Fate, Snow & Mistletoe: A Sex and Lies Holiday Novella

by Kris Calvert

  I nodded. She scoffed in reply.

  “Mimi, have you ever been naked and in the arms of a man?”

  She paused, looking away. I knew the answer. For all the blustering rhetoric Mimi had to offer, she was, in fact, a proper lady. She’d even admitted she wasn’t a risk taker.

  “Have you ever had a naked woman in your arms, Cecil Winterbourne?”

  I couldn’t look her in the eye and when I hesitated she reminded me of our pact.

  “Honesty, Cecil. That was our deal.”

  “I have not made love to a woman. I’m a virgin—just like you. But I know—I mean I know how to—”

  “What?” She exhaled. “Do it? So do I—I mean, at least I understand the dynamic of it.”

  “Yeah, me too.” I stuttered through my words, but she didn’t seem to mind. Now feeling her tremble in my arms I knew that like me, she was nervous.

  “What should we do about this?”

  “I beg your pardon?” I asked, now sitting up to look her in the eye. I was a lot of things, but a cad wasn’t one of them.

  “You want me, right? You want to make love to me?”

  “Now?” I asked, unable to hide the surprise in my voice.

  “Look, I know I’m supposed to act coy, like I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do or because you’re heading off to war and who knows what could happen. You say to me, Mimi, I may never come home. All we have is right here. Right now”.

  “What is the meaning of this?” I asked.

  “Then I say, I can’t,” she continued, not giving my question the least bit of attention. “While signaling I can. But none of that even matters because you stopped listening to what I was saying the moment I woke up naked in your arms.”

  “Why are you ruining this?”

  “Am I?” she asked.

  Climbing out from under the blankets, I stood in front of her naked, my hands on my hips in utter frustration. “Jesus, Mimi. You could screw up a wet dream.”

  “What?” she asked, unable to keep her inquisitive stare from my manhood. “There’s one I’ve never heard.”

  “I’m serious,” I said taking a blanket from the top and holding it between my legs to barely cover myself. “Laying here with you was one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I’ve always loved you Mimi. You know that. And now you had to go and ruin everything by cheapening it.”

  She batted her eyes at me, not saying a word.

  “And the worst part is you don’t even know what you’re doing to me.”

  I took a deep breath, my shoulders falling in frustration as I searched the room for any semblance of clothes to cover myself.

  Without warning, Mimi stood, allowing the blankets covering her body to fall to the floor. Silently, she took three steps to meet me, and I took her in—all of her. Her milky skin was beautiful. She was everything I’d ever fantasized she’d be and more.

  “What are you doing?” I asked in a whisper. Pulling the blanket from my hand and dropping it to the floor, she pressed her perfectly nude body to mine, trailing her fingers up my arms to rest on my shoulders.

  Taking her face in my hands, I kissed her—years of frustration and longing rushing forward in one moment in time. My dream of caressing her body and showering her with love was now a reality.

  I parted her mouth with my tongue, feeling the pulsing influx of blood to her lips. Her silky nakedness under my fingertips set my body on fire. I breathed her in, her sweet smell a devastating and invisible biological weapon that caused me to become delirious in the moment. And then I had a thought.

  “Wait,” I said, stopping her as she reached for my manhood. The surprise on her face made me smile, and at the same time, I needed to hear from her that this was what she wanted with all her heart and soul before we went any further.

  “What?” She batted her blue eyes at me. “Did I do something wrong already?”

  I shook my head. “Of course not. I just want to make sure,” I paused to kiss her—unable to stare at her and not put my lips on hers. “I want to make sure this is what you want, Marilyn.”

  “It’s Mimi, and yes. I want this. I want you, Cecil. Isn’t this what you want?”

  I filled my lungs with air, unconsciously readying myself to make love to the one girl I’d cared for my entire life. With a nod, I exhaled. “More than anything else in the world.”

