by Sage, May
She was after a little break from relationship – she wanted something simple, fun, that wouldn’t hurt her.
He’d give her that. He’d also give her the rest – the texts and phone calls his previous girlfriends had always cried about. The time he could spare. So, when he’d ask for more at the end of all this, she wouldn’t have any reason to say no.
•
Shower sex was uncomfortable as fuck. Yeah, it had been fun, but she’d screamed when he lifted her legs, believing that she was going to slip and fall. Then, there had been the angle where water just wouldn’t stop getting in her nostrils.
That was brilliant. Exactly the kinda stuff she needed to write about.
After finally managing to get relatively clean and dry, Colt and Alice made it to her bedroom; Colt all but collapsed on her bed and she would have loved to join him for a well deserved nap, but there was no point.
She knew without the shadow of a teeny, tiny little doubt that she wouldn’t manage to drift of, not even for one second. Such was the curse of writers, and most creative professionals, really. It was in her mind: she needed it on paper.
By seven, when Colt woke up, she had six thousand words and a pizza in the oven. Six thousand was way too long, probably twice the length of the entire article, but she’d written all of the ideas about the office cunnilingual experience, the first encounter and the shower sex – when it was time to draft the article, she could pick the relevant parts.
She was alerted of his presence by a series of soft, teasing kisses along the back of her neck. God. Talk about a zero to one-thirty in point one of a second. Ferraris had nothing on here: here, just like that, she was ready to go.
Chapter 10
She was genuinely desperate by Wednesday. There was no way in hell he was going to survive Christmas at home, but her mom had been pretty damn crafty this year.
Alice had served her the usual “I might need to work” thing for the third year in a row, so Mara Vaughan had taken things in her own hands.
“I’ve called On Top the other day, dear, and I spoke to the sweetest man… What was his name?”
“Tony?” Alice hazarded; there weren’t that many guys in the office – especially if she’d rang through to her floor: Tony was the only reporter man enough to dare work in such an estrogen powered environment within twenty miles of the city.
“That’s it. Tony. Is he single?”
Oh for Christ’s sake, she was twenty-five! She should at least get half a decade before her mom attempted to pair her up with any eligible guy she spoke to for five minutes.
“No mom. He’s still with his high school sweetheart.”
She didn’t add anything about the fact that the relationship was a couple of hysterical phone calls away from going down the drain; no need to encourage the shameless matchmaker.
“Mh. Anyhow, we got talking; you know Tony is from Chicago? He was asking my opinion on what present he should buy his mother for Christmas. We’re the same age, you know.”
Tony was dead. She was going to gut him slowly, feed him his intestine and then, burry him alive.
“He’s so lucky he gets to go home for Christmas every year. Have you got any news about your request for the holidays, yet?”
Actually, as she’d volunteered – or begged – to work on the previous two Christmases, Linda had all but booted her out, ordering her to forget about work and have a good time.
Alice’s idea of a good time had been getting very berry drunk with her roommates, prankcall people and fuck her way through a box of condom whenever Colt was available.
Now though, she didn’t have a choice; because people were right about her, at least, as far as her mother was concerned. She was a good girl. There was no way in hell she could just open her mouth and openly lie. Might and could were ok, while she wasn’t certain of things herself, but she knew she was off in two days.
Damn it. No one was going to find the body after she was done with Tony.
“I’m off Mama,” she admitted guiltily.
Needless to say, the response on the other end was scary. She said something about jumpers, neighbors, pies and… wait a minute.
“Mama, I’ll only make it on Christmas eve,” she cut in when she started going on about a week with her three children.
She was not submitting herself to more than forty-eight hours of Mara, Paul, Katie and Shane Vaughan.
People assumed Alice had left San Francisco because of the problems her series of unfortunate ex-boyfriends had caused her there; she hadn’t.
She’d left because of her family’s response to it.
Her dad had turned overprotective – like, where-have-you-been, it’s-nine-pm kinda overprotective; and she had been twenty-two.
Her mother, on the contrary, had started throwing her at every “good” boy she met – generally the sons of her acquaintances. Never mind that every good boy she’d come up with had been fugly, boring or plain sleazy once the parents were out of sight.
Then, there had been Shane’s reaction. The scary one.
Shane wasn’t one to actually interact with people; he’d barely seen her twice a year, then, even though he’d leaved half an hour away.
However, things had happened which had Shane’s signature all over it. She’d heard about them on social media mainly: the bank account of one of her stalker had suddenly been completely wiped clean. The guy who’d bad mouthed her around town had been fired by his employer after a buried old record of an arrest had made it to his boss’s office.
Yeah, Shane was quiet, charming, and scary as hell.
The worst had been Katie, though. Katie liked Alice’s predicament. She found it amusing, and well deserved.
Katie had been a good friend, once, a lifetime ago. Then, sixth grade, she’d grown boobs and had loved the attention; her skinny, boyish little sister became an annoyance.
But the problem started when her body didn’t stop growing those boobs, and the ass, as well as the rest; she was a curvy girl by sweet sixteen and started to genuinely hate Alice, who wasn’t.
