by Selena Kitt
“Nah.” He squeezed his arm around her shoulder. “My dad’s an astronomer. He said the Ursids would be most active on Christmas and Christmas Eve.”
“Wow.” Erica settled back into her comfortable position, head resting on his chest. She could hear his heart beating, even through his coat. “Why isn’t he watching it with you?”
“He’s in Washington.” Clay shrugged. “When President Eisenhower asks you to head up a committee, my father asks, ‘How high?’”
“But on Christmas?” Erica made a face. “Who are you spending Christmas with?”
“My mother.”
She smiled. “Does your mother know where you are right now?”
“She doesn’t even know where she is after two nightcaps and a happy pill.” Clay snorted laughter. “Merry Christmas and ho ho ho.”
“Look, there’s another one!” Erica pointed.
“Do you think there’s life out there?” Clay asked, sounding thoughtful.
“Where?”
“You know, other planets.”
Erica considered. “I don’t know.”
“You think we’ll ever get there?”
“Outer space?” she laughed. “Like in flying saucers?”
“Well, the Russians launched Sputnik,” he reminded her.
Erica shivered. “Would you want to go?”
“Anywhere but here,” Clay replied. She felt his hand stroking her hair, which was growing damp from the snow. It was starting to fall heavier, sticking to their clothes. She saw a snowflake caught on the edge of Clay’s eyelashes and he blinked it away, looking at her.
“I don’t know,” Erica murmured, sliding her leg up over his. “Here isn’t so bad.”
He didn’t bridge the gap, she did, pressing her lips to his, reveling in the warmth of their mouths, the steam of their breath rising in the cold night air. She felt him responding, hands beginning to roam, seeking her softness, reaching under her unbuttoned coat.
“Come on, I’m getting cold,” Erica murmured, sliding off the hood of the car. “Let’s go get warm.”
“What are you doing?” Clay watched as she went around to the driver’s side, opening the back door.
She winked. “There’s more room in the backseat.”
He gaped at her as she shrugged off her coat, wearing her dungarees and a white sweatshirt and boots, tossing it onto the seat.
“You coming?” Erica cocked her hip, hands on them, and then she crawled into the backseat of the Chevy. For a moment, she thought he was frozen to the car, like a hood ornament, and then he hopped off, the snow crunching under his boots as he came around the car door.
Erica had already pulled off her boots, leaving them on the floor with her damp coat. Clay hesitated only a moment, a bemused look on his face as if he’d just been told something incredible—like he’d just won a thousand dollar prize—before diving into the backseat with her, shutting the door behind him. She giggled at his enthusiasm, wrapping her arms around his neck, feathering kisses over his snow-wet face.
“It’s really coming down out there,” she murmured over his shoulder, glancing out the window at the white flakes, like a thousand flying moths, as she unbuttoned his coat. “What if we get stuck out here in the snow?”
“That would be a scandal.” He grinned, shrugging off his coat. “But I can’t think of a better way to spend Christmas.”
His coat joined Erica’s on the floor, and was soon followed by her sweatshirt and dungarees, along with his jeans and shirt, and they rolled around in their underwear, sweaty bodies sticking to the seat, only little bits of fabric left between them and paradise. Clay groaned at every instance of their disrobing, closing his eyes and dropping his head for a moment, like he was saying a little prayer, although Erica didn’t know if it was a prayer for forgiveness or a prayer of thanks.
“You’ve never done this before, have you?” Erica whispered as she took his hand in hers, sliding it past the elastic of her panties to the promise land. Clay groaned again, burying his face against her breasts.
“Done what?” he croaked, cupping her mound, snatching her bra strap between his teeth and pulling, shaking it like a dog, with a low growl in his throat.
“Oh this is going to be fun.” Erica guided his hand, parting her sex with his fingers, using them to pleasure herself. Neither of them spoke, their breath matching her motion, faster and faster. She watched his face, the confusion and the wonder there. He was enthralled, in total awe of her audacity.
