“Wait.” She reached out, grabbing my wrist. “I can’t take anymore. Your turn.”
I looked up at her. “My turn?”
“Yep.” She wiggled under me until she could reach the closest cup. “Unzip, Big Guy.”
I should protest. I should keep going. I wanted to lick chocolate sauce from her body. I wanted to drip hot chocolate—that was significantly cooled by now—over her breasts and stomach.
I paused too long because she dipped her finger into the whipped cream and chocolate sauce and held it up. “I want to lick this off of your cock.”
Well, then. “How can I argue with that?”
“You can’t.” She gave me a smug grin.
I leaned over and kissed her stomach, then shifted to sit up.
“Shirt off too,” she told me, going up onto her knees. Then she put her finger into her mouth and sucked the whipped cream clean.
Yeah, no problem. I pulled my shirt off and tossed it, then unbuttoned and unzipped.
“Oh, yeah.” She reached for me, pushing denim and my boxers out of the way. “Lift up.”
I lifted my hips, and she pulled my jeans and boxers to my ankles. She immediately returned to her main object of interest. She reached for the cup again and painted my cock with whipped cream and chocolate sauce.
Just that was sweet torture. Then she leaned in. She licked every bit off and then sucked just to be sure she got it all.
My fingers tangled in her hair, and my head fell back. I worked on just breathing. I was not going to come in her mouth, but damn, the girl was good. Or just really liked chocolate syrup.
“Okay, enough.” I tugged on her hair, pulling her mouth away before I lost it.
“Oh, you didn’t let me tap out,” she teased.
“Need you. Now,” I told her, reaching for her thigh and pulling her over to straddle my lap.
“Yes.” She kissed me, her mouth sweet and sticky from the blow job.
I plucked her nipple, also sticky from our play, and slid my other hand between us to tease her clit.
“Now, Joe, please.”
I reached for my jeans pocket and pulled out a condom. We both worked together to get it on, and then she shifted forward. She reached between us, positioned my cock at her entrance, and then let herself down, taking me deep.
“Damn, you feel good,” I told her gruffly.
“Yeah, this North Pole is perfect,” she said with a grin, even though her voice was a little breathy.
I pinched her ass. She’d gotten a naughty Santa quip in there anyway.
Then I gripped her hips, and she gripped my shoulders, and we started moving. She rode me fast and hard, and soon we were both coming, calling out each other’s names.
Paris slumped against me, her arms around my neck and her face in the curve of my shoulder.
I ran my hands up and down her back, breathing in the scent of her hair, sex, and peppermint hot chocolate.
I was never going to be able to drink it again without thinking of her.
I was okay with that.
Ten
Paris
“What do you mean they aren’t there? I placed that order before I left L.A.” I listened as the manager of my pet boutique tried to explain why the bedazzled dog collars shipment was late.
“Did you call the supplier?” I asked. “Those are our biggest sellers around the holidays.”
Dammit. I didn’t have time for this. The holiday party was tonight, and I’d spent the past three days decking every damn hall...well...aisle in the Holly Jolly Feed and Seed to get ready for it.
Christmas music was playing throughout the entire store this week, though in keeping with the country theme of the Feed and Seed side, Alan Jackson was crooning about a Honky Tonk Christmas.
Back home, I was solidly into alternative rock, and my playlist included Imagine Dragons and Panic at the Disco, but damn if country music wasn’t starting to grow on me. I flipped through Lydia’s CDs—Jesus, she actually still used CDs to play music—and pulled out a couple more country Christmas CDs for the party, George Strait for Sandy because she had a serious thing for that guy and Kenny Chesney for Jaden. Okay, fine...Chesney was for me.
“Earth to Paris,” my manager, Janice, said so loudly I had to pull my phone away from my ear. “Are you even listening?”
I hadn’t been. I mean shit, this is what I paid her to handle. I was up to my eyeballs in eggnog and tinsel at the moment, and I was finding it very difficult to run two businesses in two different states. “Text me the number of the company. I’ll call them first thing in the morning and see if I can speed up delivery.”
