Chapter 11
By this point, Duchess had detected Amy’s presence, and came bounding across the room with a thing in her mouth. Behind her was a toppled, four-foot nutcracker, lying face down. At his feet were dozens of small dark things.
“What is that?” Harrison asked.
“A dead nutcracker,” Amy said, and stepped out from behind him as Duchess barreled into her leg, dropping whatever she held in her mouth.
Amy loved her dog, but her timing could not have been worse.
She picked up the dropped item. “It’s a Santa,” she said, and turned it over.
It was a round figure of a Santa, about three inches high, with oversized black boots.
Her finger brushed against an indentation, and the boots began to move, as if they intended to march Santa right on out of there.
“A toy?” Harrison asked, squinting as he propped the tiki torch up next to the mantle.
Amy bent down and put the Santa on the floor. He began to march in a circle. Round and round he went.
Harrison bent down and picked it up. “His leg is broken,” he announced, and showed Amy where the distinct mark of a dog fang had crushed a bit of one boot.
Amy glanced across to the fallen nutcracker.
“There are dozens of them,” she said, making her way across the room.
Not only were there Santas, but snowmen with identical black boots.
She nudged the nutcracker over with her foot.
His own black boot had a spring door from which the Santas and snowmen had fallen.
There were still a few in the hollow of his leg.
Duchess sniffed around the nutcracker, her tail wagging.
Harrison crouched down to have a look. “Little windup toys,” he said.
“But without the windup. Apparently they have buttons these days.” He righted a snowman and pressed the button, and the snowman lurched into a march.
Duchess grabbed another snowman and raced down the hall to her bed with her prize.
“What in the hell?” Amy asked.
“I think they must be for a window display.” He stood up. “You know what this discovery calls for, don’t you?” he asked, his eyes shining.
Amy grinned at him. She hadn’t lived with men most of her adult life not to understand how they thought. “Of course I do. We’ll need a fair racecourse, though.”
“I think that can be arranged.”
While Amy went to make sure that Duchess didn’t choke on the snowman, Harrison created a course across the living room carpet, blocking it off with pillows on either side so the Santas and snowmen couldn’t wander too far off course.
He tested it with a few of the toys. Then, he and Amy each selected ten competitors—five Santas and five snowmen.
They decided each player could determine if a snowman or Santa was appropriate for each heat.
They would continue on until a winner emerged victorious from the heats.
The winner would receive the surprise Christmas ornament of his or her choice.
They lay down on the carpet, on their bellies. “I seriously do not understand who keeps dozens of windup toys in the boot of their nutcracker,” Amy remarked as the acoustic version of “Jingle Bells” wafted overhead.
“Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die,” Harrison said. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
On the count of three, they pushed the buttons on Harrison’s Santa and her snowman and watched them march off. The first two collided with each other before the finish line. After a lively discussion of how to conduct do-overs, they went again.
By the end of the first five heats, they realized that the Santas in general were an unruly lot.
The snowmen, on the other hand, were determined round mounds of fun.
Harrison and Amy laughed like children as they raced their toys the length of the two-foot course.
When their toys ran out of running room, they set them up again.
The last race featured two snowmen in a head-to-head matchup. One of them went rogue, taking a sharp right detour and heading into a pillow. It made a feeble attempt to climb over, but fell on its side, its feet moving.
“You have got to be kidding me. He quits in the middle of the final?” Harrison tossed his snowman onto the course. “Fat losers, all of them.”
Amy rolled onto her back, tears from laughter leaking from the corners of her eyes.
Harrison reached up to the couch and grabbed the two surprise Christmas ornaments. He rolled onto his side and propped his head on his hand. “You win. Which would you like?”
Amy selected the one on the right and opened it with glee. She withdrew a red ball from the box. “That’s it? That’s the prize?”
Harrison laughed. “Open the other if you like.”
“I certainly will.” She opened that one and withdrew a gingerbread man from the box. “Much better.” She twisted around and hung both ornaments on the massive tree, then turned back to Harrison. “I honestly can’t remember the last time I laughed this hard.”
“Me either.” He stroked her face with his knuckle. “Know what I want to do right now?” he asked, his eyes sliding down her nose, to her mouth, to her chest.
The flame she felt for him had been burning low this evening, but it suddenly leaped into full conflagration.
She glanced over his shoulder to the clump of mistletoe hanging above the entrance to the living area, just a couple of feet from where they were.
“I wonder if it’s the same thing I want to do. ”
He moved his knuckle to the side of her neck, tracing a lazy line to her throat, and leaving a trail of fire in the knuckle’s wake. “And what’s that?”
Amy swallowed. She thought about what Julie would say. She thought about how she never knew how to ask for what she wanted, and maybe this was the moment. She said, “I want to kiss you.”
Harrison’s smile was full of relief. “Thank God. I thought you might say s’mores,” he said, and snaked his arm around her middle, pulling her closer. He pressed his mouth to hers.
The touch of his lips to hers added a shot of fuel to the fire in her, and it quickly spread.
She sank her fingers into his thick hair, pressed her body against his.
She had forgotten what it felt like, to be held by a man.
To be desired by a man. She had forgotten how a kiss could elevate pleasure with hardly any effort at all.
Harrison rolled onto his back, taking her with him, his hands cupping her face, his tongue slipping between the seam of her lips.
He rolled again, putting her on her back and coming over her. He smiled down at her and pulled a thick tress that held her topknot in place. Her hair began to fall as he moved his hand to her collarbone. “Are you okay with where this is going?” he asked as he slipped his hand into her sweater.
“I am.”
