A LONG HOT CHRISTMAS

by Barbara Daly

  "Because it's making me crazy." She pulled his head away from her breasts and brought his mouth to hers, her fingers threaded through his hair, her body searching for his.

  "That's the idea," he managed to say before he yielded to her, giving her the kiss she wanted and needed, hard and hot, and crushing her against the full length of his body.

  More hardness, more heat. More than she could bear. She rolled over him, straddling him, hearing his gasp of surprise.

  His hands gripped her buttocks to pull her hard against his erection, and at last she was where she'd longed to be. Almost. There was still one thing wrong with the picture. There was still too much between them.

  Slowly she sat up, still straddling him, and gazed down at him. His eyes glittered with stars of their own in the flickering candlelight. She unbuttoned one more button, just to watch his eyes widen, then darken with increasing excitement. Another button, then another, until she reached the waist, then she slipped the velvet and lace off her shoulders and in her half-nakedness, gave him more of herself than she'd ever given another man.

  He seemed awed by the sight of her as his hands came up to cup her breasts, to stroke them again, gently, then with increasing pressure. It was ecstasy, being touched like that. She leaned into his hands and rocked against him, seeking more of him against her, feeling the tremulous beginnings of something building inside her that was almost frightening in its intensity. When she groaned, he picked up her rhythm, moving with her, increasing her pleasure. Her eyes lost their focus. She felt more than saw the flickering candles, the shadows they made against the walls, the rapid bucking of his hips beneath her.

  She was falling, falling into an abyss of aching delight. With a surprised cry she fell forward into his waiting arms.

  And instantly moaned, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I don't know how that happened. I didn't mean to … it wasn't the way it was supposed to…"

  He tipped her over onto the coverlet and smothered her words with his lips, then lifted himself just enough to say, "Oh, yes it was. That was so good. So good."

  She slid her mouth out from under his. "Was it really. Was it okay for me to…" He was tugging her jumpsuit over her hips, down her thighs, and she tried to help him, only managing to get completely in his way.

  "Not just okay." He pulled the jumpsuit away, tossed it away into some distant corner of the room and quieted, gazing at her body, now naked except for her black lace bikini panties. "It's … it's…"

  She'd rendered him speechless. At last he got his voice going again, and his hands.

  "It's essential." He was breathing hard as he hooked his thumbs into the elastic of the panties and guided them in the same direction he'd sent the jumpsuit. "Call me crazy, but I just … can't … feel a thing…"

  He tossed the panties. "…until I know you've had almost all you can stand at one time…"

  He sat up, pulled his sweater over his head and disposed of it in one swift gesture. "And we're nowhere close to that point…" He unzipped his slacks and seemed to snake himself out of them, then flung back the coverlet and nestled her into the bower of sheets where he lay beside her at last, as naked as she was, and at last he was silent.

  His voice was silent. The rest of him spoke poems of desire. For a moment she drank in the beauty and the sheer power of him, the breadth of his shoulders, the vee of dark curls that fanned across his chest and dived below his narrow waist, the muscles of his legs, and most of all, the mute evidence of his need for her. Barely giving her time to explore him with her gaze, he buried his face between her thighs, unerringly found the spot where she still throbbed, felt swollen, and caressed it with the tip of his tongue.

  She felt she was pretty close to the point that she couldn't take any more. She was lost, lost in a pool of animal instinct. She'd lost her ability to worry about his reaction to her—did he like the way she looked without clothes, was he having a good time? She could feel nothing but the currents that raged inside herself as his tongue dipped and darted, teased that tiny part of her that held the secret to her pleasure.

  She was on the brink, welcoming the rising tide, when he began to move up her body, kissing and tasting her stomach, darting his tongue into her navel. She couldn't help the little cry that exploded from her.

  He slid up and up, reaching her breasts, teasing them with his tongue in a circling dance before his mouth closed on one nipple, then the other.

