The Trouble with Christmas

by Amy Andrews

  It had to be the surroundings. It had to be the fire crackling in the hearth and the Christmas tree lights blinking haphazardly and the carols. Add in the aromas of sugar and cinnamon and the wine that must be going to her head, and it was no wonder a shot of recklessness jettisoned into her system.

  Picking up one of the unfrosted cookies, she bit into the head. It crumbled in her mouth, and the sugar and butter melted on her tongue, and she moaned a little because it tasted amazing and because it made Grady’s eyes darken and his nostrils flare.

  “Good?” His gaze dropped to her mouth and lingered.

  “Uh-huh.” Swallowing her mouthful, she licked the crumbs from her lips and enjoyed the way his eyes tracked the movement. “Best dick I’ve had in a long time,” she murmured with a smile.

  He laughed, and Suzanne’s gaze was drawn to his bottom lip, to the reddened area where she’d marked him earlier today. A prolonged inspection revealed a slight bluish discoloration to the mark. “I’m sorry…about biting you.”

  He shrugged. “I was being an asshole.”

  Suzanne blinked, surprised by his easy admission of guilt. “Yeah, you were.” He laughed again. “But that doesn’t make it right. Is it sore?”

  He shook his head. “Only when I laugh, talk, eat, drink, or breathe.”

  It was Suzanne’s turn to laugh. “I am sorry,” she said, and without giving it much thought, she lifted her fingers to his mouth and lightly touched the spot.

  He didn’t pull away or wince, he just went very still, his eyes fluttering shut for a brief moment before opening again. “It’s fine,” he dismissed, his voice like gravel as he stared at her mouth, and heat bloomed between them.

  “Maybe,” Suzanne whispered, blood throbbing through her veins, the air in her lungs heavy, “or maybe it needs kissing better?”

  He swallowed, and the bob of his Adam’s apple seemed thick and painful, and she knew all sense of rationality had left the building when she seriously contemplated kissing it better.

  Kissing all his boo-boos better. The ones she could see and the ones she could not.

  “Maybe it does,” he agreed, his voice rumbling into the air, his eyes glued to her lips, making her breath hitch and her pulse whoosh through her head as every reason she shouldn’t be doing this fled.

  It was just a kiss, right?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Slowly, rising on her tiptoes, excruciatingly careful to maintain the paltry distance between their bodies, she leaned in, her mouth—just her mouth—closing the distance. Kissing Grady’s lip better didn’t require their bodies to touch. Just their mouths.

  Only their mouths.

  Carefully, gently, Suzanne touched her mouth to the mark on his bottom lip. He kept still as her mouth lingered for one second, two. But she could hear the rough draw of his breathing. And hers. Pulling back slightly, she asked, “Better?”

  “A little.” His voice was somewhere between a pant and a whisper.

  Her pulse so loud between her ears now that she couldn’t think straight, Suzanne put her mouth to his bottom lip again, lingered again, touched her tongue to the swollen area.

  He made a rumbly kind of noise in the back of his throat, and she did it again and again until her tongue was swiping along his entire bottom lip, until he groaned and a hand slid into her hair and his mouth parted.

  They were truly kissing now, tentatively at first and then not at all tentatively as he deepened the kiss, his hand sliding onto her hip, hitching her close, their bodies bumping deliciously together, his hand sliding to the small of her back, locking them in place.

  A momentary slither of clarity had her mouth breaking away slightly, the pant of her breath mingling with the pant of his. “Does it hurt?”

  His rough “Hell no” was all the encouragement she needed to go back for more, one arm sliding around his neck, the other hand fisting in his shirt.

  Things went wild and hazy then, his mouth devouring hers, hard and demanding, his tongue licking along her lips and into her mouth, thrusting and seeking and devouring. “God, you taste good,” he said on a groan, his lips the merest of a fraction away from hers. “I want to taste all of you.”

