Unwrapped (7 page)

“Was Christmas really that awful for you?” he asked in a soft voice that made her shoulders stiffen.

Her throat felt tight and she wanted to laugh it off, blow him off, deflect the question with wit or sarcasm. But she couldn’t. She nodded. “Yeah. For most kids, aside from the religious aspect, Christmas was about them. For me, it was like the one day that made it really, really clear that I was an afterthought in my parent’s lives.”

She was glad he was behind her so he couldn’t see her face. She knew she didn’t mask her emotions well and she was feeling really vulnerable. But at the same time, she was actually relieved she’d spoken the truth. She had never admitted that out loud to anyone in her entire life and she instinctively knew that she could trust Christian with something so personal. Maybe it was even easier because she’d just met him. She didn’t know exactly what it was about him that instilled such confidence, but her heart did pound a little faster than normal as she waited for his response.

He kissed the top of her head. She’d never really had a man do that, and Christian had already done it more than once. It made her feel . . . protected.

“I’m sorry, Blue,” he said, brushing his lips across her temple. “That’s a raw deal and you deserved better than that.”

She turned her head slightly, trying to see his expression. “You’re not going to tell me that I’m whining? To suck it up. That everyone’s family is dysfunctional and I should get over it?”

“Of course not. Those things
hurt
when you’re a kid and you carry it with you to adulthood. What was Christmas at your house like? Describe a typical day.”

Blue chewed her lip and leaned forward a little so she could see him. “Are you sure you want to listen to all this? It’s not like I was abused or anything.”

But he just nodded. “Yes, I want to hear it. Get it out. Rant if you want. You’re entitled to your feelings.”

She hesitated, but then she leaned back against his chest and played with the edge of the bed sheet. “Well. My dad only saw me a few times a year, and he never wanted me for Christmas. He always went skiing. Sometimes he would send me a present, sometimes he would forget altogether, and most years I got a five dollar bill in the mail. Which, let me tell you, five bucks didn’t go very far even twenty years ago, and it’s not like my dad was hurting for cash. But it wasn’t the dollar amount, it was like I said, being an afterthought.”

Christian laced his fingers through hers and squeezed.

“My mother was all into social justice and charity, which was great. I mean, I think it’s awesome that she’s dedicated her life to helping others, but when you’re six and your friends are all getting Barbies, being told your mother donated money in your name to the Red Cross just makes you resentful. She’d lecture me about starvation in Africa and I’d just wonder why it was
me
who had to give up toys so they could eat when no one else had to. It wasn’t like my mom gave up buying clothes or spending a ton of money on airfare to exotic locales or on her yoga classes.”

“So she didn’t give you presents at all?”

His voice sounded so appalled, Blue instantly felt better.

“Not unless you count hemp mittens as a legit Christmas gift.”

“That’s it? That’s all you got?”

“One year, yeah. Some years I got nada. We didn’t have a Christmas tree either. Environmentally unsound, obviously.”

“That is fucking cracked.”

Christian’s vehemence amused her. “So now you know why I don’t dig Christmas. It was something everyone else had and I envied them at first, then just resented the holiday altogether. For other kids, it was the best day of the year. For me, it was . . . lonely.”

“That sucks. And your parents should be ashamed of themselves. They were both selfish. And your mother has wonderful ideals but she did you wrong. I bet my ass when she was six she wanted a goddamn Barbie too. She expected you to be a mini-adult and that was cruel.”

Hearing someone else say the things Blue had always felt lifted a gigantic weight off her shoulders. She’d always felt like she was the one lacking, like she was horrible and petty to feel the way she had as a kid, when she knew in her heart her feelings were legitimate. And somehow, having spoken them out loud and having them validated by Christian, she felt decidedly less bitter.

“Thanks,” she said softly, turning and giving him a kiss. “I appreciate that.”

“Did you ever get a good gift? Anything at all?”

