#ChristmasHatesYouToo
Page 7
“You guys really have to stop that.”
“Who’s this?” Ethan asked.
“I’m Hung,” he told Ethan. I smiled at his phrasing and when he stepped between us with purpose.
“Tell me all about your show.” Mom took Ethan’s hand as if she’d known him forever. “What’s it called? The Flasher?” She giggled at the thought.
“Well, I can’t say too much,” Ethan told her. “But I’ll be around for several episodes. Today is Noel’s day, though. Let’s focus on him.” Even as Ethan said it, he stripped off his leather jacket like a scene in Magic Mike, revealing the outline of his torso in a sweater so tight he may as well have taken that off too. It was so hot, Bree fanned herself. “Look what I got trending.” Ethan shoved his phone in my face. “#MerryBirthdayNoel.”
“You got it trending?” Hung asked.
“Well, I retweeted the link to your tribute,” Ethan said. “People are responding. They’re going to love you like we do.”
“Like I do,” Hung said, causing a grin to spread across my face yet again.
“Thanks, Eth, but I’d be happy just to….” I looked around the room, still devoid of holiday decorations. I was going to miss the quietness of the twenty-sixth, when I’d usually just lie on my parents’ couch and watch the little train choo-choo and chug through the village at the base of the tree. “…just to have things back the way they always were. Except for Hung, the best thing to happen to me this year. A real gift.”
“Am I getting the boot?” Ethan asked.
“Do you have any place to go?”
“My parents do Christmas… sort of. Chinese takeout and gift cards while sipping mimosas. Though by now, they’ve probably moved onto wine… or passed out.” He stood on tiptoe and kissed me on the cheek. “Let’s hang out while I’m here. New Year’s Eve, maybe?”
“He’s got plans,” Hung said.
“Oh.”
“I think I’m busy.” I shrugged. “Maybe the three of us can do something during the day?”
Hung tightened his grip on my hand. “That sounds like fun.”
Ethan headed for the door, looking sadder than a dog on his five-year-old master’s first day of school.
“Wait,” my mother said. “We don’t put people out on Christmas.”
“You don’t?” Ethan asked. “I have my next two show scripts in my satchel… we could read them.”
“Oooh. Wouldn’t that be fun? Come into the kitchen.” Ethan found himself grasped around the wrist. “Noelly, I think you should lie down while we start lunch and rehearse.”
“Rehearse?” I asked.
“Maybe Efran can get me a part, who knows?”
“You going Hollywood… or Vancouver, as it were?” I asked my mother, not even bothering to correct her on Ethan’s name.
“I can be bicoastal.”
FINALLY UP in my childhood room, I let Hung tuck me in, after which he turned to leave. “Where you going?” I snuggled into Red.
“Just downstairs.”
“Not out the front door, right? You look a little overwhelmed.”
“Maybe a little. But I love it, really.”
“Come here.”
“Noel… I can’t. Not with all the people downstairs. And the doctor said….”
“I’ll fuck you nice and quiet.”
Hung laughed. “Yeah, right.”
“When’s the last time you slept?” I asked him.
“I don’t know.”
“Come on.” I patted the bed. “I’m not really tired. I snoozed for days. I just wanted to get you alone. They’re pushy, but they’re not perverts. No one is going to come busting in.”
“You sure? They’re a pretty protective bunch.”
“Mom’s the worst, and she’s busy with Ethan.”
“What if she likes him better than me?”
“Never gonna happen. Come on. A little nap will do you good. If you prove you can take care of me, they might let you take me home tomorrow or the next day. We’ll stop for Paws… introduce him to Red. Maybe they’ll fall in love like a progressive version of Lady and the Tramp.” I caught myself. I was rushing a canine romance as much as I tried to my own. “Unless it’s too soon.”
“It doesn’t feel that way.”
“Then get in bed.” I pulled back the Christmas comforter. “Yeah. Even the bedrooms. I wish you could have seen the rest of the house. It takes Mom days. I can’t believe she yanked it all down.” Hung got under the covers. I put my arms around his shoulders and kissed him. “Suddenly, I’m all light-headed.”
He sprang up. “Should I call someone?”
“Not from the injury. I was going for romance. Get back down here.”
WE SLEPT a couple of hours, mostly Hung. I knew I had it bad when even his snoring struck me as adorable. Though he admitted it felt a bit like the walk of shame, we headed for the living room soon after he awoke.
“Whoa!”
My brothers and sisters and their spouses and kids were still there. The downstairs smelled like baked ham and was decked out in Christmas splendor.
“Nice.” I turned in a circle to take it all in. “This is my birthday.”
The tree in front of the window was dotted with lights of every color. Candles nestled into pine boughs on the mantel flickered. The stockings were back, and the card holder was in the center of the table, where it belonged.
“I sensed you missed it. A mother knows.” She pinched my cheek.