  Every move of his body sent a message to the lower half of her body, where that tiny part of her was making such urgent demands she could hardly concentrate on anything else. She nudged herself closer to him, fluttering her fingertips over his back, his shoulders, into the silk of his hair, then returning to sink her fingers into the crisp curls that tickled against her skin, finally searching for the one thing she wanted and at last finding it.

  When her hand closed on the hot shaft he groaned, moved within the circlet she'd made around him. He felt so silky, so different from the rest of him. She looked at his face, his eyes half-closed, his dark hair making damp ringlets against his forehead, his mouth swollen, his lips parted, and felt an affection for him so strong, so sharp, that it frightened her.

  "I want this. I want it now," she whispered, wishing again for an end to the sweet pain, wanting life to go back to normal.

  "Not yet." He seemed to struggle to speak. "Not quite yet," as his fingertips slid back down to her womanly core to tease, torment and then to bury themselves in her.

  She arched against him, feeling the wave coming again, threatening to wash over her and carry her away, concentrating on herself again, because she could think of nothing else but the sensation closing in on her. It happened all of a sudden, no time to think, no time to do anything but feel, to cry out from the intensity of the feeling because it was so much stronger than before, lifted her so much higher.

  He held her tight against him until at last she fell limp against the sheets.

  She opened her eyes. They were wet with tears. She held out her arms. "Now, please," she said. "Now you."

  His gaze probed her as his hand stroked her face, smoothed away the moisture of tears and perspiration. His mouth moved over hers in the gentlest of kisses. She could feel the way he held himself back, even now.

  * * *

  Sam was thinking that now was the time he should probably go home, tell her he'd changed his mind. Not that he'd pretend he didn't want her—no way he could do that with any credibility because his desire spoke for itself—but simply explain that he cared too much to follow through with the deal under false pretenses.

  That he was in deep danger of falling in love with her was something he couldn't hide from himself any longer. Falling in love with a woman who couldn't possibly fit into his life plan. Couldn't hide it from himself, but he had to hide it from her.

  Try explaining that to his body, though, now that he'd tasted her, touched her, given her pleasure and gotten pleasure from it himself.

  Even her quick arousal, her cries of delight, couldn't hide her lack of experience. He'd found it touching, exhilarating, because everything she felt was real, not practiced. Tonight would mean something to her, more than it should, because he couldn't fit into her life plan, either. Two people as driven as they were needed support at home, not a comet flying off in another direction to come back to earth a hundred years later.

  Try telling that to his body. Feeling a groan rise from deep inside him, he reached for the condoms he'd dumped on the bedside table, quickly covered himself with one and rolled her over until she was straddling him, sitting up, gazing down at him.

  She touched him, her breath quickening, her eyes glittering like gems in the candlelight. She grasped the tip and edged herself closer. His thoughts moved further and further to the background. She'd said yes. What else mattered? She was an adult. He was an adult. Whatever happened, each of them was responsible.

  She lowered herself over him, panting, aroused, wanting in a way he'd always dreamed of a woman wanting him
. When he met the slight resistance he'd wondered about, even feared, he found the presence of mind to say, "Are you sure? Is this what you want?"

  "Yes. Oh, please, yes," was all she said, and then it was done, he'd broken through her maidenhead, felt his own surprise and hers, and then he entered a world of fire and flood, heat flowing like lava through his veins.

  He could feel her tears falling on his chest, but she seemed unaware of them as she rocked with him, lost in her own apparent pleasure and need. His breathing quickened as the pressure built up inside him. He fought it down, struggling to hold back, desperate with the need to let go, but wanting her to share it with him. He held back until her sharp cry sounded in the quiet room and she collapsed against his chest, and at last he succumbed, holding on to her for dear life.

  When the storm had let up, he rolled her to his side, not letting go. "You okay?" he whispered. His voice was funny, didn't work very well.

  "Oh, yes, very, very, very okay." She hesitated, then whispered brokenly, "And very glad to be a woman."

  "I am, too," he rasped against her hair. "Glad you're a woman."

  "You gave me so much before you took anything for yourself."

