Chapter 17
CELINE
As if this couldn’t get any more surreal…
The scissors look tiny in his big paw-like hands, his concentration clear in the care he takes with each cut, paper shrapnel covering the floor at his feet. I watch him with a glow in my chest that’s downright intoxicating.
“How’s that?” he asks, holding up the cut-out snowflake.
“Actually, very good.”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised,” he says, with another smile.
Each one feels like a victory, like a medal, like I’ve earned something. The sister in me almost wishes he hadn’t revealed the light in his darkness. It was easier to resist him–not easy, but theoretically possible–before I knew he helped people: saved them.
“Shall I add it to the pile then, Ms. Claus?”
I smile and nod to the pile of snowflakes. It’s already stacked high. “Yeah. I think we should start hanging them soon. Then we’ll get a better idea of how much more we need.”
He stands and picks up a pile. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
My smile widens, adding to the drunk feeling. He makes me feel warmer and more in-the-moment than eggnog ever could. We go into the hallway together, and he turns to me, his dark eyes seeming brighter, a tiny bit more… human.
“Where shall we put the first one?” he asks.
I tap my chin. “Maybe we can run them along the stairs?”
He nods. “Good idea. I’ll find some string.”
He walks down the hallway. I’ll never get tired of watching his broad, muscled back. He loves wearing tank tops, or perhaps that’s a new addition because he knows how crazy the thick corded muscles on the back of his arms drive me.
He returns with a ball of string.
“For such a Grinch, you have a lot of arts-and-craft stuff.”
He looks at me, smile gone, something dangerous flitting across his expression.
I don’t even have to ask to know he’s used this string for something that has nothing to do with the arts.
My mind struggles to think of something mob-related.
Torture by tying around fingers? Securing big bands of cash?
“Oh,” I mutter.
He ignores me, walks toward the stairs, and nods. “You should do the honors.”
I take the ball of string from him, our hands touching, that familiar yet always new electricity humming between us. I walk up a couple of steps and take a snowflake, carefully piercing the edge with the tip of the scissors and sliding the string through.
“What do you think?” I ask, looking over my shoulder.
He’s not looking at the decorations. He’s staring at my ass with no shame on his scarred, devastatingly handsome face.
He’s staring like he can’t look away.
“Damian?” I murmur.
He slowly looks up, faces me. “Yeah… uh, good.”
“You didn’t even look.”
“I looked at what matters,” he growls.
He takes the steps slowly, as if with each danger-laced second, he’s trying to convince himself to stop. His hands magnetize to my hips, a groan escaping him as he squeezes.
“Fuck,” he whispers, and it sounds like letting go.
I smooth my hands over his shoulders, shaking my head, but I don’t have it in me to tell him to stop. I lost that ability the first time our lips clashed.
“Did you wear those shorts on purpose?” he growls. “Because, hell, Celine… I’ve never seen more perfect legs. A rounder, thicker ass. Tell me to stop.”
“I can’t,” I admit.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I don’t think you need me to.”
He pulls me against him. The heat is somehow new, like before it was a struck match, but now it’s wildfire. He lifts me off my feet as though I’m weightless.
Instinct drives me to wrap my legs around him. His thickness pushes through his pants and grinds against the thin material of my shorts. He snarls as we rock together, his powerful arms lifting me up and down so that my sex can grind against his cock through our clothes.
His lips are on mine hungrily, his hands squeezing my bare legs, choked noises of guilty pleasure escaping him. He sets me down. I think he’s going to stop, and that feels bad even if I know it’d be the right thing.
But then he gently pushes me so that I sit on the step. He steps back so that he’s level with my hips, then stares up at me, all control gone from his wild eyes.
“I need you,” he growls. “I need to fucking taste you.”
His savage hands grab my shorts and hook my underwear at the same time. I know this is the moment, the only possible one, I might be able to end this. Then the moment passes, and he’s tugging my shorts around my knees.
When he sees my naked sex, any sense of control slips away from him. He throws himself forward and buries his hands in my thighs, kisses up and down my legs, warm imprints that get closer to my sex with each round.
I grip the stair banister, shivering, knowing he should stop, knowing I’d hate him if he stopped.
Finally, he opens his mouth with a growl and presses his face against my pussy. I gasp as my world rocks, his hands pinning me in place so my shivers and shudders don’t send me hurtling down the stairs.
He strokes his tongue over my clit, one hand clutching me tighter as the other slides across my leg to my entrance. He groans when he finds the slickness there, my body responding instantly like I was made for him.
“Your wet-as-fuck slit is ready for me,” he groans, circling my entrance with his finger, talking with his mouth still pressed against me so that he paints my need with his heat. “Fucking hell, Celine. You’re perfect.”
“Don’t,” I whisper.
He looks up sharply.
“Stop,” I finish.
A smirk. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
He slips one hand around so he can massage my ass while he lavishes my clit with attention, sucking it and pushing his tongue against it, an isolated form of heat like a miniature explosion between my legs.
His finger teases my entrance, then slips inside, never moving his mouth and relentless tongue away from my clit. My head swims, and my hips gyrate without me needing to make a conscious decision to do it.
Surrounded by paper snowflakes, I chase the pleasure, twitching my hips urgently, the sensation rising unstoppably inside of me.
Nothing else matters – nothing else exists.
“Oh, fuck,” he snarls when he feels me tightening around his finger.
He can read my body like a book. He knows me better than I know myself.
I pull on the banister so hard the wood creaks. He makes savage sounds as he feasts on me, his tongue stroking faster, harder, with more and more pressure each second.
Soon, my vision is growing blurry. Surrounded by snowflakes, I give myself to the orgasm – to my brother’s best friend.
He snarls when the release gushes out of me. His tongue is so heated, so fast, so persistent. I can’t think, don’t want to think.
I just grind against him, my hips twitching uncontrollably. A moan splinters out of me at the same time as the orgasm reaches its peak. I fall back after struggling to catch my breath.
He stands firm all over, his solid manhood pushing against his pants, the outline of his hugeness clear.
“Now’s the fucking time,” he snarls. “Here and now, Celine. Beg me to stop. Fucking beg me.”
The way he says it makes it clear.
He wants me to beg, sure, but not to stop, never to stop.
“I’m begging you,” I whimper. “To fuck me, Damian. Please, please fuck me—”
He picks me up, cradling me, one hand bracing my back, and the other buried against my ass as he runs up the stairs.
He hasn’t seen the scar on my back, not yet. I’m not actively hiding it, but I hope our passion doesn’t take us there, doesn’t let him see the imperfection spread across my back.
Does that make me a hypocrite? I don’t care about his scar.
My brother’s best friend’s hands are all over me. Being a hypocrite is the least of my worries.