Winter Heat

by Kennedy Fox

  She reaches out and grabs my phone from my hand, frowning. She taps it a couple times.

  “That’s not my number,” she says.

  “No shit.”

  “It’s a nine, not a five,” she says, still tapping.

  After a moment, she hits a button, then looks at me.

  There’s a second of silence.

  Then, in the next room, her phone chirps.

  “You wrote it down wrong,” she says, handing my phone back to me.

  This feels very, very dumb.

  “You told me wrong,” I say.

  “It’s my phone number, I think I know it.”

  “Why would I write it down wrong? I clearly wanted it.”

  This was all a stupid mistake. I’ve been mad at Adeline for the last four months because of a stupid mistake and a coincidence. If she’d given me any other number, I’d have gotten the right one from someone else, but I thought the whole dump thing sent a pretty clear message.

  “Now will you agree not to freeze to death?” she asks, her voice softer. “Please?”

  “Yeah,” I finally say, and we walk into the nice, warm bedroom.

  I can’t sleep. I’m tired, but every time I try closing my eyes it feels too weird, so I just open them and stare at the ceiling some more.

  Honestly, I feel like a dipshit. I don’t know if Adeline told me the wrong number because she was drunk or if I misheard and entered the wrong one into my phone, but I can’t believe I’ve been upset since August for something this dumb.

  It had to be the number for the county dump. Any other number and I probably would’ve double-checked it with Eli or Violet, but this seemed pretty clear, so I didn’t.

  Next to me, Adeline sighs and rolls over, and there’s the other reason I can’t sleep. Every time I think that maybe, possibly, I’ll drift off in the next hour or so, she moves and I’m reminded that I’m sharing a bed with someone who looks way too good in a floor-length flannel nightgown.

  And who made out with me very enthusiastically on my parents’ couch not too long ago. Who made a casual throw-pillow-over-the-crotch embarrassingly necessary.

  I take a deep breath and roll onto my stomach, head turned toward Adeline. I wonder if I should just give up on trying to sleep and head back into my parents’ house to do a puzzle or some other classic insomnia activity.

  Then Adeline rolls over again, onto her back, staring up at the ceiling, eyes wide open, and I watch her face for a long, sleepless moment. I wonder if I should shut my eyes, let her think that I’m asleep and not just watching her try to sleep, but then she turns her head toward me and it’s too late.

  Busted.

  “Oh, I thought you were asleep,” she says.

  “I thought you were asleep,” I say.

  Adeline rolls over onto her side, and suddenly I realize that queen beds actually aren’t all that big.

  “I’m bad at sleeping in new places,” she finally says.

  “Same.”

  “I thought you slept in here all the time as a kid,” Adeline points out, and I smile, face half in the pillow.

  “I’m bad at sleeping with new people, then,” I say, and that gets an eyebrow raise.

  I turn my head and groan into the pillow.

  Chapter Nine

  ADELINE

  “I want a restart on today,” Grady says, his voice muffled. “What a shitshow.”

  I start laughing.

  “At least you’re wearing regular clothes,” I tell him, and he turns his head back. “I look like a wagon train stepped through a portal into someone’s acid trip.”

  Grady takes my forearm and pulls it from under the covers, examining it while he tries not to laugh.

  “Can I be honest?” he finally says.

  “Sure,” I tell him. “Go for it.”

  “You still look good.”

  I’m pretty sure he’s lying. No one looks good in boob ruffles.

  “Thank you,” I say, politely.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Well, I have eyes,” I point out.

  “So do I, and you know what I think?”

  “That I’m going to tell you to circle the wagons at any moment?”

  “You’re still hot in that nightie.”

  And now: blushing, not to mention feeling like I was fishing for compliments, which I wasn’t.

  “Thanks,” I say, more serious this time. “I like your reindeer pants.”

  “Thanks, I save them for special occasions.”

  “You mean… Christmas?”

