So when the food was eaten and I had cleaned up and Jack decided to get a little work done in his outer building, I went over to my bags of supplies and found the one for the craft store, getting out my art supplies and bringing them up to my room.
I had other gifts to wrap and open for Christmas.
And, having taken the supplies out, it meant that Jack would at least have one to open as well.
--
"Smells fucking amazing in here," I heard literally the second after the door opened.
I had been baking for hours. He had been gone for several more hours than that and it was already getting dark outside. I wasn't exactly sure if he was avoiding me because of the kiss or just had work to do, a schedule he stuck to, unused to having someone in his space to interrupt it.
If it was the latter, well, that was his business.
If it was the former, that was his business too. I, for one, did not regret the kiss. To be perfectly honest, it was probably at the very top of all the kisses I had had in my lifetime. Really, every second of it was perfect. And if it was just a heat of the moment, never gonna happen again thing, that was okay. I was an adult; I could be fine with that.
Even if my libido was telling me to scale that huge, hulking, hot mountain man and let him make this Christmas truly unforgettable.
"Whatcha making?" he asked, walking toward the kitchen and pausing at the counter. Even over the sweet smell of baking cookies, I could smell him- outdoors, a hint of smoke, and the soap of his from the shower.
"Well, there are chocolate chips," I said, pointing to the cookies on the rack. I was pretty proud of them. Granted, they had kind of spread too much, but it was my first try at making them from scratch and they tasted right. I watched with a smile as he reached over and grabbed a hand full of them, immediately bringing one up to bite. He made some kind of approving growl sound that really shouldn't have shot to right between my legs, but totally did. "And I have oatmeal in the oven."
"Didn't put raisins in them, did you?"
"In my humble opinion, grapes are good for two things- fruit cocktails and wine."
He chuckled at that. "So you built a snowman. You're baking cookies. What else is on your list?"
"Well, I am, if it's okay, going to line those windows," I said, pointing to the back ones, "with lights. And maybe put some garland and bows and pinecones and such in it."
"Told you to do whatever you wanted with the decorations, doll. Anything else?"
"Ah, well, I was wondering if..."
"Spit it out," he demanded, but his lips were quirked up.
"If it would be possible to maybe chop down a Christmas tree." There was such a long pause after that, that I felt like I needed to say something else. "I mean, it's totally okay if maybe there aren't any or we can't cut them down or..."
"Lyra. I live on two-hundred fucking acres. I got pine trees. And no one can tell me not to chop them down. But Christmas is the day after tomorrow. And the tree needs a day to settle before you decorate."
"Oh," I said, feeling a bit deflated. I hadn't really given that kind of thing enough thought. That was why I had a little tabletop fake tree in a box that I could put together if I had to.
"Not saying we can't do it. I'm saying if you want it, we gotta do it tonight."
"But it's getting dark. And the snow is..."
"Not going anywhere for a good long time. And I got flashlights. We won't have to go too far to find a good one. Once that batch is done, we can go."
"But I have a ton of this batter left..." I said, showing him the bowl.
"And if you refrigerate it for a couple hours, you won't have it spreading when you bake it."
"Really?" I asked, surprised the recipe didn't tell me that.
"Yeah, really. So take those out when they're done and get your snow gear back on and we can head out."
Like to punctuate his point, the oven dinged.
I put the cookies on the rack, refrigerated the batter, got re-dressed in my half-dry snow clothes, and came back down to find Jack already standing by the front door with flashlights and big, worker gloves on his hands.
"Ready?"
"I think so? Don't we need axes or..."
"City dweller," he chuckled as we stepped outside, the frigid air feeling even more frigid now that the sun was in. "Most people don't keep their axes inside their houses. Also, singular. One ax. I might let you get a chop in, but I am doing the swinging."
"Why?" I asked as we trudged through the snow toward his outer building.
"Because I would rather not be decapitated."
"What? Because I'm a girl I can't swing an ax? That's sexist," I objected, crossing my arms as he went inside the building for a second.
"No. It's just safety smart. You've never chopped down a tree before."
Well, he had a point. "Fine. And I don't think an ax would fully decapitate you. At least not on the first whack. It would take some serious hacking. Especially with how much smaller than you I am."
He turned back at me, lips turned up. "And you were worried about me?"
"Just because I can see I am at a logistical disadvantage to decapitate someone your size doesn't mean I'm a threat."
"Well, I'm locking this ax up just in case," he quipped as we moved into the tree line. "So how big a tree are you looking for?"
As much as I wanted a giant one that would fill up his massive living room, I knew that was impractical. Also, Jack wasn't a Christmas person and was being gracious enough to let me decorate his home. "One about my height would be good," I compromised.
"Yeah, no," he shot back, surprising me. "It's not a Christmas tree if someone your height can put a star on top without even going up on your tiptoes."
"I don't want to make..."
"Told you to do it up, doll. A five and a half foot tree is not doing it up. Let's aim for a six foot if we can find a full one."
So with that, we shot our flashlights around for the next ten minutes before I finally found it. I swear the damn thing was bathed in moonlight. Not really, but it felt like that when I finally came upon it- full, perfect height, no dead parts. It was beautiful.
