Chapter 14 Rowan
ROWAN
We stop by a florist on the way to Damon’s place.
Miraculously, they have a few sprigs of mistletoe left.
The moment we step through the door of Damon’s apartment, he puts the box of decorations and the shopping bags on the floor and holds the mistletoe above our heads.
I’m not going to say no to kissing him, so I gladly melt into his arms, allowing him to give me a long, deep, commanding kiss that leaves me breathless.
Only then do I get a chance to sweep my gaze around the room.
Like my apartment, it has an open-plan living area, but it’s easily three times the size of mine.
It’s bright, neat, and organised. Nothing is out of place, and everything fits together.
It’s too dark to see much of anything but city lights outside the window, but I look forward to seeing it tomorrow.
On Christmas Day. I’m spending Christmas with Damon.
My heart pounds and my head spins at the amazing thought.
Together, we put the shopping away and then hang the decorations.
He was right to pick my blue-and-silver collection.
They look amazing in the mostly cream coloured room.
A room this size needs a tree, preferably a real one, as he has wood flooring, but it’s far too late to find a decent one now.
Perhaps next year. I clap my hands to my mouth. Eyes wide.
“Something wrong, boy?” Damon pinches his lips together in concern.
“No. My thoughts were just running away with me.” I wave his worry away. “Where should we put the lights?”
“Above the sofa? There’s a plug socket just to the left of it.”
“Sounds perfect.”
He catches me by the waist before I can walk away from him. “Tell me what you were thinking.”
“You don’t want to hear about my silly fantasies.”
“Yes, I do.” His tone is commanding. This is an order, not a request. “I’m sure there’s nothing silly about them.”
I take a breath. “Well, maybe not silly, but certainly premature.”
“In what way?”
“I was thinking about how good a real Christmas tree would look in here and if I would be able to persuade you to get one next year.” I wince and hold my breath.
“I’d like that.”
I gasp and lift my brows. “You would?”
“Yes.”
“But we’ve only just started screwing each other—”
His commanding lips muffle my words. He strokes my cheek. “I can imagine doing this with you again next year.”
“You can?” I’m not sure if I should find that scary or flattering. I opt for the latter, mainly because I can envisage it, too. I want it. Probably because I’ve spent so long lusting after him.
“Yes. Too soon?”
“It would be if I didn’t feel the same way.”
And we’re lost in kissing again, hanging the lights forgotten, even though I’m still holding them. Maybe I am hoping for too much, too soon, but does it matter when we seem to be on the same page?
Somehow, we end up on his sofa, still kissing. I let the lights slip from my hands, so I can run my palms over his thighs and chest, and back. His hands rove over my body, too, making my skin tingle and my breath hitch in my throat. Damon knows how to make me feel good, even through clothes.
“We should finish decorating,” he says after a while.
“Do you like what we’ve done so far, Daddy?”
He gazes around the room. While the box of decorations would have gone a long way in my apartment, they don’t in his. We concentrated our efforts around the lounge area, turning it into a sparkling retreat.
“Yes. They brighten the place up a bit.”
“It was bright already.”
“All right, they make it more cheerful.”
I grin. “They do. I guess Christmas music is a step too far?”
He hooks his top lip.
I raise my hands. “You can’t blame a boy for trying.”
He points to a music system on the opposite wall. “Nothing with lyrics, or too jingly.”
I cross my fingers over my heart. “I promise.”
I jump up and go and investigate. He has an iPad hooked up to a fancy-looking stereo. I use the music app to create a playlist of Christmas music. No songs. Nothing too jingly, as requested.
By the time I’m done, Damon has hung the lights behind the sofa. He’s created a rough tree shape on the wall, with small rows at the top that get bigger as the lights snake downwards to a vertical central line, forming the bottom of a trunk.
“That looks beautiful, Daddy.”
