You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology

by Karina Bliss

  He’d proposed to her that night. She’d been so happy, too. As if, in offering himself to her, he had offered her the whole world.

  And the forever of fun had lasted a few years. It turned out she had wanted more in her world than him, but that hadn’t really been a surprise when he understood how important that was to her, or even a disappointment, just, eventually, a—regret. Because he himself was all he could actually offer her. The rest of what she wanted was even more beyond his control than hers. It wasn’t even happening in his body; it was all in hers. And he knew that his physical distance from it was something for which she had a very hard time forgiving him.

  Although he had tried to control what happened, God. He had tried everything: talking to her the first time—We can try again, honey—oh, shit, had that been a bad idea. And the second time: Don’t think about it, honey, please don’t get your hopes up. In a way, that technique had worked well for him, the second time—to just turn his brain off, not believe in it at all. Except that she had hated him so much for his ability to do that and for his attempts to get her to do it, too. And the third time—he had just lived in pure, knotted dread, so worried about her that he couldn’t even stand to think about the baby at all, except as what the little fetus might do to her if it didn’t, if it didn’t—

  And then it hadn’t.

  And none of his attempts to solve things, to make her better—Maybe we should adopt, or Honey, we’ve got us at least, or Honey, what do you think about a little trip to the Bahamas? India? Mount Everest?—had worked at all.

  He looked down at her now, not really hoping for a spark of that old laughter and not finding it, either. But she settled into the walk, the kitten finally figuring out that the snow wouldn’t hurt her or at least that it was a hurt she could bear, her shoulders relaxing and a little sigh running through her, her face growing thoughtful and quiet, sadness in there, yes, but a sadness with which she had made some kind of peace.

  He took his glove off—stupid armor—and caught a snowflake off her lashes, then rubbed it against her cold-flushed cheek. Her face brightened, like a surprise to her, and she looked up at him. He smiled down at her. “If I drop snow down your neck, will you chase me and kiss me?”

  Her lips curled cautiously up at the corners, her eyes crinkling with a hint of her old humor. That humor was so wary now, and he wanted to coax it out of hiding. It’s all right. I know your laughter got brutalized, but we’re in a safe space now. Aren’t we? “You might be banned from waffles for the rest of your life,” she threatened him, and then her eyes flickered.

  Oh, did you realize that to ban me from waffles, you’d have to actually let me back in for the rest of my life?

  “I guess I won’t risk it,” he said. And then he tripped her and took her down in the snow, just like that, his pulse leaping in a giddy, testosterone-laced surge to be doing something so outrageous in their current circumstances. He cushioned her fall with his arms, bracing himself over her with a grin. “Let’s make a snow angel instead.”

  But her hint of laughter faded away, and he could see her swallow. “I can’t yet,” she whispered. “She would have been four.”

  Their first attempt at a child. Their second attempt would have been a boy of almost three, and their last attempt would have been just turning one. For a moment, visions flashed through his mind—a little blonde girl making snow angels, and a brown-haired boy throwing snowballs at her, and maybe him holding a tiny one-year-old by the hand to help her walk—and his own throat closed. He bent and kissed Kai, slow and firm, and pulled them back to their feet. “All right,” he said quietly and put his arm around her shoulders as they kept walking.

  They hiked a long time, up through the woods. The snow was fresh and quiet under the trees, winds in the upper branches stirring flakes down on them gently, as if they were walking under Kai’s sieve of powdered sugar. He smiled at the thought of comparing the taste of sugar on her skin to that of real snow, and then his smile faded slowly as the idea grew in him, replacing pleasure in the fancy with arousal and a sense of its danger. Yes, kissing her was incredibly dangerous, more dangerous than any risk he had ever taken. He just never knew, now, how Kai might react to anything he did. That certainty of her happiness in him, once so precious, had been entirely destroyed.

  Arousal and its danger laced together, strengthening each other like rival armies inciting each other to battle. The white-and-shadow quiet under the trees contrasted with the thump of his blood through his veins. A bright red cardinal flashed by like a glimpse of a broken heart, and he turned her against a pine tree and sipped a snowflake right off her cheek.

