Chapter 11
ELEVEN
4 Days til Christmas
I woke to full darkness, save for the cheerful little tree with warm white lights. The bed was empty, and my body was so satisfied I was tempted to slip right back into sleep.
The fact that she wasn’t with me shook off the last of the exhaustion.
Fuck, it had been a damn long time since I’d had a full-on sex-a-thon. Thankfully, my head didn’t ache. Evidently, a few mind-bending orgasms would do that to a guy.
I padded down the hall, wishing I’d brought my damn suitcase up before, considering the chill settling on the cabin. When I got to the bottom of the staircase, the lights were all off save for the tree. She wasn’t crashed out on a couch.
A mixer and the scent of fresh-baked cookies made my stomach roar. I stopped off at my suitcase and pulled out a pair of sweats and one of my sweatshirts before following the sounds to the kitchen.
She was in another pair of her fuzzy socks over pink pants with peppermint candies all over them, which made me smile as I leaned against the river rock wall. She was wearing a tank that showed off a lot of skin and I wished I was facing the other direction.
I thought she was swaying to some internal song until I realized she was wearing earbuds.
Rows and rows of chocolate chip cookies were stacked on racks and naked gingerbread men were lined up like soldiers as she whipped frosting in her bowl. She dropped food coloring in the precisely weighed bowls and smartly whipped each one until the colors came alive.
Pink, red, blue, and green filled each bowl and finally, she left one alone. She gave a little swish of her hips, and my dick twitched with the knowledge that there was nothing under all that cotton candy pink.
Just her soft skin with my marks.
She shimmied over to the sink and dropped the big bowl inside and twirled around, her eyes closed as her lips moved to whatever song was playing in her ears. Her free-flowing breasts swayed and the tips tightened against the cotton.
She opened those big blue eyes and screamed.
She held her little scraper tool in one hand. Flying frosting dotted her shirt, chin, and neck.
I laughed as she pulled out one of the buds. “You scared the shit out of me.”
I pulled her to me and licked the frosting off her neck and chin. “You left me.”
She stilled in my arms, then she softened as I inched my way up her neck to the little spot behind her ear that made her sigh.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
I took the spatula from her and set it on the counter. “You aren’t freaking out on me, are you?”
“What makes you say that?”
“2 AM cookies.”
“You don’t know that I have rampant insomnia and cook to get through it.”
I slipped my arm around her back. “Do you have rampant insomnia?”
Her lower lip jutted out as she stared at my chest. “No.”
“Sudden onset?”
“Maybe.” She frowned.
I tipped up her chin. Her deep blue eyes were shuttered. Not the open woman who’d showered with me, who’d accepted the pleasure that had exploded between us. “What’s up, Angel?”
She shrugged me off and turned back to her batches of frosting. “Nothing. I was just too keyed up to sleep.”
I picked up one of the piping bags and she gave me a startled look. I shrugged. “I worked in a bakery for a summer.”
“You did?”
“I like all kinds of drawing. You’d be surprised how piping can give you endless patience.” I slid the green bowl in front of me and began filling the game. The set was a cheap one from a craft store, but it would do the job. I found the smallest nozzle and twisted it on. “Mind if I play with a few of the Gingerbread men?”
She shook her head.
“Can change to the speakers if you want.”
She craned her neck to look over my shoulder. “You come in here and plan to show me up, pal?”
I turned and sneaked a kiss. “You want me to leave you alone?”
“No.” She frowned and took out the other earbud. She went to her phone and fiddled with settings. Suddenly, Kelly Clarkson’s throaty voice filled the kitchen.
We worked in companionable silence for a while. The songs rotated through old standards and pop holiday songs. It had been a damn long time since I’d had a bag in my hand, but the rhythm of it took me back to easier times.
She kept stopping to watch me and she even added colors to my collection. I was so focused on the Spiderman version of a cookie that I didn’t notice she’d put another two cookie sheets of gingerbread and sugar cookies in to cook, then to cool.
I straightened and winced. I’d been crouched over the counter for so long my back was screaming at me.
“I didn’t want to interrupt,” she said quietly. “I’ve never seen anything like that except on social media videos.”
I looked at my hands dotted in royal icing of every color in the rainbow. “This amazing guy named Walter taught me how to decorate—how to make the icing and all that. But then he taught me how to do the flood cookies and I’d been a goner.”
“I don’t know how to make flood icing.”
“Oh, you don’t want me making those cookies. I’ll never come back up for air.” I put the bag down and reached for her, dragging here into my arms. “I have limited time with a certain beautiful woman.”
Her eyes lost a bit of that sparkle.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m having a good time.”
She tried to wiggle out of my hold, but I kept my grip firm. If she really wanted to get away, I’d let her of course. But I didn’t want her to hold anything back from me. “Ocean.”
She lifted her chin, giving me a taste of that defiant, bold woman who’d taken me on a ride since our game of Uno. “What’s there to say? We’re having fun, right?”
“I thought we were.” I reached up and brushed my thumb along her lower lip. Her eyes were that depthless blue I’d searched for in each release she’d offered me earlier. “But if you’re not, we can stop.”
She touched my arm. “I don’t want that.”
“Good. We’ll just call it a super long first date.”
Her lips twitched. “I don’t usually sleep with someone on the first date.”