Smiling, he bends down and flicks the lights on. They sparkle slowly. He dims the room lighting, sits on the sofa, and beckons me to him. As I approach, he takes my hand and pulls me onto his lap, cradling my lower back with his strong arm.
“Happy, boy?” he asks.
“Very, Daddy. Thank you for humouring me.”
“You’re welcome. I told you, I want to make you happy.”
I rest my head on his shoulder. “You are.”
“Do you have any Christmas Eve traditions?”
“Mum would buy us matching Christmas pyjamas. We’d put them on and snuggle up to watch a film with fresh popcorn, and hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows.”
“A Christmas film?”
“Yes. The films changed as I got older, and we’d often give new films a try. Even if the film was terrible, it was still fun.”
“Is this the first Christmas you’ve spent without your parents?”
I sigh. “Yes. Does that make me pathetic?”
“Not at all. Many people would argue that Christmas should be spent with family.”
“But not you?”
He shrugs. “I prefer to hide away from it all. But this year is going to be different. We’re going to do all the things you enjoy.”
“I hope you enjoy them, too, Daddy.”
“I am so far, because we’re doing them together.”
I smile. “That’s kind of sappy.”
“Do you like sappy?”
“Sappy can be romantic, but, seriously, Daddy, you don’t need to do anything special for me.”
He strokes my hair tenderly. “I told you, I want to. Help me find the joy in Christmas, boy.”
I hope I can. For him, Christmas is wrapped up in unhappy memories of watching his parents overspend in an attempt to make him and Nigel happy. I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do to compensate for those memories, except create newer, happier ones.
“I’ll do my best, Daddy.”
“Where do we start?”
I hum. “We should probably eat dinner. We could cook together.”
“That would be fun.”
“I don’t suppose you have any popcorn?”
“No, sorry.”
“Hot chocolate?”
He shakes his head. “And no cream or marshmallows, either.”
I pout.
“But there is a shop around the corner that stays open until late, even on Christmas Eve. They’ll have most of your wish-list.”
I grin.
“As long as you don’t mind bagged popcorn, rather than popping it yourself.”
“Eh, I’ll cope with bagged stuff.”
“Let’s walk there now, pick up supplies, and then make dinner together. Afterwards, you can choose a film to watch.”
I shake my head.
“No?”
“We can choose a film to watch.”
He smiles. “All right. We’ll watch the film we’ve chosen, eat popcorn and drink hot chocolate.”
“And snuggle.”
He chuckles. “Yes, snuggling is the most important part.” He kisses my forehead. “And then sleep.”
“Sleep? Aren’t we going to play with my Christmas present?”
“It’s not Christmas yet, boy.”
I open and close my mouth. “Well, we don’t need a toy to have sexy fun before we go to sleep.”
“That’s true, we don’t.”
“Do you have restraints and a proper blindfold?”
“Yes.”
I kiss his jaw. “Then we’ll be able to have lots of fun. You can spank me again during sex. That was hot.”
Damon’s eyes gleam with excitement. “I’m looking forward to it already.”
“Me too. It’s going to be the most perfect Christmas Eve ever.”
After a fun debate, we settle on a new Christmas rom-com, featuring a gay couple.
It’s the usual city guy falls for the country guy and learns the meaning of the Christmas story, full of heartfelt moments, and nowhere near enough kissing.
In fact, like so many of these films, it ends with their first kiss.
“No fair, it ended before it got to the good stuff,” I say.
“That would be an entirely different type of film.”
“Good point. We could find Christmas porn next.”
“Or we could go to bed.”
I snuggle closer to Damon. “Or that.”
It’s been nice spending the evening cuddled up to him.
He’s had his arm around me the whole time, although he’s switched between stroking my hair and my shoulder.
We’ve eaten popcorn and drank hot chocolate.
I ended up with cream on my lips, which he licked off, which might have encouraged me to do it again when we got refills.
“Did you enjoy the film?” I ask.
“It was okay.”