  She closed her eyes, lifting her face to mine for another drugging kiss and I obliged her, bringing our bodies back to the blanket covered floor.

  Propping her head with a feather pillow, I smiled down at her heavy-lidded gaze. “This is everything to me,” she said.

  I covered our bodies with a quilt, closing out the world and whispered in her ear. “You are everything to me.”

  December 25, 1941

  Marilyn

  I awoke to the sound of ice pecking on the windowpane of the master bedroom. The fire in the fireplace across from the bed had all but gone out. I rolled over to find Cecil stretched out, covering the entire left side of the bed. His arms over his head, I could now easily see the muscles he hid under his made-to-order dress shirts.

  He looked like a sleeping child, sandy hair and rosy cheeks. The dog tags lying on his bare chest told a different story.

  Propping myself up on my elbow, I watched him breathe in and out, playing the last twelve hours over in my head. Once we started making love, we’d barely come up for air. The first time was awkward, but then we got the hang of it and suddenly we weren’t thinking at all but feeling—all inhibitions thrown to the wind.

  I traced an imaginary line down the side of his arm and wondered if it had been as magical for him as it was for me. I felt different inside somehow—and it wasn’t that I was a woman now. My theory had always been you become a woman when you begin to think on your own and you stand up for what you believe in. I’d been doing that for a few years now. This was different. It was like a door had been opened for me and I was ushered in. It felt like coming home to a place I’d never known and now that I’d arrived, I didn’t know if I wanted to leave.

  I’d made a promise to Cecil that what happened at Winter Lodge would stay here, and I fully intended to keep that promise—no matter how hard it would be to leave my new happy place and close the door behind me.

  I brushed a stray feather—evidence the down pillows were tossed to and fro during last night’s love making—away from his face, rousing him unintentionally.

  “How’s my beautiful girl this morning?” His voice was soft and ragged as he rolled onto his side. He blinked hard, obviously trying to wake from a dead sleep.

  I didn’t say anything, but offered a tiny smile.

  “What is it?” he asked, stroking my exposed arm with the back of his hand. “Everything okay?”

  I nodded, not making so much as a peep.

  “It doesn’t seem as if everything’s okay.”

  Leaning in, he lightly brushed his mouth across my lips, then pulled away to look me in the face.

  “Mimi. Say something. I know things might seem different in the light of day, but nothing has changed for me.”

  I nodded again.

  “I need to know you’re okay. I need to know you’re okay with me—with us.”

  I managed two words. “I am.”

  He pulled me into his chest, kissing the top of my head and hugging me tightly. Letting out a heavy sigh, he began to speak in a soft whisper. “Mimi, last night was…last night was magical. At least for me. I’ve never done this before, so I can only tell you what’s going on in my head right now.”

  “Did you have any idea this was going to happen?”

  “Seriously?” he asked with a laugh. “Of course not.”

  He looked to the ceiling, searching for words. “Look, I’ve always, you know, cared about you. I think you know that. But I didn’t have an agenda. I may have fantasized a few times about this. Okay,” he said with a sigh of confession. “I’ve fantasized about it a lot. In fact, you are
my favorite fantasy.”

  “Really? You fantasized about…me?” I didn’t know if I should be offended or flattered.

  “Well… yeah. I’m a man, Mimi. That’s what we do. We think about girls—like, all the time.”

  “Hmmm.” I didn’t know how to ask my next question, but under our pact of honesty I blurted it out. “Did it live up to your expectations? It’s pretty hard to compete against a fantasy.”

  He pulled me close to him, gliding his hands up and down my bare back giving me chills. “This has been the most wonderful Christmas of my entire life. I can’t think of a better memory to take with me when I leave. You. Me. This. It’s everything. Did I—”

  He paused and I knew it was my turn to confess about the last twelve hours. “Did you satisfy me?” I asked, knowing if I embarrassed him enough he might leave our special night alone for us to contemplate separately and not examine like a corpse, post-mortem.

  “Honestly, I was going to ask if it met your expectations, but sure. Did I satisfy your needs?”