  “And laundry day, sometimes.”

  “That’s the most special occasion of all,” I say, and Grady grins.

  Then he just looks at me for a long moment, eyes moving over my face.

  “I had fun at the wedding,” he finally says.

  “I did too,” I agree. “That’s why I tried to give you my number.”

  “Well, I tried to take it,” he says.

  “I had fun on your parents’ couch,” I say.

  Under the blankets, Grady’s hand slides over my waist.

  “I can’t sleep. You can’t sleep,” he says, a wicked smile coming over his face. “Want to do what we should’ve done months ago?”

  I move toward him, head still on the pillow, put one hand on his chest.

  “I would love to verify my phone number,” I murmur.

  “Shut up,” he teases, and pulls me into him.

  We kiss, our bodies pressing together. Underneath the blankets he’s so warm he feels like he’s boiling, body molten under his clothes. Before I know it his shirt is pushed up, my hands against hot skin, and Grady groans into my mouth.

  It’s hot. Really hot. Hot enough that I press myself into him even harder, forgetting that I’m a guest of his parents and forgetting that I’m wearing the world’s least sexy garment. I forget everything except the fact that it’s dark, he’s sexy, and I’ve been thinking about this for several months.

  He grabs my ass with one hand. I bite his lip and sigh, and he squeezes. Pauses, and I run my hand up his back, under his shirt, pulling him closer until his hand finds the notch between my butt and my thigh, slides inward.

  One fingertip just barely brushes my panties, and I swallow hard, my eyes fluttering closed. Grady’s hard again, his erection bumping against my thigh, and it’s tempting.

  It’s very, very tempting.

  I try to move my leg over his, but when I get halfway the nightgown pulls tight, cock blocking me for half a second. Grady laughs into my mouth and I grab his ass, rock him against me.

  “I thought you said it was a hot nightgown,” I say, rolling onto my back and pulling it up to my waist.

  He grabs one bare thigh and pulls it over him, sliding his hand from knee to hip, setting off sparks all over my body.

  “No, I said you looked hot in it,” he says. “There’s a difference.”

  His hand moves up and up, over my waist, toward my ribcage, stops.

  I take his wrist and move it onto my breast and he groans again, flattening his palm over my nipple, his skin skipping along mine as I dig my fingers into his back, breathing hard.

  In a moment, he’s on top of me, between my legs, and he pushes the nightgown over my chest. Pinches a nipple and I arch my back, dig my fingers into his sides. We kiss. His erection slides along me, grinds against my clit, and I moan.

  Grady ducks his head and sucks a nipple into his mouth, and I gasp as he rolls it over his tongue, teeth held lightly against it, the other held between his fingers.

  When he comes up to look at me, I pull his shirt over his head, his muscles on full display in the low light of the wood stove.

  Lord.

  He kisses me again, and I scrabble at the buttons holding the nightgown together. It takes a couple of tugs, but then it’s finally off and on the floor and Grady grins and grinds against me, still wearing the reindeer pants, my legs circling his hips.

  When I finally reach down and grab his cock,
he groans, pumps himself into my hand. Desire spikes through me anew: reckless and daring. I’m not usually a fuck before the first date kind of girl, but this has been the weirdest day and a strange four months, honestly, and I’m over it.

  I reach into the reindeer pants just as Grady slides a hand between my legs, strokes me through my panties.

  He pauses when I grab his bare cock, eyes closed, head back. Groans again as he flexes his hip and pumps his thick shaft through my hand.

  I think it might be the most perfectly sexy thing I’ve ever seen: just a beautiful man unabashedly enjoying what I’m doing to him.

  “Fuck, that feels good,” he says, and of course I do it again, then again. He opens his eyes and looks at me, runs his hand over my body again, nipple to hip as he holds himself up with the other.

  Finally, he hooks his fingers under the waist of my panties. Groans as his hips move, eyes going to half-mast, the muscles in his chest flexing with every breath.

