Page 264 of Sweet Temptation

He looked utterly serious, and I looked him over.

“This is you, happy?” I teased.

“It’s the Christmas sweater,” he said gravely. “It’s overpowering the joy I’m exuding.”

“Then take it off.”

He stripped it off over his head, and I helped him.

“You’re not allowed to fuck up my makeup,” I informed him as he started pushing the layers of organza up my thighs, “but you can rip the panties.”

He growled a little in his throat as he reached under my skirt. He ripped off my panties, glancing at them as he tossed them aside. “Didn’t you just buy those…?”

“Uh-huh,” I breathed, as he started kissing his way up my thigh. I’d bought them today, in fact.

“We’re really gonna have to review your budget…” he murmured against my skin, as he started pulling off my skirt.

“Ugh. You and Brody can both shut up about my budget.”

He dropped my skirt on the floor. “I just want to make sure you have enough money to afford all the tear-off panties you want,” he said innocently.

Okay, that was a budget I could work with.

“Fine,” I sighed, as I helped him strip off my bustier. “You win this one.”

“You know, it really turns me on when you say that.”

I grinned as I undid his jeans… only to discover that he’d snuck on the slutty red underwear I gave him. I laughed with joy.

Then I made love to my fiancé… wearing nothing but my two diamond rings.

Christmas music played downstairs. Snow fell softly outside. I felt completely safe, loved, in Ronan’s arms.

And I knew…

Sometimes, fairytales do come true.

Epilogue

Taylor

“On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love sent to meeee…!”

Oh, yes, indeed. I was happy.

I was so happy, in fact, that I was singing all the way up the stairs to my apartment.

Because so what if my psycho boss had completely screwed me over in the most psycho boss move ever—by coming on to me while he was drunk at the office Christmas party—and when I turned him down, telling his wife, the HR manager, that I came on to him… and then they fired me, four days before Christmas?

So. The fuck. What.

I hated that job. I hated my boss. And now I was liberated, right?

It was all how you chose to look at it. And my glass, right now, was a truly decent quarter-full. I’d deal with refilling the rest of it after Christmas, when the suckfest of searching for a new job began.

“Eight maids a-milking! Seven swans a-swimming! Six geese a-laying…!”

Also. I was seriously looking forward to not being at the beck and call of an abusive employer over the holidays. My Christmas shopping was officially done. I’d treated myself to a new lipstick: Soulcrushing Red. And I was going to a hot Christmas party tonight with my best friend, Danica.

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