  She couldn't imagine how much he'd taken for himself. "For a woman," he said, smiling in the darkness, "the pleasure is infinite. For a man…"

  Even as he spoke he felt himself hardening, felt the need rising again, wondered if he would frighten her by giving in to it. "A man," he began again, "has to wait, oh, two or three minutes in between." And he gave up, gave in, reveling in her soft, surprised laughter as she pulled him tight against her.

  * * *

  In the middle of the night, she lay cuddled in his arms, dreamy and peaceful after yet another session of lovemaking, slow this time and infinitely satisfying. It was such an effort to move her head, but she did, rolling it up a little to gaze at him in the light from the candles that flickered from the dresser top.

  She found him staring fixedly at the ceiling. "What's up there on the beam," he said. His voice was rough with sleepiness. "Those things with the ribbons on them."

  "Pipe," Hope said. "Pieces of pipe."

  "Oh." He yawned, snuggled her tightly to him and was soon asleep.

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  « ^ »

  A low cry of pain and a string of muttered not-quite-curses woke Hope up, not the dancing light that filled the room.

  "Curtains, curtains," Sam moaned.

  He was either dreaming it was "curtains" for one of his clients or pleading with her to pull the curtains. Which she couldn't do, because there weren't any.

  "Do you want a mask?" she whispered.

  Sam was lying flat on his back. He turned his head an inch, so that one deep blue eye squinted at her. When he squinted, his long lashes folded almost in half. She could tell she'd confused him.

  She made circles around her eyes with her fingers. "You know, the kind they give you on the airplane so you can sleep."

  "Oh. No, that's okay. I'm getting used to it," he said at last. His lashes struggled open.

  "It must be late," Hope said. She carefully assumed the same position he was in, flat on her back and staring up, and they lay there in silence for a moment.

  "I'd say eight o'clock."

  "I've never slept until eight o'clock," Hope said. "If you slept late, you'd need curtains or shades in a room like this." The ceiling was an ever-changing pattern of triangles as the sun hit the icicles that hung outside the windows. The effect was rather pretty. She couldn't help herself. She inched a millimeter closer to Sam's big warm body.

  "I've never slept until eight o'clock, either," Sam said. "Summer, though, I do sleep past four. That's when the sun comes up in July."

  "I guess that's when I wake up in July," Hope said.

  "Sometimes I spend weekends in the country," Sam said. "There it's birds."

  Hope nodded. "This is a little high for birds."

  "To warble at each other, anyway," Sam said. "I guess up here they just fly on by."

  Sunlight danced on the beam, lit up the slanted lengths of copper pipe with their bows of rosy red ribbon. The telephone rang. Hope didn't move.

  "Aren't you going to answer it?" Sam asked her.

  "No."

  "Don't you want to know who it is?"

  "I know who it is. I can feel who it is. And I think it must be later than eight o'clock."

  "Why?"

  "Because if it's eight o'clock here," Hope said, "it's only five o'clock in California and seven o'clock in Chicago."

  "That's what it would be, all right."

  The ringing ended; a muted voice that had the staccato rhythm of Charity at her bossiest came from the office alcove as the answering machine picked up. Hope knew she only imagined that Sam inched a centimeter toward her as they lay there in silence, staring at the ceiling.

  She'd just had the most important, most exciting night of her life. Even though every second of it thrilled through her as she lay there so quietly, it was something she simply couldn't talk about, not even to Sam, who'd made it happen. And never, never would she be able to share it in giggly girl-talk with her sisters.

  He tilted his head just a bit, following her gaze to the beam. "Pipe's a phallic symbol, you know," he said.

  "Is not," Hope said at once.

  "Is too." He nodded. "All these years you've been substituting pipe for penises."

  She half-rose, reached behind her and grabbed up a pillow. "I have not!" She raised the pillow over her head.

  "Hey, don't yell at me. I'm not the one with pipe envy." Sam rolled smoothly off the bed just as she slammed the pillow into the spot where he'd been lying.

  At the doorway to the bathroom, in all his naked masculine glory, not at all shy the morning after, he turned to give her a wicked smile. "Don't move," he said. "I'm going to brush my teeth and get fresh supplies, and then I'm coming back to relieve your need for pipe. Forever."