“When are you coming back?”
Janice’s question hung in the air. Mainly because I couldn’t answer it. I hadn’t had another nibble on the Holly Jolly Feed and Seed since the idiots from Indianapolis had come, seen, and then not called back, and God only knew when I’d find someone else interested in a shop like this.
“This really isn’t a good time,” I said. “I’ll take care of the collars and call you back tomorrow.”
I hung up, frustrated as hell.
Sandy came out of the back workroom with her arms weighted down with colorfully wrapped packages.
“Let me help you with those,” I said, rushing over to relieve her of half a dozen boxes.
“Oh, thank you, dear. I was trying to keep up with the presents, but the shop was busier than usual today, and I fell behind. I swear it was a revolving door of ladies dropping goodies off. I just need to add these to Santa’s sack.”
The Ladies Auxiliary of the North Pole Fire Department apparently held countless fundraisers throughout the year, so that each child who attended the town’s holiday social would receive a gift from Santa. According to Sandy, Lydia had started the tradition and the party the first year she’d opened the store, and nothing—not even the blizzard ten years earlier—had stopped Santa from coming to the Holly Jolly Feed and Seed to deliver presents to the good children of North Pole.
Joe had filled me in on twenty-plus years of holiday party highlights last night as the two of us cuddled on my couch, Louis on Joe’s lap, Roscoe on mine. It had felt ridiculously domestic.
And I’d loved it. Loved listening to him talk about past holidays. He’d been a kid himself when the tradition of the party had started, and his first gift from Santa had been a hacky sack, which cracked me up. Even more so when Joe confessed he still had it, and he was kickass at it. I tried to convince him that wasn’t the sort of thing you told people, but he accused me of being jealous of his mad skills.
To make matters worse, he’d shown up with it this morning and actually gotten me to kick the thing around with him for half an hour. It had been silly and more fun than I cared to admit. And Joe was right. He was great at it.
“Okay, dear. Jaden and I are going to go home and get dressed for the party. We’ll be back here in half an hour or so to help with all the finishing touches before the guests arrive.”
“Santa’s really coming?” Jaden asked his grandmother, who covertly winked at me as she said, “Only if you shake a leg and come on. We’re running late.”
I waved goodbye to Sandy and Jaden. “See you in a little while.”
I needed to get ready for the party as well, but I was too nervous about tonight. The holiday party had obviously been a big deal to my Aunt Lydia and to the locals. I didn’t want to screw it up.
“Dammit,” I muttered when I realized one of the sprigs of mistletoe Joe had hung this morning had fallen down. Dragging a chair over, I picked the mistletoe up and climbed up, struggling to reach the hook. Teetering on tiptoe, I prayed I didn’t fall and bust my ass. That would be a great way to make a stressful day even more painful.
“Hey, whoa.” I heard Joe’s voice a second before I felt his steadying hands on my rear end. “What are you doing?”
“The mistletoe fell.” With him spotting me, I was able to slip the ribbon over the hook. “There.”
Joe
reached for my hand, helping me down. “You should have asked me to do that. Or left it down. We’ve hung up enough mistletoe that we’re in danger of turning the Holly Jolly into Lover’s Lane. Put a few glasses of the spiked eggnog in Bob’s hand, and none of the lovely ladies of North Pole are safe under the mistletoe.”
“Thanks for the warning,” I said with a tired grin. “I’ll give Bob a wide berth tonight. Your mom and Jaden went home to get ready.”
He nodded. “Guess that’s our cue to go get dressed as well. You ready?”
I looked around, hesitant to leave. “I feel like maybe there’s something I’m forgetting to do.”
Joe grasped my hand and dragged me to the counter, picking up my coat. “Paris. Astronauts can see the Holly Jolly from space, we’ve strung up so many lights. The good ladies in town have wrapped everything that doesn’t move within a ten-mile radius and made enough Christmas cookies to choke Jim’s entire herd of cattle. There is nothing else to do now except enjoy the party.”