  “Can I?” he asks, voice husky, pulling at the fabric.

  I just nod and lift my hips in response and he pulls them off, leans in, kisses me. Slides a hand up my thigh, a finger across my slit, just barely dipping between my lips before moving higher.

  Grady pulls back, watches my face, circles with his fingers, so I take his hand and guide him to the right spot. When he hits it, I sigh.

  He grins again.

  “There?” he asks, stroking my clit.

  “There,” I murmur back, and he rubs me, slowly. He kisses me and then watches my face like he’s taking notes, memorizing every gasp and moan and flutter, like learning how to pleasure me is the most important task in his life.

  Impatient, I push at his pants. Finally, he gets them off, standing next to the bed. I sit up, on the edge, pull him to me again. He rubs my clit again and I grab his cock, stroking.

  I want to lie back and take him. I’ve been on a pretty long dry spell, and now I’m literally in bed with an extremely hot guy who’s got a great dick.

  Apparently he can also read my mind, because a moment later, he pulls away from the kiss and swallows hard, his hand still between my legs.

  “I think there’s condoms under the sink,” he says, still breathing hard. “Want me to—"

  “Yes,” I say before he can finish the sentence.

  I don’t have to tell him twice. He’s gone instantly, rummaging through the bathroom, slamming open a cabinet.

  I can hear him pushing things around. Taking them out. Some light cursing.

  Sounds like it’s gonna be an oral kind of night until I hear: “Aha! There’s one.”

  Moments later Grady’s coming back, rolling it into his cock as he walks toward the bed. I’ve pulled my legs under me and now I’m kneeling, and he’s kneeling, and he slides his hand between my legs and strokes me one more time.

  I push him backward onto the pillows. Straddle his lap. Grady grabs my thighs and gives me that same look from before: eyes half-closed, lips parted. Pure desire.

  “This is not how I imagined tonight going when I woke up this morning,” he says, his voice filled with gravel.

  I reach down and grab his cock, brace my other hand on his chest.

  “Me either,” I say.

  “This is much, much better,” he tells me as I position himself at my entrance.

  Then he groans as I ease myself onto him. I gasp. My hands tighten on his chest and I go slow, because it’s been a while and he’s not small. By the time he bottoms out I’m already rocking back and forth, breath coming in gasps, and he’s got his head back and his eyes closed again.

  After a moment, he opens his eyes. Looks at me, hands on my hips, pulling me down. I rock back and forth again because fuck it feels really good, Grady’s cock rubbing all the spots inside me that’ve been neglected for way too long.

  “This is even hotter than the nightgown,” he says, a lazy smile on his face.

  “That’s your point of comparison?” I manage to say.

  “Well, we’ll have to do this more,” he says, and reaches for a nipple. Pinches it. “Give me something to compare it to, though I’m confident I’m always gonna like this.”

  I’m still rocking, shifting my hips against him, riding gently at first partly to start slow and partly because this feels way, way too good.

  “I like it so far,” I manage to gasp out.

  He puts his other hand on my thigh, slides his thumb onto my clit, starts circling it in time with our rhythm.

  I love a quick study.

  I lean back, hands on his thighs, and ride Grady. I ride him slow and hard and then pretty soon we’ve moving faster and faster and I’m trying very, very hard to be quiet but his cock feels good and his thumb on my clit feels good and he’s grabbing my ass and growling that he likes the way my tits bounce, and I come.

  I come with a full-body shiver. My toes curl. My fingers curl. I bite my lip because I’m trying not to moan, but I moan anyway, and it feels like beautiful, beautiful relief.

  Then Grady’s gasping and moaning too, and his hands tighten and he throws his head back again, cock jerking inside me. I lean down, drape myself over him, and his arms circle my back. I kiss him once, slowly, and he doesn’t let me go and kisses me again until I finally pull back, climb off, and collapse in a puddle next to him as we catch our breaths.

