Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle (Play with Me, Snowfall, and After Midnight): A Loveswept Contemporary Romance

by Lisa Renee Jones

  “I thought—”

  “What?” What, exactly, what. I want him to tell me. This incredible convergence of the university, our landlord’s contract with them, a Christmas letter, my love of pictures, out of all that, what?

  I needed him to tell me.

  “I remembered, through all of this, when I was moving out, that the landlord had told me a woman from Seattle, a postdoc, was moving in. I thought of all the times, if I had some reason to look at the contact sheet in your chart, that I would’ve found out that way. Always, always, we were drifting together, always, I was getting to know you more, falling for you. I just thought. I don’t know. I thought, when I saw that picture on your desk, realized you wouldn’t believe in it. Believe or trust in me.”

  “What?” I whisper. He touches my hair, but just the long ends over my shoulder, not looking at me.

  “I could hardly believe any of it myself. We had just agreed to meet, finally, I had wanted to meet you after the first time we chatted online. Already, I was nervous about meeting Lincoln because of the—intimacy,” he whispered this, and a flush rose from his throat.

  He touched the hair on my shoulder again. “I had come to your office to tell you how I felt about you; meanwhile, I had all these feelings about Lincoln, and like I said, Lincoln was real to me, even though we hadn’t met. I’d been so confused, you have to understand, just fucking off my pins.

  “Then I picked up that picture, and this will sound totally stupid, but it felt like Christmas.” Evan dragged a hand over his face. His almost smile was back, but his eyes were wrecked, looking over my face desperately.

  My hip, where I fell, throbbed. The chair was hard and cold against my bottom, my thighs. My heart was beating fast while my blood fizzed through it, on the edge of making me feel like I might float away from my body.

  “I thought,” Evan said, his voice rough, “you wouldn’t believe in all of this, how could you? I barely could. I walked out of your office feeling like I was carrying some kind of, I don’t know, it sounds so fucking stupid, but magic around, and you’re a scientist, and so unbelievably smart, I was just worried that you’d think I arranged it or something, like I was creepy, pathological, even. Can you imagine? By the way, this picture, I took this and we’ve been cybering for weeks and I just so happen to also be the slob that is firing himself for wanting to kiss you? There was no way you’d think that was real.”

  I take his arm, and he stops. I’ve seen him patient, with me, with himself. I’ve seen him search, so many times, for what to say or do next. I hadn’t seen this.

  This tangle of fear in the face of something he wanted that had become precarious.

  It’s not something that I think I could have seen before.

  But I get it now.

  I get the lack of trust, the sense that what you want is a moving target, the grief of disbelief that losing yourself is possible when you were doing so well.

  He looks at me. “I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t lose you if I told you this crazy story. If I told you right then, or if I sent you a picture of me, just me, in return for yours. I was completely positive that you would freak out, I had worked out all the reasons you probably would in my mind. Then, after you sent me that picture of yourself, and I was dumb and sent those macros of me, you, well. You broke up with me. With C. Of course you did. It was all the biggest possible mess, and at the coffe shop that day, I hadn’t planned the kissing, I promised myself none of that until I told you, and then we were kissing, and the last thing my brain or body wanted was to watch your light go out like I watched Lincoln’s go dark. I had decided I would meet you, like we’d planned, on Christmas Eve’s Eve and hope, hope it would be okay and you wouldn’t just walk out.”

  My throat’s tight, my heart stopped, my eyes burning, and I don’t even know there are tears until he’s holding my face, rubbing them away.

  But I don’t want that.

  I turn my face away.

  It’s not that I believe in magic, my work is concerned with the observable world, after all, it’s that I’ve always been able to see the convergences of things, the complexity of systems that pile together and behave like magic.

  When I saw his tattoo in the van I didn’t believe that he had arranged all of this, but I step back and look at the whole system to try to understand what I believed. What I saw.