  Ah—cold and fragile, yielding instantly to the warmth of his mouth and her skin. Not sweet, like her sugar, but purified of flavor.

  He caught snow off the nearest branch and rubbed a pinch of it over her cheekbone, making her gasp and shiver. He breathed an apology over that snow, melting it, and kissed the cold spot, warming her up again.

  With a little sigh, she nestled her cheek against his kiss. So he rubbed more snow over her lips, and she winced from the cold and opened her mouth to protest—and he kissed her there, too, drinking the snow all away, slipping into the heat of her mouth, until cold held them in its grip everywhere except for the meeting of their mouths, their tongues, the way he took and took and took from her and tried to give back.

  She liked it so much more than he expected. Even after yesterday, on her granite island and in her shower, he still didn’t believe in the way she warmed to him in a rush of grateful hunger, her mouth opening and taking, her hands climbing up to press cold gloves into his neck, frustrating him beyond belief. He wanted her to just strip those gloves off and press her ice-cold fingers straight into him.

  Anyone would think he would have had the good sense to do this with the snow right by her hot tub, but no, here they were, deep in the woods with no recourse against the cold all around them but each other. Their bodies, their warmth.

  And lots and lots of icy snow.

  Let’s make it melt for us. Let’s kiss it all away.

  I love you, Kai. Are you ready to love me just a little again?

  He pushed her up on his thigh against the tree, thrilling to the power in his hands, how easily he could handle her body compared to every other thing he had had to handle in their lives. Something visceral and animal surged through him at the power, fed by the scent of pine and the cold hush. “I could take you right here,” he said, guttural.

  Her hips surged up against his, still such an unexpected hunger for him that he nearly toppled them in the snow right there. “Oh, God, I love it when you say things like that with that perfect, perfect accent of yours,” she said, petting his head frantically with her clumsy gloves and pulling herself up into him.

  What? Didn’t he talk like a normal person? But he couldn’t check because her mouth had tangled with his, as if she was starved for him.

  No, she couldn’t possibly be as starved as he was. He devoured her mouth to prove it, a battle of starvations. God, all that hunger in the shower had been nothing. A greater hunger swamped him, as if yesterday’s attack had just been some tiny signal to his body that it had the right to an appetite again. Oh, God, she tasted so—he wanted so much more—he—

  “If I could take you right here—” His voice sounded harsher than the tree bark under his palms. He lowered it. “I would rub snow all over your breasts.” She flinched at the thought as he cupped them through her thick jacket. His voice dropped until it was almost as soft as the hushed woods: “And then suck it all off.”

  She shivered, from cold or heat or maybe the battle of both.

  “I think I’d even rub it here.” His hand massaged into the V of her jeans, thorough and when he felt the hot hint of dampness, harder. “And then make that melt, too.”

  “I’d freeze,” she protested, even as she climbed into him, seeking warmth against that idea of freezing, seeking it from him. Rubbing herself against him, oh, shit, y
es, God. “Kurt, you wouldn’t do that to me. I’d freeze.”

  Maybe. His brain had exploded into that place of arousal where it didn’t really matter what made sense, what might actually work. “I’d like to try it, though,” he breathed, rubbing her jeans harder. Hunger and power leaped in one great glorious surge in him when her head arched back, when her body grew pliant to him. God, he loved it when he shut her brain off, shut off all her ability to take action, as if her whole self just yielded to the need to be his. He loved how the harder he got, the more he wanted to take her, the softer she got and the more she wanted to be taken.

  “No,” she managed to whisper, shaking her head. “No way.”

  “Let’s get back to your hot tub.” He grabbed her wrist and pulled her from the tree. “Damn it, why did we hike so far away?”

  “Kurt, I swear to God, if you try to rub snow on my chacha, I am wrapping one great bit fistful of it around your dick,” she told him, even as she let herself be dragged along after him. He nearly stopped dead, and it wasn’t from the fistful of snow image, which, granted, was hideous—maybe that whole snow against her sex fantasy wasn’t one he should actually do—but because she sounded—well, she sounded like the woman who had once dropped snow down his collar and dodged laughing behind trees until he caught her.