  Then he was kissing her again, so deep and so good and pressed against her so close and so tight that Suzanne was barely conscious of him turning her and lifting her onto the bench. Her knees spread automatically to admit him closer, and his hands found her ass and hitched her forward. The bench was just the right height, bringing the heat and tingling between her legs flush against the heat and hardness between his. It felt electric, arcing and sizzling, tearing a gasp from her throat and a groan from his.

  “Fuck,” he whispered as their lips broke apart and they held, panting together, suspended in the moment for a beat or two before Suzanne ground against him.

  “Yes please,” she said, her voice low and urgent.

  Grady groaned again, his lips sliding kisses to her jaw and down her neck and along her collarbone and to the swell of her cleavage as she rode the hard ridge of his erection, the sensation both soothing and stoking the roaring ache between her legs.

  The tip of his tongue licked along the edge of the V neckline before his lips traveled to the hard point of her nipple pressing against the T-shirt and sucked into his mouth. Even with the barrier of fabric, it was a jolt through her system, and Suzanne cried out, her hand finding the back of his head and holding tight.

  He broke free, lifting his head, and said, “Off.” His eyes hot green pools as he glared in frustration at her shirt. “I need to see you.”

  He didn’t wait for her to comply, just lifted his hands to the front of her shirt, grasped either side of the buttons, and yanked them apart. Suzanne gasped as buttons flew everywhere and she sat exposed before him, her shirt ruined, her chest rising and falling unevenly, her breathing a rough pant as his eyes roved over her satiny red bra with black stitching and a black lace trim.

  “Christ.” His eyes roved over her breasts like he’d just discovered gold. “These are so much nicer than my fantasies,” he said in a hushed, husky kind of reverence that Suzanne felt all the way down to her clitoris.

  “You fantasized about me?” Her stomach clenched and her heart fibrillated, and she was hot and trembling all over. It was good to know she hadn’t been the only one unable to master her subconscious.

  But had he fantasized about her with the level of detail she had him?

  He nodded. “All the time.” Dragging his gaze off her breasts, he met her eyes. “While I’m fixing fences, feeding cattle, talking to my men, freezing my ass off on a horse. And every fucking night since you moved into the cottage.”

  His voice was rough with desire and indignation, like he hated himself a little for his lack of control, and that only made Suzanne hotter. Because she knew exactly how he felt. Streaks of need darted from her inner thighs to her belly button and undulated along her pelvic floor.

  “And these.” Grady dropped his gaze to her breasts, his hands sliding up her thighs, over her stomach and ribs to slide onto the satin-covered mounds. He squeezed them, Suzanne’s breath caught, and when he swiped his thumbs over the visibly erect nipples, she made a little noise in her throat and arched her back. “I’ve thought about these more than I’ve thought about boobs in my whole life combined.”

  He traced his index fingers along the lacy edge where fabric met flesh and then, hooking his fingers under the edge, he pulled both the cups aside. Suzanne panted heavily as her breasts spilled out, and Grady groaned, his hands moving to capture the fullness of them, squeezing them, playing with the weight of them in his hands before lowering his head.

  Suzanne cried out as he sucked a nipple into the wet heat of his mouth, rolling it around, flicking it with his tongue, grazing it with his teeth. He switched quickly to the other, and everything dissolved around her as her body succumbed to the hot, wet
tug of his mouth, her fingers winding in his hair.

  But even as she gasped and writhed beneath his tongue, the growing need to touch him, to slide her hands over him, to feel him, grew until she was clawing at his soft shirt. She yanked it up over his head, forcing him to release her nipple, but that was okay because oh dear god it was the mudroom all over again. Except his skin was flushed and warm and his eyes were hot as they bored into her and his mouth was wet and he was looking at her with the kind of feral need she knew echoed in every beat of her heart.

  Grabbing his shoulders, Suzanne pulled him close, her mouth landing on his, her breasts flattened to his chest as she ground against his erection. His hands slid to her ass to keep them locked in place, and she blasted him with a kiss that gave and took in equal measure as her hands explored his back, stroking up and down the length, feeling the play of muscle, the hardness of bone, the furrow and notches of his spine. Exploring the dip that was the small of his back, the rounded well of two dimples and the slope leading to the waistband of his track pants.

