ChristmasInHisHeart (9 page)

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Just because I’m not attracted to you the wa—”

“Bullshit,” Xander repeated himself as he held up two fingers. “That’s twice. Remember what I said about third times?”

Dermot’s eyes widened as he nodded slowly.

“I remember the first time I saw you.” Warmth spread through Xander at the happy memory. “You probably don’t recall it, that’s fine. It was just a bump on the sidewalk with someone you didn’t know…but for me it was more. Your voice danced over my skin. It was a hot day, but I had goose bumps from you mumbling just a few words to me in passing. I didn’t realize it at the time, but you were the deciding factor for me wanting the job at Craft Time.”

The meaning behind his words must’ve hit Dermot solidly in his midsection, because the man dropped back down on the couch and looked dumbstruck.

“But…Shawna hired you months ago.”

“Yeah.” Xander nodded. “End of July, I came down to help her interview prospects, and decided I wanted the position myself. Months of me ogling your assets from afar, thinking it was just a passing thing, a good-looking man to rest my stare on. But you intrigued me. Not only were you stingy with your smiles, but I’ve never seen anyone so damn grumpy without actually being mean to people. That’s a true gift.”

“Oh…” Dermot leaned back on the couch with a thud, his face losing the flush Xander’s touch had put on it. “So I’m like a project of yours? It’s your job to turn me into a happy-go-lucky sap like you? After I’m converted who’s next? Maybe Prudence? I heard she scowled at Mr. Hatterly the other day. You may want to jump on that one quick.”

Xander copped a squat on the coffee table in front of Dermot, grabbing the man’s hands and keeping him still when he tried to move away. “Good call, and after Prudence maybe I’ll work on that sous chef of yours—what’s his name? Chaz? He didn’t smile at me the other day and I personally took offense to it.” He chuckled at Dermot’s growl. “The problem with these plans is that I think you might keep me busy for the foreseeable future, which is good considering you’re the one I want to be busy with.”

He held up his hand to stop whatever Dermot thought to say. He wasn’t done talking, and he wouldn’t be derailed now, not when he was so close to hopefully making his point.

“And I’m not just talking sex. Though I think we can both agree that’s pretty damn good stuff. But I want to know the man behind the sneer. What do you do for fun? How long have you been feeding that stray behind the building? What type of music do you listen to?”

Green eyes dragged Xander to the edge of the coffee table, almost to the point of sliding right off it.

“Books or movies? Sweet or salty?”

He hooked his hand behind Dermot’s neck and pulled him forward.

“Do you cuddle? Do you snore?”

Dermot shook his head, a look of bewilderment flashed over his face before the corner of his mouth barely tipped up. “Snore?”

Xander matched the oh-so-slight grin with one of his own. “Oh yeah. Nothing better than a light, breathy reminder that a hot man is sleeping next to me.”

Their foreheads bumped, their chests rising and falling faster than normal in the intimate situation. Xander moved his hand, his fingers dragging along heated skin to rub circles in the delicate area behind Dermot’s earlobe.

“So much to learn about you, and I want to know everything.”

He not only heard the gulp from Dermot, he felt it in the tips of his fingertips.

“Everything?” the nervous man asked.

“Everything.” Xander drew the word out to punctuate his meaning. “All you have to do is give us a try. No more kicking my ass out. Think you can do that?”

He kept very still while he waited, watching a kaleidoscope of emotions wash over his chef’s face.

***

He got so caught up in the bubble, the euphoria of Xander’s words that Dermot almost went with it, like Charlie and his grandfather in the chocolate factory stealing fizzy drinks. But the voice of sanity intervened.

“Xander.” He caught his breath and held up a hand as the man leaned in closer. “Can you…go sit over there?” Dermot waved at a ratty armchair that needed to be reupholstered in a bad way.

“What?” Xander’s confusion was clear in his tone, but he made a show of getting up and seating himself on the chair.

“We need to talk.”

“I think I just did,” Xander murmured, an amused smile tilting the corners of his mouth and creating intriguing lines on his cheeks.

“Yes, you did, thank you. I’m very…flattered and…I don’t even know what to say about how what you said makes me feel. But I do know… Look, I’m thirty-two, not nineteen. I may be acting like an immature idiot, but that’s your fault, not mine.”