“Are you… what are you…?”
“Shhhhh.” She quieted him with a quick kiss, wanting it, working for it, knowing that once she gave him the full green light, it would be over in seconds, so she had to get hers now, right now, like this. Erica curled his fingers around her sex, forcing them inside of her, and Clay had found her rhythm, rocking his hand between her legs under the stretch of her white cotton panties.
Erica cried out when she came, pelvis arched up, legs butterflied around Clay’s hips, quivering in the steamy heat of the backseat with the final pulsing release of it. He groaned again, fingers still buried in her, as she floated back down to earth.
“Was that… did you…?”
“Yes.” She wiggled out of her panties, adding them to the growing mass of clothes on the floor. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Whoa. Wait… I… really?” he squeaked, blinking in surprise when Erica rolled him onto his back, reaching around to unhook her bra. His reluctance disappeared the moment he saw her sitting on him topless, lust overtaking his hesitation, hands reaching for her breasts, cupping them in wonder.
“Let’s see what we have here…” Erica slid his boxers down, allowing him to spring free, satisfyingly hard. “Mmm. Nice.”
“Erica…” Clay bit his lip when she began to stroke him, his face pained. “I didn’t bring you here for… I mean…”
“I know. It’s okay. I want to.” She shifted in her straddle, sliding him between her labia. They were swollen from her orgasm, her juices flowing, more than ready for him. “Did you think, when you invited me to meet you at two in the morning, that I was going to be a good girl?”
“But you’re… I really like you, Erica.”
“I like you too.” She was guiding him, nice and easy. “That’s why we’re doing this.”
“Wow.” Clay’s hands gripped her breasts as she began to slide down on him. “Wow. Oh wowwwwww. You’re something else!”
She pressed a finger to his lips, settling into the saddle of his hips, feeling him fully inside of her. “Shhh. No more talking.”
Erica rocked her pelvis back and forth, up and back, watching his expression change from astonishment to pleasure, from fascination to lust. It was his first time, but it was far from hers, so she took complete control, enjoying her power, feeding on it. It was intoxicating, and Erica was fearless, unashamed, using her body to force him to the brink.
She knew she was bad, she knew it, and she enjoyed it. The flirting they’d been doing for the past few weeks had culminated in this moment, but for her, it was more than that. She’d been holding back her feelings for Father Michael so long, she couldn’t help the floodgates when the dam burst. Poor Clay had just been standing in the way and was in danger of drowning. It wasn’t this poor boy’s fault that she was imagining a certain handsome priest, but Clay didn’t look like he minded. He probably still wouldn’t have minded if she’d told him the truth, but she wasn’t going to do that.
“Oh. God. Ohhh! God!” Clay’s hands crushed her breasts together, hips bucking her up so hard she nearly hit the roof of the car.
Erica leaned in to whisper in his ear, “Go ahead. You can come inside of me. I want you to.”
He shuddered, wrapping his arms around her waist and burying himself completely inside of her, his final cry of release making her smile in triumph as she felt the tell-tale surge of white hot liquid deep in her belly. She kissed his sweaty cheek, slowly shifting her weight, feeling him slide out of her, both of
them crying out at the sensation.
“Oh God.” Clay threw an arm over his eyes as Erica began to dress, feeling around for her underwear. “What if you get pregnant? Oh no. Oh God. This isn’t happening.”
“I can’t get pregnant,” she assured him, putting on her bra.
He peeked out at her, watching as she pulled her sweatshirt over her head. “You’re a girl, aren’t you? Girls can get pregnant. Trust me, I paid attention in science class, remember?”
“I can’t get pregnant.” Erica tossed his boxers to him, starting to wiggle into her dungarees. “Really, it’s true. I’m not making it up. See this?”
She twisted her hips toward him, zipper still down, and showed him the scar on her belly.
“What is that?”
“I had an operation.” She yanked up her pants, zipping and buttoning them. “I can’t have babies. Ever.”