  His sexy growl and the mention of fresh supplies were almost her undoing, but she was still mad about the pipe thing. "Wait just a minute," she told him. "This was supposed to be an emergency treatment, not a marathon." Besides, the longer he stood in the doorway, the longer she had to memorize the lines of his body, the swell of his muscles. All the details she'd hold in her heart for the rest of her life.

  "But we might as well be thorough while I'm here," he said. "It's the only efficient way to go." He closed the bathroom door behind himself.

  Hope leaped out of bed, found her robe and darted out of the bedroom and into the powder room. She kept a toothbrush there. He was right. When you already had the assembly line set up, you might as well do another run.

  Pipe envy. For heaven's sake.

  * * *

  At two that afternoon, Sam sat up feeling purposeful. As he dusted off the crumbs of breakfast in bed—toasted corn muffins with butter and honey—and lunch in bed—warm Brie, French bread and grapes, he pondered the amazing effect the honey had had on the right side of his brain. Usually quiet and unobtrusive, it had suddenly sprung into action, arousing his creative powers to new heights—as well as other parts of him. It had been buckwheat honey, strong and potent. For the rest of his life its sharp, sweet tang would mingle with the sharp, sweet taste of Hope on his tongue.

  "I know how we should spend the rest of the afternoon," he announced.

  "So do I," Hope said. "Working."

  "Getting you a Christmas tree," Sam said, ignoring the comment about working. He'd known that's what she'd say.

  "I don't need a Christmas tree," Hope protested. "I've got a poinsettia. I'll put lights on it."

  "Not the same," Sam said.

  "I'll be going home for Christmas," she said, building her argument. "Every year Mom tries to recreate Macy's. It's all the holiday spirit I can handle."

  Still he ignored her. Best way to deal with Hope, he'd figured out. "You've got room for it. It'll spruce things up."

  "Puns, yet," Hope groused
, but he noticed she was slipping out of bed and into a robe—why she kept putting on the robe he couldn't imagine—and looking lively. "Well, maybe just a little tree."

  "Umm," he hummed noncommittally. "You take the first shower," he said. "I'll make a list of equipment we'll need. Or…" He eyed her contemplatively. "…we could shower together and make the list later."

  Under the shower, Hope confronted the worst of all possibilities, that Sam had all the equipment she'd ever need—for the rest of her life.

  Dusk was falling when Sam slipped generous tips to the two building porters who'd struggled a nine-foot blue spruce into the service elevator and at last deposited it on the floor of Hope's living room.

  "I deserve at least a flyer myself," Hope complained, dropping several shopping bags to the floor with a thud.

  "Careful with those ornaments," Sam said with a sharp glance up from the tree stand box he was ripping into.

  "Are we in agreement about the lights?" Hope asked. "Because the lights were always my thing when I was a kid, and I can't stand it if they're not…"

  "I can guess. Evenly spaced."

  "I used a triangle."

  "I bet the tinsel has to go on one strand at a time."

  "I always dreamed of tinsel put on one strand at a time," Hope said mournfully, "but Faith was in charge of tinsel and Faith has a more … random approach to life. Charity, well, Charity got to do the ornaments, but Mom wouldn't let her stand on a ladder when she was little, so they were all at the bottom at first and as she grew, they moved up. It was a terrible-looking tree until Charity reached her full height," she finished up, feeling a strange longing to return to that terrible-looking tree. "She grew to be awfully tall. Her trees look great now."

  "Do you have some old clothes to change into?" Sam asked her. "When we put the tree in the stand, things could get messy."

  Hope took a look at the spruce needles, then glanced down at her emerald-green sweater. "Snaggy is what they could get. Okay, I'll change." She supposed it was time for Sam to see her in the baggy sweats she liked to slouch around the house in. It might put a lid on the warm, snuggly feelings that had been zinging between them all afternoon like a subtext to their practical discussion of lights per tree-foot and silver and gold versus red and green.