
k at it that way.

  I’m not sure how I want to look at it, but I am sure of one thing.

  We’re doing this. Maybe not all the way, like he suggested. Or maybe we are. Maybe I want that. Maybe I want it a lot. I don’t actually know because this moment has lived in fantasy in my head for so long, and fantasises are only good because they never become reality. My head is a total mess—okay, all of me is a total mess—when it comes to Karsyn and I can’t actually decipher what I think and feel, because he makes me think and feel everything and it sucks and is totally amazing all at once.

  It’s all that feeling that I don’t know what to do with.

  It’s all that feeling that might be the most dangerous thing in the world.

  Chapter 12

  Karsyn

  My face hurts. Every muscle burns, but it’s nothing compared to what is going on with the rest of me. We’re about to do this. I’m sure. What I’m not sure about is the aftermath. I know that I shouldn’t be accelerating things this quickly, but when you’ve literally waited half your life for something, it’s hard to go slow.

  “I might have missed you,” I murmur against Breona’s lush lips.

  “No, you didn’t,” she mumbles between kisses. “You were busy living your own life.”

  “Not too busy that I didn’t think about you. About what we could have been.”

  “We couldn’t have been anything.” She bites my bottom lip again and it’s so raw and swollen I swear I taste blood.

  “No,” I agree as I glide my tongue over the spot, and I definitely taste copper. “Neither of us were brave enough to try.”

  “You’re very conceited. I don’t find you attractive at all,” Breona snorts. “Not then. Not now.”

  “No?” I lick at the seam of her lips and she moans. “Not even a little?”

  “Not by a long shot. This is only happening because it’s a wedding and hooking up is almost expected.”

  “I thought that was supposed to be at the end of the night. You saying you want to go home with me, Breona?” Her name slides off my tongue and I nearly groan at the delicious taste of it in my mouth.

  “Never,” she breathes. “You’re staying in a hotel. That’s not home.”

  “Same diff.”

  “Is it? And how says diff? You’re a journalist, aren’t you?”

  “We both know that being a journalist and being a writer are two different things.”

  “Do we?”

  I let my hands fall away from her face in a slow, sensual caress down her body. My cock is so hard I figure it’s about to burst. I skim over her breasts, not lingering there because if I do, I’m done. I do make the mistake of gripping her ass, her gorgeous, curvy ass, but I make up for it by hoisting her up so that she has to wrap her legs around my waist, and jam her up against the metal door.

  “I don’t know anything when it comes to you,” I admit, which is scarily close to the truth.

  She groans against my mouth. “I don’t either. Not then. Not now. Not ever.”

  “Promise me,” I say huskily as I kiss her again. “Promise me that you’re not going to disappear on me again.”

  Her hands twine around my neck and her nails dig in. “I’m not promising you anything.”

  I realize that I’ve done this all wrong. But I can’t stop. Then there’s the fact that I’ve also fucked up the order of this by still wearing all of my clothes.

  I set Breona down slowly and she blinks at me in confusion until my hands fumble at my jacket and I shed it, tossing it onto one of the empty shelves right behind us. Her eyes trace every movement as I undo my tie and all the annoying buttons of the white dress shirt.

  When I peel away the shirt, Bree’s breath hitches, which sets my cock back to pounding and my balls back to feeling like they’re going to detonate. Her dark eyes glow with appreciation. I know that I’m cut. I’ll never be a big bastard like Jake and all his other football cronies, but I’m streamlined and muscled. I don’t just hit the gym. I actually run just about every morning as well. I have to keep in shape. Keeping up with everything only gets harder. I put in long hours at work and taking a sick day is usually a no-go.

  Her eyes explore my shoulders, my pecs, the six pack that wasn’t just made in the gym, some of that is actually natural because I do have some athletic ability. I was always good at track. I played basketball, even though I never really liked it. Track, though, I loved. I kept up with the running long after high school was done.

  Those brown velvet orbs drop straight to the V that arrows down below my pants. Her tongue snakes out and licks her lips like she’s contemplating tracing the muscle with it. Licking me.

  Jesus. I don’t know why, but the picture of me coming home from a run, sweaty, and her waiting for me…licking my sweat…

  It’s pretty disgusting and random, but fuck, it’s hot as hell too.

  “I’m not promising you anything,” she says again, but her voice is off. Hoarse. Strained.

  “I get that.” I’m still sure there’s time to change her mind.

  I fish in my pocket and produce a condom. Her eyes widen. I didn’t think I’d actually get a chance to use it, but I wasn’t going to finally find myself in this moment and have to walk away with a case of the world’s worst blue balls because I wasn’t properly equipped.

  I slip the condom between my teeth as I undo my belt and my pants. The zipper sounds sexual between us, like it has a life of its own. I push them down my legs, along with my boxers, letting my cock spring free.

  Breona sucks in a breath again, and yeah, the bastard likes that. The only thing it would like better that her wide-eyed stare and her breathless state is to be inside her.

  She swallows hard, then lifts her eyes to mine. “Well? Should we see what all the fuss is about. Maybe I’ll hate it. Maybe you’ll hate it. Maybe we’ll go back to hating each other.”

  I tear the packet open and roll the condom down my length while Breona takes shallow, nervous breaths. “There’s only one problem with that.” I back her up against the door and hike her up again. Her legs fit around my waist like they were meant to be there.

  “What’s that?” she pants in my ear.

  I push her panties aside so fast and hard that it has to sting, but the lace is soaked and willing to give, especially after how I stretched them in the bathroom earlier. She gasps when I fit myself to her entrance, but I wait, lingering there, trying to calm myself the hell down, because I know if I slide home now, it’s game over.

  Her hands are on my shoulders, but I brace her against the door with my hips while I capture them in mine and sweep them above her head, holding her prisoner. She doesn’t fight. She doesn’t do anything but rock her pelvis against mine, shut her eyes, and whimper low in her throat.

  My pulse nearly jumps out of my neck when I bring my face to hers. I whisper thickly in the shell of her ear, “I never hated you.”

  I let my cock slide away from her entrance to press up against her clit, teasing her wickedly, while also driving myself crazy. She shivers so hard that I swear the door vibrates behind us.

  I thrust through her folds, letting her feel all of me, teasing her, so close to her entrance, but I dart away each time.

  “Jesus, Karsyn…” she moans.

  I’m damn thankful that the metal door seems to be keeping the sounds from outside the room out, which means it will probably keep the sounds from inside in. I wonder if I pound her against it until she’s screaming my name, if anyone else will hear. There would be worse things in the world. I’m not worried enough about it to actually stop or move away.

  “Tell me,” I breathe, my words fogging all over her lips, her chin, her cheek, her neck. “Tell me that you want this. Tell me that you want me.”

  She presses her lips together, her eyes still closed, and I know she’s not going to say it. I need her to say it. I need it more than I’ve ever needed anything in my entire life. I crave it. I nibble at her chin when she stays resolutely silent. I sl
ide my tongue along her jawline and thrust it into the shell of her ear before I bite down on her earlobe. Her hips jack into mine and I know she wants me, but I want the words. I want her words. I want all of her words.

  She still refuses, so I arch my hips away, pinning her up against the door with just my hands. I stick my knee between her thighs and she writhes against me. Her eyes shoot open and she glares at me. She tries to squirm lower, rub herself against my knee, which is still clothed since I was in too much of a hurry to actually take my pants completely off.