So, yeah, she’d decided she didn’t need the agro – not continuously, in any case. Shane got away with brooding in his penthouse, but when she’d lived in the city, her parents had expected her around most weekends – she’d had to justify her absence.
So when Linda had come up with the proposal, she’d bitten her hand off.
“Just Christmas eve?” Mara repeated, a certain note in her voice.
Oh, mama bear was pissed.
“Yes, mother. I’m working until the nineteenth; then, I have presents to buy and people to see. And, oh, I don’t know, maybe a birthday somewhere in there?”
“Exactly! You should be here for your birthday.”
She did manage to prevent herself from laughing. She should be anywhere else for her birthday.
“I have plans.”
She wasn’t one to make a fuss about it – years of “Christmas and birthday” presents, cards and parties did that to a girl – but enjoying a good glass of champagne and a bubble bath in her own place was a little piece of heaven she was not missing out on.
“Alice… Is there someone you want to spend your birthday with? Are you seeing a man?... Or a girl, I’m not one to judge.”
She hesitated one instant, knowing that this conversation would go a great deal better if she only said “yes,” however, it wouldn’t be fair to throw Colt under a bus like that.
Because Mara would hunt him down and force feed him Christmas dinner. There just wasn’t any other ways that story was going to end.
An obnoxious doorbell saved her from needing to paddle her way through that particular storm.
“There’s someone at the door, Mama, speak to you soon!”
She almost ran to answer, as she knew who that someone was, and he had chocolate.
“Alice Arabella Vaughan! Don’t you think this conversation is…”
“Love youuu!” she sang away, cutting her off while
opening the door.
Then, she lagged like a HP on Windows 10; the brain shut down.
Colt was wearing jeans and a t-shirt under a leather jacket. Like, seriously. Not even a shirt, or a blazer.
“Better have been talking to someone with a vagina,” he growled, before diving towards her lips.
Fuck.
The kiss was passionate, consummating and unfortunately, quick.
Way sooner than what was acceptable by her standards, he came up for air, pushing her away before saying: “We have a problem.”
•
Colt was distracted. For the first time since he’d hanged up, he wasn’t worried about the upcoming event; his mind wasn’t even focusing on Alice’s lame excuse of a PJ – the teeniest, tiniest shorts and a white t-shirt that might as well have been transparent, for what it hid of her nipples.
No; he was replaying her words.
Love you.
It hadn’t been sultry, sexy, or even remotely intimate – it sounded like a joke; but it bothered him all the same.
He couldn’t recall ever saying those words to anyone, even his parents, his brothers; let alone the women who’d shared his bed. They’d said it in the past and it had crept him out, because he hadn’t been even close to loving any of his eighteen girlfriends.
That’s usually when he started to keep his distance. Afterwards, he managed to get dumped pretty easily.
Would he have freaked out if Alice had been talking to him, rather than whomever she’d been on the phone with?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
“So?”
“Hm?”
“Does the mysterious called possess a vagina?”
“Definitely; I would know, I came out of it.”
Oh, her mom. He released a breath he didn’t know he was holding while following her to the kitchen.
Alice cooked – as in, from scratch. She didn’t do it everyday, but over the course of two weeks, they’d spent five nights at her place and there had been a homemade meal three times. It was comfort food – simple and delicious. The kind of stuff he hadn’t actually eaten since he’d left home for college over a dozen years ago; yeah, Tamsin and his mother fed him, but they were all for fancy stuff.
Right now, she was cutting some vegetables; quickly, too. Her ease with a knife was one of the million things about her that made him hard.
“Anyhow, what’s the problem?” she asked, dropping onions in a frying pan.
“My mother. I may have failed to inform you that she wanted you around for brunch.”
Alice laughed out loud – it wasn’t one of those fake high pitched screeches some girls did, but a full-on belly laugh; sometime, when he really made her crack up, she even snorted and fuck, that was cute.
These moments didn’t only appeal to his crotch – they’d also started making his heart stop, slow and quicken.
Fuck, he really was screwed.
“Well, she’s upped the ante. She was talking about inviting you for a shopping trip – to have some girl talk.”
He wasn’t worried because The Dragon might give her the third degree like she had done with his previous girlfriends; oh, no.
The issue was that she was going to ask whether Alice preferred a small or a large wedding; then, she’d probably draft a list of potential color themes for the baby’s rooms.
Small wedding. Yellow rooms. He could be swayed towards sage green or magenta.
“I had to do something; I just blurted out she’d see you at the Colburn Christmas party. It’s not actually on Christmas Day, my parents are having a romantic getaway then; but we’re throwing a socialite affair Sunday. I hate to ask, but can you make it?”
Her smirk did betray her instant acceptance, but Alice pretended to think it out.
“Hmm, I don’t know. That’s a big favor. If I do this, you’ll owe me.”
“Anything,” he instantly replied.
He meant it.
“You’ve got plan for Christmas Day?”
He shook his head.
“Tamsin’s taking Xander to London, so no – I don’t think Kellan or Kane want to bother.”