“Just okay?”
“I don’t normally watch that kind of film.”
“Romances?”
He nods.
“I love them. It’s even better now I can imagine myself as a character in one of the films.”
He chuckles. “And which would you have been? The city guy or the country guy?”
“Oh, I’m totally the country guy. The one who teaches the grumpy city guy about the spirit of Christmas.”
“A country guy who likes expensive cars?”
“They’d probably be horses in the film and I’d own them.”
“Naturally.”
“Your car would have broken down. I’d have found you and taken you to my farm on the back of my horse, where we’d promptly get snowed in and fall in love.”
“And the credits would roll on our first kiss.”
I wag my finger. “No way. If I’m in this film, we’re getting to the good stuff.”
“It’s not PG-rated then?”
“No. This romance will definitely be an 18.”
He nuzzles my neck. “Sounds good to me.” He glances out the window. “It’s snowing again.”
“It is?” I sound like an excited kid. “I don’t remember ever having a white Christmas before.”
“Why is that special?”
I stare at him like he’s from Mars. “Why wouldn’t it be special?
We rarely get decent snow in London, but getting it at Christmas is magical.
” I probably have stars in my eyes right now.
“It turns a good Christmas into a picture-postcard-perfect Christmas. When I was a kid, I’d write to Santa every year.
I’d write ‘a white Christmas’ at the top of my wish-list.”
“Every year?”
“Yes. I never got one. Not a real one, anyway.”
“I’m confused.”
“Dad tried to make it happen one year. He bought fake snow off the internet.”
Damon gapes. “You can buy fake snow?”
“Yes! He bought bags of the stuff and hid it in the shed. He got up super early on Christmas morning and covered the garden in the stuff. Or he tried to, anyway, but it didn’t go as far as he imagined, and it wasn’t good for snowball fights or building snowmen. But I loved it, anyway.”
“Your parents sound amazing.”
“They are.” I hold his hand. “Your parents sound amazing, too. They did everything they could to give you and Nigel good Christmases.”
He sighs. “They did more than they should have. No one should have to get into debt to give a child a happy Christmas.”
“Maybe not, but how do you explain to a kid that Santa bought their friends the latest toy or the coolest trainers, but not them?”
“You believe in Santa?”
“Believed. Past tense. Didn’t you?”
“Yes. But we only ever got one present from Santa, and it was always a token gift. My parents told us that Santa delivered one small gift to every child in the world, so everyone had something to open, but the rest of the presents—the expensive stuff—came from family and friends.”
“Wow. That’s a good explanation. I’ll have to remember that.”
“You want kids?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe. I haven’t thought about it. I’d need to settle down first, and then we’d decide together if that was something we did or didn’t want.”
“You want to settle down?”
I smile and nod. “Yes.”
“When?”
“Whenever I find the right person.” I bite my lower lip and dip my chin. “The right Daddy, preferably. I can’t imagine being with someone I couldn’t be kinky with.”
“Nor can I,” he whispers.
Could Damon be the right person? It’s something we’ll need time to figure out.
He tips my chin up and kisses me. “I think we might have reached the next part of the evening we planned, boy.”
“Bed?”
“To play.”
I hum. “Sounds perfect, Daddy. Do you mind if I use your shower first?”
“Not at all. I’ll tidy up in here and meet you in the bedroom when you’re ready.”
I return his kiss. “Thank you, Daddy.”
“It’s me who should be thanking you.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s been a lovely Christmas Eve. I’ve enjoyed joining you in your traditions.”
“They could be your traditions, too, Daddy.” I spiral my finger over his thigh. “Who knows? Maybe they’ll become our traditions.”
“Maybe.” He kisses me again.
“Anyway, Christmas Eve isn’t over yet.”
“Not quite.”
“Let’s make a new tradition.”
He arches his brow. “Christmas Eve sex?”
I grin. “Kinky Christmas Eve sex.”