I let him lead me to the front door, but I turned around when we got there, looking at the store, the decorations, the lights, the huge tree in the back corner with Santa’s huge chair sitting next to it. “It does look pretty good, doesn’t it?” I said.
“It looks perfect. Lydia would be proud of you.”
I’d never met Aunt Lydia, never knew anything about her while she lived except that my dad affectionately called her kooky and she had some connection at the bank who hooked her up with crisp, clean five-dollar bills every year on my birthday.
Since moving to North Pole, however, she’d become real. It was obvious she’d made a huge impact on the people in this town, and they’d loved her. And over the past few weeks, I’d come to love her too. More than that, I regretted never getting to know her before she died.
So Joe’s comment touched me more deeply than I would have imagined.
I turned to him and smiled, and then I stretched up on tiptoe to kiss him. I could tell my impromptu kiss surprised him. We’d been very careful to keep our affair a secret, and now, here I was, kissing him in the front windows of the Holly Jolly where anyone passing on Main Street could see us.
Joe’s shock didn’t last more than a second before his arms were around my waist and his tongue was in my mouth. God, the man could kiss.
His common sense kicked in first—in truth, I’m not sure mine ever would have—and he broke the kiss, his lips tipped up in an amused grin. “Don’t mean to brag, but I didn’t even need the eggnog or the mistletoe.”
I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Come on, Santa.”
He’d dropped his Santa costume by my place earlier today. The plan was for him to dress there—to ensure that Jaden wouldn’t catch sight of him at home—then I’d text him once all the kids were there, and he’d walk the back way from my house to the rear entrance of the store and enter from the workroom, grabbing the sack of toys that was stowed there.
Once his Santa duties were done, he planned to go back to my house, change into his street clothes, and then show up at the party as himself.
He held my hand the whole way to my place, claiming he did it because I was always falling on my ass. I didn’t bother to point out I’d stopped falling ever since trading in my beloved Fendi boots for his mother’s sturdy winter ones. I mean, why the hell would I? I had no problem with Joe holding my hand.
I had no problem with anything Joe did to me.
In fact...as soon as we walked into my house, I turned around, pushing him against the front door, expanding on that kiss we started at the store.
Joe’s hands wrapped around me, gripping my ass and pulling me closer to him. I could feel his erection through his jeans.
It was stupid to start something we didn’t have the time to finish. I needed to change into my elf costume and return to the store in twenty minutes. While the idea of a quickie was appealing, it occurred to me I’d much rather have hours—no, days, weeks, months—wrapped up in Joe’s arms.
Months?
That thought had me pulling away from him. I wasn’t staying here months. I wasn’t even supposed to be here beyond two weeks.
Joe didn’t pick up on my sudden freak-out. Thank God. Instead, he gave me that adorable lopsided grin, his voice filled with regret. “It’s going to be a long night.”
I laughed because that was the right response, the one that would keep him from realizing my heart was racing, my ears thudding, my head reeling.
I’d initiated this, proclaiming I was going to teach him all about casual sex. Yeah, that had blown up in my face.
Because it was starting to feel like I hadn’t taught Joe a damn thing.
In truth, I think I was the one who’d learned something I hadn’t intended, hadn’t thought I wanted.
It was feeling a lot like Joe had taught me what it felt like to fall in love with a sweet, sexy, romantic Indiana boy.
And the most shocking part of that was…it didn’t scare me or make me want to puke up duck confit.
“You okay?” he asked when I continued to stare at him like an idiot.
I nodded, afraid to open my mouth, terrified of what would fall out. Because there were three little words definitely clamoring for sound.
But I couldn’t say those to him.
Could I?
Joe smiled and headed upstairs to where we’d stashed his costume while I drifted to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and pulled out the opened bottle of wine. I tugged out the cork and tipped the thing up to my lips, much like I did my first night in North Pole.
