Authors: Delphine Dryden
Karl seemed to consider this for a moment, looking at her as though she were a puzzle to solve. Which, quite possibly, she was. “Do you want your virtue to be safe with me?”
“I don’t know,” Elyce admitted. “That’s why it’s distracting.”
Tentatively, as if he almost expected to be slapped, Karl leaned forward, pressing his lips to hers so gently she could hardly feel it.
It was Elyce who deepened the kiss this time, bending into Karl’s space, lifting her hands to his shoulders.
The blanket slipped down when her arms moved, and as one they reached to pul it back up around them. And then stopped, caught in one another’s questioning gaze, no longer able to pretend that if they proceeded, it was not a premeditated act. The heat of passion, though not completely absent, couldn’t excuse this.
Al too aware, they looked for that moment and then kissed again, neither knowing who had moved first.
* * * * *
The cold final y drove them back inside after another half hour or so, their noses nipped red by the chil and their toes beginning to go numb despite the thermal layers, the heavy boots and the blanket. Their body heat was not shared as efficiently as it might have been, since al their clothing had remained on their bodies.
It had been thirty minutes of no conversation, or at least no conversation with words. But they had built an entire silent world between them, there in their little cocoon, and Elyce felt a splash of something like culture shock upon rejoining the rest of the family with their boisterous noisiness. They were al laughing and talking and communicating quite openly and loudly as the children begged for just a few more minutes to enjoy their single night-before presents. Too used to such pleas, the parents and grandparents coldheartedly sent the older children to their loft, and little Alicia to her cot in her parents’ room down the hal , with stern admonishments not to show their faces in the great room again until the official approval was given to do so the next morning.
“You used to keep us waiting for
hours
on the stairs every Christmas morning, while you made coffee and messed around trying to get the flash on the camera to work,” Karl reminisced to his father. Bil Nash picked up a sleek digital from the end table nearest him, turned it on with one practiced hand and snapped a photo of his son.
“I have no idea what you mean, boy,” the elder Nash said with a wide grin Elyce recognized clearly. She had seen it as often on Karl’s face as she had seen his mother’s smirk. “It was never hours. It just seemed like a long time because you wanted to come downstairs and see what Santa brought you. Which probably should’ve been coals and switches, for being so impatient.”
“That is not the camera you had back then, Dad.”
“I just keep our kids waiting because of the power trip,”
Scott contributed with a perfectly straight delivery. He had sprawled across the hearthrug, and his words were slightly muffled because his head was resting on his folded arms.
“Just as I suspected,” Karl said. He held up Elyce’s eggnog mug, which he had retrieved from the kitchen where he’d taken it after she made her hasty exit. “Do you want a refil ? I’m getting some.”
“Yes, please, just a little. No more ice cream.”
“You sure you want that cold eggnog?” Wil asked from his seat on the floor next to the lavish, glittering tree. He was systematical y picking up each of his gifts and shaking them careful y, just as he had done every Christmas Eve that Elyce had known him. “You might do better with some hot chocolate to warm you back up. It gets pretty cold out in that ski shack.”
“Wil !” Emily nudged him with her toe in passing. “Just ignore him, Elyce. I always do.”
“Love you too, Sis,” Wil said with a grin.
Elyce smiled beatifical y. “Ignore who?”
“Exactly.”
Emily sat down beside Elyce on the couch and appropriated a corner of the blanket, holding her own glass of eggnog cupped in both hands. When Karl returned to find his spot usurped by his sister, he took the other side with an affable shrug, sandwiching Elyce between Nashes.
“I miss opening one present the night before,” Emily said after a moment or two of companionable silence while eggnog was sipped and enjoyed. “Now that we’re grown up we don’t get to do it…it doesn’t seem fair.”
“I never got to,” Elyce reminded her.
“Do you want to open one now? You could, you know.”
Elyce thought about it, smiling at the idea. “No. But thanks. I think I’l stick to waiting it out with the rest of the grownups.”
“Good decision. If you’d opted to open a present, you might have also had to sit at the kids’ table for dinner tomorrow night. Karl, you’re awful y quiet over there. Are you stil awake?”
“Barely.” Karl knocked back the last few gulps of his eggnog, finishing with a happy sigh. “I think I’m going to turn in, actual y. Elyce, are you coming? Or are you stil thinking of sleeping down here, away from the snoring? It’s real y just because you like the idea of sleeping by the Christmas tree, isn’t it? You think you’l catch Santa.”
She looked at him, at the open offer he was presenting her, the easy way out if she wanted to take it. Being given the choice made her decision simpler, though she knew the outcome would be far from simple.
“No, Santa’s not real y my type. I guess I’l come up with you.”
And she did, folding the blanket in her arms to give her hands something to do, waiting by the couch while Karl returned the eggnog cups to the kitchen and rinsed them.
And then he was back, holding out a hand to her, and in the split second before she reached to take it, she saw a flash of vulnerability in his eyes that she thought probably mirrored her own.
She gave his fingers a reassuring squeeze as she twined hers through them, then bid a fond good night and
“merry Christmas” to al assembled before letting Karl lead the way to the stairs.