"Jack!" I called, my voice high-pitched in excitement.
"Like how you say my name, doll," he said from right behind me, making me jump and spin somehow simultaneously. "What's up?" he asked as I faced him, my head craned up.
"This is the tree!" I declared, turning again and flashing my light on it.
He made a grunting noise, moving past me and looking over it in a circle. "Think you're right," he agreed, pulling the ax out from where he had the handle tucked into his pants. Then he turned and pointed the handle to me. "You get the first whack."
I was too excited to be nervous, grabbing the ax and bending low to aim toward the trunk. I took a breath and swung with everything in me. And effectively got the damn thing stuck inside the trunk.
I struggled to free it for a long minute, making very unladylike grunting noises in the process, before I dropped down on my ass hard to the chorus of Jack's laughter.
"You're right; I don't got shit to worry about from you in the murder department. Come on," he said, reaching down and grabbing me under the arms to drag me unceremoniously onto my feet. "Take a couple steps back so you don't lose that pretty head of yours," he added and I quickly followed directions. I watched as he dragged the ax out of the wood as if it was a hot knife inside a stick of butter. Then he proceeded to swing and hack until the whole thing teetered and fell with a very muffled thud against the snow.
I won't lie, I was maybe a bit too turned on by the show of pure, masculine energy.
When he turned back, he must have seen it in my face too because his own eyes went a little heated for a moment.
"You ready?" he asked a second later.
I nodded; he grabbed the trunk of the tree.
Then we made the walk back to the house where he screwed it up into the stand, watered it, and left it to settle as I went back t
o putting cookies in the oven.
Jack sampled one from each batch for "quality control". Then he disappeared yet again to his outer building for about an hour as I decorated the mantle with garland, bows, and pinecones. I lined the windows in lights. I put cinnamon sticks in various corners of the room. I didn't put up my stocking because there wasn't one for Jack. Then, when he still hadn't returned, I cleaned up the kitchen, stole the book he was loaning me, and headed up to bed.
If there was one thing I wasn't prepared for, it was how tiring preparing for Christmas was.
And the next morning would mean finishing my gift for Jack, baking pies for Christmas Day dessert, decorating the tree, doing a little meal prep, and wrapping presents.
It would be a full day.
But even so, eyes swollen from a long day and then reading, I still couldn't sleep.
I blamed it mostly on the fact that I could hear Jack moving around downstairs, then coming up, going into the bathroom and turning on the shower. An image of him, gloriously naked under the spray with his wide shoulders, chest, and back, firm abdominals, and strong arms on full display, taking up every bit of my focus.
Then, because I was being a complete creepy eavesdropper, I heard him hiss out a curse that was met with the slamming sound of a fist on the shower wall.
And I knew.
I knew what he had just done.
And I had a very strong suspicion that it was me he was thinking about while he did it.
Six
Jack
I woke up the next morning to the smell of pumpkin pie.
And in that moment, I realized just how rote, how uninspired, how boring my life had become over the years. Living by yourself, there were no surprises except maybe if a pipe decided to bust or a tree knocked out the power. Aside from actual small disasters, my life was exactly the same day after day. I woke up, I got coffee, I showered. On hunting days, I geared up and headed out. On work days, I hit the back building and did cleaning and curing or packing. On shipping days, I headed down the mountain, hit the post office, stocked up on supplies, and headed back home.
On a rare, rare occasion, I might hit the bar for a drink or maybe take a woman up on an offer to warm her bed. But that hadn't happened in more months than I cared to admit.
Never, not once in my adult life, did I wake up in my house and have coffee or breakfast made, have cookies in the oven, have a pumpkin pie to look forward to.
As I moved into the hall, I stopped at the top of the stairs, hearing the Christmas music playing and Lyra singing along. When I quietly moved down, I stopped at the bottom of the staircase with a huge smile on my face at the sight that greeted me.
First, the place was a mess.
I was a kind of 'clean as you go' person when it came to cooking.
Lyra was definitely not cut from that same cloth.
Every square inch of the counters were covered in bowls and dishes and utensils and supplies and food. Lyra herself, in a red sweater with a giant Christmas lightbulb on the center, had various supplies all over her as well- cinnamon on her sleeve, powdered sugar on her pant leg, a smudge of flour on her cheek.
And if that picture wasn't enough, she was holding a giant bowl against her belly, whisking the contents of it while dancing around to "Rocking Around The Christmas Tree".
I liked what I saw.
That was somewhat alarming.
I had gotten so used to my solitary life, so accustomed to my own rhythms, that I had actually begun to convince myself that it was perfectly fulfilling.
But watching a woman in my kitchen who had already warmed up my cheerless living room, knowing she was going to make food for the both of us to enjoy, yeah, it made me see that I was, and had been for a long time, missing out.
Now, I was sure the pent-up sexual frustration wasn't helping the whole situation.
What could I say? She was fucking gorgeous, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen and it was some goddamn miracle that I got to get within five feet of her, let alone have her fucking melt under me when I let my control slip and kissed her during the snowball fight. And it was another miracle that she not only let me do it, but she would have let me do more.