  I’m not sure it was ever entirely observable.

  Except, underneath, it was always just us.

  The scrape on my hip starts to sting, and my tears are coming faster, sitting on this chair, at an awkward angle, my pants off, my face in his hands—I’m uncomfortable.

  Inside and out.

  I close my eyes.

  That makes it easier to get inside my own body, out of my head, and just pay attention to the man in front of me. I put my hands over his on my face.

  “Bad news from Dr. Allen today,” I tell him.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I was feeling pretty good, and I didn’t realize that some part of that was her confidence that I was holding right where I was, that all I had to do was get used to the changes that had already happened. I didn’t totally get I would have to deal with more.”

  Then I feel him lean toward me, and he kisses my forehead.

  “I don’t believe in magic.” I open my eyes and look at him. “But actually, there is totally such a thing as coincidence.”

  “What happens after a coincidence?”

  “Well, in my work, I note it and move on and get on with the bigger picture.” He smiles. “I don’t know if I am good at the big picture. I’m good at big pictures of small things.”

  I smile back. “You are, I think. You kind of lost sight of this one.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry, Jenny.”

  “I’m upset, just really upset.” I look at him; his face is so worried. “You know how when someone dies, everyone has sex?”

  He looks at me for a long moment, his eyebrows nearly crossed, and then laughs, rubbing his palms over my jaw and down my neck and back again. “I think I know what you mean. Life-affirming kind of thing?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  He keeps up his touching, his thumbs rubbing tears before they drip, sliding down my neck and squeezing my nape. “Jenny—”

  “That. I’d like that. I want life-affirming sex, Evan.”

  He closes his eyes. So I kiss him.

  He receives my kiss, his mouth soft.

  Then I hold his face, tipping it where I want it, the nap of his bristles soft one way, prickling another. I kiss his top lip and his bottom one, I kiss the divot over his top lip and the crease in his chin under the bottom.

  I touch with my tongue, just a little, and then he opens to me, kisses back.

  I’m willing to kiss as long as he needs to.

  As long as I do.

  I hope it isn’t long, though, before he’ll follow me where I need to go.

  I let myself just feel him. I close my eyes and ignore how that makes my heart feel too tight. I remember that day in the foyer, when my mind reached out to what was around me.

  For a long time, kissing Evan is like swimming underwater. How the light pressure all over your body is at first giddy and novel, and then it just is what it is—small currents like little breezes. Relaxing, absorbing.

  Then his hands leave my nape and travel over my shoulders to fist in my sweater. My heart speeds up, my hands start to move, too, I squeeze his shoulders, his sides, he’s solid and live and his movements are bulky, a little out of control, and I feel every part of him that’s touching every part of me.

  “Jenny, I—” He pulls me from the chair, and we sink to the floor.

  Kissing.

  “Shhh,” I soothe, and I brush over him, over his fly. “It’s okay,” I whisper into his neck, “if this is all you want—kissing. I want you, but it’s okay.”

  Though, really, I want him to lay me out, come inside of me, over me, but I know he has to be right with me.

 
; He has to need this, too.

  I open my eyes, and his are right there, looking in mine.

  When he looks away, I try not to be disappointed, but he’s not letting me go, not at all, he’s fumbling in his back pocket, one arm still braced along my spine.

  I watch him open his wallet. I watch his hands shake as he fumbles out a condom.

  “Could you read this?” he says. “I need to make sure it’s okay.”

  I take it from him, and it’s fine. Not even wrinkled. The expiration months away.

  “Do you sit on your wallet?” I can’t believe my calm voice. My questions from Sex Ed 101.

  “No. I usually keep it in my bag. I don’t usually have those in there, not exactly, I—”

  “It’s okay. It’s good. Can I put it on you?” Our eyes meet again, and I try to keep steady, but I feel hot over my neck again, I feel like I’m standing on the edge of the abyss and Evan is the only thing keeping me from stepping over.

