A Snowy Little Christmas

It’s the best Christmas tradition, this one. The one I didn’t even know I was missing. After midnight, now Christmas Eve. Kissing Jasper.

Jasper kisses me like he’s been making this kind of trouble with me for years, and within seconds of our lips touching I’m in his lap, and it’s so fast, so hot, so natural that I don’t know if I crawled over or if he pulled me. I only know the way we feel together—our lips and tongues tangling, his fingers pushed through my hair, holding one side of it back, his other arm wrapped tight around my lower back, pressing me close to him. Between our layers of clothes I can feel how hard he is beneath me, everywhere—the strong arms that hold me, the broad chest I’m held against, the muscled thighs supporting me, the thick length between those thighs that I feel desperate to rub against.

I bite at his lip, scar-side, and he grunts. “Damn,” he breathes out.

“How did you get this?” I whisper, darting my tongue against it.

“I don’t remember,” he says, the words muffled against my neck, where he starts kissing. “A fence, maybe.” He lets out another frustrated exhale. “This sweatshirt is enormous.”

I tip my head back, exposing more skin, and he rewards me with a slow lick up the side of my neck, and—yeah. This sweatshirt is enormous, and too warm, and my breasts ache with the need to be closer to his chest, his hands, his mouth.

“Not”—I pause, gasp as he nibbles at the spot he’s just licked, try to get my motor skills under control enough to find the hem of this thing so I can get it off—“the sexiest lingerie, I guess,” I finish breathily. I have never been this turned on, ever. I hope he doesn’t think I’m having an asthma attack.

“It’s the sexiest thing,” he says, moving my hands away, pushing his own under the hem, his hands hot and calloused on my skin. “I love this sweatshirt.” His hands rise up, tracing either side of my spine, then the bottom edge of the pullover bra I’m wearing. “It’s so soft.”

“Wait until you feel what’s underneath,” I tease, and I feel his smile on the skin of my neck.

“You are trouble,” he says, and then his hands work fast, pulling the sweatshirt and the bra off all at once, and for a few seconds he stares, his face dumbstruck—a slow blink of his eyes, his lips parted. His hold on me is firm, his big hands on either side of my rib cage, and that feels so good, to be held like this by Jasper. To be looked at like this by Jasper.

“You’re beautiful,” he breathes. “Feels like I’m unwrapping you.”

“My turn,” I say, and the rest of our clothes come off like that—like presents under a tree, like we can’t decide how long to pause and admire the gift we’ve got in front of us before we start thinking about what we still have waiting.

When we’re both down to just our underwear, me back to straddling Jasper’s lap, his hands caressing all over my skin and mine clutching at his biceps, shoulders, and hair, Jasper pulls his lips back from mine, moving one hand up my arm and pausing when he reaches my neck, so sensitive to his touch that I shiver. He looks at me, his expression serious, his eyes searching, the lights from the tree winking across his skin gorgeously.

“Kris,” he whispers. “Is this okay?” I realize he’s waiting to see whatever he thought he saw the last time we kissed. Me regretting, or me startled, whatever.

“It’s better than okay. It’s . . .” I lean forward, kiss him again, sink into his warmth, feel the vibration of the moan he makes against my chest. My senses feel overloaded, not just from the way he touches me, or from the way he looks and sounds and tastes. It’s everything about this day—the comfort I’d felt, lolling around in pajamas, like I would have at home. The glow of that ridiculous color-changing tree, the smell of the cookies baking, the familiar, cheerful instrumental holiday music in the movies we watched. All the things he’s done for me today.

“Christmas,” I finish, and that’s when he stands, his hands holding the backs of my thighs as he maneuvers us around the love seat. I absolutely regret every time I have teased him for insisting on gym time for himself during our work trips. Gym time is great; gym time should have a hallowed shrine built in its honor.

He puts me down gently, swipes most of the sheets and blankets off the bed, keeping one that he drapes over the mattress before coming back to me, wrapping me in his arms to move me farther onto the now half-made bed. “We should’ve taken care of this,” he murmurs, but I stop his mouth with mine. This bed had frozen us both over last night, and I don’t want that happening again.

I don’t know how long we spend like that—minutes, hours—spread out with him on top of me, kissing like it’s what we need to stay alive, our skin growing warm, fevered, our hands clutching and desperate.

“Jasper,” I breathe, clenching my fingers in his hair, pulling him up from where he has just spent an incredibly satisfying few minutes. “Please tell me you have a condom. Please.”

It’s his turn to look startled, and he practically jolts away from me, moving back to the love seat and bending to pick up his pants off the floor. I watch as he clumsily yanks his wallet from the back pocket, tossing the pants like he’s angry at them, and I put a hand over my mouth to hide my smile, and also to hide the howl of sadness that will surely come out of my mouth if he doesn’t find a condom in there.

But he’s victorious, a foil wrapper held between his fingers and a triumphant smile on his face that dims momentarily while he stalks over to the little Christmas tree, holding the square package underneath one of the fiber-optic branches and squinting.

The fact that he has to check the expiration—it is ludicrously gratifying to me, even though I know I’ve got no business wondering.

“Thank God,” he says, coming back to me, standing at the foot of the bed. “What if I’d had to go to the house and ask that Tanner guy for a condom?” He bends and kisses my stomach, the skin there quivering with the laugh I let out.

“Probably he wouldn’t have had one.” I gasp at the feel of Jasper licking upward. He hasn’t even unwrapped the condom and I feel dangerously, embarrassingly close to the edge, his tongue doing incredible things to me. “Because—of the baby?”

“Hmm.” He kisses across my collarbone, and I’m so flushed with heat and anticipation. All at once it’s hitting me, even more so than before—I have wanted this with Jasper for so long. I have loved him for so long, and I’m so relieved to be doing this finally that I hardly know what to do with all this feeling. Somewhere, kicking around in the deep recesses of my mind, is the knowledge that we haven’t dealt with work—that inside this cottage Jasper has been all mine, but out in the world, it’s always the job for him first, and I don’t know what that means for tomorrow.

But I don’t pay attention to those deep recesses, not right now. I have to keep talking to distract myself. “Gil and Romina seem pretty connected, though. Maybe he’d have one.”

He laughs now, pulls away and looks down at me. “Kristen. If you want us to keep going here, you’d better get that image out of my head.”

For a second we stay like that, smiling at each other like coconspirators in this trouble we’re making together. The moment is so easy and simple and happy, and then I realize that all I need to do with this overflowing feeling I have is to . . . hang on to it. To enjoy it and celebrate it like the holiday it is.

I reach down, tuck my thumbs in the edge of my plain cotton boy shorts, and push them down.

He leans back and watches.

“Better image,” he says, his voice rough, and then he’s tearing open that foil square, and it’s nothing like how it’s always been before for me—nothing like when I avert my eyes for this part, worrying that it’ll feel too routine, too pragmatic, something that will spoil the mood. Nothing like when I stiffen slightly at that first press between my legs, the intimacy of joining with another person always somewhat awkward for me. Nothing like those moments where a fleeting thought—about work, about bills or laundry, or, most often, about Jasper—will tug at my mind, distracting me from what I’m doing, the person I’m with.

With Jasper, I watch everything. I feel everything. I focus on everything.

And nothing, nothing, has ever felt better.