“Why, thank you.” Xander preened, seeming to take that as a compliment. Dermot chose not to argue the point. It wouldn’t be important for much longer anyway. Xander wasn’t likely to prove any different than the last six guys he’d dated.

“You have to know…before you decide that you want to pursue this beyond just fucking, which as you pointed out, has been very nice.” He dragged in a hearty breath and willed his cock back to quiescence. “I don’t do Christmas. I can see that’s very important to you, what with um…”

“You have a problem with Christmas? Not a problem with me?”

Hmm… “Basically, yes.” Dermot’s heart pounded in his chest, constricting his breathing. Was it really going to be this easy?

“And you’re going to let Christmas stand in the way of something that I can just feel in my heart is going to be good, for both of us? Maybe even amazing?” Xander sat upright and sent him an audacious leer.

“Well.” When put like that, it did seem kind of trivial, didn’t it? Christmas was one holiday, once a year. A relationship was three hundred sixty-five days a year…

Don’t drink the Kool-Aid!

The alert sent his careening emotions to a halt.

Remember Draven?

Remember Kyle?

Remember?

“I’ve heard that before, Xander.” Dermot sighed, tired suddenly. “Everyone says no big deal. I’ve even had men point out to me how frequently couples of different religions get together, and that there are ways to work around all of our differences.”

“That’s exactly right.” Xander nodded firmly.

“Then they end up leaving anyway.”

“Um… No. That’s not how it works.” Xander left the armchair and crossed back to perch on the coffee table. “Those were obviously the wrong guys, Dermot. You tell me you don’t do Christmas, I say okay, and then we go on. Christmas isn’t a requirement. You and me together, naked on the bed, sharing ourselves, heart, soul, body. That’s what’s important.”

“Are you serious?” Dermot leaned in closer than he should have, close enough to smell the sweat under Xander’s cologne, close enough to feel the way his body heated and to see…

Oh my god…to see the lazy pulse of blood strum to rapid life in his throat, his temple. And Dermot couldn’t think any more about why it was a bad idea, why the attraction between them was a bad thing.

All he could do was feel and experience. Tension drew them tighter together, heat spiraled between them. Every breath he took was laden with the scent of Xander. An aura of portent…hung in the air between them.

This moment was more than sex, Xander had made his feelings on that clear. If Dermot gave in to the urges of his body and heart, if he could shut up the voice in his mind and ignore its warnings, then this was the beginning of something new for them.

Something new, powerful, and all-consuming.

Maybe that threat had been there all along, the dire need that could burn away all that was Dermot and replace it with Xander…

Like he didn’t already spend enough of his days dreaming about that smile? Imagining them skin on skin and buried as deeply into each other as mind and flesh could go?

Um… Even in his own head he made no sense.

Except when Xander’s hands touched him…like now. “Oh…” Now it all made sense. Christmas wasn’t a hang-up, Dermot was. He was using Christmas to shield himself from potential pain…

But Xander would never hurt him.

His grip was hard, firm, but tender nonetheless, and Dermot was ready for this. He wanted Xander, in his bed, in his life. Clearly he’d already accepted him in his heart.

“Is that, oh yes, Xander, take me to bed, Xander, let me fuck you, Xander?” The man’s wicked baritone rumbled through Dermot, raising goose bumps on his overheated skin and causing his internal wiring to short out somehow so that all his blood supply seemed to be redirected immediately south. His already swelling dick went painfully rigid. Dermot growled, low and soft.

“Down the hall, now.” He forced the words past a throat tight with emotion he didn’t want to take the time to examine. If Xander was offering what he thought he was, then Dermot was accepting…the sex and the happily ever after, too.

He’d earned it.

Santa Claus owed it to him.

Chapter Ten

He knew Dermot would take the reins if given the opportunity. Xander hurried down the hall, stopping long enough to toe one green Vans off in front of the bathroom and the other right outside a partially open door that he damn sure hoped was Dermot’s bedroom. If it wasn’t, oh well, that was where they were going to do this because Xander had no plans of waiting any longer. He nudged the door open and saw a huge king-sized bed in the middle of the room.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” he muttered as he quickly unfastened his jeans and pushed them along with his briefs down his legs.