  “Yeah.” He bunches up his T-shirt and sweater in his fist, pulls them over his head.

  His skin is flushed, the planes of his body on the big, lanky scale that’s Evan, how he’s made.

  I pull apart his leather belt, the buckle falling loose, kiss his shoulders, his chest, his collarbones, while I unbutton his pants, reach inside, hold him, full in my hand, then, touch him, stroke him until he’s completely hard.

  I rub my nose over his collarbone and he gathers my hair in his hand. I play with his erection—soft touches, watch his stomach cave when I hit a sensitive spot.

  I decide I could do this forever. Just touching, holding.

  Then he bumps his hips up, groans, wraps his hand around mine and asks for a rougher touch.

  I roll on the condom, slow and careful.

  He eases me on my back, on the floor. The carpet is a short nap, the kind that’s easy to clean in buildings like this, and it’s rough on my ass and catches at my sweater.

  He kisses me, and seems determined to kiss me for as long as it takes for us to get there, to that restless, needy place. His mouth is exactly what I want, and I’m grateful for the buzz that starts taking over my brain, for his fingers, sliding where my clit’s grown pinched, for his arm at my back keeping me steady.

  Even better is his hard penis at my entrance where I already feel so tight and throbbing. I bend my knees and tip up at the very same time he spreads me open with his fingers and slides the head snug against me.

  He keeps his thrust slow, and we watch each other. He feels big, slick, and I let myself squeeze tight, to slow it all down, but then he makes this noise, something almost articulate and awed and distracted and I tip up more and he pushes and then I make the noise, too, because he’s inside me, hot and stretching and good.

  We move our faces into each other’s neck, and I breathe in his skin, and he gives another little push that makes my eyes roll back and my hips feel shaky.

  I hook one leg over his back so he stays right there, and then I feel the pressure of his thumb or a finger right to the side of my clit, just pressing, and God, the whole world finally, finally disappears.

  I sink into it, way, way down.

  Every time he thrusts, his thumb presses, and I say, “just like that,” or I think I do, but I must because he doesn’t stop, and it’s so big and perfect, his glide, his press, the sound of his breath in my ear, it’s something like when he was rocking me in the courtyard, all comfort, all physical presence and attendance.

  I fight against coming until I know he can’t, when I realize I can hear his belt buckle ringing as it hits the floor with each thrust.

  “Evan,” I say, and then we’re kissing, and I’m coming, and it feels so good, but it’s mostly my heart I can feel pounding, making my chest tight, and then I understand that I’m crying, that coming with Evan inside of me somehow shoved everything I’ve been holding back out of the way, and so I’m taken up with all this pleasure, but unrelieved, sobbing with every pulse of this orgasm, Evan’s cheek rough against mine, and he’s coming, too, and he says my name, Jenny, over and over.

  Chapter Nine

  It’s Christmas Eve’s Eve

  What’s so astonishing is how much I can see.

  I have two monitors in front of me, and I’m taking measurements from images the ESEM took a year ago of E. coli and as I click and drag I’m kind of overcome with the same excitement I always have.

  Numbers add up, at least for a while, and what’s tedious starts to collect into something I can understand, something I can start to talk about and think about.

  I start to feel the way that I do when I’m losing track of time, and it’s been so long since that happened it’s like how it feels turning the last corner home after a long time away—gladness and relief and permission to be whatever it is you are, to let out whatever it is you’ve been keeping in check.

  It’s all working. These are images I didn’t capture, but they were prepared well, done well by a visiting researcher I’ve already exchanged long emails with, and I feel my place in a part of something bigger.

  After the New Year, I’ll start the work to prepare my own time with the ESEM, and that’s another good thing. In our meeting this morning, my proposal for assistants was accepted, and I’ve already talked to the graduate students I know I want to work with.

  The campus is so quiet, in this space between terms. Only the main paths are cleared and salted each morning, for those of us who work here, and the snow has continued to fall.