  Suzanne didn’t think twice about slipping her hands into the waistband. Her palms were greedy for the feel of his flesh, and they moved on autopilot, enjoying the contraction of muscles as she palmed the smooth naked globes of his ass and gave them a squeeze.

  God…Grady was built. This was an ass that out-assed anything she could have ever painted. Suzanne stroked her tongue in and out, mimicking the rhythm of her hands as they kneaded his glutes. The deep well of his groan was like a sexual sugar rush to a system already buzzing with high-octane arousal.

  But, as good as it was, his ass was never going to be enough. She needed more than his ass in her hands; she needed the hardness between his legs in her hands—in other parts of her. Greedily, her fingers moved to his front, dipping into his boxer briefs, seeking out his erection, trembling with a need that bordered on feral, finding it all hard and heavy and solid, moaning in satisfaction as she curled her fingers around its girth.

  A noise that didn’t sound quite human spilled from Grady’s lips as he tore his mouth away, pressing his forehead to hers, their heads bowing as she wrapped her fingers around his dick, a bead of liquid pearling at the slit in his flushed crown.

  “Jesus…” He gasped, his breathing short, sharp pants. “We should not be doing this.”

  Suzanne’s chest rose and fell in unison. “I know.” And she did know. He was absolutely right. They really needed to stop. This wasn’t real, and making it real wasn’t an option.

  But he felt so good in her hand—so thick, so right—the taut skin deceptively velvet, the core like forged steel. And it felt like that all the way from the root to the tip because she tested it to make sure. She couldn’t not. Not with her heartbeat like a tempest in her blood.

  Groaning again, he buried his head in the crook of her shoulder, and she knew that his gaze was locked on her hand as she worked up and down his length. Once, twice, three times. A series of rough pants spilling from his mouth.

  “Suzy…” he muttered, his hand on her ass tightening.

  The use of Suzy was like a lit flare to a vat of oil. Suzanne might just have been able to pull her back from the brink. After all, Suzanne always did the right thing. She was the good daughter, the good friend. She didn’t push or make waves. Her path had been cut out for her in life, and she’d been happy to tread it. She was Simone St. Michelle’s daughter; she forged other people’s art and was happy doing so.

  Suzy, on the other hand, was none of those things. Suzy yelled at tough rancher dudes and bribed them and bit their lips. She lied to her parents. Suzy painted her own stuff. And made out on kitchen benches.

  Suzy was freaking awesome.

  “I need…” His voice trailed away as his gaze searched her face like he was trying to fathom if she also felt this wild kind of recklessness. “I need…”

  She nodded. She knew exactly what he needed because she needed it to. She needed him inside her, moving inside her, to be as connected to him as was humanly possible.

  To be one with Joshua Grady.

  “Me too,” she whispered, releasing his dick to circle her arms around his neck, her nipples brushing the smoothness of his chest. “Me too.”

  She kissed him again, their lips meeting in a desperate kind of mashing that had her gripping his hair and locking her legs around him, clinging and grinding herself against him until they were both groaning and panting.

  Suzanne wouldn’t have thought it was possible to come from dry humping, but she was damn near there, and she wanted him inside her when she came.

  “Condoms,” she rasped, pulling out of the kiss, the air in her lungs thick with desire.

  He stared at her, his hair all messed up, the spot where she’d bitten him even more pronounced, his chest rising and falling as he dragged air into his lungs. “Wh-what?” His green gaze was clouded with confusion for a second before it cleared. “Oh shit.” His eyes went distant as if he was doing a mental inventory of his bathroom vanity. “I…don’t think I have a single condom in this entire house.”

  Suzanne, her breath chugging, too, sat back a little. She hadn’t expected him to have them in the back pocket of his track pants, but what single man didn’t have quick, easy access to a stash in his own home? Just in case he was called on to be someone’s fake rancher boyfriend and things got out of hand. “You don’t use condoms?”

