Page 221 of A Merry Mountain Christmas

“Good,” I say firmly. “Because I don’t want casual. I wanteverything.” It’s what I said to him our first night together, but the meaning is different now, and we both know it.

“What about Aidan?” he asks, still unsure.

“Maybe I’m selfish,” I say, “but I’m not willing to give you up. I want you for both of us. We’ll figure out later what to tell him and when.”

Before I can lose my nerve or allow any what-ifsto creep in, I take his hand and lead him toward my bedroom. His breath catches, but he follows me. Is his heart hammering in his chest too?

When we get inside, I shut the door behind us, savoring the click it makes. Savoring the sight of him standing there, staring down at me with eyes full of wonder and warmth and admiration.

I thought we were done.

I thought I wasn’t ever going to see him again.

My heart feels like it’s going to swallow me whole.

“Are you sure?” he asks, and it’s obvious it killed him to ask.

My response is to pull him to me by the hem of his T-shirt. He leans down as I lift up, kissing me with a passion that consumes, our mouths fitting together as if we can only get oxygen from each other, not the air. But it’s not enough. I break away and lift the hem of his T-shirt over his head, revealing his ripped torso and his tattoos. He sucks in a breath as I trace the meandering line of the anchor tattoo with one finger. Then, because I want to, I lean in and trace it with my tongue, pausing here and there to plant a kiss. A slight moan escapes him, and he spears a hand through my short hair.

I’m close enough to feel his arousal against my body, but he doesn’t try to take over. The anchor tattoo ends just above his shorts and boxer briefs, and I pull them down, gasping at the sight of him. He’s hard for me even when I’m like this—undone, no makeup, no polish.

Nicole wasn’t wrong. Although I obviously haven’t had much basis of comparison, Jace’s dick is absolutely impressive enough to be a model for dildos. And it’s mine.

I run my fingers down his length, memorizing him. I feel a shudder of pleasure run through him, but he doesn’t try to take over or urge me to do anything. He just strokes my hair with his hand, his gentle touch sending shivers of sensation through me as I trace his dick with my tongue and then take him in my mouth. I experience a moment of panic—Glenn once told me that I wasn’t any good at this—but I don’t let that stop me. Everything in me wants to know Jace this way. And then he moans, and a feeling of power builds within me, edging my own pleasure higher. Swirling my tongue, I work him, up and down, his fingers still woven in my hair, tightening slightly but not pushing me to take him deeper or change my pace.

Then, suddenly, he’s pulling me up. The panic surfaces again for only an instant, there and then gone, because no, he’s not stopping me because he wasn’t enjoying it.

“Fuck, Mary,” he says, his expression strained. “I can’t take anymore. I need to come inside you.”

The words send a dirty thrill through me, like I made my claim on him and now he wants to make his claim on me, and I start to tug off my sweatshirt before his big hands still me. “Let me do that.”

He slips it over my head and lets it fall to the floor, sucking in a breath when he sees I’m still not wearing a bra underneath, and one hand is already reaching for my breast, palming it and playing with my nipple, while the other slides down my sweatpants and underwear. (I changed into an old, comfortable pair before he came over, but I can’t find it in myself to care about that or the stain currently setting into my couch cushion.)

I step out of the pants, our mouths already locked together again, our lips and tongues fighting to be closer, to connect deeper, and his clever hand finds the sensitive spot between my legs, and he touches me there and strokes in one finger, two, and I’m already so close, and…

He pulls away, breathless, and it takes him a second to get out the words. “Please tell me you have a condom. Mrs. Rosa tried to put, like, twenty of them in my suit pockets, but I didn’t let her.”

At another time, I’d be tempted to laugh and ask about a dozen questions, but right now, a more demanding need is coursing through me.

“I don’t,” I say, feeling another flutter of panic, but new sensations and emotions push it out. Warmth. Adoration.Trust.“But I was tested after Glenn and I separated, and I have an IUD. Have you been tested since your last partner?” Even though it’sbeyond stupid, I feel a little prick of jealousy toward whoever she was.

“I have. I’m clean.” His eyes are boring into me in a way that instantly soothes me. “Are you sure?”

I know what he’s asking. He’s asking if I trust him, and I do. All the way.

“I am. How do you want to…”

He takes my hand, lacing our fingers together, and leads me through our strewn clothes to the bed. I don’t have a single errant thought about the mess. My focus is solely on him. Onus.

I thought maybe he’d ask me to turn around like last time, or that he’d throw me onto the bed and lower down over me, but when we reach the edge of the mattress, he picks me up, my legs wrapping around his waist as if they’re desperate to keep him here too, and kisses me again—one of those oxygen-stealing kisses that makes me lose myself and not care—and then lowers backward onto the mattress, leaving me straddling him, his hardness pressed against me, rubbing against me. And oh God, he wants me to…

“I want you to ride me, Mary,” he says, looking up at me with those blazing blue eyes. But he doesn’t reach down to align himself, and I realize he’s leaving it all to me tonight. He’s giving me the power. He reaches up to touch my breasts, reverent, and kisses the tip of one of them, flicking his tongue over the nipple. For once I don’t let myself worry about whether I’m doing it right or whether we’ll both find pleasure. I just reach down and adjust him, engulfed by a hot blaze of anticipation and then raw pleasure as I slowly sink down, taking in a little of him at a time until he’s fully seated. Until we’re fitted together with absolutely nothing between us. For a moment I stay like that, enjoying the sensation of him inside me and the wonder of being infatuated with this man. Then he pulls me down for a kiss, and I start moving against him again as our mouths meld together.

The pleasure of it. Oh, the pleasure of it. We continue like that for a while, and then I rise up again, needing a different angle, and he stares at me with a glint in his eye—pride and pleasure and something more—and caresses my breasts and belly and then the apex of my legs as I keep riding him, the strokes reaching something deep inside of me that sends pleasure unfurling through me. It’s that look in his eyes that sends me tumbling over a peak, free-flying but not fearing what I might collide with down below. No, I’m just enjoying the moment. Because he’s right there with me, and we’re doing this together.

Maybe it’s silly,but I tell Jace we should get dressed before we talk about Dennis. He doesn’t object, just smiles at me in this indulgent way that sends little butterflies of pleasure through me and pulls on his shorts. Since the sweatshirt clearly didn’t put him off, I put on a different one. (There’s a wine stain on the other, after all, and there’s only so much mess a girl can take without feeling sloppy.)

“Let’s sit by the tree,” I say, which is maybe a ridiculous suggestion, but he doesn’t say so. He just sweeps me up off my feet as if I’m a princess in a fairy tale and carries me to the couch. Then he lowers me, and he doesn’t even laugh when I insist on stripping the cushion cover and hastening it to the wash—no, he goes and gets the stained sweatshirt.

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