I’d had a feeling the bravado during the game was the real Ocean. I wasn’t sure why she wanted to shield me from that side of her again. Or maybe it was because the connection between us had been so complete in so little time. There was sex, and then there was whatever we’d been doing for the last ten hours.
“Maybe you do,” she said quietly.
“I don’t.”
“Mr. Chicago.”
“Mr. Syracuse,” I corrected. “I’m from right around here. Middle class all the way. If I was a big shot, you think I’d be driving a Versa in a snowstorm?”
She laughed. “Okay, you have a point. But Eden Advertising is anything but small change.”
“It is when you’re mid-level.” And unhappy in that mid-level. It felt as if I was pushing paper and getting more boxed in with every single new client. Don’t go too big. Don’t get too creative. Keep in lockstep with all the other brands out there.
She went onto her toes and kissed me. “Where did you go?”
I shook off the thoughts of work. I was shaking off the stress and straps of my job. I’d prefer to keep to the fantasy of this cabin and the snow that kept everyone out right now. “Reality isn’t something I want to think about right now. You?” I tucked my fingertips under the frilly hem of her camisole and trailed circles along the dip in her lower back.
“Reality can wait.” She looped her arms around my neck. She smelled of nutmeg and cinnamon. Of sugar and butter and her indefinable ocean and lemon scent. Something I wouldn’t grow tired of anytime soon.
I lowered my mouth to hers, wrapping my arms around her back and lifting her onto the counter.
“Hudson, the cookies!”
I laughed. “I’ll make more. In fact...” I lifted the piping bag. “Tug down your shirt, Angel.”
She licked her lips and flipped the strap of her shirt off her shoulder, revealing her soft breast. I brought the piping bag to the swell of her breast and drew a smile line under her nipple then traced pink around her soft rose-colored areola.
“Oops, not a perfect circle.” I lowered my mouth to flick my tongue over her satiny skin. Her nipple tightened as I drew it deeper into my mouth, flicking the tip of my tongue along the heaviest of the icing.
Her hands gripped the edge of the counter. “Hudson, you don’t play fair.”
“Isn’t that how this all started? You didn’t play fair. Now it’s just quid pro quo.” I straightened and lifted the bag again. I took my time circling around the widest part of her nipple and then the center. Her flesh so warm the icing instantly started melting. I swiped my finger through the icing and lifted it to her mouth. “Taste?”
As her mouth opened, her tongue swiped over the pad of my finger and my cock instantly came on board with whatever game we played. She closed her lips around my finger and sucked.
I threw the bag aside and scooped her off the counter and carted her back into the living room. I laid her out under the tree where the velvet skirt stretched out over the rug. She arched up as I cleaned off the rest of the icing from her breast and I shoved down her pants to get to her already wet pussy.
She threaded her fingers through my hair and dragged me back up to her mouth. “So fucking sensitive still.”
Gently, I played along the swollen center of her. She hissed and then she sighed as I dipped one finger then another inside her heat. “But so wet. Can you take me again?”
“Yes,” she said with a hungry groan. “Inside me again.” She reached above her head to the magic basket. “One left.”
“We’re going to have to start putting bowls of them around the room.”
She laughed and tugged at the drawstrings of my sweats. “I wasn’t planning a marathon, sir.”
My cock jumped again as her cool fingers lightly danced over my shaft before her grip made me groan. “How much can we bribe some idiot kid to walk from town with another bag full of them?”
“Not sure there’s an app for that.” She dragged her thumb along the crown of my shaft and I tipped my head back, pushing myself harder into her hand.
“There should be,” I growled and rolled onto my back, dragging her on top of me. “Ride me, Angel. Let me watch you in the lights.”
She wiggled out of her pants and kicked out of the fuzzy socks, crawling between my thighs to straddle me. The tip of her tongue poking through her teeth as she rolled the latex down me ever so slowly before she covered me with her skin. With the heat I was rapidly becoming addicted to.
“Ocean.” I breathed into her neck as I rose to meet her, my arms banded around her. “Angel.”
She rode me in the dim lights of the tree, and I wondered if she was very right about being worried about us and our short time together. I already craved her.
I lifted my hips to meet her frenzied rocking, both of us stretching for that end goal where dark and light crashed into one another. Where our skin and breath and sweat let us finally topple over the edge.
I caught her close to me as she shuddered around me.
As our skin cooled and the eerie orange of swollen clouds stared down at us through the windows, I marshaled my strength to get off the floor. I was definitely getting too old for this. Especially when there was a very nice bed upstairs waiting for us.
I helped her up off the floor and laughed as she had to twist her shirt around three times to get it on her. I couldn’t say I minded the show.
Ocean snatched a huge sweater off the couch near the back door. “I want to go outside for a minute.”
My eyebrows climbed up my forehead, aiming into the rafters. “You do see the mountain of snow out there, don’t you?”
She shrugged. “Yeah. But it looks so beautiful.”
I came up behind her at the window and wrapped my arms around her. “How about we look out there for now and tomorrow we have a little snowman competition?”
She folded her arms over mine in front of her and twisted her head around enough to look me in the eye. “You sure you want to get into another competition with me?”
I laughed and tucked her head under my chin. “Couldn’t stop me.”