You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology

by Karina Bliss

  I can still make him happy?

  I can, can’t I? I can still make him happy.

  That was kind of a precious miracle in and of itself.

  She kissed him, and he set the knife carefully far away from them as he kissed her back—which was so like him, that care and attention. She kissed him more for it, and then, and then—all the pain she had caused him rose up in her, and she pulled back, ashamed, knowing she didn’t deserve this. Damn it, would the weight of her guilt never go away?

  Kurt must have thought her withdrawal was from another wave of grief for the miscarriages, because he squeezed her shoulder and pulled a feather out of her hair, going back to work on the potatoes without comment. By the time the ornaments were dry enough to let them decorate the tree, a plethora of scents filled the house to bursting: cinnamon, cookies, stew, the fir itself as it prickled over her arms, the fire Kurt started. Given that she was a food stylist who often did her work here, scents of food had filled this house ever since she had moved into it. And yet it was so different when the scents were shared.

  So much warmer, so much more full. As if life was full. Not this great empty thing she had to get through.

  She kissed him again, and he pulled her into his arms, squeezing her far too hard.

  He couldn’t seem to let go. Even when she had to wiggle for freedom because her lungs started protesting, he couldn’t loosen his arms, and when she squeaked, he took them down onto the plush rug in front of the fire. The early winter evening was lowering by then, gray deepening toward night over the snow, and their fire and their tree lights glowed over their faces in the otherwise unlit room.

  Kurt captured her wrists over her head as the only thing he seemed to know to do with his hands to keep them from squeezing her too tightly. When she tried to pull free, his hold tightened. “Kurt,” she protested, half-laughingly.

  “In a minute.” The firelight gilded over his cheekbones, throwing them into relief, his face intense, severe.

  Arousal washed through her. Of course it did. How could she help it? They had discovered a long, long time ago that sometimes she liked that game. And oh, so did he. But she said, “Kurt, no. I want my hands free.”

  With some difficulty, he pulled his hands from her wrists and sank them instead into the thick rug, digging into it.

  “I want to do this,” she said softly, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing him as tightly as he had her.

  He let his body lower onto hers with the heavy voluptuousness of a man sinking into a bed after a long, brutal day. The warmth of him rushed from her fingertips to her toes. She ran those fingertips over him, seeking still more of that warmth, like an impossible addiction.

  “I want to do this,” she whispered, unbuttoning his shirt and finding her way in to his skin. She shivered with the pleasure of it, as if she hadn’t just felt his skin that morning, as if it had been years.

  The white Christmas lights sparkled over his strong, smooth back when she bared it. She chased them over his skin, fascinated, stroking them as if they were a dream she could capture. On the tree, the lights shimmered off the glitter of the snowflakes and brown bears and red cardinals, sparkling over this dream, this dream she could have.

  Still.

  He would still let her have him.

  That was such an incredible thing.

  He made love to her intensely, in the firelight and the tree lights, kissing her everywhere, being kissed everywhere, stroking her too deeply, gripping her too hard, and breathing in hard gasps of pleasure when she gripped and stroked him, too. He rolled her over him and sat her up astride him for what seemed to be the pure pleasure of seeing her there, of stroking the lights over her skin, maybe of believing in her. He rolled her under him again in a sudden, hard rush, as if he had to capture her beneath him before she disappeared.

  “I love you,” she said suddenly, and he jerked, his hands spasming on her body.

  “I love you so much,” she said, and he kissed her urgently, whether to shut the words up or to drink them straight from her mouth, she couldn’t tell.

  She kissed him back, giving him the words through her kiss, through her touch. I love you so much. How could you love me?

  I got so bogged down in what I lost, but I never lost you?

  “I love you so much,” she whispered again to his shoulder, that strong, strong shoulder, the gorgeous bone and sinew and muscle of it.