  “Just wait and see if you like it first,” he said soothingly, while the fact that he was teasing her ran through him giddily. He allowed himself the daring, long-lost privilege of a smirk at her. “You never know, you might beg for more.”

  She scooped up a fistful of snow and lobbed it at him.

  Good God. She had actually done that. Just thrown a lopsided snowball at him, as if laughter and teasing had surged past these terrible years and broken out again. He grabbed his own fistful and threw it back at her in a wild burst of so much testosterone and so much hunger that he accidentally aimed it with his full competitive skill and hit her straight in the face.

  Her jaw dropped in pure indignation—Kurt never hit her straight in the face in snowball fights, and he had a second’s guilty relief that he hadn’t taken the time to pack his snow into a proper snowball, before she jumped up, grabbed the branch over her head—and jerked all her weight down on it, leaping to the refuge of the trunk as snow dumped on top of him.

  He burst out laughing as he shook himself, so much happiness pressing suddenly through him that it threatened to split his skin, and at the same time this dominant greediness, so that he just had to catch her, take her, make this moment all his.

  He lunged for her so menacingly that she squeaked with alarm and dodged behind the tree, then to another tree. And then they were weaving in and out among the pines. He wanted to catch her so damn bad and yet he wanted to toy with her, too, cat and mouse, make her squeal and tremble in terror of being caught and yet want it so much she forgot everything but him.

  He surged at her, growling, and she threw a fast snowball at him, too unnerved to pack and aim it properly. He let her dodge away to a refuge behind a big oak where she couldn’t see his body . . . and then he stalked her around it, coming in close to the trunk, making her peek one way and another in vain, her tension ratcheting up a notch, and then another, until he lunged at her with a growl—

  She screamed again, louder, freer, ever happier, and ran to the next tree, and the next, as he chased her and caught her and let her manage to wiggle free, taking his snow punishment as she tried to defend herself and then catching her again.

  I love you, I love you, I love you so damn much, Kai, so much that he finally couldn’t stand it anymore, and he tackled her in one hard lunge, taking her down and cupping her head in the snow with his bare hands to protect it as he kissed her and kissed her.

  “Is that hot tub any closer yet?” he groaned, rolling them over to get her out of the snow. Christ, she was cute. She looked just like she had the day he had proposed. Except for the thinner cheeks, but let’s just not think about those things right now, sweetheart. Let’s just be us, let’s just be happy. I think that might be how life works, that sometimes it takes all your happiness away and you just have to build it back, bit by bit. Or some people don’t build it back, but we’re not going to be those people. We’re not going to leave our lives in ruins; we’re going to put them back together again. He pulled her down to him and kissed her again, and again, in no hurry to ever let this kissing end.

  In case he couldn’t get it started again.

  “I’m never getting so far away from a hot tub in the winter again in my life,” he swore finally, pushing them to their feet again. “How much farther? A couple of miles?”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll have forgotten all about it by then,” she said soothingly, patting him on the back like a small boy she was trying to console, with a little smirk.

  “You’ve forgotten the persistence of my imagination, Kai Winters.” He dusted her hair off and pulled her hat back on her head, loving everything about this moment—her teasing, the way she had forgotten sorrow, even that reaffirmation of his name on her.

  She grinned. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she said saucily, taunting him with the swing of her hips as she headed back to the trail. What a beautiful sight that swinging butt was. She still hadn’t remembered to be unhappy.

  “Are you sure?” he murmured menacingly, as he came close behind her, enjoying being the hungry threat bearing down on her. “That you’ll need to see it? Are you sure I couldn’t blindfold you and still somehow manage to convince you how long my imagination can last, Kai?”

  She darted a glance back at him over her shoulder, her eyes brilliant with alarm, but it was a fun alarm, she was loving every second of it, he could tell.