Her smile grew bigger yet.
“Great! Call them both; we’re going to San-Francisco.”
“We are?”
“Oh yes. We definitely are.”
Chapter 11
The distraction totally worked. Telling Mara that she knew three poor schmucks who didn’t have their mommy bear to cook them Christmas dinner was like throwing a baby at Rumpelstiltskin. Katie was too busy checking out the hunks to be a bitch, Shane wasn’t certain which one she shagged, so he didn’t hack into anyone’s personal files, and talking about hiking did sway her dad.
What sucked were the sleeping arrangements. Her parent’s suburban four bedroom wasn’t likely to comfortably house them all, so the Colburn were about to check into a hotel, when unexpectedly, Shane offered three of his five spare bedrooms.
Wow. That was new.
Alice had to wonder if there were darker motives behind the generous offer; was it to drill them, get a clearer picture of the mechanism?
She didn’t want a clear picture – she and Colt had an arrangement; she could do without having to explain things to her family when it stopped. So, they really didn’t need to know anything more than the truth: the Colburn were her friends.
Needless to say, Mama Vaughan didn’t see things her way.
Always the perfect hostess, Mara let it go while they were in company, but she cleverly cornered her in the kitchen under the presence of needing her girls to help with dessert.
“I wasn’t born yesterday, young lady,” she told her, a hand on her curvaceous hips. “These three boys are real gentlemen. Don’t you think I didn’t see them opening the doors, pushing our chairs... And they sure don’t make them like them around here! All these muscles…”
And to say that she thought hearing her parents having sex ten years ago had been traumatizing; it was nothing compared to the image of her damn milf of a mother licking sweat off a tanned, chiseled six pack.
Brain bleach needed.
“Mama, swear to me you’ll never, ever mention the physical attributes of any of my friends.”
“You shouldn’t have brought back three actual GQ models, then, should you?” Katie intervened.
From anyone else, it might have seemed a teasing jest, but Alice heard the venom underneath it all; she all but spat it out at her face. There was an accusation here, somehow.
As per usual, she let it go, deciding to ignore the jab. Someone had to pretend being an adult here.
“Exactly,” Mara agreed. “So cut the crappy cake and tell us which one we will see at Easter.”
Oh, for Christ’s sake.
“Remember you’ve made me spill this out; we’re just friends who fuck, Mama.”
This wasn’t met with so much as a raised eyebrow.
“Of course, dear; your father and I are, and will always be friends who fuck, too.”
“Mom!”
Agreed and emphasized; Katie and Alice might not agree on much, but for once, they were on the exact same radio station: this was TMI, big time.
“Shut it, Katie; I’m winning,” she warned, before turning to Alice, eyes narrowed. “Let me spill it out for you, dear. I will become your nightmare. I’ll get the childhood pictures out, speak about your exes, mention my sex life and grope one of their delightfully toned derrieres after getting drunk, if you don’t tell me which one you’re seeing. Now.”
Fuck. Her mother was plain evil.
•
Meeting the Vaughan had been enlightening; over the course of the last five hours, he’d come to understand a lot more about Alice than he’d managed to in the whole of their acquaintance.
Might have something to do with the fact that he’d avoided her for a good two months and had spent the following three weeks fucking her; somehow, they hadn’t really had time to talk on about stuff that mattered.
&nb
sp; The holiday dinner was exactly what he’d needed to get stuff out of her. Families had a way of saying, repeating and arguing the same matter over and over each time they gathered; football, politics, movies, music – everything was mentioned.
Turns out, she liked sports, didn’t mind the president and had seen every single blockbusters out in 2015; more importantly, he came to understand a lot about her character through her role in her nest.
She was the mediator.
Her sister, a pretty damn gorgeous, voluptuous blond with a massive rack and an ass Kellan had yet to stop staring at was a bit of a bitch, and her mother seemed sad each time she dug into anyone; Alice diligently redirected the discussion towards something else, effortlessly throwing a random comment which somehow interested every present party. Words were her weapon; her career choice seemed completely logical, now he saw her in action.
Her father was uptight, and a little bit scary – the kind of men who definitely owned a rifle – but her smile completely transfixed his entire aura. He chilled out each time her lips curled up; she stuck her tongue at him at some point, making him actually chuckle.
Her brother seemed cool, but he occasionally left the room; not physically, perhaps, but his mind was completely elsewhere half the time. Her mom had called him a couple of time without getting a reaction; she’d sighed and let it go, but Alice kicked his chair.
“Dud, wakey wakey, mother wants the mustard.”
In short, Alice was pretty damn amazing and came from good people.
Everything went great, expect for the fact that he hadn’t touched her since they’d been out of the car. She didn’t want her family to know about them; he wasn’t overly surprised, but the development was still unpleasant.
Then, unexpectedly, after the most orgasmingly amazing lemon drizzle he’d ever tasted, their gorgeous, elegant host turned to him and asked if he was staying with Alice.
The entire table shut up; Colt could feel the two Vaughan male’s eyes on him and they weren’t friendly right now.