  He slipped his hand between her face and his body and covered her mouth, forcing her head down to the floor until she was pinned there by his hand silencing her. She stared at him over it. His face could have cut the air with its severity, his eyes glowing in the firelight, almost beseeching, as if she was torturing him.

  But I do, she tried to say, the protest muffled against his hand.

  But I really do.

  His palm hardened, his other hand dragging fiercely down from her breast, over her belly, to take her sex, spearing her in one aggressive thrust of his finger.

  She yelped a little, and that, too, got crushed by his hand on her mouth. She tried to twist her head back and forth, to shake him off her, but he held her, and her body yielded to his mastery in one helpless rush of arousal. Making itself ready for whatever he wanted.

  Oh, God, she had always loved this game. And yet it was different now.

  It wasn’t a game.

  His eyes glittered, his touch so ferocious, so much anger in him suddenly, this wild beast of anger that bucked against even his control.

  I do love you, she told him with her hands, shaping those beautiful cheekbones of his, that mouth that hardened so much when her fingers stroked over it. I do. She petted the words over his hair, which had gotten just a little too long, as if he just could not bring himself to care about getting it cut.

  Shut up, his finger said, spearing her deep, holding her impaled. When she wriggled against it, the heel of his palm firmed on her pubic bone, holding her down, and all her body’s effort to adjust had to go into the squeeze of her inner muscles around his finger, into the heady release of all tension, the softening.

  She dragged her hands over those gorgeous arm muscles of his, all lean and hardened now. You don’t understand. I really, really do.

  I’ll make you shut up, his thumb said against her clitoris. I’ll make you. She shivered with the pleasure and the invasion, aroused more and more every time she tried to twist and failed to twist free. The arousal pressed at her, almost brutally fast, the edge coming up so quickly . . .

  Please, Kurt. She tried to beg for more, for release, and she couldn’t. Only with her eyes, and yet when she tried to catch his eyes, tried to beg him, his own eyes glittered, ungentle, dangerous. Please just—do it, she tried to plead with a buck of her hips.

  But he wouldn’t let her hips buck. He eased his thumb up from her clitoris and twisted his finger in her, slow and deep and relentless, when they tried.

  She began to pant, wanting to kiss him so desperately, wanting to fling herself at him and wrap herself around him and drag him into her. But his hand pressed down on her lips unyieldingly, and the line of his mouth was bitter-hard.

  Please, please, please. She dragged her hands down his arm, pressing his thumb back against her.

  The edge of his teeth showed at that, something cruel and fierce, and he took his thumb and drove her toward her peak while he watched her, that torturer’s merciless regard, as if her orgasm was her confession or her punishment.

  Kurt, Kurt, Kurt, she tried to cry out his name as the waves hit her, to be saved by him, to be held by him, to find her solace in the wild, rocking pleasure of it. But she couldn’t do that either. She could only come, clutching to his wrist as he made her do so, lost and unable to speak.

  He made her come and come and come, as if he wanted to torture her with her own pleasure, and she couldn’t speak to stop him, he wouldn’t let her.

  Then he took her, in long, deep relentless thrusts, his hands at last slipping to either side of her head to b
race himself while she came apart again at the pleasure of being so used. Oh, God, use me. Please use me. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” she scrambled out as the waves of pleasure mounted again, driving her madder and madder with each slow thrust.

  He kissed her this time to shut her up, thrusting his tongue into her as if in his head he was thrusting something else, and brought his thumb back into play, driving her mercilessly with each thrust of his body and the deep, relentless, silencing kisses, until she was caught everywhere in him, unable to think or speak or do anything but yield, shattering for him over and over, until his fingers dug cruelly into her butt with his last thrust as he came, too.

  It was a long time before he rolled away. He lay still on his back on the rug for a while, and eventually rolled back on his side to look at her. His hand came up to stroke gently over her mouth, and then he leaned closer to kiss all around the edges of her lips, which still felt crushed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said low. “The last time I thought you loved me, you left me in the morning. I didn’t mean to let it out in quite that way.”

