When Destry’s suggestions turned from nostalgic to naughty, Eve lost her hold on her racing heartbeat. Thankfully, he skirted her embarrassment by pursing his full lips down on his snorting chuckle. The way he did it, the way he shook his head and his hair flew back from his face, reminded Eve of… well, of a horse. There was nothing like the sight of a wild horse or stag bolting through the woods. Eve had seen that a few times in the four months or so she’d been in Evergreen and been moved to silence and awe regardless of not feeling certain at all that this was the right place for her, not just because she’d inherited a house there.
Eve felt bad about being unable to get her mind off sex and how good Tristan smelled as he tried to impress her by showing her all the crafts and baked goods people where sharing and selling at the carnival. Behind one table, Willow Klauson stood with her mother over the elaborately decorated cookies and pastries they were selling at typical token bake sale prices.
“Faerie mirrors,” Willow said proudly as she pointed Eve’s attention to cookies shaped like hand mirrors with silver frosting where the glass would have been.
“Very creative,” Bertha said from the press of the crowd, making Eve jump like she’d been caught doing something, thinking something she shouldn’t have been—like wondering if Tristan was actually sincere in his attentions toward her, what he looked like without that coat and sweater, if everything on the man was in proportion to his towering height.
This is a favor, Eve reminded herself. Something between a chore and a pity date. Believing otherwise was worse than believing in the Easter Bunny or Halloween ghosts.
The Evergreen Queens emerged from the churning press of holiday revelers, and Eve caught her breath. Neither wore the plain, practical clothes of school staff that evening. From beneath their open coats peeked long lace dresses, Bertha’s in her trademark white and Mrs. Holdan’s in icy blue. Both matrons wore there hair down in the first time in Eve’s experience, Bertha’s loose in a veil of streaming silver, and the teacher’s in a high ponytail that flowed down over one shoulder. Eve thought to herself that if she was very very lucky, she might be half as stunning and imposing as these women when she got to be their age.
Bertha smiled approvingly at Eve’s unspoken reaction, another first from a woman who remained stern as a rule, but then turned to look and speak to the Klauson women. “You made the slipper tarts again. Those are always my favorite.”
“We know!” Willow beamed as she selected a long puff pastry pocket with rounded ends, no filling. The girl reached toward a covered pot with a ladle handle sticking out before pausing and looking back at Bertha. “Cherry?”
“Always, dear,” the silver-haired lady responded and then accepted the pastry from Willow once the girl had spooned warm cherry pie filling into the flaky dough.
“What flavor for you?” Willow asked Eve.
Tristan tried to peek into the pots. “What have you got?”
“Cherry, of course, and lemon, apple cinnamon, and lingonberry.”
“We’ll have three of each,” Tristan told her.
Eve raised a brow. “Three?” She hoped he liked his women round, then reminded herself she wasn’t ‘his woman’ to begin with.
“One of each flavor for you and for me and one of each to leave out tonight for the little people and the Yule Buck.”
“Sod that,” Eve said, inhaling the delicious smell from the thick paper plate Willow handed them, pastries wrapped snug in waxy sheets. “It’s bad enough wasting perfectly good sugar cookies on Santa Fraud.”
The hush that fell over the area, as Bertha and Mrs. Holdan turned to glare at Eve, chilled her so badly that she shivered and her cheeks ached like frostbite.
Chapter Three
In dreadful unison, Bertha and Mrs. Holdan turned back toward the pastry table and toward Eve. They strode forward and straight up to the girl. The matrons stood over her, peering at her coolly as they might have examined an unfamiliar bug that had crawled into their homes—before squashing it. All at once, the rudeness of Eve’s flippancy hit home.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean….” Eve stumbled over her apology, over the insincerity of nearly saying she hadn’t intended to make fun of an event, a time of year, the spirit of a season that obviously brought of lot of happiness to Evergreen. Just not to Eve. And what a rude little snot she must have seemed to Tristan now. Eve couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
“Here,” someone whispered from just over Eve’s shoulder. She found Willow, with the wide eyes of a child knowing she was watching someone about to be dressed down, offering her a foam cup. “Warm eggnog. Just drink it. Let Mr. Destry do the talking.”