  “I don’t have a lot to compare it with.”

  “Me either,” he said. “But it was still the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I mean, I’ll never be completely satisfied.”

  “What? Why not?”

  He looked me in the eye, brushing the back of his hand across my cheek. Tears glistened in his eyes and I felt the truthfulness of his bare soul. “I’ll always want you, Mimi.” He swallowed hard, the momentary pause capturing the emotion that had run away with itself. “I’ll always want more of you—with you. And I know that sounds crazy, and I know I’m leaving to fight in a war I might not survive. There are a lot of things I’m unsure of. But I know one thing for sure. This—you and me? No matter what happens for the rest of my life, I’ll always want you. I’ll always want this.”

  “Making love,” I said, turning my flushed face into his body. I didn’t want him to read the awkwardness on my face. “It was…”

  “What?”

  “I feel like I should say it was lovely, and it was. It was,” I repeated as I searched for a way to put into words how I felt. “But it’s so much more than that. More like…a rapture. My soul has been awakened. I’ve always known I was a part of something bigger—you know how you just know that? All my life I’ve been the black sheep of my family. I didn’t fit in and what’s more, I think I didn’t like fitting in. My mother always nagging, everyone telling me I’m not living up to my potential—meaning being a wife and mother and not an independent woman. Still…” I paused to take a breath in my stream of conscious diatribe. “I’ve always thought I was a part of something bigger. And now I know there’s more out there—you know—to everything.”

  “Like what?” he asked, pulling away to rest on his elbow again. Suddenly I had the attention of his mind and not just his yearning body.

  “Life.” I sat up, pulling the sheet under my arms to cover myself. “Soul shaking, gut wrenching, who-knows-what-could-happen-next, dare-to-be-great life.”

  A smile gently broke out across Cecil’s face. He understood. “Yeah.”

  “So you have to come back to it, Cecil. You have to be careful and you have to come home.”

  He brushed the hair from my shoulder. “I want to come home to you, Mimi.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “I’ve,” he began with a stutter. “I’ve fallen in lo—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Why? Why can’t I tell you how I feel? What I feel. That was our deal, Mimi. Honesty.”

  “I know. It’s just. I don’t want to spoil it. That’s all.”

  “How could telling you how I feel spoil it?”

  “Because you’re leaving. I can’t be left behind with all these feelings. You know? I just can’t.”

  “And what about me?” he asked. “Don’t I get a say in what I want you to know before I leave? What if I never come home again and I regret I didn’t tell you?”

  “Fine,” I said sitting up, my hair cascading in the space between us. “Say it.”

  Abruptly, Cecil pushed the covers away, got out of bed and walked naked to the bathroom. “Forget it,” he called over his shoulder.

  He slammed the door to the master bathroom. I could hear the water running and decided he was probably going to take a bath. Maybe that’s what I needed as well. A long hot soak to think about my life and what had happened in the last forty-eight hours.

  Wrapping a sheet around my body, I walked the long hallway outside the master bedroom, the white bedding trailing behind me like a bridal train. Ducking into a guest room, I found it too cold without a fire. Turning on my heels, I stormed back to the master bedroom, throwing open the bathroom door without so much as a knock to find Cecil standing in front of the mirror, a towel wrapped around his waist, as he brushed his teeth.

  He looked to me with a foaming mouth. “Wha’?”

  “I just.” I didn’t know what I wanted to say, only that I needed to say something. I’d spent the night making love to the man and now when he wanted to profess his true feelings for me, I was cutting him off at the knees.

  Cecil rinsed and spit. “What?” This time his question was clearer.

  “I ah…ah…I wanted to say that I need some time to process everything that’s—you know—transpired, Cecil. I wouldn’t change what happened between us, I just need…a moment to take a hot bath and think. This was a big deal for me.”