  “You better call me after that,” I finally tease, and Grady just laughs.

  “If you think you can get rid of me, think again,” he answers. “Not a chance.”

  Chapter Ten

  GRADY

  We wake up still naked, because for some reason Adeline doesn’t put the nightgown on again. I look at her. She looks at me.

  We both smile at the same time.

  I consider saying Merry Christmas by having her sit on my face, because there are a lot of things I’d like to do to her that we’ve only scratched the surface of, but instead of orgasms there’s a knock on the door.

  Well, it’s not a knock. It’s a frantic, frenzied pounding.

  “Yeah?” I call.

  “IT’S CHRISTMAS!” at least three children yell, and Adeline buries her head on my shoulder, laughing.

  “Thank you!” I call back.

  “HURRY UP!”

  “Give us five minutes, okay?”

  Adeline’s still laughing as they retreat.

  “We should probably go before they storm the cabin,” she says, as I stroke her hair.

  “Yeah, so much for my morning plans,” I tease.

  She just raises one eyebrow.

  “It’ll be a surprise for next time,” I tell her. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Great. Come out with me. What about Friday?”

  “Shouldn’t I say yes to one date at a time?” she says, laughing.

  “I’m making up for four lost months,” I say.

  Feet stomp onto the cabin’s porch again.

  “That wasn’t five minutes!” I shout.

  Even through the door, I can hear small, exasperated sighs.

  “We should go before they explode,” Adeline says.

  “After you say yes,” I tell her. “You know what? Three dates. New Year’s Eve, too.”

  “All right, all right, yes,” she says, grabs my hand, and kisses it.

  “Merry Christmas Adeline,” I tell her, and she smiles.

  “Merry Christmas, Grady,” she says, and we kiss.

  About the Author

  I love writing sexy, rugged men and the headstrong women they fall for. My weaknesses include: beards, whiskey, nice abs with treasure trails, sarcasm, cats, prowess in the kitchen, prowess in the bedroom, forearm tattoos, and gummy bears. I live in California with my very own sexy, bearded, whiskey-loving husband and two hell-raising cats.

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  Chapter One

  CALLUM />
  Blasting Michael Bublé’s version of “Silent Night” as I sped down the street in an icy winter wonderland probably seemed incongruous, but I was in an exceptionally good mood.

  Who wouldn’t be when classes at the community college were officially finished for the semester? Finals were done. Grades submitted. Endless infernal staff meetings in the bag.

  I was finally free—for a month or so, give or take some faculty enrichment days.

  I’d cracked the windows on my wholly-inappropriate-for-this-climate Toyota Supra sports car to let in the cool late afternoon breeze, and I’d put the heat on low to offset the chill. I was driving a little too fast for the fat flakes streaming down from the sky and accumulating in frosty slush along the side of the roadway. Playing my music a bit too loud for the quaint small town I was headed toward full bore.

  Crescent Cove, was it? I’d never been here before. Oh, I’d heard of it, considering I lived fifty-plus miles away. But this place was postcard bucolic, a speck on the map, and I tended to like to hit the highways where I could go faster.

  Thirty miles an hour was not fast. Nor was my risky thirty-six.

  I didn’t even know why I’d driven this far out today. I was all too used to Central New York’s changeable weather. Snowstorms didn’t usually slow me down, but the sleet gray clouds warned we might be in for a prolonged event.

  So much for enjoying my freedom in my sweet impractical beauty. I’d just do a U-turn and head back—

  Suddenly, a truck backed out of a driveway, and I hit the brakes far too hard. My tires shrieked as I aimed right for the curb—and the ditch hidden by the thick layer of white layered on top of it.

  My horn rang out as did my particularly colorful stream of curses. Wheels spun. My knee jabbed hard into something, and for a second, my vision wavered.

  Had I hit my head? Or had the belt tightened just enough to send my ribcage upward into my skull?

  Could’ve been either one.