At that moment, Tristan stepped up in front of Eve, wedging one shoulder between her and the offended town matrons.
Bertha glared at Tristan, and Eve started again to try to excuse her poor behavior. Last thing she wanted now was to cause a real rift between neighbors because Destry’s friendly gesture toward her—even if it was a bid for favor with the two ladies—had gone wrong. Again, Willow motioned toward the cup, insisting. A deep swallow turned warm and then warmer in Eve’s mouth. That cup had to have been at least half brandy. Very good, very strong brandy.
“I said she’d be here,” the silver-haired of the Queens reminded the other. “And I said she’d miss the point.”
Mrs. Holden sighed her agreement. “Right as ever, Bertha, dear. Right as rain.”
With one hand, Tristan reached back to nudge Eve more squarely behind him, as though something about Mrs. Holdan’s comment held significance that was lost on Eve. This maneuver just made the two matrons lean either direction to look around his shoulders at the outsider that Eve knew herself to be in that moment more than ever. It was her own fault, no doubt.
Amazing how strong alcohol washed away the stiffest pretentions and cleared one’s vision. As soon as she’d drained one cup, Willow handed her another.
“Forbearance, ladies?” Tristan asked. “You know Eve just moved here. Her grandparents lived here with us, but she didn’t have the chance to spend time with them in Evergreen. She’s been living in the valley, down in the city. People there don’t know each other the way we know each other. She’s got to have time to get used to us.”
The abrupt laughter from the matrons came out downright Disney-villain evil, and yet beautifully musical at the same time. And Eve, feeling warm-chested now from two cups of spiked eggnog, couldn’t tell if she was annoyed by the queenly composure of the women or impressed by it. But probably both.
“It is getting late, Bertha,” Mrs. Holdan noted as she took a step back, though she faced Tristan and Eve still.
“It is, Mrs. Holdan,” Bertha agreed. “And I’ve been meaning to get up early now that it’s holiday vacation for the school, to get some cleaning done. To shake out my bedding before we get that next deep snow.”
Tristan had pressed near to Eve, protectively, near enough now that she felt his whole body tense. “No rush to get chores done all that quickly, ma’am,” he told Bertha and sounded oddly plaintive even with that deep, sexy voice. Like a little boy talking his way out of trouble. “Give it a week, at least a few days to enjoy your vacation. I’ll come over myself and help with some of the outdoor chores. You can use some of that wood out back moved up by the door, can’t you?”
“Hmm,” Bertha said, half humming, half chuckling her response. “Before the next snowfall?”
“Before the next snowfall,” he agreed.
“Are you all speaking in code?” Eve finally asked, though the brandy was doing most of her talking. She might have been a big girl, but when it came to liquor, she was a lightweight.
“Go get your girl a mulled spice wine, Mr. Destry,” the white-haired teacher advised as she motioned for Bertha to move one with her.
For her part, Bertha nodded. “That brandy is going to give her a terrible headache by morning. If she hasn’t run off by then.”
And didn’t that just sound like another p
rediction, though it turned cryptic there at the end.
Once the Evergreen Queens had disappeared into the crowd, Tristan whirled on Eve and took her by the shoulders, not roughly by firmly. It thrilled as much as it stunned her. It took a broad, massive beast of a man to make the lifelong chubby girl feel so delicate and small.
“Eve Alfred, you’re lucky I don’t put you over my knee.”
“You call that lucky?” she blurted, then hiccupped, then nearly swooned with a hot wave of embarrassment. Or maybe that was the brandy, too.
Tristan kept her upright by pulling her near, cradling her against that plush sweater and the warm, muscular definition of his body beneath that. Eve smelled wood and citrus again, felt the hard curves of Destry’s thighs and biceps and abs against her, marveled with an edge of shame at the ridge she thought she felt digging into her abdomen at the level of his groin.
“I can tell, Eve,” he whispered against her cheek. “I can tell you don’t really want to be the cold, hard cynic who never sees the magic happening around her.”