  He caught up with her enough to grab her by the collar and run a little dusting of snow up and down her nape. She yelped and shivered all over, and he bent down and growled low in her ear. Her head arched back to him at that, her eyes closing, and he laughed, taking her hand and falling into step beside her. Fuck, this might actually turn into a good Christmas.

  Chapter Seven

  God, he felt so animal, so animal, so animal, sinking her into the hot tub naked, lifting her out just enough to rub her breasts with snow while she writhed and half-fought and entirely yielded, sucking the snow off her nipples, sinking her down again, wallowing in sensations until there was nothing left of them but senses. Until they were nothing but animals. Utter animals.

  He did try the snow on her sex. He’d kept her in the hot tub a long time by then, until they were both much too hot, and he laid her back on the edge of it and watched her face and watched her sex as he rubbed a finger of snow up those intimate lips. She shivered and clenched and tried to fight it, and he parted her and slipped more cold snow with his finger deep inside her. She flinched, trying to get away—but not too hard, oh, no, she let him hold her down, panting and panting. God, she liked it when he controlled her. It always drove him crazy, how much she liked that. He bent and took her with his mouth again, sucking all that coldness away. She winced into it so much and she melted afterward so well that he did it over and over, even testing a snow-cold thumb on her clitoris, feeling vaguely, satisfyingly cruel, utterly, evilly delicious as she flinched and melted, flinched and melted, let him conquer all cold, let him make her come.

  He loved taking her in that hot tub and snow. He did all kinds of things to her in that hot tub. He hadn’t thought he had so much animal in him. He hadn’t known that so did she—melting into him, rounding into him, arching into him, wallowing in him as if she never wanted to climb out of the sensuality of it enough to let her brain turn on ever again.

  He put his mouth to her and sucked her humanity straight out of her. Made her scream. God, but he loved making her scream.

  Loved the helpless, violent convulsions of her, how she became so weak and vulnerable in his hands, loved petting those out and driving her up into them again. He loved it probably past any kindness, because he drove her into exhaustion and then had to carry her to th
e bed.

  And he took her one last time there, while she was almost asleep, just lax and willing, took her just because they were in a bed, a big king marital bed, and he wanted to make it his bed, their bed, and even though he had just come not long ago in the hot tub, the need to take her again rose up in him, too strong. He didn’t care if she half-dreamed her way through it. He had taken her plenty of times in his dreams, in the past year and a half.

  Her turn to let him into her dreams.

  Exhausted with all that animal sex, she didn’t seem to mind, her body still willing, easy, her arms sliding loosely over him but still holding him as he took her, her body curling into him when he was done, as they both fell asleep.

  And that was the most beautiful thing of all, to sleep in a big bed together again.

  He hadn’t always realized this, back in the days when their future could only hold bright, happy things, but to sleep together in a bed together might very well be so beautiful that if it was all the beauty his life could hold—he would still take it.

  Chapter Eight

  Waking was sleepy, happy, and then it shocked through Kai that the long body lying so close to hers wasn’t a dream, and she held herself still, heart in her throat, as if that dream might catch her and turn into a nightmare.

  The potential nightmare slumbered, though, beautiful. A lithe, long, muscled body, warming all the space under the covers. He wasn’t eating enough, she thought, and touched his wrist, there were the tendons were so relaxed now in sleep. Of course, he wasn’t. He was probably swimming at lunch and running again in the evening, going rock climbing on weekends, playing Ultimate relentlessly—anything but sitting down at the kitchen table and . . . and—eating cold cereal by himself?

  Of course he was.

  Grief squeezed her again for all the hurt she had done him. But she realized she no longer wanted to shut him out of her life so that she didn’t have to deal with that grief. Whether the grief had just grown more manageable with time, or whether her heart had grown stronger from all it had had to learn to bear, she did not know, but she breathed through the wave of grief quietly, letting it subside and just rest there, not trying to heal it or stop it or chase it away. Just letting it be. It was there. It would always be there. If she left it alone and did not worry at it, maybe it would take a nap.