“I’m sorry I’m so fickle… and maybe an unappreciative jerk.”
“Never.”
“One year the candles on my cake were the battery-operated ones from the window,” I told Hung.
“I forgot to get the birthday kind. And you were eight. How do you remember that?”
“I guess because it was special. Plus, gifts in the morning and at night? Who gets that? A Christmas baby, that’s who. And none of you ever got a birthday spanking from Santa, now, have you?”
“That what he’s into?” Ned elbowed Hung in the ribs.
“Remember the year you put candles in figgy pudding?”
“My British phase,” my mom said with a put-on accent.
“That was good,” Hung told her.
“That’s what Ethan said. Did you know the woman who portrays what’s-her-name on The Young and the Beautiful is playing my part?”
I had no idea what actress or which of the two shows she’d combined into one she was talking about. “Your part?”
“Rumble sings. I always fancied myself an actress.”
“I finished peeling the potatoes.” Ethan entered with a flourish from the kitchen. “I think. I’ve never done it before. Hey, Noel.”
“Ethan.”
“I better stir the gravy.” He disappeared back behind the door.
“You two are bonding,” I said to my mother.
“Only for professional purposes,” she assured me. “Hung…. Four-H… he’s your true prince.”
WE HAD Christmas—twice—and my birthday as well. I told my family about the woman who wrote about me playing Santa. “I happened to be in Target, feeling sorry for myself and trying to be incognito. I saw her looking at a list, taking things off the shelves, and then putting them back. I knew what was happening, so I stealthily followed her, threw it all in my cart, and then rushed ahead of her to the front of the store. I got someone in the office to stall her while I checked out. The plan was for him to give her the stuff anonymously. It was kind of fun… like some undercover operation Ethan might act out in a movie someday. She wasn’t supposed to know. I guess the guy in the courtesy office spilled the beans.”
Hung fit right in with the family. Covered in frosting and sugar cookie dough, he also proved to be a good sport with Drew’s little girls by helping them all bake after-Christmas cookies the day before New Year’s Eve. “I’m exhausted,” he said, as the last metal sheet pan went into a sink full of suds. “How many of your own do you envision?” He let Paws and Red lick
a little icing before he got the rest with a paper towel. “Kids, I mean. How many have you always wanted?”
“Well, there were eight of us, so I’m thinking… nine.”
“Nine?”
“Maybe Kevin, Cory, and Kyle, except we spell them all with Qs.”
Hung looked unconvinced, maybe by the names, maybe the number.
“It’s all negotiable.”
He seemed relieved by that.
NEW YEAR’S Eve it was just the two of us—plus the dogs and a cat that had shown up in the snow the morning I went from my parents’ home to my own. She was an affectionate calico we named Noelle. I was feeling a bit nervous as I set up the living room with candles and champagne, plus a belated Christmas gift that had arrived that day, while Hung had the two canines out to do their final business of the night—of the year. We’d watched Hung’s piece online, and then caught the eleven o’clock news on TV, where I received an “honorable mention” on the list of “top online newsmakers of the year.” It was broken down into months. I was only big in December, and I was glad the month was nearly over. There were only twenty minutes left in all of 2016, as a matter of fact. I had stripped down to silky black boxers and was just pulling a pair of fleece pajama pants back on when I heard the front door. I lowered them to my knees and then yanked them back up before taking them off again, indecisive, worried I was coming on too dopey. My seven-day restricted activity period was over. I hoped to partake in something rather strenuous upstairs, if Four-H was feeling one more—horny. We’d done a lot of kissing and some touching when he’d helped me shower. I found out in there Hung wasn’t lying when he didn’t tell Ethan what his name was—but rather said he was.
As Hung came in the door, both him and the dogs sparkling in a dusting of light, iridescent snow, I couldn’t help but say, “I love you. You’re… handsome, hot, happy?”
“Yes.”
“How about… home?”
“Home?”
“You’ve been here close to a week. I’m… I’m supposed to be better, but I don’t want you to go.”
“Oh. I don’t want you to feel obligated.”
“I don’t.”
“Because my apartment sucks.”
“I want you here.” I got down on the floor to roll around with the dogs and tried to pull him down by the ankles.
“Be careful.”
“I’m fine.”
“There’s snow all over. Your clothes are getting all wet.”
I stopped and looked up. “I’m not wearing clothes.”
“So I see.”
“Why don’t you get out of yours and join me?”
“Or….” Hung reached for my hand and pulled me up. “We could take it upstairs. All four of us.”
“Five.”
“Five?”
“Look behind the couch,” I told him.
He did, and then he laughed as he pulled from behind it a life-size inflatable shark. “Shelby!”
“She arrived this morning. Took me all day to blow her up.”
“I love her… and you… for remembering all the way since last summer.”
“Now we all go to bed.” I kissed him. “Except… two is better.”