That was the precise reason I pulled away and resumed the snowball fight.
Girls like her- sweet, open, hopeful, they didn't need a man like me in their lives.
Not that I was a bad man by any stretch of the word, but I wasn't someone girls like her really wanted. She got wrapped up in the moment and I probably fulfilled some alpha-male mountain man fantasy of hers. Fact of the matter was though, that was usually a fantasy. It was all well and good to get turned on by a beard and a gruff demeanor. But you would quickly find that it's not something you'd want to have day in and day out, that it's only worth a roll in the hay.
Seeing as I was trying to give her a good holiday to remember, I didn't want to sully it with a fling gone bad.
"Oh, sorry. Is the music too loud? Did I wake you?" she yelled over it as she moved to lower the volume.
"Nah, didn't hear shit, doll," I said truthfully. That was also a bit unnerving. I was used to quiet. Nothing was more silent than a house in the middle of nowhere under a foot of snow. The only sounds I usually heard were the wind and the logs cracking in the fireplace. It should have woken me out of a dead sleep to have her crashing and dancing and singing around my kitchen.
But it didn't.
"There's coffee. Hey, no," she said, slapping the top of my hand when I reached to put it in a bowl of M&Ms. It was so unexpected that a smile curved my lips as my brow lifted. "Those are for our gingerbread houses."
"Our?" I asked, finding that I maybe like the sound of that a little too much for a woman I just met.
"Yes. You're making one too, like it or lump it."
"Haven't made a gingerbread house since I was eight years old," I said, shaking my head.
"Yes, well, then you're due, aren't you?"
"No arguing with that," I agreed.
"Really?" she asked, beaming, positively beaming, like, despite her bravado, she was expecting me to turn up my nose at the childhood holiday passtime.
"Yeah, babe, really. Then we gotta string the lights and decorate the tree."
"You're gonna help?"
"How the fuck else you gonna get the star on top?"
She pressed her lips together for a long second, like she was debating whether or not to say what was on her mind. In the end, she blurted it out, something that seemed to be her nature, as much as being more quiet was mine. "I'm kind of glad you T-boned my car and there was a crazy snowstorm and I got stranded here with you," she started, cheeks turning just the tiny bit pink. "I don't think I realized just how lonely it would have been with just me. Maybe I would have ended up with my head inside an oven after all. It's, ah, nice to share the holiday with someone."
"Yeah," I agreed with a nod, "it is."
"Really?" she asked, brows drawn together. "I thought you had this whole Grinch view of the whole thing."
"Maybe you changed my mind." At least while she was here, she changed it. When she was gone, I doubted I would go through the trouble to celebrate by myself the next year. Like she said, that shit would be depressing. But I'd have to be a fucking robot to not say that it was nice, it was warm, it was traditional, and I fucking liked it.
"Oh yeah?" she asked, turning to put the bowl down on the counter which put her body close to mine, our hips actually brushing.
I reached out, my thumb sliding across the smooth skin of her cheek and swiping the flour away. "Yeah, doll."
Her eyes heated a little as her sweet lips slipped open. But she rushed to try to cover. "I'll make a Christmas lover out of you yet," she said, pushing my shoulder playfully.
Only her hand stayed planted there.
And, well, I really only had so much self-control.
My hand closed around the wrist of the hand on my shoulder as my other hand moved to cup the side of her face, pulling her forw
ard as my head ducked down, my lips claiming hers- hard, hungry, demanding, just barely any control to keep me from bruising her lips.
A low, throaty whimper escaped her lips and my hand left her face, my arm sliding around her small hips and hauling her up against me as my other hand moved out and swiped whatever the fuck contents were on the counter directly behind her, sending it all clattering to the floor a second before I hauled her up onto it, laying her flat, my body folding over hers. The second she was down, my lips moved from hers, kissing down her neck, my beard scratching the delicate skin and her back arched off the counter in response.
My hand snagged the bottom of her sweater, hauling it up to expose her simple pink bra with a cute as fuck little rose in the center. I looked at that for a long second, smile toying at my lips. Because it just suited her- sweet, delicate, almost innocent.
But there was nothing innocent about my intentions as my hand grabbed the cup of her bra and yanked it down, exposing her milky-white breast and slightly hardened pink nipple. I leaned down, sucking it into my mouth until it was hard and straining, until she moaned a sound that went right to my cock, until her fingernails were scraping the back of my neck, until her legs folded around my back. I released it then, teasing over the sensitive point with my tongue as her hips started to move beneath me, desperate for release. I moved across her chest to work her other nipple, letting out a low growl when her hand sifted into my hair and pulled hard until my mouth sealed over hers again, my tongue sliding inside to claim hers.
In that moment, she was mine.
And something about that sure felt right.
But that was something to think about at another time, not when her legs had crossed around my lower back and her hips were rising up to meet mine, grinding against my cock, letting out whimpers and frustrated grumbles when the layers of clothes proved too much of an obstacle.
My hand slid down the smooth fabric of the jeans covering her thighs, then inward, pressing against her pussy with firm pressure, moving up until she let out a moan when my fingers found her clit.
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