Page 25 of Coming Home

“Hey, no sex until after dirty Santa,” someone said from behind them.

David flipped whoever it was off as Erin Green, a new member of the club, stepped up to select her first gift.

She made no attempt to look at the gifts under the tree and made a beeline for Marissa instead.

“Seriously?” Marissa said with a huff.

Lance leaned over and whispered something to her.

“Hey,” Patrick said, “I thought we agreed no couples working together to get a gift they want. Don’t make me separate you two.”

Lance shrugged. “I don’t remember agreeing to any such thing.”

Marissa just grinned and handed Erin her bottle of whiskey.

“Don’t worry, Master Patrick, I already had Lance’s suggestion in mind.”

She crossed the room to where Dakota sat and held her hand out for the sex toy.

“I had a feeling you’d be interested in this one.”

With a sigh, she headed for the tree. “I’m half tempted to take the whiskey but let’s see what else is under this tree, shall we?”

With a saucy shake of her hips, the woman went to the tree and picked up a large box. It was one of the ones David and Emily had put under the tree. “This looks fun,” Dakota said as she brought the box into the center of the room.

She tore into the large package. When the wrapping was on the floor she let out a loud whooping laugh. “Of course the cowgirl of the group is going to get a damn Sybian.”

Everyone laughed as Dakota inspected the large sex toy box. It was an expensive motorized toy that could be straddled and ridden. Emily wasn’t sure what all the hype was, but everyone seemed very interested in the gift and Dakota was threatening to stab anyone who tried to steal it.

The game of dirty Santa lasted a lot longer than everyone expected because people kept stealing gifts instead of opening the ones under the tree. In the end, Lance wound up with the high tech vibrator and Marissa got a pretty diamond necklace that she seemed happy with.

Emily wound up with a gift card to a high end sex shop and David took home the leather cuffs. Holly wound up with a collection of kinky romance novels, and Dakota got to keep the Sybian.

As everyone mingled and talked with their gifts in hand, Emily watched Hunter slip out with his phone in his hand.

“Everything OK with Hunter?” she asked David.

“Not sure,” he said as he tracked Hunter leaving too.

Hunter came back into the bar a few minutes later and whispered to Mitch, the bartender who gave him a nod and picked up a phone that hung on the wall. When he spoke, his voice was amplified.

“Folks, the weather is pretty bad out there again. We have room to house some of you in the cabins out back but if you’re planning to stay in town tonight, you may want to consider heading back to your hotels. If we get stranded we can survive, but the fewer that are stuck here the better off we’ll all be. We’ve got cars waiting in the parking lot to take anyone out of here who wants out and Simon is ready to escort people to the back cabins.”

The room became abuzz with frantic movements as people began to make plans for whether they would spend the night on the property or head back to their hotel rooms. Many people chose to leave and soon it was just the handful of people who intended to spend the night.

The board members huddled around a table in the bar to talk over what the plan should be in the morning.

“This has me even more convinced that we need to finish the renovations on the second building. We should be able to house more members overnight than we currently can,” David said.

Everyone murmured their agreement.

“Excuse me a moment,” David said as he stood. “I need to go take care of something.”

Emily frowned and started to follow him. What was he up to?

“Everything OK?” she asked when she caught up to him.

He grinned as he draped an arm around her. “Yeah. I just want to make someone’s night. Come with me. I finally know what we can get for Marissa.”

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