  She nodded. I’m sorry. “I did love you. Too much. And I just couldn’t—I couldn’t—” Her voice broke, and he took her hand, holding it securely. “I couldn’t love anymore. I just couldn’t. Not then. You know?”

  She had tried to tell him this the day before, and yet no matter how many times she said it, it seemed so stupid, so worthless, to say she couldn’t. Couldn’t love him, of all people. Can’t never could, her dad would always say cheerfully when she was a kid balking at some challenge. You always could, if you tried hard enough. Some days it had felt as if she was trying with everything in her. And failing. She had hated those days. She had not wanted to try. She had just wanted to curl up in the snow and die.

  “No,” Kurt said. “I don’t know. But I read about it. I can try to understand.”

  “You—you’ve never reached the point where you couldn’t love me?” How could that possibly be? The screaming, weeping woman she had turned into, out of all that life and fun and laughter he had married?

  “No, Kai. I never have.”

  “It just hurt so much, to love,” she whispered. “It was like my heart had been shattered into all these shards of glass and it pierced me every single time it tried to beat. I had to hide.”

  He said nothing, lying on his side in the firelight and Christmas lights, stroking her knuckles as he watched her.

  “And I was hurting you. I couldn’t keep hurting you that way. I had to get away.”

  “Kai. I could take it, you screaming. It was the least I could do.” He shifted back to her until the length of their bodies touched, covering her belly with his hand. “Because I couldn’t do this. I could only watch as it—broke you.” The lights shimmered across the sudden sheen his eyes. “Shit.” His hand left her belly to dash across his eyes suddenly, and then he rolled away to lie on his back, lashes pressed firmly down on his cheeks, as he breathed long careful breaths.

  She curled into him, wrapping one arm around him and pressing her cheek into his shoulder. They lay there for a while, in the heat of the fire.

  “You remember all those stupid things I used to do, to try to keep it from breaking you?” Kurt asked softly.

  She nodded against his shoulder. Just don’t think about it, Kai. Wait until we know for sure. Or, after, Let’s go on a trip, sweetheart. What do you say to the Bahamas? No matter how much she loved him, she had still hated him for those ideas. “I know you meant well,” she murmured. “I know you wanted to help.”

  “I suspect you have no idea how much I wanted to help. The same way there are things you felt that I can’t ever really know, I think I have some feelings that you won’t ever be able to understand completely, either.”

  She kissed his shoulder and then just lay there against him, stroking his chest. Sometimes maybe that was all there was left to do, accept that two people could love each other and yet their minds and hearts not always work the same. They fell asleep that way, waking to full darkness and the scent of dinner.

  There was something peculiarly and profoundly lovely about sitting in the firelight with bowls of stew before them, eating together. “Is it Christmas Eve?” she asked suddenly.

  He nodded.

  Her mouth twisted. “I was—trying not to keep track, this year.” In her vision of the way her life should have gone, that third baby was supposed to have been born at midnight, her little miracle baby, and a great star would shine in the heavens and all the world would be made right.

  He reached across and touched her hand.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said suddenly. And, with a quiet wonder: “It’s a—it’s a good Christmas.”

  “Oh, God, it’s so much better than last year,” he said, heartfelt, taking both her hands. His eyes searched her face, and his voice went very low and careful: “Kai, I know how happy you made me. But have you ever thought that maybe it’s taking you so long to recover because—I might have helped make you happy, too?”

  “Kurt.” She could only stare at him. It hurt her so deeply that she might have left him thinking so little of himself. “Of course that’s part of why it’s taking me so long to be happy again. Because I destroyed us, too, the one thing that could have kept on being as beautiful as it was from the very first moment it was conceived. You were why I was so happy. You didn’t know that?”

  He shook his head, slowly but very firmly. “I know you said that sometimes, Kai, but you were always happy. Before, I mean. The first moment I met you, you were happy.”

  “You were there, weren’t you?” she pointed out simply.

