Mission of Christmas (5 page)

So I grabbed a handful of popcorn. “Well, explain to me why you’re here. Didn’t you get an offer in your tie?”

Hawkins helped himself to some popcorn. “Would you want to go to bed with Tawny?”

I shook my head. “Even if I was male, I wouldn’t have anything to do with her. I have to wonder if there isn’t anyone left at the office that hasn’t ridden that bike.”

He laughed and stretched his arm out. “I sure won’t.”

Though the popcorn was between us, he was still able to reach out and touch my shoulder, his hand caressing the back of my neck. He’d done it a thousand times before, but tonight I liked it more than I ever had.

Would I admit it?

Never.

But I liked him being here, and not there.

Chapter Seven

Saturday night
 

After the movie, Hawkins popped in another one with an even larger collection of explosions and gore and things children under thirteen shouldn’t watch. While action, violence, and explosions were always good, I was exhausted.

It had been a long day. The mall, the party…sitting here drinking more, and lounging. Oh, and let’s not forget my explosion of emotion. Can’t ignore that painful reveal of my pathetic childhood.

Sleep would have been nice.

I yawned a few times, trying to hint he needed to go, but he just wasn’t getting it. I was still licking my wounds from my Christmas Horrors story. Though we watched the movie in relative silence, I couldn’t help thinking he probably thought the worst of me right now.

Pretty sad family secret to be letting out.

I headed into the kitchen to refill my wine. “You know you don’t have to hang here. I’m getting tired anyway. The night’s been eventful, and the day wasn’t exactly relaxing. I’m about ready to crash.”

I swore I thought he was in the living room, which is why I was yelling. So when he put his hands on my shoulders, I about jumped out of my skin.

“Do you want me to go?” He rubbed my shoulders, attacking the muscles that now felt like a steel rod. His thumbs dug into the tight cords, and I felt myself start to go woozy under his ministrations.

“Um, well, uh…” I swayed.

He smirked and wrapped his arms around me in a hug. “I want you to have that gift, Erica.”

His arms felt way too cozy around me, and the tension he’d managed to knead out came back.

“I can’t. It’s just too much. I, uh, I have gift guilt. I didn’t get you anything. I feel like I need to buy you an iPad now.”

He let go of me and took my wine glass. “That’s not the point.”

I spun around to face him. “And what is the point?”

He leaned precariously close. “I like the way you smell in Chanel.”

My heart hammered. “Uh…”

“As much as I wouldn’t mind an iPad, you certainly don’t have to go buy me one.”

I smirked at his words. Then he leaned forward and smelled me again. This time there was no denying it.

“I love how you smell…” He buried his head in my neck and breathed in again.

I thought I was going to melt into the floor. Even four hours ago, the idea of him sniffing me would have been weird and scary. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the fact I’d exposed something so private to him, I was vulnerable.

Maybe I was overly sensitized.

Anything was possible.

But this was incredibly erotic. His lips grazed my throat, a gentle brush against my skin, and my nerves stood at attention—in all the good ways. He never took his hands off my shoulders as he deliberately placed a kiss on my neck. The soft touch, slightly moist, sent a shiver through me.

“Andy.” Part of me wondered if this was a good idea. And the other part of me wanted to tell that part to shut the hell up.

I rocked my head to the side, allowing him further access. His lips trailed up my throat, and he guided my head around so he could taste the other side. I burned down to my girly parts, and I reached for him, one hand on his back, the other sliding up into his hair as he licked and tasted my skin.

He started guiding me backward, and I continued to hold on until something hard and cold met my back.

Oh. The refrigerator. I owned one of those?

Andy kissed up my throat, then he found my jaw, my cheeks, and then I saw his eyes. Darker than I’d ever noticed before, they burned with desire, with power and intensity.

His expression seared me, a practically tactile sensation, flipping every switch in me.

I wanted this man.

Oh, how I wanted him.

His hips ground into mine, and I could feel he’d grown a bit with age—I didn’t remember his bulge being that large when we were teenagers.

Thanks for growing up!

My hand slid down between us, and before I realized what I was doing, I put my hand on his crotch, feeling his hardness through his slacks.

He let out a low moan.

And then he devoured me in a kiss. This wasn’t a friendly kiss between two people who were comforting each other. This was a kiss to melt the ice in Antarctica. Every part of me started to burn, and I knew I was done for. I reached for his belt, sliding my hands into his pants…

Oh my God.

Commando
.

I got a head rush thinking about the fact that he’d been naked under his pants for the entire evening.

He released our fiery kiss with a growl, and while my hand was still in his pants, I met his eyes.

“So, you always go commando?” I asked.

He arched his eyebrow. “Do you want me to?”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to look at you the same at the office if I knew you did.”

“Then I don’t.”

“Rats.”

His hand grazed my breast under my jammies top. “You always run around without your bra on around me.”

It wasn’t a question. “You’ve never noticed before.”

“I’ve noticed.” His hand slid into the button hole, popping a couple of the buttons so he could touch me. In a flash, my pajama shirt was open almost to my bellybutton. His fingers grazed the sides of my breast just before he caressed my nipple. My head started to swim, and I swore I was dying and heading straight for heaven.

I slid my hand up and down his cock—the thing was like a friggin’ steel bar, the skin like velvet, and the tip rock hard and ready.

He let out a groan as he palmed my breast. His thumb did crazy caress-touches and I let out a whimper.

“I’ve wanted to do this for a long time.” Leaning down, Andy took my bared nipple into his mouth.

