Page 20 of Secret Santa

“Elvis’s Aunt Bee’s famous Coconut Cake.”

“I feel so honored you trust me to do the sifting for such an important recipe. It is the best in three counties I hear.”

I loved her laugh. It tinkled like a Disney princess. Though the stick figure cartoons had nothing on the curvy goddess who stood across from me carefully measuring her sugar, salt, and baking powder while humming softly to the music floating in from the other room. Especially not in those leggings. The way the globes of her ass lifted, like they begged for my hands to run over them and appreciate each peachy half for hours.

“No offense, but it’s just flour. It’s probably the safest part for you to handle. A cake never went bad from over sifting.”

“How many cake orders do you have for Thanksgiving?” I asked, staring at all of the plastic containers she’d lined up for prep work.

“Umm in coconut cakes I think I have sixty. That doesn’t include the pies, which I believe I have seventy-five.”

“Priscilla, that is too much for one person to shoulder while also still running the diner every day. You’re going to drop dead from exhaustion.”

She winced. It was after the comment tumbled out of my mouth, I remembered that’s essentially exactly what happened to her mom. Could I possibly be any more obtuse? It was milliseconds between the time I made that stupid blunder and she gathered herself up to her full height, spine ramrod straight as if preparing for the verbal dress down of the century.

“I just meant that a single person can’t handle all of this. You need help. Please let me help you. My brothers are here, and they just love sticking their nose in other people’s business, especially if it means they can feel good about helping.”

It was a joke of course. I loved they dropped everything to come to my aid. But, while they were here, I know they’d fall over themselves to make themselves useful. Well, Harris would anyway.

“It’s fine.” She waved away my offer with a smile that didn’t feel genuine. “We’re nearly done prepping the dry ingredients. This is part of my four-point plan to make sure that I stay organized and can be a robot of efficiency this year.”

It didn’t feel fine. Another few weeks of the insanity I witnessed the day before and she’d run out of gas well before the holiday. I planned to say something else, but I could feel her tense the moment my mouth opened. Instead, I held out my hand to her. She placed it in mine automatically, a question painted across her cheeks.

“Dance with me,” I whispered. “I’ve been listening to you hum these songs, and each time one of these slow songs comes on, I tell myself…this will be the time I ask her to dance.”

“There’s still so much to do.” She looked back at the table, but stepped into my arms, swaying with me to the sounds of Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” “After you left, Harris was unloading their luggage from my car and discovered a present on my door. It was book about Christmas movies from my Secret Santa. As we were talking about everything going on, he recites from the book this insignificant fact aboutIt’s a Wonderful Life. That’s why I came here. Because it felt like a sign. Like the universe was telling me I needed to come and be with you. To help you, because sometimes having someone realize you need help without needing to ask, is the best feeling there is.”

I felt Priscilla melt against my chest. Feeling her soften, to have the fight drain out of her because of something I said felt like I’d won a gold medal. Suddenly a vision of us doing this very thing Christmas after Christmas teased me like a long-forgotten song. Wouldn’t it be great? To have longevity like Coach Kimball, and a little house somewhere near the square, to walk past the diner every night on my way home from coaching to walk my wife back home. It was a waking dream I didn’t want to end. The years unspooled in front of me as we moved slowly back and forth to the song. Long before I was ready for it to end, the jukebox hummed, and a new song played. One too upbeat for slow dancing.

Priscilla looked up at me, those summer storm eyes of hers deepening to midnight. Despite Elvis pounding his guitar from the Wurlitzer, the moment still felt soft and still. Nothing had broken the magic just yet. This time, she pressed into me, cupped my face, and explored my lips at a languid pace. I wanted to grab hold of her hips. To press my hard against her soft. To take control of the pace that tortured me with its lazy perfection. Her teasing kiss dripped gasoline on a smoldering pyre. With each slow pass and lazy exploration of her mouth against mine, I could practically hear the hiss and sizzle as each fat droplet of desire as they smoked and smoldered.

Her nails tickling down the front of my shirt may as well have been against naked skin for the reaction it elicited. My hand traveled up to her neck, my thumb resting on her pulse point, and the moment it did her body fused against mine. She unabashedly rubbed against the ridge that formed in my sweatpants. I doubled down, pressing against the small of her back, rocking against where I knew she ached for me.

“Presley,” she came up for air, gasping my name. “Yes, there.”

I flipped us, so her back was flush against the wall. She wiggled against me, her legs opening wider with each subtle shift of my hips. I ravenously fed on every emotion that skittered across her face as she unraveled for me.

“I want to take you on a real date, Priscilla. Dinner, conversation, the whole nine yards.”

I don’t think she understood a word I said. Between each panted phrase she tried to capture my mouth with her own. Grunting in frustration each time I denied her access.

“Tell me you will.”

“I will. I will,” she repeated, her head rocking back and forth against the tiled wall. Her hips pressed harder against my groin, jerking with each electrified pass against the head of my cock.

Feeling her heat separated only by the thinnest of barriers in those cotton stretch pants was pure torture. I needed to feel for myself how wet she was for me.

“Presley.” The throaty way she sang my name, as if it carried a melody only the two of us could hear.

Priscilla gasped and stilled the moment my hand snaked beneath her elastic waistband and came in contact with the warm skin of her belly.

“I want to feel how wet you are for me, princess. Are you wet for me?” I teased her pulse point with my nose before tracing her fluttering pulse with my lips. “Do you want me to see how badly you need me to take you over the edge?”

I felt her nodding, her hips shimmying to move my fingers downward. One gentle swipe against that swollen bud had her pressing against me so hard, I nearly lost my balance and dropped her. With an open palm, I pressed two fingers into where she wept for me, her fingernails abrading my neck and back every time she flexed her hands to hold on tighter.

“I can already feel you fluttering,” I told her, accepting her invitation to kiss her hard and deep, “I want to watch when you fall over. Do you want that? To come now? Or should I draw it out a bit more, really make you beg for it.”

The ding on her oven decided for us. I knew just based on the obsessive and militaristic precision she had everything prepped and ready to go that she would not take kindly to burnt to pie crust.

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