“Oh. Wow.” Clay sat, pulling on his boxers, looking over at her. He clearly didn’t know what to say. Not that she could blame him. “Oh wow. Erica, I’m so sorry.”
“No sense crying over spilled milk.” She rubbed her hand over the steam on the window, peering outside. “You think the light show is over?”
“Probably.” Clay was dressing, pulling on his jeans, slipping on his t-shirt. “Sorry we missed it?”
“A little.” Erica drew a face on the glass, a round face, two eyes and a sardonic squiggly smile.
Clay scooted closer, putting his arms around her waist. “I’m not.”
“What time is it?”
He sighed, looking at his watch. “Time to take you home. You’re sure no one will notice you snuck out?”
“I told you, my father is oblivious.” Erica grabbed her boots, starting to pull them on. She didn’t want to think about her father—and Leah. She had thought having her best friend back would make things right again, but since Leah had come home from Magdalene House, she had been withdrawn and moody and prone to fits of either anger or tears over the littlest things.
Erica couldn’t really blame her. Even though Leah had gone away to a maternity home to have her baby—most girls who found themselves with a bun in the oven ended up at places like Magdalene House—she’d changed her mind once Grace had been born. Even back when Leah had actually believed her mother’s lie—that Robert Nolan was Leah’s biological father—Leah had decided to run off to New York and start a new life with her baby in tow.
Leah had sworn up and down that she’d been tricked into signing the adoption papers by the social worker, and while Erica’s father had hired a private investigator to find her and had talked to several lawyers, apparently Leah’s signature on the document made things legally tricky. Erica didn’t really know all the details—she just knew she and Father Michael had almost caught the adoption worker taking off in the car that had carried baby Grace away from the hospital where Leah had given birth to her.
If they’d just gotten to her a few minutes sooner!
Erica felt guilty about that. She felt guilty about a lot of things, including not figuring out the mystery of Leah’s disappearance sooner—how had she not connected the dots?
It made sense now, in hindsight of course. The only thing that would have made Leah disappear like that, without a trace or even a word of goodbye, was something as scandalous as an unwed pregnancy. She would have been kicked out of their strict Catholic college the instant she began showing, and Leah’s mother, Patty, wouldn’t have been able to hold her head up in the grocery store once tongues started wagging about “the Wendt girl” who “got herself in trouble.” Funny how it was always “got herself in trouble,” as if no boy was involved in the whole mess.
Of course, in this case, there was no boy. There was a man, and that man was Erica’s father, Robert Nolan.
He’s not your father.
The revelation that Robert Nolan wasn’t Leah’s father, like Patty Wendt falsely claimed, had come along with the shocking news that Erica wasn’t his daughter either. She’d been adopted, because Robert’s first wife, Susan, hadn’t been able to have children either. Erica shivered, even in the steamy heat of Clay’s backseat, touching her belly at the site of her scar, the same one her mother had.
Erica shoved that train of thought away, derailing it completely by turning to Clay and kissing him deeply, cutting off his words. She hadn’t been listening to him anyway. He gasped in surprise—she rather liked shocking him—but soon caught on to her mood, his hands less reticent now, roaming those places he’d formerly touched so hesitantly.
“What were you saying?” she whispered into his ear, reaching down to cup the growing bulge in his jeans, wondering if they had enough time for one more. It would likely take him longer a second time, and be more fun for her, but it was getting late.
“Ummm…” Clay shook his head to clear it, blinking at her. “I said… it sounds like your father and my mother would get along fabulously.”
She laughed. “We should introduce them.”
“Guess you’re ready to go?” He looked disappointed as she plucked her coat from the floor, shaking it off.
“It’s late.” She kissed him on the cheek, nudging him with her hip. “Have to get home to bed before Santa comes.”
Clay drove home slowly in the falling snow, taking twice as long to get her back home than it had taken them to get out into the country. Erica turned up the radio and sang along as Elvis begged her to be his teddy bear, the lingering scent of sex filling the enclosed vehicle.