She didn’t even hesitate on that one. “Yes. Just once. I was eight, and my dad had been to New York for Thanksgiving and he bought me a glass snow globe. He gave it to me for Christmas, and it was even wrapped and everything. And I loved it . . . it was like magic. You shook it and the beautiful little flakes danced around the high rise buildings. They had wreathes on them for Christmas and I imagined that in a big city like that, with all those people, you would walk down the sidewalk in the snow and never feel lonely ever . . .”

The image of the cityscape dissipated in her mind and Blue cleared her throat, wondering what the hell she was doing. She was just going to shut up now.

“Have you been to New York?”

“No.” Because what if she walked down the sidewalk in the snow at Christmastime and still felt lonely? She didn’t want to ruin the magic, the hope.

“You should . . . it would be like embracing Christmas, hope, a different life for yourself than what your parents created.”

Or be crushed. One or the other. It freaked her out that he had used the word hope as well, that he could somehow pinpoint her emotions, that he hadn’t just shut this whole conversation down with an ill-timed joke five minutes ago. She didn’t know how to deal with him, with any of this, so she just said, “You’re quite the philosopher, you know that? Not what I expected.”

“Nah. Just a guy who is content and wants amazing people he knows to feel the same way. And you have a choice now, you know. You can keep Christmas as a time of year that makes you unhappy, or you can decide to let it in and make some of your own traditions.”

“Like margaritas in bed in a cheap motel?” she said, mustering up a sassy smirk. This was all too raw. She needed to retreat.

Part of her figured he would argue or sigh that she was ditching the serious tone of the conversation. But he didn’t. After a second, where he searched her face with an intensity that was unnerving, he nodded.

“Exactly. Margaritas in bed on Christmas Eve. I like it.”

“Then I’ll get you another one.” Blue popped up out of bed and took their empty cups off the nightstand. She went to pour them refills, but first she lifted the lid of her suitcase and pulled out a T-shirt and a pair of pajama pants, and not because it was cold outside and she was about to open the door.

She wanted to be covered up.

Christian watched Blue dragging on a shirt and cotton pajama pants and tried to make some sense of his complicated thoughts and emotions. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear to God he had fallen head over ass for this woman.

He liked everything about her, from the sound of her voice to the way she tilted her head, to the vulnerability she buried beneath sassiness. The way she had readily agreed to breakfast with Roy, the ancient motel owner, said a lot about her heart, and he liked her sense of humor, the way she was determined to remain aloof and always cracked.

When they left this motel, he didn’t want to never see her again.

He wanted to date Blue out in the real world and everything about that stunned and excited and scared the shit out of him. Never having had this instantaneous response to a woman, he had no freaking clue what to do with it.

So he tossed back the bedding and got out of bed. The one thing he could do was brave the cold himself instead of having her do it. “No, Blue, I’ll get the bottles. I’m the one who stuck them out there. And you’re a freeze baby, while I’m clearly not.”

“A freeze baby?” She stopped with her hand on the doorknob and smiled at him in amusement. “I’ve never heard that expression before.”

“Where the hell have you been hiding?” Christian didn’t bother to put his shirt on, and he was already wearing his boxers. Good enough. Two seconds of cold wasn’t going to kill him. A glance behind the curtain of the window to the parking lot showed it had actually stopped snowing. “Stand back, miss,” he joked in a country drawl. “This is man’s work.”

The eye roll from her was expected, but she did back up and ripped open a pack of peanuts on the table. “I do have one Christmas tradition,” she said unexpectedly.

“Yeah?” He threw open the door and waited for her to elaborate as he grabbed the tequila and the mixer, ignoring the biting wind that cut into his flesh. He couldn’t exactly complain that the cold hurt after pulling the macho act.

“Before the big Christmas party at the nursing home, I go and do the ladies’ hair for free.”

Christian paused, half bent over, touched beyond belief, and forgetting all about the icy chill seeping into his feet. God, he was falling hard for Blue. Crazy, out of control, illogical, wanted to write a goddamn love poem falling for this gorgeous woman.

“I mean, it’s not a big deal, it’s just they like to feel good about themselves when their families show up for the party and I . . . I like to talk to them. They’re very sweet.”