“You can, huh?” she sighed against him, very nearly sharing breath with the man. Her emotions a roiling confusion sloshing around in her alcohol-addled head, Eve wasn’t sure if the thought was hopeful or dismal, charming or pointless. In Eve’s world, there simply were no Yule bucks or Christmas faeries or Tristan Destry’s wanting to make her squeal over his knee.
Abruptly anxious at the lonely, depressed place her thoughts were leading her, Eve sucked in a deep breath of bracingly cold air. “What was that about mulled wine? I’ve never had it. You going to do something about that?”
Tristan’s expression twisted. “Never had it? You can’t be serious. Good lord, and you think you’ve got civilization down in that city? Spiced wine, right. But not the stuff here. It’s not half as good as what I put together from my own recipe. Come with me. The stalls here have everything we need. Then we’ll go back to your place, and….”
Eve’s girlish chuckling interrupted the man as he tried to direct her through the carnival crowd.
“What?” he asked.
“Are you suggesting we go back to my place for a drink, Mr. Destry?” Eve asked, knowing her impression of Mrs. Holdan’s imperious tone was a poor one. “Planning on taking advantage of me in my inebriated state?”
As soon as the flirtatious remark had slipped out of her mouth, Eve regretted it. This was the part where the men she ‘dated’ admitted that they only wanted to be friends or hoped she’d introduce them to a sexier, thinner woman from her social circle.
She wasn’t prepared, not prepared at all, for Tristan to tighten his hold on her shoulders or to nudge his hips forward just enough to dispel any doubt that his cock was straining at his jeans. Her sex fluttered and tensed hard inside her, needing the sort of intense and ferocious intimacy she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt.
“Of course I am,” he told her plainly, in a huff of sensually hot breath against her skin. “The chance to finally get you alone after all that ridiculous glancing back and forth at school pretending we’re not checking each other out? If you’re too old for make-believe, then let’s stop acting like that goddess of a body you’ve got isn’t making me rock-hard for you. And you’re so wet and ready to spread those beautiful thighs for me that I can literally smell the sweet musk of you.”
Eve gasped and gaped as badly as if she’d just seen Santa and his reindeer actually land on her roof in the flesh. She had only that moment to blink and doubt what she’d heard, before Tristan Destry sealed his satin-smooth mouth to her and used his lips to open hers for his deft, insistent tongue.
Chapter Four
Like a scene out of movie, something totally unreal that could never happen in Eve’s real life, as soon as she’d gotten her front door of her little mountain cottage unlocked, Tristan pushed her inside. Already she could hardly breathe, from the silky heat of his lips as he’d ravenously kissed up the side of her neck while she had struggled with her keys in the door. And from the terrible burning need between her legs from feeling the man fit the massive ridge of his hard-on along the crevice of her backside through her coat and jeans.
“I’ve never… like this….,” Eve said, struggling to speak through her panting breath as Tristan pushed her back against the closed door, rattling its glass panel. He hardly gave her time to put the pastries down on the entry table where he hastily set the wine and spices. “I mean, most men don’t….”
Shut up, Eve. You don’t need to tell him how pathetic your love life has been.
Destry stopped nipping and sucking at her tingling, bee-stung lips long enough to answer. “You’ve never been with a man like me, princess.”
“Princess?” Eve realized with a shiver that no man had ever used an endearment on her before, and she wasn’t sure how to take this one. She’d always just assumed that darling little nicknames were never sincere.
When Tristan breathed a chuckle against her neck, she’d have sworn she could feel his breath and his words swirling and flowing down her skin like liquid. “Because you look like the faerie princesses in Mrs. Holdan’s stories and the hangings she weaves.” Destry lifted his head to look Eve square in the face. “Don’t count on me to save your virtue, princess. I’m the beast who wants to ravage you and fuck you while you scream for me.”
Eve’s pussy throbbed so hard at the thought, the sensation was nearly an orgasm by itself. The way he said ‘fuck’ in that deep voice was so fucking sexy. She keened at the sudden bliss of it and then again in surprise as Tristan put his hands under her butt and hefted her up his body. Destry settled Eve with thighs spread over the ridge of his hard-on in his jeans, putting pressure on her tingling clitoris with the thick inseam of her pants. He panted and sighed but not with the effort of lifting Eve. It was like her weight was nothing to him.