Shit.
What do I do now?
Joe
“Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!”
I ducked back into the wooden Santa house behind the huge chair that, honestly, felt a little like a throne during this annual party.
I loved being Santa to the kids. I’d tried getting out of it; I’d tried saying that it was someone else’s turn, but damn, seeing someone’s face light up when you walked into a room was something. Seeing an entire gaggle of little kids lighting up, gasping, grinning, and waving? Yeah, that was kingly shit right there, and I’ll admit, I ate it up.
As Paris, Sandy, and the kids’ parents all distracted them with their new gifts and mountains of cookies and other treats, I snuck out the back door of the little house, crept down the aisle with the snow globes, sprinted for the aisle with the chicken feed, and finally shut myself in the storeroom.
All the while thinking about how it was the look on Paris’ face that was really sticking with me. Sure, I loved making the little kids happy. But Paris had looked almost choked up tonight as we worked together, listening to the kids whisper their secret wishes and handing out gifts. I’d actually seen her brush a tear away when one of the older ladies pulled her aside and told her how the store and the party was exactly the way it had always been when Lydia had put it together. Lenore Arnold told her it was better than Lydia’s parties and that Lydia would have loved it. Paris had needed to excuse herself to the restroom for a bit after that.
I’d grinned like a damn fool through it all.
Because my girl loved it here.
She felt like a part of this town. She was taking pride in the store. She was feeling like she belonged here, and she was putting her heart into it.
I was starting to get my hopes up. I knew better, of course. I’d been down this road before. But this felt different. This felt more real. The other girls I’d fallen for had been here and had been looking for a way out. Paris wasn’t from here. She already had a life outside of North Pole. Her love for this town wasn’t about not knowing anything else or her roots being here. Hell, she hadn’t even wanted to come here. She certainly hadn’t intended to like it.
No, her feelings of pride and happiness and belonging were fully, truly about falling for this place.
Falling for me.
As I slipped out the back door and the icy air hit me in the face, I thought about how conceited that sounded. She hadn
’t said she’d fallen for me. I didn’t know her well enough to know how she acted when she was in love. This was all about how it felt to be with her. How she looked at me. How everything about us from the way she fit in my arms to the way she fit in my nephew’s life felt so fucking right.
I jogged across the backyard to Lydia’s house and let myself in the back door. I quickly stripped out of the Santa suit, shoving it into a sack in the mudroom in case Jaden came over here before I could collect it.
I pulled my regular clothes on quickly. The mudroom wasn’t heated like the rest of the house. I ran a hand through my hair, laced up my boots, shrugged into my coat, and headed back out.
Jaden would want to show me the toy bulldozer he got, and I had to act surprised. I needed about a dozen cookies and maybe some fudge. Then I needed Paris.
I always needed Paris.
It was too soon to tell her that. I knew that deep down. But the urge to blurt it out kept bubbling up.
I made my way to the front of the Holly Jolly and pulled the door open. Jaden thought I’d had a job that ran late outside of town helping a guy with his barn. Jaden, thankfully, didn’t need any further details than that to believe it, and when there were new toys and sugar involved, he wasn’t good at telling time so he wouldn’t realize how long I’d been absent.
The noise had died down significantly, and the crowd was starting to thin out a bit as the families with younger kids had started heading home. I waved to Sandy and started in their direction.
“Look what Santa gave me!” Jaden said, running at me as soon as he spotted me.
“Wow!” I caught him and swung him up in my arms.
“It’s just like the one you and I looked at online!”
“It’s even cooler than it looked!” I said. “I bet Santa did something extra to it for you when he found out you’d be here tonight.”
Jaden’s eyes got wide. “How did he know I’d be here?”
“He knows everything,” I told him with a wink. Jaden told me all about the toys his friends got as I scanned the crowd, looking for Paris. I finally found her over by the registers. She was talking to a couple of men that I didn’t recognize and that didn’t have any kids with them.
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