Saxon
S hould’ve known I was setting myself up for trouble when I took Alison out for the day. Oh, I cleared it with Charles and with the rest of the security team, obviously, but I should’ve run it past my own common sense a few more times first.
Her and me.
Alone.
Was so sure I could handle it like a professional, and now look at me. I’m worn ragged already, trailing after Alison between rows and rows of Christmas trees in pots, taking an Olympic level of effort to keep my eyes off her tight, swaying ass.
Her red t-shirt is on back to front. Should I point that out? What if she whips it clean off right out here in the open air and gives me a heart attack?
“What about this one?” Ali stops at a squat, chubby-looking tree, stroking her fingertips over the branches. “Are your ceilings high? How much space are we working with?”
Every time I get close to her, I smell the shampoo scent clinging to her damp hair. It’s driving me crazy.
“Plenty of space,” I say, pointing my nose into the warm breeze instead. It smells like baked dirt, juniper, and car exhaust—and like those Christmas tree-scented air fresheners that people dangle from their wing mirrors, though I guess this is the real deal. “Just don’t pick a massive tree meant for a town square and we’re good.”
Ali giggles, flashing a smile back over her shoulder, and I about crash to my knees in worship.
Not good. It’s early in the morning for my control to be so threadbare.
Guess it’s no surprise. I spent all night by her side, after all, holding her hand through that party, and that would wear down any man’s defenses.
Charles lectured me about it—about keeping Ali from her hostess duties.
Works for me. I’ll take the blame each time, and she can spend the parties unbothered. I’d do a lot more to assure this girl’s happiness.
The sun rises slowly into a pale blue sky, with scattered puffs of cloud pushed by the breeze. And Ali takes an age to pick her tree, strolling through a bristly green maze, but I don’t mind the wait, trailing along behind her with my hands in my pockets. Gives me a chance to keep an eye out, scanning our environment for threats. I’m armed, like always, but I don’t have backup out here, so I need to stay sharp.
Sure, this little caper means I’m working on my day off, but what else would I be doing otherwise? What else would be better? I’d probably just hit the gym, same as always, and try to sweat out the last few years’ worth of sexual frustration.
“Can we pick up decorations on the way to your place?” Ali calls back to me. She’s got her hands on her hips, eyeing up a tall spruce.
I scratch my chin. “Yeah.”
Just as well that she asked, because it’s not like I’ve got anything at home Ali can use. Truth be told, I’ve never bothered much with decorating for the holidays—not even string lights. What’s the point when I live alone, and spend most of my time at the Wainwright place anyway?
But I can get in the spirit.
I can have Ali in my space for a few hours without losing my mind.
This is fine.
* * *
Fuck, it’s hard being alone together. All our usual rules keep fading away, receding in my mind’s eye until I almost forget that Alison is a Wainwright, that she’s my boss’s daughter, and that this is a professional relationship. Supposed to be, anyway.
It just all feels so right. Being with her; the two of us alone. Undisturbed and uninterrupted for hours together, first picking out a tree at the farm, then stopping off for decorations, then finally swinging by a roadside diner to chow down an early lunch before we head to my place.
Everything is easy with Alison. I’m never much of a talker with anyone else, never have much to add, but with her, I’ve got things to say. And she laughs easily, smiles easily, is so quick to please that it gets me thinking ridiculous thoughts.
Thinking that this is how it would be… if Ali was mine.
Mine. As soon as that thought drifts across my brain one single time, it clangs to a halt and refuses to leave.
Mine.
Mine.
Ali should be mine. My baby girl.
Lord knows I’d take better care of her than Charles Wainwright ever has. I’d see to all of her needs, too; all the needs that he’s oblivious to. Like right now, as she fidgets in the passenger seat of the car as we drive the final mile to my place—Ali’s clearly worked up. Flushed and breathing hard, squeezing her thighs together in those skimpy black leggings, swallowing back whimpers as we rock over bumps in the road.
Makes it hard for me to think straight. And I don’t kid myself for a moment that her body’s cravings have anything to do with me , not when she’s been kept under lock and key her whole life.
The poor thing’s pent up. Needy.
But I could help her with that. Could scratch her itch. Make her moan.
