Chapter Ten
Autumn
As soon as he said that, he jumped up again, like he’d been scalded, but his words hung in the air for one heartbeat, then another, then another.
He reappeared with a wool blanket under his arm. “Hey, get up a sec?” he asked.
I moved out of the way and let him shake it out and lay it on the floor, right up at the edge of the wood stove platform. I knelt down and spread my hands in front of the fire.
“Are you warm enough?” he asked.
“No,” I shivered.
He grabbed another blanket from the trunk. It smelled like musty wool, a strangely comforting scent, and tossed it over his shoulders. Then he knelt down next to me and slung it over mine.
“How about now?”
Heat that had no business gathering in my core gathered anyway. “Better,” I said. It came out more like a sigh.
“How about now?” He folded his arms around me and pulled me closer.
“A little bit.”
“How about now?”
This time there was no question in my head as to why I was kissing him. I was just kissing him back as hard as he was kissing me, with all the pent up urgency of the eight long years I had missed kissing him. I kissed him to make up for lost time.
“Autumn, fuck,” he whispered against my lips. “Merry fucking Christmas. Fuck.”
I laughed against his chest. “Merry fucking Christmas to you too.”
“This is the best present I could have asked for.”
Some little devil inside of me, the same one that made me laugh when Cole pulled the cow prank, suddenly took over my tongue. “The best one you could have asked for? Wow, you’re more easily satisfied than I remember.”
His eyes darkened and he pulled back from me. “I didn’t know we were exchanging wish lists.”
“We can. It’s Christmas Eve.”
“Have you been naughty or nice?”
"Don't naughty girls get a lump of coal in their stocking?"
He waggled his eyebrows. "I can put that lump of Cole where ever you'd like. Have you been naughty?
“Actually, I was pretty nice up until you came back into the picture.”
He smirked a small expression of relief that there hadn’t been too many guys after him. Or at all. I looked down at my fingers and blushed. “How about you?”
“I’ve been so much nicer than you’d believe.”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t believe it.”
“Well, you should, Autumn. There’s no one like you. You’re it. I knew it, but I didn’t want to believe it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Now tell me what’s on top of your wish list. Good girls deserve presents.”
“Best things come in small packages they say.”
“Ain’t nothing small about this package,” he said with a cocky grin.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s on your list?” I asked him “Since you claim you haven’t been naughty.”
“No, I haven’t been naughty.” The way he looked at me had me unable to catch my breath. “But I’m about to be very naughty.” His voice was so low that I leaned in to hear him. His lip brushed against my ear lobe as he murmured, “At the top of my wish list? I want to see you spread on this blanket like a present under the tree. I want to see those tits of yours and kiss them until those pretty pink nipples get all hard under my tongue.” I bit my lip as his mouth moved lower, his breath warm against my neck. “I want to spread those creamy thighs of yours and lick you until you lose your mind. I want to watch you grab this blanket and hold on for dear life as I fuck you, because Autumn baby, that’s the number one wish on my list. I want to see if you feel as good as you do in my memories. I want to come home for Christmas.”
He covered my mouth with his before I could utter a single word. My mind skipped and dove like a retreating dolphin leaving no rational thought left in its wake. All I had left was sensation, desire and the desperate need to feel him again. I needed him, he was ingrained in me, a part of my DNA, as much as my red hair and freckles. He was a part of me, a part I had so desperately tried to cut out, and he was here again, real under my fingers, warm under my touch. It was so unbelievable as to be otherworldly and for one second I truly did believe in the magic of the season.
Merry fucking Christmas indeed.