Page 61 of What Happens This Christmas
Everything I’d done…
Everything I’d become…
Had been for Nick.
So I could be a good wife for him. So he’d always love me. So he’d always be happy. And never look for something elsewhere, outside of our marriage. I didn’t think I could handle a devastation like that.
Maybe it was warped and wrong, but I might as well have been on the stand for a murder trial because it was the whole truth and nothing but.
I had been so sure my way was the right way. The only way. How wrong I’d been. “Yes,” I all but screamed.
He fell silent.
“Fine! Is that what you want to hear? I’m tired of it all.” I threw my hands up in the air, my bustier doing far too good a job as it was practically squeezing the air from my lungs.
Nick didn’t flinch. He didn’t blink an eye. He didn’t attempt to say a word. “Then stop, Candy cane, because this isn’t you, and none of that matters.”
It was easy for him to say. He was perfect. Everyone loved him. He fit in everywhere he went, whether it was the pub where he worked or Wall Street and everywhere in between. “I never wanted people to judge us. Me.” My voice was softer than it’d been all evening, but the words that floated in the air were also the most vulnerable I’d ever spoken. At least in a ridiculously long time.
“People’s opinions may be the very least important thing in the world. They don’t matter.” He shook his head, and what I would have given to run my hands through his hair that reminded me of shiny obsidian. “Don’t you see that?”
My teeth pulled on the corner of my lower lip. I heard him, and he was right, but it was so much more than that. “Maybe so. I just can’t take it anymore. I can’t worry about what other people think anymore, Nick. I’m sorry, but I just…can’t. Regardless, I want you to know that I heard you loud and clear at that dinner table, and if you want to leave me now, you can…” I told him cautiously. “I’ll be okay.” I didn’t want him to worry about me or feel like he needed to stay with me out of guilt. Even so, the sting from knowing he could walk away, before Christmas, would hurt, but it’d pass just like everything else did in this world.
“We had an arrangement,” Nick retorted, his voice stern, like he didn’t like the prospect of me reneging on it. “I’m not going anywhere, and you’re not getting rid of me just yet. And, for the record, I don’t care about the charity gala.” He brushed his fingers through my hair, the hairspray that was holding it together fracturing. He slipped the pins from my hair, slowly letting them fall to the floor one by one. “I only enjoy it because I see how happy it makes you to give back to the community.”
A smile flickered across his face, and I remembered. I remembered all of it, every last bit of it. This was what it was like to come completely undone at the hands of Nick Crane.
Hearing his words, feeling his touch, I could no longer ignore the way my body, my heart, reacted to my husband. I reached up and pulled him close, but it was what Nick did next that had visions of sugarplums dancing in my head.
Chapter 27
I’ll keep you warm
Nick
Candy melted into me, into the kiss, moaning against my lips as I busied myself tangling my hand in her hair. My other one stayed on her throat, never applying pressure, only remaining there, feeling her whimpers as much as I was hearing them. Her pulse quickened when I teased her tongue with mine.
She was warmth. She was comfort. She was mine.
And she was making my cock twitch uncomfortably in these pants that were restraining it. That didn’t stop me from taking my time, though. I wanted to taste my wife and savor every touch and noise from her.
Her impatient side was rearing its head as her hands framed my face, cupping me as she seemed to be losing control, spiraling out of it in a way that had me fighting back a laugh deep in my throat. She tangled her tongue with mine, deepening the kiss.
I moved my hands, holding them firmly on her hips as I guided her backward, into the great room. Her tongue was smooth against mine, leisurely swiping across it.
Fuck.
My dick hardened as she captured my bottom lip between her teeth. It was obviously premature, though, because then she bit me, and my mind spiraled.
I groaned, moving a hand to her jaw and angling her head.
Her hands snaked around me, her palms combing down my back, and I could feel the heat from her touch beneath my clothes. It was electrifying. She put her fake nails to good use, tracing them across my back. God, I wished I wasn’t wearing anything so that she could mark my back with her nails.
Better yet…
When we finally broke apart, I demanded, “Take it off.” I was as breathless as she was flushed, smiling up at me.
“I don’t know,” she teased, raking her teeth over her bottom lip before pulling on it in a way that had me wanting to replace her teeth with mine. “I could catch a chill.”