“Thank you so much for this, .” Ali’s words are breathless as her little hand lands on my thigh and squeezes, and I about go cross-eyed as I put the SUV in park. We’re in the underground garage for my own building, an echo of the one we left this morning—but this one’s shared with all my neighbors, smaller and less well lit, with a jumble of different vehicles. “I owe you big time.”
Don’t think it.
Don’t think how she could pay you in kind. Don’t be a goddamn creep.
“No problem,” I rasp. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes and a trail of pine needles later, Ali stands on my living room rug, her fists propped on her hips. Brown paper bags and canvas totes filled with decorations spill around her feet, and she squints at the tree in its ceramic pot where it looms in the corner.
“Two inches to the left,” she says.
I rustle the tree over, sweating buckets under my shirt. It’s sticky work lumping holiday supplies around, especially up to the tenth floor.
“Your other left.”
I roll my eyes behind the branches and comply. And with the sun beating through the French doors that lead to my balcony, this room is quickly turning into a sauna. Not quite the winter wonderland Ali had in mind, but I can’t control the weather for her. If I could, I would.
She stops to put on a festive playlist anyway, the music drifting softly from the speakers on my TV. Songs about building snowmen and jingling all the way. And it’s funny—Ali has barely spent ten minutes in this apartment, but already she seems so at home. Weaving around the furniture like it’s second nature; using my gadgets as easily as if they were hers.
Like she’s meant to be here. With me.
Fuck, I’m delusional.
“It’s perfect,” Ali breathes, beaming up at the Christmas tree we bought at the farm. Well—rented. Apparently after the season is over, we return it in its pot, and it goes back into the soil until next year. Eventually, once it’s done its time, the tree will retire to a patch of forest—a fact that made Ali sniffle with joy. God, she’s soft.
Though she eyes the tree with something like envy now as she crouches down, rummaging through the shopping bags for string lights. “You know, even this plant is allowed to work outside the home. This tree has more freedom than I do.”
“It doesn’t have legs,” I point out, but Ali huffs and blows a stray lock of hair from her eyes. It slipped out of her messy bun an hour ago, and it’s been haunting me ever since. Want to wind those glossy black strands around my knuckles; want to tug on them until her lips part.
“You’re missing the point.”
“So I am.” My knees crack as I squat beside Ali, sifting through the bags too. The box of string lights is buried at the bottom of a canvas tote, and I hand it over with a wink. It’s so freeing being here together like this, not fretting about security every single second.
We’re safe here. Private.
Alone.
“Charles—I mean, your dad mentioned something the other day about a work contract for you. Some big designer getting in touch? That could be something, right?”
The sun flares against the glass as I push to my feet again, and I cross to the balcony doors to push one open. Better to coax in a breeze and chase away this stifling heat.
Ali sucks on her teeth, standing too as she unravels the knotted string lights. “Modeling,” she mutters, with as much distaste as if she’d been offered a job scooping up radioactive waste. And I know Ali doesn’t have a problem with models, doesn’t think badly of the profession really, but after everything that happened with her mother…
Guess it makes sense. Who’d want to follow in the footsteps of the person who rejected you? Who threw you away and resented you for ‘ruining’ her stick-thin body?
Even if Ali is one of the most beautiful young women alive, even if she does make strangers literally stop in their tracks, mouths hanging open as she passes… that doesn’t mean she needs to take the obvious road.
Christ, I thought the fella working the Christmas tree farm was going to swallow his own tongue when he saw her, especially when she started bouncing on her toes with excitement.
Because the thing is… Ali has no idea what kind of effect she has on people. Not really. She hasn’t been allowed out in public enough to properly notice, and she’s not vain enough for it to occur to her independently. She thinks she’s pretty enough. Averagely nice to look at.
Meanwhile hordes of men she’s never met counted down the days to Ali’s eighteenth birthday online. Fuck, I hope she never finds out about that. Those assholes had no business coveting her when she was so young.
“Can I plug these in somewhere?”
I point her at an outlet behind the tree, head spinning, sick with guilt. Because I can comfort myself with the fact that I didn’t notice Ali like that until a year ago, I can tell myself all the excuses I like, but the fact is, this girl is still way too young for me. I’m still a creep for even noticing her at all.
