Page 173 of A Merry Mountain Christmas

“What’s so funny?” I ask, giving his shoulder a little shove.

“You, frigid?” he sputters. “You’re like liquid fire. Only a fool would call you frigid.” His expression turns serious. “I didn’t know you could dance like that.”

There’s a funny feeling in my chest, something I don’t quite understand.

“I haven’t in a long time. I gave it up before my parents died.” I didn’t mean to tell him that. It’s not really a friends-with-benefits conversation, which reminds me we haven’t evenhada friends-with-benefits conversation.

“Why?”

“Why?” I ask, stuck in my head.

“Why’d you give it up?”

The weird thing is that I want to tell him. Maybe because I’m still so unaccustomed to being asked personal questions. Glenn never bothered to ask about my feelings or motivations, and talking about emotions—his or anyone else’s—doesn’t come naturally for Aidan. All I know is that Jace’s interest puts a knot of feeling in my throat.

“It’s stupid, really,” I say.

“I doubt that,” he says, almost in a growl, as if he’s offended on my behalf that anyone, myself included, would call me stupid.

I touch him, because I can, tracing that rope from his arm across his chest, and the slight shiver he gives emboldens me. “I loved ballet. No one knows this besides my mother, but for a brief period of time, I considered applying to dance school. It was foolish, of course, and she disapproved. Her preference was for me to pursue being a lawyer or an accountant, like her.”

“And then?”

I trace the outline of the anchor, feeling the play of his muscles, the hard press of them. Wanting him again. Wanting him in a way I hadn’t known I could want.

“I overheard my dance teacher talking to a friend. She was talking aboutme.”

He frowns but nods, encouraging me to continue.

“She didn’t think I had what it took to make it as a dancer. I was good but not great, and only someone great would get anywhere. Then she said—”

Why am I telling him this? He’s nearly a stranger. Except that doesn’t feel quite right. This man has known me in a way so few people have. He’s known me in a wayno onehas.

“What did she say, Mary?” he asks.

I take a breath, long and deep. “I’ll tell you another time, Jace. I can’t right now. I quit ballet after that. In college, I joined a dance group, but Glenn thought it was a waste of time, and then my parents died, and I…”

And that’s when he reaches for me, tucking me close to him, my head beneath his chin, his hand possessively on my hip. His semihardness pressed against me. “I understand. Losing my dad changed everything for me. All I can tell you is that I loved seeing you dance. I loved seeing your enjoyment,” he says as his hand strokes my hip. “Just like I did when I was inside you.”

Suddenly, I do feel like I’m molten inside. He’s getting hard again, something I hadn’t realized could happen so soon—does he have another condom? Please tell me he has another condom—and his words and his hands send a quiver through me.

Closing my eyes, I take calming breaths, trying to cool myself down a little. Because we still haven’t spoken about what this thing between us is. What it means.

Or rather what it can’t mean.

But that’s the last thing I want to do. Because I want to know everything about this man. I want to ask about his dad. About that car he destroyed. About the sister who won’t talk to him. Such questions, though, might lead somewhere, and we…we just can’t. Not right now anyway.

“Jace,” I say, my voice wobbly as his hand dips down to the vee between my legs. “We need to talk about this. About what we’re doing.”

“I’m listening,” he says into my ear, his breath hot against my lobe. Then he nips it slightly with his teeth, and the sensation of him pressed against me, so hot and big and manly, his hand moving over me like I’m that violin I imagined, my earlobe pinched between his teeth—that on its own is almost enough to make me come. Like I had a repressed well of pleasure buildingup inside me all these years, and now that it’s been tapped, it’s ready to burst like a shaken soda.

“I’m finding it hard to speak when you do that.”

He chuckles. “Are you asking me to stop?”

“No!” It comes out a little too desperate, but he doesn’t react. He just stills his hand on my hip, rubbing little circles there, the brush of his callused fingertips against my skin unbearably erotic.

“You were saying?”

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