“I have an idea,” Erica said as Clay pulled up into the alleyway behind the warehouse she called home. “How about you come to my house tomorrow… well, today. For Christmas dinner.”
She’d hatched her evil plan during the drive home, looking at the way a sort of sly, proud smile kept playing on Clay’s lips every time he glanced her way. Father Michael was supposed to come to Christmas dinner, and having Clay there would suit her purposes nicely. Besides, she really did like Clay. That part hadn’t been a lie.
“What time?” He put the car in park, letting the engine idle. “My mother wants to go to brunch at eleven, after we do gifts.”
“Perfect!” Erica smiled. “We won’t eat until five.”
“Are you sure your family will be okay with it?”
“Let me worry about that. You just come.”
He leaned over and kissed her, his lips soft and warm, and Erica slid her arms around his neck, kissing him back.
“Wow,” he breathed as they parted, looking into her eyes. “And here I thought I was going to show you something tonight.”
“You did.”
“But…” He cleared his throat. “I really didn’t expect… I mean…”
She pressed her lips to his ear, whispering, “Good girls don’t sneak out to meet boys in the middle of the night.”
He laughed. “So you’re a bad girl?”
“When I want to be.” She wiggled her eyebrows and he laughed again, sliding his hands down to her hips, pulling her closer.
“Do you think you might want to be again… soon?”
“Hang around and find out.” Erica smiled, sliding across the seat and opening the passenger side door.
He leaned over and called out, “I intend to!”
“Goodnight, Clay.”
“Night. See you in…” He glanced down at his watch. “About twelve hours…”
She shut the passenger side door, trudging through the snow—there was almost a foot on the ground already—glancing back to see Clay pulling out into the street. He waved to her and she waved back, smiling to herself.
She hadn’t really felt that Christmas spirit yet this year, not when they’d gone shopping for the Christmas tree, not stringing it with lights, not shopping for gifts, not even participating in midnight mass as the immaculate virgin—an irony that wasn’t lost on her. Something had been missing, even with Leah home, and it wasn’t just her best friend’s sorrow about her missing baby.
Erica was lonely. She’d fallen head
over heels for a man she couldn’t have—and in spite of the nearly palpable attraction between them, Father Michael had made it clear nothing could ever happen—and she’d been spending all her time, in spite of that, thinking about him and wanting him and wishing it could be different. It left her exhausted and lonely, like constantly being in a crowded room and not recognizing a soul.
For the first time in a long time, she felt connected, really alive. After the surprise meteor shower and the spontaneous fireworks in Clay’s backseat, a white Christmas felt like a gift, and she twirled around, laughing and sticking out her tongue like they used to when they were little, trying to catch snowflakes.
Chapter Three
After the disaster that was Christmas dinner, Leah just wanted to go to bed and sleep forever. She might have done just that—taken a handful of the sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed for her, and gone to sleep. Forever. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d considered it. But there was Rob, with that sad, helpless look in his eyes, stroking her hair, whispering how much he loved her, that it was going to be okay, and she wanted to believe him, even if she couldn’t, quite.
So for Rob, she hung on. She clung to him, desperate for contact, wanting him to erase her memory, to take her back to the time before, and he did his very best. Erica was gone with that new boy from St. Casimir, Clayton something, he whispered as he climbed into bed beside her. Father Patrick and Father Michael had left, and even Solie, who stayed to clean up after dinner, had gone home
They were alone—except for the ghost, who was always there, even when she wasn’t looking, waiting just beyond her senses, waiting to move through her like a knife through her chest.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, for the hundredth time, the millionth maybe, and he shook his head, kissing her quiet. She’d missed his kisses, his hands, the press of his thigh between hers. She didn’t understand how it happened, the whole falling-in-love thing, but she couldn’t deny it, even now, after his sweet, heartfelt proposal—had it just been that morning? It seemed eons ago—knowing she was his, and he, hers. She didn’t know the hows and whys, and she didn’t trust her head, where all the crazy-talk was happening.