Seventeen years. There are seventeen years between the two of us. I’m almost old enough to be her—
“?”
Scrubbing one palm down my face, I drag my brain back into gear. Force myself to stop spiraling and focus. “Yeah?”
Ali’s wrapped the string light around the bottom two-thirds of the tree, but she’s struggling to reach the higher branches. As she strains, her arms stretching overhead, her red t-shirt rides up and shows a taut strip of bare navel.
I can see her belly button. Can see the faint jut of her hip bone.
Kill me now.
“Will you help me with this?”
Shit . I tear my gaze away, and I guess my body’s paying better attention than my brain, because I’m already striding across the rug, already taking the string lights from her hands, already reaching up to wind them around the topmost branches. And Ali’s trapped between the tree and my chest, so delicate, her body heat blending with mine, but neither of us mention how close we’re standing now. Neither of us mention the way my chest heaves, brushing up against her with every inhale. If I’m not careful, my ragged breaths will knock her forward.
“You being so big comes in handy sometimes,” Ali says, her voice shaky.
I grunt, scowling at my hands as they work. Don’t trust myself to reply.
* * *
“There’s one more thing,” Ali says hours later, as the sun bleeds into the horizon outside and she brushes imaginary dust from her hands. Her black bun is sagging to one side, her forehead dewy with sweat and her neck flushed, but she’s done a great job. Can’t deny it. My one-bed bachelor pad by the waterfront has been transformed into an explosion of Christmas cheer.
There’s the tree, obviously, with golden string lights wound through the layers and red velvet bows nestled among the green needles. Silver frosted baubles drip from the branches, and a glittery star marks the very top.
But Ali also swagged tinsel beneath my breakfast bar, and hung a wreath on the front door, and burned scented candles to make my place smell like allspice. She even hung a stocking from the mantelpiece and gave my floor lamp a tinsel crown.
Now she’s clutching a canvas tote to her chest, shifting back and forth between her feet, looking guilty.
“What did you do?” I ask, faux stern the way she likes, and Ali laughs nervously. When she draws a sprig of mistletoe from the bag, dropping the tote to the rug, I forget to breathe.
“It’s traditional,” she says in a rush, practically hopping from nerves now. “You’ve got to have mistletoe at Christmas. It’s, like, the law.”
I clear my throat with effort. “Right.”
Ali tiptoes toward me like I’m a wild animal. Like I might bolt, or maybe charge at her. Guess she’s not wrong, because both those things are on the table right now.
She waves the mistletoe weakly. “So where should we hang it? Above the front door?”
I cough out a laugh and shake my head, although none of this is funny. Not really. Or if it is, the joke is on me. “Not at the front door. I’m not planting a smacker on every delivery person who comes to my door in December.”
Ali presses her lips together against a smile. “Where, then?”
And I shrug and pluck the mistletoe from her hand. She’s right in front of me now; close enough to feel her heat again, to smell her shampoo, and maybe that’s why I do it. Why I lose my ever-loving mind.
Because I raise the green sprig over our heads, white berries clinging to the twigs, and say, “How about here?”
Ali’s breath hitches. Her eyes sparkle so bright. And her hands lift up, cautious at first, then spread over my chest, two sudden shocks of contact. Of heat.
God help me, as Ali pushes up onto her toes, I don’t stop her. I don’t stop her for a second. Inside the chaotic whirl of my mind, I’m urging her on, begging her to do it. Do it.
She pauses a breath from my mouth—and look at how I’m leaning down to help her, stooping to get in range. So desperate for a taste that I forget everything—my training, my professionalism, the age gap between us. Everything but how badly I want this girl.
I’m done for. Cooked.
Ali’s warm breath wafts against my lips. It tastes like peppermint, like the candy cane she’s been gnawing on as she decorates all afternoon. In the background, a man sings softly about driving home on Christmas Eve, and my bones are creaking from the effort of holding this still.
“Can I?” Ali whispers, like we aren’t ninety percent of the way there already.
I nod, and that alone makes our lips brush. Lightning zaps down my spine, and my blood rushes through my veins, pumped by my anguished heart.
It’s a barely-there kiss. Less than a second of contact before she stumbles back, blushing hard.
And it detonates a crater in my chest.