Page 31 of No Business Like Snow Business

We kissed, and it was amazing. One of Sterling’s hands rested on my hip; the other cupped my cheek gently, keeping my face angled correctly into the kiss. The kiss was firm and heated, with none of the hesitation we’d shown earlier in Sugar Plum Park. This time we both knew what we were doing. I closed my eyes and relished it, trying to commit every detail to memory, even though I knew it was pointless. I didn’t have enough blood in my brain at the moment to retain anything. My whole body was alive with the kiss: my lips tingled, my skin prickled, and arousal swirled low and heavy in my gut.

Sterling’s hand slid from my cheek to my hair. His fingers curled around the back of my skull as he deepened the kiss for a moment. Then he pulled his mouth slowly from mine.

“Harvey,” His breath was warm against my lips. “Will you stay the night?”

“Yes.” An entire team of reindeer couldn’t drag me out of here.

I shrugged my coat off, and Sterling did the same.

This was another path that should have been awkward, both of us diverting scarves and coats and beanies and gloves.That bed with its patchwork comforter was just there, lurking or something. Not in an ominous way, exactly, but there were always expectations, right? Expectations that you wouldn’t suck in bed. Performance-wise, at least. All other sucking was encouraged. I wasn’t very good at this part. I’d never been confident I was good atanyof the parts, and Steven, my most recent relationship, hadn’t exactly provided much positive feedback. Just another thing he’d said I was boring about.

I pushed that asshole out of my mind. I wasn’tboring. I was a Christmas encyclopedia, and a Trixie Belden fan, and by the heated look that Sterling was giving me right now he thought I was hot as fuck. And, okay, I knew it wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to build my self-confidence around someone else’s opinion of me, but Sterling Van Ruyven wanted to sleep with me? That was a hell of an ego boost.

I pushed Sterling backward, and he made a surprised sound as he sat on the bed. He was still smiling though, and he had a wicked gleam in his eye.

I stood in between his knees, meeting his smile with one of my own as I began to unbutton my shirt. He reached out and put his hands on my hips, skin sliding against skin as I opened my shirt.

“Gorgeous,” he said, his gaze slowly finding its way up my torso before finally settling on my face.

I straddled him, just like I’d tried in the car, and we kissed again.

Things got a little fuzzy after that.

Sterling’s hands on my skin turned my arousal from simmering to a full boil, and as we kissed, we both worked to squirm out of our clothes. Sterling got his head stuck in his shirt because of his failure to undo his top button, and I forgot to take my boots off before my jeans, which meant the whole undressingthing hit a very sudden roadblock. But it was fun, and funny too, and we snickered between heated kisses.

“I don’t have anything,” Sterling murmured as we stretched out on the bed, down to our underwear by now. His were a lot fancier than mine.

I pulled him into another kiss while my scrambled brain tried to figure out what he meant. “Like, condoms or STIs?”

“Jesus.” He laughed. “Both. But I meant condoms.”

“Okay.” I sounded breathless. “We can just?—”

Sterling made an approving sound as I angled my body toward his, pushing my knee between his thighs.

“Yeah?” I asked, shivering as our dicks came into contact through the fabric of our underwear.

Sterling gave an experimental thrust, and we both gasped. “Yes!”

The bed creaked softly as we figured out a rhythm. Sterling rolled me onto my back. I wrapped my legs around him, and his strong arms bracketed my body as he leaned down to kiss me again. Then he rocked against me, and I jerked and cried out as our dicks made contact again. The rasp of my damp underwear against my dick wasn’t enough; I wanted it harder. I grabbed Sterling by the ass and pulled him ever closer.

“Should have gone to that gas station,” he gasped against my ear.

“Now isn’t the time to think about Pringles,” I said, even though I knew exactly what he meant, and he gave a burst of startled laughter that totally messed up our burgeoning rhythm for a moment. It didn’t take us long to find it again though, and soon I was tilting my hips up to meet each one of Sterling’s thrusts, my fingers digging into his warm flesh, as we shared increasingly desperate kisses between ragged breaths.

When I came, it was with no more warning than a gasp, and then my whole body seized and I shuddered my way through myrelease. Sterling thrust faster against me for a moment, his hips jerking, and then he was coming too, groaning hard in my ear.

“Harvey,” he whispered as he sagged against me, and I splayed my hands against his sweaty back, counting the knots in his spine while I enjoyed my dozy post-orgasm high. I stared blankly at the ceiling and breathed in the scent of Sterling’s hair products.

That was fun and hot and awkward andamazing.

Merry Christmas to me!

nine

STERLING

Islept better than I should have in a bed that was still unfamiliar and with a bed partner who definitely was. I didn’t do relationships. I did one-night stands and I did not, as a rule, invite the guy to stay over in my very minimalist, very beige apartment. But the rules had taken a break in Christmas Falls, probably because this place felt less like a change of scenery and more like an actual alien planet when compared with my regular life, and it had felt nice to sleep with Harvey beside me. I’d woken up a few times when he’d shifted, or snuffled, and I’d smiled each time in the darkness when my sleepy brain remembered who was there with me. And now, with the morning light filtering through the curtains, I took a moment to prop myself up on one elbow and take Harvey in.

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