He could almost hear the blush on her and as he stood up, Christian turned slowly with the bottles in his hands. “I think that tradition rocks, Blue.”

She put her hands on her hips and she nodded in conviction. “You know what? It does. It totally does.”

Christian kicked the door closed with his foot. “You rock.”

She took the tequila out of his hands and grinned. “I do, don’t I?”

It was that moment that he lost himself in a haze of tequila, lust, off the chart attraction, and the spirit of Christmas giving.

Plunking the mixer down on the table, Christian grabbed Blue and kissed her, a wild, tongue plunging sweep of domination and desperation, wanting to show her how completely awesome he thought she was and how she rocked all right. She’d rocked his world to the very foundation in one night.

Christian lifted Blue right off her feet, his hands on her ass as she wrapped her legs around his waist.

“Yes,” he managed between kisses, the feel of her body so close to his electrifying. “You definitely rock.”

Chapter Seven

“Y
ou’re really strong,” she murmured between kisses. Christian ground her hips against his and breathed in the fresh scent of her skin. “You’re tiny, it’s not hard to hold you. And I’m hopped up on adrenaline. I could probably lift a car right now.” Or have sex again after not much of a break to refuel.

That definitely wasn’t going to be a problem. His erection was knocking on her door already and he turned and sat on the edge of the bed, Blue still in his lap.

They kissed each other with a wild abandon, her nails digging into his back, his fingers tangling in her dark hair. Christian yanked up her T-shirt to her armpits and covered her breast with his mouth, tugging at the taut nipple.

How he was so frantic after they’d already made love, he had no idea, but he was. He was every freaking cliché there ever was about a man in the desert being offered water, and it didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense about the fact that every inch of his body was desperate, compelled, irrational to be against Blue, to possess her, claim her, fill her.

“Get on your knees,” he urged her, skimming his palms down into the waistband of her pajama pants.

“What?” she asked breathlessly, her head lolling back, nipples displayed invitingly in front of him.

“On your knees. Now.” The tone was rougher than he intended but he wasn’t going to wait.

She did, her eyes hooded, lips cherry red and glistening from his kisses.

When he yanked her bottoms down, panties included, she gasped.

A little determination and some hard tugs had them off both ankles and Christian freed his erection from his boxers right before she settled her thighs on either side of his and her warm flesh collided with him.

He was willing to say the hell with foreplay and just slam her down onto him, but Blue took his cock in her hand and slowly stroked it. It was Christian’s turn to gasp, and he dug his fingers into her hips. She moved her lithe touch over him up and down, a feathery tease of a touch, her lips brushing against his neck in a similar barely there contact.

That was only damaging his control, but when she took him and slid him up and down in her wetness, using the tip of his cock to stimulate her clitoris, he was almost destroyed. “Oh, damn,” he said, teeth gritted, grip on her so tight that he could see the whiteness of his fingers. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“You know what I’m doing,” she whispered in his ear, her tongue flickering out to lick his lobe. “I’m getting off with your cock.”

Oh, yeah, he definitely knew that’s what she was doing. Christian tried to breathe, realizing she had turned the tease around on him. This was torture.

“You like that, don’t you?” he asked her, enjoying each slick slide up and down her, almost being allowed access to push into her, then being denied as she pulled him back up again. Definitely torture.

“Uh-huh.” Blue’s breath came in short staccato bursts and she was concentrating intently, her free hand on his shoulder to brace herself.

He realized she was actually going to be able to come and he stared at her in fascination, amazed that she was so gorgeous, so sensual, so in tune with her own body.

“That’s it,” he told her. “Take it, take what you want.”

She did. She moved him into position and let her hips drop so that he filled her in one motion. Christian exhaled sharply, his grip on her waist brutal. It was a tantalizing position, her body resting on his, her breasts teasingly close, her hands on his shoulders, her hair falling in her face as she leaned forward and kissed him.

He knew she couldn’t really get the leverage to set the rhythm like this, so he did, pumping his hips so that he went deep inside her. The way she enclosed him, her slick sweetness stroking at his cock, was insanely good.