“The dogs will be bored with our company pretty quickly. They’ll head for their own beds out in the hallway. Come on!” Hung patted his hip and took off at a sprint with his shark. The dogs followed—and so did I, panting twice as hard.
He was right about the dogs, and I made him stand there naked so I could look at him once they’d left the room. “It’s hard not to be self-conscious,” he complained, as I traced over the lines of his muscles and the curves of his arms, his torso and hips. “When do I get to do it to you?”
“When I’m finished.” I put my nose to his neck. “Sight, scent, sound… I hear you breathing, and it’s wonderful.”
When I turned him around, I started between the shoulder blades, and then stroked the hair in the small of his back before using both hands to massage the golden flesh of his ass. I wanted to touch him, but I needed to taste him. He staggered forward and caught himself on the bureau as I found his opening with my tongue.
“Mmm.”
“I’d like to fuck you.”
“What are you waiting for?”
My nakedness pressed against his was as sexually powerful as his tightness around my cock. I thrust in and out of him forcefully, working up sweat that melded us together, him against the wall, me as close to him as I could get at his back. “I’d love to feel you inside me,” I said, my mouth right against his ear.
“Get on the bed,” he told me. “We need to take it easier.”
“I don’t think we do.” Still, I moved. I wanted to please him in any way I could.
Hung was extra gentle when he entered me from behind, as I propped myself up on the padded leather headboard. His smooth rocking and gliding played every one of my nerve endings, not just below the waist, but above. He seemed to take pleasure in edging me slowly, almost frustratingly so, toward coming even without manipulation of my dick. When he started to hum the melody I’d written for us, jagged jolts that felt like the moment was inevitable subsided into mellower tingling that made me groan.
“You ready?”
The prickle in my cock head brought on by Hung’s grip and the slipperiness of sweat on leather, left me unable to hold back. My climax was intensified, as Hung collapsed against me and let loose with his. “Merry birthday,” he whispered in my ear. “I love you.”
“I love you.” I did.
As we cuddled and hummed, naked in each other’s arms, my phone buzzed.
“It’s Ethan,” I said.
“Tell him we’re busy.”
“You know what? I think he’s kind of lonely, actually.” I read Ethan’s text. “His parents… there doesn’t seem to be much of a bond there. He said he wanted to leave us alone, but now he’s all by himself and bored.”
“At five minutes to midnight on New Year’s Eve?”
“Been there.”
“Yeah,” Hung said. “Me too. Okay. I guess he can come over.”
I relayed the invitation. “He wants to know if we can three-way.”
“Seriously?”
I showed Hung the message.
“Give me the phone.” He typed a response.
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“I told him sure.”
“You did not.”
Hung proved it.
“Damn.” I laughed.
Sure. On your next birthday, Hung had written.
That’s not until 2020! Ethan balked.
Something to look forward to.
Hung shut off the phone. “No more of that.”
“Is he still coming?”
“I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Happy New Year, Noel.”
“Number thirty. It’s going to be a great one, as long as I get to spend it with you.”
E.F. MULDER has been an avid reader and storyteller since childhood. Whenever a book was assigned for class, E.F. would be thrilled, even as other students grumbled. Soon, that love of a good story expanded to creating them herself. E.F.’s mother received a ton of catalogs in the mail and E.F. would spend many a lazy summer afternoon or quiet Sunday envisioning the goings on of the men and women—or men and men—in pretty clothes or decorating their Christmas trees when the holiday books showed up in late fall. This creativity also came in handy when playing Barbie with her sister and sometimes her brother. Since E.F.’s mother was a soap opera fan, sitting down for half of Another World and General Hospital daily after work, E.F. came to appreciate that sort of storytelling as well, where love could be a struggle, but also a miracle that conquered all. This sort of yarn spinning led to E.F.’s Barbie and her beaus going through some very interesting plotlines and later came in handy writing romance novels where the road to happiness has plenty of bumps. To this day, E.F. and her writing partner, David, love to throw romantic soapy twists into their tales.
E.F. also enjoys rainy days, crisp autumns, Christmas decorations, her four kitty cats, Molly, Speckles, Tuxedo, and Mama Bear, and working on a virtual farm when not writing. It’s so much easier to clean under the fingernails when done digitally. A love of QVC means the kitties have a fresh rotation of new boxes to play in and the cute UPS man gets to visit often. Maybe there’s a story there….
Visit Edgy Romance Novels by David Connor and E F. Mulder here: www.facebook.com/mmromcomsinprint
By E.F. Mulder
#ChristmasHatesYouToo
Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS
www.dreamspinnerpress.com
Published by
DREAMSPINNER PRESS
5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA
www.dreamspinnerpress.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
#ChristmasHatesYouToo
© 2016 E.F. Mulder.
Cover Art
© 2016 L.C. Chase.
http://www.lcchase.com
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
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