  When I made it home, that night after we had been together in his office, my email had notified me that C Ford, that Evan, had posted pictures, and when I looked at them, they were family snapshots.

  Him with a woman who had to be his mom, her eyes as blue, tall.

  A picture of him with more family, or friends, laughing in a canoe.

  A graduation picture, with a doctoral hood, and one of him running, with a number pinned to his shirt.

  His avatar was lit, which meant he was there, but I looked through the pictures without comment. I could still feel the soreness from my fall, from crying, from our lovemaking—I was sore inside and out.

  Not just physically.

  I looked through the pictures, and his avatar stayed lit, and I imagined Evan sitting the way he does, all long limbs but somehow graceful, looking at my lit avatar, the lines deep in his forehead with worry, and it was enough to have his vigil.

  I clicked through his pictures and looked at his grins, I measured them, like I am clicking and measuring now, the microscopic changes on a common bacterium.

  I have his measure as a man who tries to do what is right and who wants others to do what is right.

  Between us, is everything.

  It’s like one of these pictures on my monitor of a bacterium, the details so intense your mind tries to make sense of them with what it already knows—that looks like a hole, a hair, a tail, an eye, the surface of the moon—all the possibilities actually completely improbable because it is just itself.

  This is what this bacterium looks like.

  We want to compare it to what we know, but it is incomparable. I can see.

  I can see so much, I can’t begin to know what it means.

  That’s the most exciting place to be, in an experiment, or in life.

  I told my mom when I looked at the world I saw everything at once, the view and the small things.

  That I loved the small things.

  The big world has a way of not letting you see everything at once, but it’s actually made of small things.

  Like loss.

  Like love.

  * * *

  “I thought, maybe, we could walk there together.”

  Evan is on my stoop, a paper bag in his hand, snow on his shoulders and in his hair. He rang the doorbell, the first person ever to do so, and now he’s on my stoop.

  “It’s Christmas Eve’s Eve,” he explains. “It’s almost eleven.” I squeeze the handle of the door. “I know.”

  �
��Were you going to come?”

  “Well, I was putting on my coat and boots, and had my hand on the door when you rang the bell.”

  He grins and looks down. He’s nervous.

  He puts the bag down. “So, ah, I started my way there, on my own, and then I was thinking it was only three blocks from your place, and they haven’t cleared the sidewalks. It would be nicer, I thought, if I took you there?” He closes his eyes. “Fuck.”

  “You were afraid I wouldn’t come?”

  “I didn’t think I was.”

  We both look out at the street, the snow coming down so fast you can almost hear it as it falls on the drifts and inches already over the ground. It’s cold. Dark, even at eleven in the morning.

  “It’s seems kind of early for mashed potatoes,” I say.

  “Okay. We could do something else? Coffee? Or, I can come back later.”

  I hold open my door. “I was thinking you could come in.”

  “Oh, sure.” He starts in, and then I remember something.

  “Wait. One thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  I look at him, his face a little worried, his thin coat that forces him to hunch against the cold. I stick out my hand.

  Evan takes it. “Nice to meet you, I’m Evan Carlisle-Ford. I’m an OT at LSU, and an amateur photographer.”

  “Jenny Wright, microbiologist. I live here on Lincoln Street.”

  “Jenny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Before I kissed you, I should have told you I knew you were Lincoln.”

  I turn his hand up and stroke over his palm. The look in his face is almost too much. I can see the small thing in his face that will start the whole origin of our world, and even though it was all I have been thinking about, I can hardly breathe.

  “Except, I knew a lot more than just Jenny Wright was Lincoln, when I kissed you.”

  “What did you know?” I whisper.

  “That I’d fallen for you. Then that day, when you fell in the courtyard—”

  I meet his eyes, he has questions for me, what I’d asked for that day, and what he’d given me. “You weren’t just—available,” I whisper.