God, he just held her there suspended in his arms, grinding her sex down on his rampant cock through their clothing while he took her mouth with his again. Eve had never been kissed so ravenously, with such appreciation and abandon. His tongue was hot, firm, velvety as it drove deep into her mouth, swirled against the inside of her cheeks, slid against her tongue. It reminded her of… of the wildness of Evergreen, the primal forest, the stallion and stag and even the wolf she’d seen running across the meadows.
Tristan huffed in frustration, making Eve realize with a start that he was trying to peel her coat off her shoulders while still holding her up. The moment was a collision of panic, lust, and confusion as he got one sleeve off of Eve despite her sudden ambivalence about letting Destry undress her—on their first date! Forgetting they’d put the food and wine down on the entry table, he tried to perch Eve there to finish his task. One of the two wine bottles they’d bought crashed to the floor with an impact that shattered both the glass and the moment.
Startled, distracted by the fog of desire, both Eve and Tristan blinked and stared for a second down at the mess before he reluctantly put the woman down on her feet by the door, beyond the radius of the shards.
“Ah, sorry,” Tristan said in a low, thick grumble that sounded as languorous with lust as Eve felt. “I’ll clean it up.”
Without thinking about it, Eve closed her fists down on the shoulders of Tristan’s overcoat. “No, you don’t have to.” Just then, she didn’t care if the spill stained the wood floor; she just didn’t want the man to step away from her. He was like a dream that would dissipate if the real world crept too close.
“Yes, I do. I’ll take care of it, Eve. You stay right here. I don’t want you getting cut.” She watched helpless and so sexually and emotionally frustrated that she physically trembled as Tristan turned and wandered toward the kitchen, visible through an open archway. “Where are your dish towels?”
“Drawer to the right of the stovetop,” she answered, sounding as dismal and impatient as she felt. Was that a chuckle she heard from the man? Like he wasn’t as worked up as she was!
Eve’s attention snagged on that thought. Tristan w
as as worked up as she was; she’d felt it, tasted it, heard it in his heavy breath. There had been so many times in Eve’s life, most of them when she was a teenager or just into her twenties, when she thought it was finally happening to her. When she thought she’d finally found her guy, the one who liked what other men saw as flaws. When she was going to be the one giddy with ‘can’t keep our hands off each other’ love instead of the dutiful friend listening to other girls gushing about the one.
Don’t do this to yourself, Eve, a part of her said. Don’t get your hopes up.
But another part of her had an entirely different take on the matter. Just how much are you enjoying that safe, cynical, loveless life?
When a single hard rap sounded on the door, Eve whirled to stare at it in annoyance. It wasn’t particularly late—even the big holiday festivities in Evergreen seemed to wind down by nine at the latest. Still, it was odd, unless it was just Rina.
“Did you forget to do your laundry, Eve?” Tristan called from the kitchen. “No towels in that drawer.”
The knock sounded again. How weird could a person get, pounding just once on a door, not the rhythmic three or four raps? Stranger still was that fact that even though the glass in the door as frosted, Eve should have been able to see a blurry figure through the pane, but she didn’t.
The low din of Tristan shuffling around in the kitchen went silent. A second later, Tristan called out. “Eve, was that you?”
“No, someone’s at the door,” she called back to him in answer. “Must be Rina stopping by to see how….” Eve had almost said her friend would want to know how the date went, but she didn’t need Tristan to know how thoroughly women debriefed one another on these things. “Anyway, I’ll get it.”
“Eve? Eve, we didn’t put the food out on the porch yet.” Reaching for the doorknob, Eve felt her brow knit. What an odd thing for Tristan to say. She thought he’d been kidding when he mentioned putting some of the pastries out for the faeries. Now, she supposed not. Heavy steps thudded toward Eve from behind as she turned the latch on the deadbolt. “Eve, don’t open that door!”
Shifter Wonderland: Twelve BBW Paranormal Holiday Shape Shifter Romances Page 43