  Without so much as a word, Cecil walked to the Roman tub, turning on the water and stopping the drain. He held his hand under the faucet, waiting for the water to warm, then tossed a handful of sweet smelling bath salts from the shelf on the wall into the water.

  Returning to the sink, he rinsed his mouth and strolled past me, stopping to kiss me on the cheek. “Take as much time as you’d like. I’ll shower in the other room, and meet you downstairs.”

  I nodded without looking at him. When he made it to the door, he stopped before closing it. “For the record, this was a big deal for me, too.”

  I washed the smell of the mossy pond out of my hair and soaked in the floral scented bath. A layer of steam rose from the water and I knew as much as I’d love to stay in the warm tub forever, eventually I’d need to face the music—face Cecil.

  What would I say? How would I say it? I’d never had feelings for a man like this before and I really didn’t like having them for Cecil. He was young—too young for me. And he was leaving. I always pictured my first experience would be with the man I intended to marry and yet I’d fully and deliberately committed to being with him yesterday and well into the night. Now, here it was Christmas Day. Alone in the cocoon of Winter Lodge we’d found the confidence and security to share everything—including our bodies. Now the snow was melting outside and reality was creeping in like the daylight through the cracks of the shuttered windows.

  I climbed from the tub and wrapped a fluffy robe around my body, tying it off at my waist. I pulled the plug at the bottom of the tub and watched it all rush down the drain, the last of the water in a vortex before finally giving in to the momentum. I felt like those last few bubbles—spent, caught up in something bigger than I could stop. I was circling the drain, afraid to relent.

  A knock came at the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Everything okay?” Cecil called from the other side.

  Instead of answering, I stared at myself in the mirror. My cheeks flush, my hair wet and combed back. It wasn’t a state I’d ever let a man see me in before. But Cecil was no longer just a man. He was the man who suddenly knew me better than anyone else.

  I opened the door and looked him in the eye even though I didn’t want to. “Hi,” I said sheepishly.

  “Are you okay?”

  I nodded. “I’m fine.”

  “Get dressed. Meet me downstairs. I’ve got some things I want to say to you and you’re going to listen.”

  I nodded again. “Give me a few minutes.”

  He stroked my arm from the shoulder d
own. The feeling of his strong hand caused my stomach to flip flop just as it had yesterday when he kissed me.

  “Take all the time you need. We’re not going anywhere. Not today. It’s Christmas.”

  I watched him walk away, closing the door to the bedroom behind him. I looked to the king-sized bed. The covers had been thrown over the pillows. Cecil had done his best to cover up what happened last night. I was confused and felt tears well in my eyes—a lump form in my throat. Shaking it off, I looked into the mirror at my reflection, “Marilyn Richardson, you are not the kind of girl who cries over a man.”

  Filled with the energy of my little pep talk, I decided to put on a dress and heels after drying my hair and fashioning it into a bun at the nape of my neck. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than having what my mother referred to as the unkempt look.

  Using a little bit of powder, rouge and a light pink lipstick, I checked out the dark green dress I’d chosen in the mirror before walking out and closing the door behind me. My face had a certain glow about it that I’d never noticed before.

  Once in the hallway, I could immediately hear music playing on the radio downstairs. Descending the staircase, I noticed Cecil had lit the decorations—all of them.

  Outside the ice storm had turned back into fluffy snow and a fire roared in the great hall, warming the room to a beautiful orange glow.

  Seated on the couch, sipping from a coffee mug, was Cecil. Standing upon seeing me, he watched my every move, following me to the bottom of the winding staircase. The smile on his face grew exponentially the closer I got to him. It wasn’t necessarily love, more like pride.

  He was dressed in black slacks, white shirt and red tie. His Christmas ensemble was topped off by a red cardigan. He was as handsome as I’d ever seen him and he had a glow about him that matched my own.

  He held out his hand to me, assisting in the last two steps.

  “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you look more radiant, Mimi.”

  “Funny you should say that. I was thinking the same thing about you.”

  “May I get you a coffee? Orange juice?” he asked.