Page 130 of The Nightmare Before Kissmas
He holds the condom out to me. The simple function of that task, too, lets my brain have another moment to reset, which is good, desperately needed, because when I’m done with it, he puts his hand on me only it’s slick now and I buck into the pillows.
God, do not fucking ruin this, do notfuckingcomethis soon.
He’s up on his knees, aligning me with him. I can feel a shake in his hand on me.
I hold still. I hold so fucking still, concrete and glass again, solid and breakable all at once, he will shatter me.
His eyes snap to mine, one hand in the center of my chest for balance. It’s good my throat is nearly pinched shut, because I wantto beg him, I want to sputter out all kinds of nonsense about how pretty and perfect he looks on top of me.
“Relax,” is all I say. But I have to close my eyes, jaw clamped, fingers iron clawed into his legs because fuck if I can take my own advice.
He lowers down, up again, down, working in increments, but that gradualness only makes the devastation of his tightness and heat suck me in like quicksand and I beg myself now,Open your eyes, open your eyes—
I do. His full lips are split in a winded scowl, hair sheeted around a face set in dire concentration. Those eyes flick up to meet mine and as if he’d been waiting for that contact, that connection, he sinks all the way down.
Sparks of pleasure scattershot through my body to the point of agony, everything impacted by its barrage, veins and muscles and my hips buck up involuntarily like I can both chase and get away from the onslaught.
His sudden gasp is ruinous, and I barely have time to feel it before “Sí, otra vez,” rips out of him, a rough tumble, and I don’t need to use any sort of translation magic to get that meaning, because just the sensation of him switching languages has me fuckingsoaring.
I do it again, hips punching up, and I hiss at that edge coming way too close. His shivering cry tells me he’s right there too, the noise so delicate and otherworldly as to be fey-like. His head dips back, and all the tension he’d been keeping at bay races on him tenfold until he’s nothing but corded muscles on top of me, lines of sinew and abs sweat-painted; my lips were there, and there—
At my next thrust, he moves to meet me, hips rolling, and I hold on for dear life, half sensation, half action. My hand finds the space above where we’re joined and I wrap my fingers around him again, pumping, andfuckit’s a cataclysm now, his whole body straining and shuddering but he drags me with him as the storm builds.
“Coal—I need—” he babbles, trembling, and I feel the thrum of his words in the base of my stomach.
I sweep up, a wordless dance where my other arm braces him tome, and I hook his leg and flip us on the bed. The angle of me on top hits him deeper, so fucking deep that both of us moan.
“I got you,” I promise. He locks my free hand with his, thrown overhead, gravity tangible in the space between our intertwined fingers. I’m thrusting now, entirely whittled to his need and his pleasure so that’s all I am, his, and I say it again, again, “I got you, sweetheart, I got you—”
“You too,” he says into my mouth, and it pitches, goes whiny and pleading, “Now, Coal,now.”
His body seizes up around me a moment before he cries out and then we’re both falling, blurring into each other, laving tongues and heels digging into my back and dewy satin lips.
He said joy creates a foundation, and we do create that foundation, every kiss and caress sets up a reality where the sun will rise tomorrow and I’ll make him tea and we’ll leisurely figure out what we want to do with our day, no schedule, no events. We’ll go down to North Pole City and buy ornaments and then come back and turn this bed inside out again. And in that reality, we don’t worry about days passing. We don’t worry about losing everything, because our everything is impenetrable, and we create and create with every shake and beg and heartbeat.
I love him.
I love him, and I can’t put it into words with how big it is, so I keep talking, and showing, and creating with him.
Chapter Seventeen
I’ve spent most of my life trying to make the people I love smile. Stupid jokes and quippy one-liners and acts of self-sabotaging nonsense but none of it was ever enough, and I had gotten to the point where I wasn’t sure what else I could do. My job, my duty, would be to bring joy to the world through Christmas, but how could I ever do that when I couldn’t bring joy to my brother, to Iris, hell, even to my father?
But what I’d spent my life trying to generate wasn’t joy, necessarily. Fun, sure. But notjoy.
Because every morning now, my pillow smells like citrus and spice. I lie facing him and I watch the lights from outside rise up his body, illuminating crevices and cliffs I know by touch and taste. He wakes up next to me and I know, I know, god, I hope we have created enough joy that the reality of not having to worry is ours.
I float through these days, and it’s easier and easier to find ways to spread the joy I’m generating, like I’m my own sort of Merry Measure. I don’t think about it half the time now—there’s another concert, and I suggest we go caroling instead, and Dad permits it. But instead of grabbing whatever pre-arranged songs are laid out, I go up to the members of House Caroler and ask what they think we should sing. What songs are in their past, our past, that don’t get the stage space they should?
They confer for a few minutes, then songs are decided on, music sheets are found, and we haul ourselves through the palace, singing at the doors to the Route Planners and the Toy Factory and everywhere else. Our court belts out rather screechy renditions of songs I’ve never heard, but they’re filled with well-wishes and cheer and laughter. The staff at the open doors stares in stunned amusement, and I see more than a few instances of our court lingering at thesestops to talk to the staff working, and I don’t know that I’ve everseenour courttalkto our staff before. Do they even know their names? I introduce them when I can, Renee and Lacie and Lucas and all the others who have been fixtures throughout my life.
And for the next event, our own cookie decorating party, it’s usually stiff and formulaic. But I invite all the staff I run into on my way and tell them to spread the news and there aredozensof people packed into Renee’s kitchen. It’s a madhouse of elbows and sprinkles, and at the end, a member of House Frost asks where these cookies are going, and most of them are disastrous piles of icing at this point. But we arrange to turn them into gift boxes and ship them out, a dash of pre-Christmas magic for the people of North Pole City.
I clean up with the staff, and more than a few nobles, who linger too. I don’t know what is happening but they’re smiling in ways I’ve never seen, not the smiles of formality, butreallysmiling.
I grab Wren in passing one day and ask her why we don’t have more decorations that signifyallof our houses in our décor. The next morning, there are delicate paper bags housing softly pulsing lights lining the staircases, and Wren tells me she’s working on getting woven tapestries from House Jacobs and other decorations too. Whatever that woman’s paid isn’t enough.
When I look at the tabloids, both those focused on Christmas and wider—okay, that does kill my soul, but I make myself do it—the photos are messier than the older ones. More candid. Smiles and genuineness. The ones that show our staff intermingled with our nobles are goingcrazy,likes and shares and effusive comments. It’s hard to tell where the support is coming from, our people or any of the other Holidays who can see these tabloids, but I’ll take it, wherever its source.