  He shot her a frustrated scowl. “I always use condoms. I just…don’t do this all that regularly…and never here. I usually get them on the way…”

  Suzanne supposed it made her a bad person to like that Grady wasn’t putting it out for every woman he came across. It probably made her a truly heinous person to admit the thought even turned her on a little. Grady was a seriously hot guy. She imagined—if he actually smiled—he could crook his finger and have just about anyone.

  And he’d chosen her.

  It was ridiculous to be aroused by what essentially amounted to a lack of practice. It probably made him lousy in bed. But some things were innate, and Grady sure as hell hadn’t taken a wrong step yet.

  “I have condoms,” she said, sliding her arms around his neck, tightening her thighs around his waist. She always carried them in her handbag. “In my room.”

  Grady did not need any further direction. He just grabbed her ass and pulled her off the bench top, kissing her with deep, drugging kisses as he carried her, navigating from the kitchen past Zoom’s tank through the archway to her bedroom at the end of the hall without dropping her or running them into a single wall. Not that Suzanne was conscious of anything outside of Grady. All that existed was his mouth and the play of his tongue and the heat of his chest and the hardness between his legs. It was as if she were floating.

  Floating in a sea of fake rancher boyfriend.

  It wasn’t until he urged her legs to unlock and her feet were sliding to the ground, the backs of her calves brushing the mattress, that she came back to herself. They broke apart and just stared at each other for long moments, the only sound between them the husky fall of their breaths.

  God…he was sexy. His naked chest, his hair all messed up, the stubble on his jaw. The heat radiating from his body mixed with the soapy scent of his skin to form some kind of intoxicating hit of pheromones. The glitter in his eyes was full of desire and longing and absolute purpose.

  Her legs suddenly weak as cotton candy, Suzanne sat on the mattress and eyed the tie of his track pants. It was dark in the room, but her night vision was in full working order, allowing her to see the prominent bulge at just the right level.

  Yay for night vision!

  Her mouth watered at the thought of tasting him. “Take them off.”

  It was satisfying to hear the rough intake of his breath and see the slight tremble of his hand as he tugged on the tie, then pushed them down his legs.

  “Those too,” she said, pointing at hi
s boxer briefs even before his track pants had hit the floor. He looked hot as fuck in the crimson fabric, his erection filling them out the way God and Calvin Klein had no doubt intended, but right now all they were doing was stopping her from getting to his goods.

  They were soon gone, too, and his erection sprang free, standing out—thick and proud. And hard. And big. The kind of big that made tumescent manroot an entirely acceptable way of describing a penis.

  He was certainly no David—that was for sure.

  “Come closer,” she whispered, her exposed nipples aching, her mouth dry with the need to taste him.

  He stepped in close, and their gazes locked. The groan he let out when she slid her fingers down his length went straight to her ovaries. The swift, harsh suck of his breath when her mouth followed went straight to her clitoris.

  “Jesussss,” he hissed. “Fuck.”

  His eyes closed as he slid his hand onto her shoulder, and Suzanne’s eyes closed, too, reveling in the silky hard contradiction of him against her tongue, in the scent of him filling her nostrils and his clean salty flavor playing on her taste buds. She swallowed him up, her hand sliding onto one of his ass cheeks as she took him as far as she could before backing off, to swirl her tongue around and around and around the taut crown, lapping at the salty residue there.

  “Christ,” he muttered, opening his eyes. “You drive me crazy.”

  Suzanne didn’t know if he meant right now or the past two weeks or both, but he sounded so undone, and hell if that didn’t do loopy things to her insides. Her eyes fluttered open to find him staring down at her, and the craving in his gaze was arousing in ways she never knew existed.

  He wasn’t the tough guy rancher or the badass military dude anymore. He was just a man—totally stripped back. It was humbling and powerful all at once that he was laying himself bare to her. A guy as hard and stoic as the elements he battled every day, who didn’t seem to open up to anybody. To need anybody. But he was looking at her—the woman who talked too much and sassed him too much and was just there too much—with such naked hunger, her bones dissolved.