  His gaze was incredulous. “Kai. There is no way you looked across that garden and lit with happiness because of me. That’s not—I don’t hit people that way. I’ve met your family. You’re just happy people. You like to laugh and play and—I got lucky. Well, I put a lot of effort into making sure I was the man who got that lucky, but you know what I mean.”

  He had gotten lucky. To find her. Wasn’t that the craziest thing for him to think? “I don’t think you know what I mean. Yes, I was always a laughing, fun-loving person. Compared to yours, my family looks like a non-stop swing dance, I guess.” She had spoken to her family less and less with each miscarriage and barely at all in the past year. They hadn’t known what to do with that much grief, and she hadn’t known what to do with their need for her to get over it again and just laugh with them. And get back with Kurt and be the sweetheart couple in which they had so delighted before. “But you were the reason I was . . . happy.” She pressed her fist to her heart, trying to show something deeper. “And yes, you did hit me that way. You made my whole body kick awake the first moment I looked up and saw you watching me, and I liked it. And then, when you were courting me—”

  He winced a little in embarrassment at the word courtship, the way he always did, and a little grin came up out of somewhere inside her, surprising her again by how readily it wanted to spark out, just like her laughter used to. Some moments, he made her feel as if she might one day become a fully happy person once again, given enough time. Given him.

  “You were so hot,” she said and had to rub her hands over her face as it surged through her, the memory of how helplessly attracted she had felt, the way every cell in her body seemed to pull toward him like filings to a super magnet, and how she had loved every minute of it. Never an instant’s fear, never even a second of trepidation at the possible consequences of giving him all her heart. He had always seemed like such a sure, strong, perfect person to receive all her life.

  That old fearless heart was changed now, had learned fear, and yet—here he was. Still there for her. Still taking care. “Really hot,” she whispered.

  His own grin showed, a surprised kick of pleasure. She used to be able to make him blush by telling him how hot he was, streaking color across those beautiful cheekbones, his whole face growing severe in the struggle to get the blush to die down. She had adored it.
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  “You still are, you know,” she told him, and—it was so hard to tell with the firelight, but was that the blush? He wasn’t trying to fight it, if so, because his face hadn’t taken on that adorable blush-fighting sternness, but was instead more vulnerable, more open—hopeful.

  His hands pulled on hers, not so hard as to force, but more like a yearning for her. “Kai. Come back to me. Let’s work on being happy again. Together. Not alone. I think we’re so much more likely to actually reach that happiness again, if we do it together.”

  “I want to,” she whispered. “I really, really want to. If you’re sure.”

  “Kai, sweetheart.” Now he did pull her into his lap. His body was sure and strong and held in it, maybe, a thread of anger that tightened it, even as he tried to keep it reassuring. “I’ve always been sure.” You were the one who wasn’t. But he didn’t say it. He’d always been so good at mastering his own anger. Not like her, when that alien anger had taken possession of her after the last miscarriage, had whipped her—and them—around like they were debris caught in its twister. Within only a few seconds, that thread of tension in his body calmed, and he just held her, watching the tree.

  And it was, she realized. A good Christmas. He was her miracle. She was beginning to understand now that he always had been.

  *

  Hours later, Kurt lay stroking the length of his wife’s body, from shoulder to hip, quietly, watching the Christmas tree, too contented to go to sleep and risk waking to find her crying and leaving him again. He knew his distrust might not be fair to her, but he probably wouldn’t lose that fear for a long, long time, the same way he hadn’t lost the heartbreak of his parents’ divorce—and what it meant to him, the essential loss of his father—for years and years, the same way she wouldn’t lose the grief over those miscarriages ever, not completely. Life was like that. It dealt you some things that changed you and that you had to deal with, even when you thought they were too cruel, even when you believed that no human should ever have to deal with a blow so cruel. He would have done anything to keep Kai from learning how much life could hurt, but he hadn’t had any more ability to stop those losses than she had.