I tipped my head back and arched against him. Whatever it was he did, I didn’t know, only that it was completely incredible. My entire body was alive with flames as he nibbled and sucked and generally induced lots of moans from me.

“Christ.” I couldn’t keep a hold of my prize, so I put my hands in his hair, letting the strands slide through my fingers while he continued. “Did you take a class or something?”

Andy looked up at me. “You talk too much.”

“I probably… Oh my God!”

His mouth encircled one nipple, his hand on the other, making the synapses in my brain forget to fire. His kisses led down my body to my stomach. He nipped and teased the skin to my pants line. He blew a breath on my center, and even through the flannel, the heat gave me a head rush.

Our eyes met, and though I swear I can’t read minds, I knew exactly what he was thinking.

Horizontal. We needed to get horizontal ASAP
.

I pulled him back up to me. Nothing was said, just a long, slow, sloppy kiss before separating. He took my hands and led me to my bedroom.

We walked into the room and he flipped on the light. I was suddenly blinded by both the light and the realization he wasn’t going to turn it back off.

“No, wait.”

He glanced at me.

“I want the lights off.”

He shook his head. “I’ve wanted to see you for a long time, Erica. You’re not stopping me now.”

My cheeks flamed red. “Uh…” In my head, I had a thousand witty replies, but one look in those eyes and every one of them died on my lips. Smart-assisms would not keep us on this path, anyway.

And I did want to continue. In the back of my mind, I knew that I’d wanted this probably for as long as he did—yet every time I’d ever considered such a thing, I’d shoved it away, shaking it off as quick as a blink. Friends weren’t supposed to want each other. At least that’s what I told myself.

Yet here I was, desperately wanting him. The logical side of me started screaming this would change everything. The teeny-tiny romantic in me, though, wasn’t sure. Would it? Would it really?

Of course it would.

Sex changes everything.

Was I ready to make this relationship move in that particular direction? Did I really want to do this?

My insides churned in turmoil—partially because of what my body yearned for, partially because of the fear of what this would do to our relationship.

He sat me on the bed, and my hands shook. He clenched my fingers, steadying them, and placed a soft kiss on my cheek. He walked around to my nightstand and flipped on my little reading lamp. Then he shut off the overhead light. It put off just enough light to illuminate without overpowering, and I felt a bit more comfortable.

My hands were still shaking.

“Erica?” he whispered.

“I’m fine… I am,” I said, shoving my shaking hands under my legs.

He sat next to me. “Scared?”

I nodded.

“I am too.” Scared as he was, he still kissed me—it was a taste, a need that I could understand, identify, and something I desperately wanted. It seemed to shove the fear away, and I stopped trembling. I fumbled with my shirt, finishing off the last couple of buttons as we kissed. I stretched to pull it off when he stopped me.

“Let me.” His hands were slow and meticulous at removing the material. I watched them move, and his fingers trembled a bit too. I wanted to cry—not tears of pain or worry, but of joy. He really was nervous. I felt like we’d rocketed back to high school, a couple of bumbling teenagers stealing a sacred moment while our parents were away.

He pushed the fabric off my shoulders, his hands caressing my skin as he slid the shirt down. His fingers lingered on my arms, making little lighting trails with every barely-there touch.

I shuddered under his ministrations.

He leaned down and kissed me, his hands no longer on me, but pulling at the buttons on his dress shirt and revealing planes of lovely skin and square pectoral muscles. Dark hair spread across those pecs and led down to a mostly flat stomach, a small trail of hair pointing to the south, very erect pole.

He stood up, unfastened his pants, but didn’t push them down. I reached up and ran a hand down his chest, feeling the skin. When I traced around his belly button, he sucked in his stomach and twisted his hips away from me. The fabric hung low, his erection holding the pants in place.

I grabbed his barely-covered hips, pulling him straight in front of me, and started to place kisses around his belly button.

His stomach was all the nice male flavors—skin, musk, man, all those hormone-inducing aromas. “I like your stomach.”

“It’s not as cut as it used to be.” He tried to step away from me a bit, but I held him in place.

“Neither of us are spring chickens anymore.” I placed a few kisses on his belt line, nuzzling against the skin.

“Erica,” he moaned, his hands in my hair.

I opened his pants, revealing his hard cock, and I swear the thing bounced in salutation. I couldn’t help smiling. I ran my hand up and down the smooth, velvet skin.

“Why is it,” I said, blowing a breath on the head, “that the skin here is so much softer and smoother than any other skin on a man’s body? Or on a woman’s, for that matter?”

“I don’t—”

I licked the head.

He let out a growl.

I took him in my mouth.

He blew out a breath, like he could explode any second.

I slipped my hands around his hips and felt the lines of his butt, the way the roundness curved down into the back of his legs. I pushed the pants down farther so I could touch the muscles, where the hair started on his legs. He groaned, but remained perfectly still, his hands on my shoulders.

I slid off him and glanced up. His eyes, though he was looking down at me, were lost—in a different place, the throes of ecstasy.

“Hi.”

He pushed me backward onto the bed, shucked his pants, and attacked me. The weight of him on top of me should have bothered me—most of the time, most men, it did.

Not with him. It just felt, well, right.

He nuzzled my neck, sending shivers through me, and so began his quest of covering every inch of my chest with licks and nips and kisses. I stretched my arms to my sides, my fingers digging into the afghans on the bed, the holes in the crocheted blankets becoming wonderful handles to keep me somewhat grounded.