Page 47 of His Gift
“It’s too bad we can’t have a snowball fight instead,” Enzo called out, as giddy as a teenager, as he balled up a bunch of snow.
Maybe he intended to use it to start rolling the base of our snowman, but instead, he threw the ball at me. I couldn’t let that stand, so I grabbed a handful of snow, mashed it together, and threw it straight at him. Both of us bent down to gather up more snow for another attack.
“Maybe I should have mentioned that for liability reasons, no snowball fights,” the alpha announced.
Enzo and I weren’t the only ones that laughed. We weren’t the only ones who had decided it was more fun to hurl icy snow at each other either.
In the end, it was better that we got to work making the snowman. Neither of us had really dressed for the activity, which meant we were rolling big snowballs with our bare hands and slipping around in our work shoes. I didn’t really care that my trousers were getting soaked all the way up to my knees or that I’d probably just ruined a five hundred dollar pair of shoes. I was having fun with my omega, and that was all that mattered.
“Two minutes left,” the organizer called out.
“We’ve only got two balls,” I said as Enzo and I rolled our snowballs closer together.
“Trust me. Two is all you need,” he said, wiggling his eyeballs at me.
A rush of heat made the chill from the snow feel like a distant memory. I wanted to drop everything and pull Enzo into my arms for a kiss. I wouldn’t have said no to pushing him forward over one of the larger snowballs and burying myself in him until he was so hot he melted the snow.
“One minute!” the organizer called out.
There wasn’t time for anything else but to lift the smaller of our two snowballs onto the bigger one. While I balanced them as best I could, Enzo sprinted over to grab some decorations so we could give our snowman a face and stick arms.
“And…time!” the organizer shouted.
Well, it wasn’t the best snowman I’d ever seen, but neither was anyone else’s. We all had a good laugh as judges were pulled from the crowd who had gathered to watch a bunch of grown adults roll around in the snow. They made a big show of weighing the pros and cons of each of the seven snowmen. Someone had the idea of naming them after the seven dwarves.My and Enzo’s snowman ended up being dubbed Happy because of the way Enzo had exaggerated its coal smile.
“And the winner of the snowman building competition goes to…Sneezy!” the organizer declared at last.
“Aw, nuts,” Enzo said, all in good fun.
Sneezy really was the best. That snowman had been made by two older omegas, who had managed three snowball levels, and who had chosen a carrot for its nose with a deformity on the end that looked like a hanging drop of snot.
“Second place goes to Happy,” the organizer announced once the concert tickets had been handed over to the other pair. “You guys win a voucher for free cocoa at any of the concession booths. By the look of your hands, you’re going to need it.”
I glanced down at my own freezing, red hands, then at Enzo’s. Now that we’d stopped moving, he looked chilled to the bone.
“We definitely need cocoa,” I said as I accepted the vouchers from the organizer.
“I might need to take a bath in it,” Enzo said, exaggerating the way his teeth chattered with cold. At least, I hoped he was exaggerating.
I slipped my arm around my omega and walked him out of the snowy area and down a row of booths to one of the concession stands. It was manned by pair of young omegas dressed as elves. Ever since the elves had made headlines as the highlight of the first Barrington Christmas Market, the competition to score one of those seasonal jobs was fierce every year.
The elves who helped us rushed to get warm cocoa into our hands right away. I ordered a few soft, chewy cookies to go with the cocoa, and before long, Enzo and I were sitting snuggled up against each other on one of the benches at a crossroads between two rows of booths.
“So is this what we do for work every day at the Wythe Foundation?” Enzo asked pressing his body against mine as we sipped cocoa.
I laughed loudly and freely, feeling happier than I could remember, even though I was damp and cold. “Absolutely not,” I said. “This is something I reserve for special occasions.”
“So you don’t take all of your new employees out and get them drunk on cocoa after making snowmen with them,” Enzo said with a smirk. “I’ll make a note of that.”
“I save treatment like this for the best of the best,” I said. And since it was a day for me doing new things in the boldest way possible, I leaned closer to Enzo and whispered, “I also have a good idea for how we can warm up at home when we change our clothes to head back to the office.”
“Shawn!” Enzo gasped with pretend shock. The lust that glimmered in his eyes and the flush that painted his face conveyed anything but shock, though.
I couldn’t resist kissing him. Or, at least, I wouldn’t have been able to resist it if we hadn’t been interrupted just as I leaned in and put an arm around him.
“Zo-Zo, my boy!”
We both jumped, and Enzo spilled a little of his cocoa onto his hand. That wasn’t what made his eyes bug out incredulously, though.
