Chapter 5
Humbug
The bed creaks beneath us, old springs protesting while the storm outside cheers us on. Snow hammers the windows while wind howls like the whole damn world’s lost its mind.
Like I’ve lost mine already.
I think about confessing before things go too far, but instead I’m lost between Carol’s soft thighs. I breathe her in, peppermint, sweat, sin, and it hits harder than any shot of whiskey. It’s perfect, like nothing that belongs in a dump like this clubhouse.
Like a dying man, I lap her up.
Damn. I don’t usually go straight to eating pussy, but I’m trying to make an impression. Make her forget feeling so afraid.
Between her thighs, I mimic our earlier kiss, desperate, aching, need. Even her pussy tastes sugary as this girl’s pure sweetness. She grabs at my hair and presses my head with her legs as she squirms around me. The sounds escaping her almost do me in.
Damn. I’m on fire.
My hands, my mouth rise slower, high, memorizing instead of taking. The calm before the storm, as I lick her belly, her neck, her breasts, until I’m right back where I started.
Staring at her sweet mouth. Looming over her. She’s in my arms, small and soft against the rough of me. My cock gets wet and sticky sliding between her soaking thighs. Girl moans out, and it about kills me.
Her breath trembles against my throat, hot and uneven. I’m killing her too… We’re sleighing each other. I think of her jokes too fondly. Fighting a smile, my heart leaps in my chest.
I whisper, “Easy.” But I’m talking to myself. I know I shouldn’t be here. Not with her. Not like this. But fuck, I’m inching my cock inside her.
“You sure?” I ask too late.
“Why do you keep asking that?” she squeaks.
Inside her, only the tip, I freeze. “I’m a lot older and wiser. I’ve been around the block a time or two. Don’t want you to have regrets.”
“Because I’m young and dumb?”
“No. Because I don’t plan on stopping.”
“I’m sure.” Carol touches my face like she’s known me forever, and suddenly I don’t care who I was before tonight.
All the noise in my head, Trina’s voice, the club, the guilt, drops away until there’s only her.
She looks up at me through the dark, eyes wide and sure.
“Don’t stop,” she says, her sweet voice shaking as she fights against the size of me.
I don’t. Even as she cries out. I hold her hips steady, forging my cock forward. Deep. But still her body is choking my dick.
Damn. She’s nothing like the bunnies at the club. She's squeezing me and is also so responsive. Every heartbeat, every sigh, every small sound she makes burns itself into my cock. My head. My heart.
Her boyfriend’s a lucky guy. The thought sickens me. Imagining she belongs to another, I plunge my dick deeper, take her even harder, marking my claim.
The rest comes in flashes, her fingers clutching my shoulder, the feel of her pussy, hot and wet, crushing my cock, the storm outside swallowing the sounds we shouldn’t be making.
It’s messy, human, too real to be anything but wrong and perfect. Every sinful thrust feels like a confession we can’t take back. She screams my name when I make her come, and I come inside her because I’m a fucking idiot.
At some point, the power flickers back on, casting gold light over her skin, over the mess we’ve made of the sheets.
She’s still there, eyes half-closed, breathing hard, lips parted like she’s praying or cursing or both.
I press my forehead to hers.
“You okay, Peppermint?” When I say the name, I can taste her.
She nods, too tired to lie. “Yeah.”
“Good,” I murmur, brushing my thumb across her jaw. “’Cause I’m not.”
For a while, we just lie there, her in the crook of my arm. The storm finally gave up outside, the world going quiet except for our breathing.
“It’s after midnight. Merry Christmas, Humbug” she says. Her hand finds mine under the blanket, fingers small but sure, and it hits me like a truth I never wanted.
“It is, isn’t it?” I say and feel it deep.
She hums something soft, a Christmas carol, and I almost follow along. Then I almost laugh. Figures. Leave it to her to bring Christmas back to a man who swore he’d buried it. I kiss the corner of her mouth instead, let my eyes close, and for the first time in years, I sleep without the nightmares.
When the generator coughs back to life, diesel and ozone fill the room. She’s lying beside me, dark hair tangled across my chest, heartbeat still racing against my ribs. I stare at the ceiling fan that isn’t turning and wonder what the hell I’ve done.
Trina’s face flashes, cold eyes, colder words.
She might forgive a club bunny, but not this.
Hell, maybe I won’t forgive me either.
Yet, when Carol shifts in her sleep, soft sound catching in her throat, guilt twists into something else, need, protectiveness, something dangerously close to tenderness.
I ease out of bed, pull on my jeans, and light a cigarette I don’t even want. Smoke curls toward the ceiling, turning the air gray and guilty. I used to think nothing could shake me. I’ve been stabbed, shot at, left for dead twice.
But this girl’s the thing that does it, this little bartender with Christmas in her heart and eyes too damn bright for a man who’s forgotten light. I almost hope she sleeps through the fallout, that morning never comes.
She already stirs. Carol sits up, sheet clutched to her chest, eyes wide, unsure. “What in the hell did we do?”
“Whatever we fucking wanted,” I say.
Her laugh cracks. “What we wanted will ruin everything.”
“Maybe the only way to fix something this broken is to burn it down first.”
She stands, shaky, looking for her clothes scattered across the floor.
“I can’t… this was a mistake.”
I watch her pull on her sweater, hair wild, face flushed from more than the heat coming back on.
“You think I don’t know that?” I ask. “But I can’t take it back.”
A sweater and no drawers. Hell, it’s hard to stop glaring at what I just buried my cock in. Her bush is shaved into a shape. She notices me looking and cups her sex. Her other hand trembles as she picks up her candy cane striped panties.
“You have a wife.”
“Yeah, I have an Ol’ Lady who stopped being anything like one a long time ago.”
“That doesn’t make this right.”
“No,” I say. “Just makes it real.”
She turns away, but not fast enough for me to miss the tear she wipes with the back of her hand.
I want to reach for her. I don’t.
Outside, wind screams through the trees.
She walks to the window and presses her fingers to the fogged glass.
For a second, I think she’ll ask me to hold her again. Instead, she hums. Low and quiet, just a thread of melody “O Holy Night.”
Of all the damn songs.
It cuts through me like a blade made of memory… my mother’s voice, a church choir, a Christmas that ended with sirens.
I used to hate that song more than anything.
Now suddenly it feels like breathing. I drop the cigarette in an empty glass, cross the room, bend down and rest my forehead against hers.
She doesn’t pull back.
“Don’t,” I murmur.
“Don’t what?” She pouts.
“Don’t sing to me like that.”
“Why?”
“Because if you keep singing, I’ll start believing I still deserve saving.”
Her eyes shine in the half-light. “Maybe you do. But I’m not the one to save you, Humbug.”
We stand there, the storm fading to a hush around us, the world remade in gray and gold. I should tell her it’s over, that when morning comes, she’ll go home and forget me. Instead, I brush a strand of hair from her cheek.
“Get some sleep,” I say. “We’ll figure out the rest when the roads clear.”
She nods and crawls back under the covers.