My Favorite Holidate

Bonus Epilogue

My Favorite Holidate Bonus: A Very Good Night

Wilder

Ah, there’s nothing quite like watching a football game on the fifty-yard line. The roar of the crowd. The smell of beer. The rumble of the stands.

It’s become a favorite spot of mine for enjoying the Renegades, since my team—ahem, my wife’s team—is having one of their best seasons ever.

That includes this game, here on Christmas Day. Late into the fourth quarter, the quarterback guns a beautiful spiral to our wide receiver.

I mean, her wide receiver.

Carter grabs it with soft hands, runs like the wind, and hauls it into the end zone. “Yes!” I thrust my arms in the air, then smack palms with Leo, who’s watching the game with me, along with Charlotte.

“They’re looking good, man,” Leo says.

“They sure are,” I say. My wife picked up a new tight end and a rookie defensive back at the start of the season, and those trades have paid dividends.

Speaking of my wife…I clap Leo on the shoulder and say, “I need to take off.”

He rolls his eyes. “Got a fight to go to?”

“Something like that,” I say dryly.

“Have fun fighting,” Charlotte teases.

I head up through the stands, passing Shay and his wife. “Go Renegades,” he says, a reindeer head bobbing at the front of his sweater.

“Go Renegades,” I say to him too, then head down the corridor in the stadium toward the VIP elevators, where I take one to the top level and head down the hall, nodding hello to people I know. I stop in front of the owner’s suite as a stream of my wife’s friends spill out—Everly and Max, Wesley and Josie, Rachel, Maeve, and other friends.

“We’re leaving, we’re leaving. Don’t worry,” Max says.

“I’m not worried,” I say with a grin.

Maeve winks. “Have fun.”

“I will.”

I push open the door, and my chest is a furnace set to high. The sight of my wife in her little Santa dress with tall black boots is far too much. She’s filthy perfection.

“Look at you. Dressing like a very naughty elf,” I say as I lock the door behind me.

“And you look like a hot billionaire,” she says, from a couch in the suite, where she kicks one ankle back and forth, drawing my gaze to her long, beautiful legs. I stride through the plush suite, past sleek bars and cushy chairs, and go straight to my wife.

“Your team’s about to win on Christmas,” I remark.

“Don’t jinx them,” she warns me.

“You already snagged home-field advantage for the playoffs.”

“And I plan to take them all the way to the big game,” she says.

She’s a more active owner than I expected, but still, she leaves most of the day-to-day ops to her GM so she has plenty of time to run her jewelry stores—her true passion. She’s opened ten in the last year, with many more to come.

But first, I have a Christmas gift for her. As I shed my coat, I reach into the inside pocket and take it out.

Her eyes widen, and she quickly unwraps the silver and gold paper. Then she hums happily. “Candy cane handcuffs.”

They’re lined with red-and-white-striped fake fur.

“Sometimes you need to be locked up so you remember who owns your body,” I tell her, running a hand down the soft flesh of her thigh.

She shudders, then dangles them in front of me. “Lock me up, Mr. Blaine.”

I reach for her hands, lead her to the wall, then tell her to put her hands above her head. She complies, and I cinch the cuffs closed. Then, she’s up against the wall in the owner’s suite, furry handcuffs locked tight as I hike up her skirt, and discover…a gift for me.

She’s wearing nothing underneath. “You are the naughtiest owner in football,” I rasp out.

“And you’re the naughtiest former owner. So fuck your wife as her team wins this game.”

And I do. It’s a merry Christmas to all, and to all a very, very good night.