Page 125 of The Nightmare Before Kissmas
Her glare tells me she knows I’m lying. She flicks me in the nose. “Good night, dumbass.”
She pauses.
“We did good things today, Coal,” she adds, gentle.
I nod. My throat is welling, or maybe I’m exhausted—today hasbeen alotand I’m not sure how I’ll be able to process everything we set in motion, but I flick her nose right back.
She leaves, and Kris, Hex, and I stay to help the staff fix the disaster that this room became. Popcorn, just,everywhere.
By the time the room is in order, I’m fully drained, but I catch Hex’s wrist as he passes me.
“Come to my suite tonight?” I ask.
“It’s past midnight.”
“So?”
His gaze goes molten. “So, my suite is… far from yours. And if I stay in your room for any amount of time, it will only get later, and later.”
He can portal back to his room, but I don’t mention that, because his lips unfurl in a sultry smile that yanks something deep in my gut.
The staff have left. Kris is straightening one last chair.
“Stay.” My voice cracks. The plea echoes,stay,a request I only mean for tonight, but I can feel it tendril out, snake around Christmas Eve and get on its knees and ask him, impossibly,stay.
He’ll leave. I know he’ll leave. He was always going toleave.
But now that I’ve started thinking about our shortening time together, it’s a growing, gluttonous beast arching up behind my true intent and I hate the idea of him not being under the same roof as me.
He exhales, warm breath on my collarbone. “Just one night.”
No. All the nights. Every one you’ll give me.
It’s late enough that we don’t bother trying to stagger back to my room. We walk, side by side, and don’t run into anyone. Kris parts ways at my door and though he doesn’t care, I wait until he’s gone down the turn for his own suite.
Then I push into my room.
Hex walks in after me, almost statuesque in his movements, like he’s performing again, hiding behind his façade.
The door shuts. I lock it.
And I kiss him. Claim his mouth in this dark room and he goes supple for half a second; then he grabs my neck in one hand and kisses me back like he’s trying to bruise me. I let him, I want his bruises and his marks and every scar he’ll leave on me, because then I’ll stop thinking about how this all might end, I’llstop thinking.
Just stop thinking.
He makes a desperate, throaty sound, all plea and ecstasy, and maybe there’s a little of that gluttonous beast in him too. He pushes me back, back, until my knees hit the bed and I drop, and before I can utter a word, he’s flattening me on the comforter and climbing up my body, straddling me, fitting over the saddle of my hips.
Okay, think, alittleat least.
“Today’s been a long day,” I whisper.
A column of light comes from the seam around the closed door, a soft glow emanates from a Christmas tree in the corner so we’re mostly in black, some in red-green-gold. It’s enough that it lets me see the way his pupils have blown wide as he leans down, the silhouette of his arching body in that corset vest, his laser focus intent, control that makes everything in me go malleable and submissive.
His lips suction to my neck. Teeth bite down.
I’m thrown fully into the cosmos, only staying in this dimension thanks to the weight of him, holding me down. His mouth, the things he can do with thatgoddamn mouth—
He takes a break from that torment to tongue the spot and I belt my arm around his torso and spin us so we’re on our sides. One of his legs arches on my hip, and I run my hand up his thigh, down to his calf, his ankle. And I hold there. Istopthere. Forehead to his cheek. Hand on his ankle. I am stone and I will not move because if I do, if I so much asbreathetoo strongly, then—then—