It was quiet behind him and he worried maybe…did he push Dermot too hard? Come off too strong? Oh god, was he half undressed standing in the man’s bedroom while Dermot was in the living room having second thoughts?

Shit.

Conflicted between whether he should finish taking his jeans off or pull them up and go see where his chef was, he turned to look down the hall.

“Oh. Fuck. Me.”

His mouth hit the floor as his gaze roamed up and down the very naked, very happy man stalking toward him. Xander couldn’t tell he was happy from his stern face, but damn, other parts of his body spoke for him in that aspect.

“Yes, but”—Dermot gestured to his jeans still bunched around his ankles—“think you can finish undressing?”

Since Xander still stood in the opening to the room, Dermot had to turn slightly sideways to enter it. The moist tip of his cock painted a thin line across Xander’s upper thigh. They both hissed when their erections played en garde with each other before his other thigh felt the evidence of Dermot’s interest.

When Dermot turned away from him to head to the bed, Xander finally did what all his fantasies screamed for…he watched that tight ass in all its glory. Holy shit, he wasn’t disappointed. Dermot had two perfectly sculpted globes, the left one with double dimples near the top that were accentuated when he walked.

When Dermot turned around to face him again, he stroked his cock slowly. “Do you plan on only watching?”

Xander started doing that special hop dance everyone does when trying to get denim off as quickly as possible, stepping on one leg while trying to pry the other out of the opening and then switching. Finally freed of them and his briefs, he yanked his socks off also.

“Pfft,” he answered Dermot’s snarky question, “you couldn’t keep me away from you when you were clothed, no way in hell can you do it now. You’re perfect.”

Dermot’s chest and neck reddened as his hand hesitated on the downstroke.

“Here, let me help you with that.” Xander fell to his knees and removed Dermot’s hand, kissing each fingertip before fluttering light kisses over the crown of his cock. A drop of pre-cum glazed his upper lip and he quickly licked it away. “Absolutely perfect.”

Fists clenched in Xander’s hair as his tongue poked and prodded beneath the ridge, tracing the thick veins down the underside to the base. He dug his nose in the coarse hair there as his tongue darted out and bathed Dermot’s balls, curling around one and bringing it to his lips. He sucked it in, pressing firmly against the delicate body part, Dermot’s grunting encouraging him to worship the other one next.

The tugging on Xander’s hair carried unspoken demands that he had no intention of ignoring, so he moved his mouth back to Dermot’s hard length and nibbled his way up again. After licking the moisture from the tip, Xander puckered his lips and squeezed them over Dermot’s cock, not stopping until it bumped against the back of his throat, demanding entrance. Breathing in through his nose, Xander closed his eyes, relaxed those stubborn muscles blocking Dermot’s way and swallowed. He wasn’t sure which turned him on more, Dermot’s deep gasp and sudden admittance to finding religion or him holding Xander’s head in a steel grip as he lost control and fucked his mouth.

At this point, finesse was completely out of the question, so he kept his mouth wide for Dermot to take what he needed while Xander ran his finger from Dermot’s balls to his anus and back, making sure his nail tugged on the thin skin, scratching it with each trip.

Dermot tried to shakily swipe at the hand Xander teased him with. “No…Xan…want to…don’t want to come in your mouth…” His speech broke between gasps and thrusts.

Xander couldn’t help smiling around the thick erection still hammering his mouth even with its owner professing he didn’t want to shoot this way—even though granted, the smile probably wasn’t very obvious considering how stretched his lips were.

He grabbed Dermot’s hips and stilled them, taking over by hollowing his cheeks before pulling off with a loud pop.

Keeping his hand around Dermot, Xander smiled up at him. “So, where do you want to come?” He immediately went back to licking the head, coaxing it to give up some more of those drops he craved.

Dermot swatted playfully at Xander’s head as he tried to pull his hips away from the questing mouth. “Stop it.”

“Can’t help it”—
lick
—“told you I liked your sausage.”

“You did not just say that,” Dermot groaned, but Xander heard the mirth in his voice and responded to that.