Page 75 of Hostile for the Holidays

“What are you going to do about it?”

He wraps his arms around me. His hands sliding down my back to cup my ass.

“I’m going to kiss you again.” I press my lips against his softly. “Take you home with me tonight. And when you move to New York next month, make you move in with me.”

“I love this plan.” His lips tease along my jaw and I know I could easily get lost in him again, but I still haven’t officially said it.

My hands cup his face so I can pull him back to meet his eyes again.

“I love you, Jasper.”

His eyes light up like a kid on Christmas morning.

“Say it again.”

“I love y—” Jasper doesn’t let me finish. His lips capture mine and we’re lost in each other all over again.

TWENTY-SIX

JASPER

“No one’s at my house.”Stella pulls my hand, urging me across the street. “Sadie and Tom are at the hotel. Daniel’s with Cady, and my parents, of all people, went downtown with some of the wedding guests.”

It feels like we’re teenagers sneaking around.

She opens the door to her house, then guides me upstairs, and I wonder if this is what it would have been like if we hadn’t been fighting all those years.

I lie on the bed waiting for Stella as she instructed, and try to imagine what her room looked like when we were younger. Currently it’s light gray walls and a white duvet. It’s exactly as she described—guest room number one. I can’t wait to see her place in New York. I can’t believe she asked me to move in with her. That might have been the Cognac talking but I’m hopeful she was serious, because I want to wake up next to her every day and fall asleep next to her every night.

Stella comes out of the bathroom. She’s wearing a fuzzy blue bath robe, and her face is now free of makeup. With no preamble, she crawls over me and straddles my lap.

“I love you,” she says, unbuckling my belt, and a moment later she’s got me in the palm of her hand. It’s only a few strokes before I’m impossibly hard and leaking at my tip.

I cup her jaw and pull her close. “And I love you.”

She parts her robe, and then I’m sinking inside her.

Her mouth parts on a gasp, and I groan at the feel of her tight walls clamping down around me.

Stella St. James loves me and she’s riding my cock so fucking well, I can’t believe my luck.

It doesn’t take much to send us both over the edge, and once I’ve cleaned her up, Stella stands at her window, looking out across the street at my parents’ house. I step in behind her, wrapping my arms around her and snuggling into her fuzzy robe.

“You know how much this pains me to say it, but your house is the official winner of the Whistler Lane holiday lights display contest this year.”

I smile against her neck.

“Don’t rub it in. You sabotaged my house with mediocre light installation.”

“It’s not a contest.”

“Actually, that’s exactly what it is.”

“Not for me.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, her eyebrows melting together in confusion. “It’s always been a contest. You’ve always put up an impressive display because you wanted it to be better than mine.”

“No. I knew how much you love Christmas lights so I wanted you to have the best display to look at.” I motion across the street to my house. “The light display is one thing, but really, anything I did, it was always for you, Stell.”

---