“You’re sure?” he asked, as his hands grazed the tip of her breast.
“I’m never going to be sure, but I’m definitely into this,” she said, and brushed her fingers across his stubbled chin. “I say we strike while the iron is hot.”
“Amy,” he said, but it was more of a warble than the start of a sentence.
She felt herself sink rapidly under the weight of desire.
There was a surprising amount of it, too—more than she would have thought was rumbling around in her decades-old body.
She felt strangely beautiful as he sank his fingers in her hair and pulled her to him.
He bent down, nibbled her earlobe, then her neck.
“Wow,” she whispered, and steadied herself with her hands to his arms as he continued to kiss her cheeks, her nose. “Wow.” She bent her neck to give him better access.
“Is wow good or bad?” he asked before licking the hollow of her throat.
“It’s a good wow. It’s a wow, I really like this.”
“Great, because I do, too.” He kissed her mouth, his tongue slipping in between her lips.
She could feel the rush of desire turning to fire in her cheeks.
She stroked his ear, ran her hands down his arm.
His body felt familiar in that way a man felt familiar—hard and lean, and the muscles in his arms bulging beneath her grip.
She could not have been more turned on had he done a striptease.
He wrapped her in his arms, pressed his lips to her neck for a long, lingering moment, and whispered into her ear, “Should we move from the floor? Maybe find a bed?”
Amy shook her head, as her breathing was already short. “No time.”
“No time?”
“Nope. We need to keep going.”
“We keep going,” he said, and moved down her body. There was a moment of disruption when they realized that their clothes were an impediment, and they clawed at each other and their own clothes until they were free of them.
They resumed where they’d left off: their mouths on each other, her hands on him, his hands on her, their heads in the clouds. At least her head was in the clouds—the excitement of being with him was almost more than she could bear.
His hand slid between her legs as he pressed himself, hard and long, against her leg. His fingers moved inside her, tantalizing her.
She lifted up to him, and a light flickered somewhere in the room, catching the blue-gray of his eyes.
“What is it?” he asked breathlessly. “Everything okay?”
“Everything is outstanding,” she said. “But it’s been a while.”
He grinned. “No excuses.” He crushed his mouth to hers.
It was as if a bolt of lightning had streaked through her, leaving her sizzling in every place his body touched hers.
The only thing that tethered her to this earth was the ceiling above her—everything else seemed to fade away, covered up by the sensations.
No excuses. She didn’t hold back, didn’t wait for him to take the lead.
She figured she’d gone this far down the path, she may as well go for it, and pressed against his hardness, wrapping one leg around his back to anchor him to her.
Harrison groaned. “Wait,” he said, pressing his forehead to hers. “We don’t have everything we need.”
“Huh?”
“Condom.”
Condom! It had been so long she didn’t even consider it! “Oh no,” she said, almost in a whimper. “I don’t have—”
“Be right back.” He hopped to his feet, kicked his pants free, and then stood above her, gloriously erect. He was gone in a flash, racing from the living room so completely naked that Amy couldn’t help but laugh.
But she stopped laughing when he returned.
He seemed harder somehow. More determined.
The glint in his eye had turned from light to business, and he used his hands and mouth on her breasts, and then on her hips, moaning every time she gasped.
His scent was intoxicating, the smell of pine and cologne.
When he pressed against her, Amy pressed back, moving against him, her arms going around his neck, her legs falling open.
She couldn’t really think coherently when he shifted his body between her legs, other than she was due; she needed this.
She deserved this. She wrapped both legs around him.
They gazed at each other for one terrifying moment in which Amy’s brain went completely blank.
She was not thinking; she was running purely on sensation.
And then, he began to move, sliding into her.
They took each other, together. She felt the wild abandon of her youth again. Everything worked. Her body still bent and moved and felt like it had once before. She closed her eyes, dug her fingers into his shoulders, and arched her body hard against his.
He silently continued, taking it slow, pausing now and again to take her breast into his mouth, nibbling at the peak. Amy clung to his hips, pushing him against her, moving her body against his. Harrison sank a little deeper, then moved to the other breast.
Amy arched her back into his mouth, thrust her hands into his hair.
She rubbed her leg against him, slid her fingers down his back, and reached between their bodies, spurring him on.
His pace quickened, sliding in and out of her, thrusting into her deep.
Her body clenched around him. How easily the rust fell away.
She met each thrust, gasped with delight as they moved.
He increased the tempo, and their gazes locked, their bodies working from some primal place, until they reached a monstrous climax.
It felt like a lifetime of pent-up pleasure exploded within her.
In one long, sensational moment, she ceased to exist. And when she found her breath again, the air was heavy with their perspiration, and the Christmas song “Sleigh Ride” began to jingle at them.
They laughed with relief and ecstasy and amusement.
He pressed his lips to her shoulder. She turned toward him and kissed him. “I feel like I should thank you. That was fantastic.”
“I should thank you. That was incredible.”
She was pleased that he’d felt it, too. “I guess that’s what happens when you go without for too long. It’s pretty fucking spectacular.”
He laughed and rolled onto his back. His breath was heavy, his legs limp. He grimaced, then shifted, twisting his arm behind him. He held up a gingerbread-man ornament. “Ouch.” He tossed it aside.
Amy dropped an arm across him. She wanted to bask in this moment. She wasn’t sure what came next, but an itch had been scratched in a most delightful way, and lying there, she was pretty sure she could get used to this.
She would think about tomorrow, tomorrow. For now, she was just going to enjoy the lovely afterglow of great sex.
Why had no one ever clued her in that golfers were so hot?