* * * * *
It was, at first, as if the previous two nights had never happened, as if they had been apart those ful eleven months and had entirely forgotten the feel of one another’s bodies. Slowly and so careful y, Karl undressed her, stroking each inch of flesh he revealed before bending to press his lips where his fingers had been. Not against the wal this time but lying in the bed, snuggled down under the covers, with one garment after another tossed out of the nest as they worked their way down through the layers, entwining their bodies closer and closer.
Elyce felt almost like a teenager, necking and petting, drugged with kissing as though nothing else in the world existed but lips and hands and arousal, advancing cautiously through the steps of a strange new ritual whose end was shrouded in a certain amount of healthy mystery.
Then Karl’s long fingers found her face, cupped her cheek as he kissed her, and a sense memory of his kissing her like that flooded over Elyce. At their wedding he had held her face the same way, paused that same second a few inches away before final y closing the distance between them.
And now, as then, Elyce had felt a bit embarrassed that her instant response to his loving, tender gesture was a raw surge of need and want.
She slipped one long leg over Karl’s hip, hooking her foot around to pul him closer and kissing him back more greedily than she’d intended. Karl pul ed away a little, not giving her the intensity she suddenly craved, only nibbling gently at her lips. He resisted her efforts to draw him in, skirted around the edges of passion, but managed to inflame her even further with his courtly restraint than he would have had he used a more direct approach. It was maddening, but Elyce also realized there was a certain luxury in it, in kissing deliberately, and not as though they couldn’t help themselves. It was different from the two previous nights the way a choice was different from an accident, the way a hard-earned achievement is different from a windfal . They were doing this on purpose, and the feeling of intent added an indefinable but undeniably delicious flavor to the proceedings.
Karl skimmed one of her breasts with a featherlight touch, and Elyce could feel an electric snap of desire as his palm crossed her nipple and the flesh tightened beneath his hand. He continued down, slipping his fingers neatly under the hip strap of her underwear, the only thing she was stil wearing, and then let them rest there while she anticipated where he might move next. After an agonizing few moments, unable to hold back, she made a move of her own, stroking downward from his chest, lingering briefly to play with the narrow stripe of hair that bisected his torso and ending with her fingertips just grazing the spot where the hair thickened.
Karl groaned into her mouth and she distanced her lips from his just enough to shush him, giggling. His eyes opened, blinking drowsily, heavy not with sleep but with passion, and he glanced over Elyce’s shoulder toward the door as if the children might come through it that very second. For a moment he seemed about to say something, but then he shook his head and resumed kissing Elyce.
She pul ed away again, curious.
“What were you about to say?”
“Nothing,” he whispered.
“Nobody ever says that unless they mean ‘there actual y is something, but I don’t want to tel you’.”
Karl smiled, brushing his lips against hers, humoring her. “Okay, then. I just don’t want to tel you. Not right now. I’l tel you sometime.”
“That’s almost worse than not tel ing me.”
“But only
almost
worse, right?”
He didn’t let her answer, but occupied her mouth otherwise until she forgot about the lingering question, forgot about everything else. Elyce shuddered delicately as she tried to restrain herself, keep to Karl’s pace while her body clamored for more. She wanted to plead for more, harder, faster…but some part of her brain was stil aware enough to know that to go harder and faster would actual y be less satisfying than whatever lay at the end of this slow torture.
She resumed the lazy motions of her fingers, tickling her way through the wiry curls that bordered her ultimate destination, and smiled when she felt a muscular twitch against the back of her hand. Giving in to temptation, she reached around and circled her fingers over Karl’s erection, savoring the softness of the skin that slid so smoothly across the stiffened flesh beneath. Her hand was cool and he winced slightly at the shock, but then pushed into her touch with another eager noise, quieter this time.
She played for a while, recal ing his reactions as she saw them, changing the strength of her grip and the speed of her strokes to see if she could stil anticipate what he would do in response. Within a few minutes he was breathing heavily and when he captured her mouth again, there was more impatience behind it.
Elyce made up her mind quickly and moved without warning, ducking under the covers and scooting down to kneel between Karl’s knees, taking his length into her mouth before he could offer any resistance. She heard his weak protest but just kept moving, flicking her tongue across the spongy tip of his cock and then licking roughly over his frenulum, relishing the flex of his hips and tightening of his abdomen that always fol owed when she hit just the right spot in just the right way.
A sudden rush of cold hit her head and shoulders. He had thrown the blanket back, the better to watch her, and she raised her eyes to his boldly, swal owing as much of him as she could and then drawing back up, enjoying the look on his face as he squeezed his eyes shut and whispered a curse. He was already close, she realized, and trying to hold back.
Reluctantly, she slid her mouth free and cupped both hands around the wet skin she’d exposed. “Yes or no?”
After a strangled first attempt, and an embarrassed throat-clearing, Karl whispered a ragged, “No…” With a surge of resolve, he lowered his hands to hers and tugged on them, pul ing her up to lie on top of him and slipping both hands beneath the silk of her panties to cup her buttocks and press her closer. He rol ed them over to their sides with ease and nudged Elyce’s knees apart with his own, moving one hand from her rear to the warm space between her thighs. When she shifted as if to remove her underwear, he stopped her with a lascivious smile.
“Don’t. I like them on.” And he shifted his hand again, covering her sex over the silk, pressing with his fingers against the hot moistness she knew he could feel even through the fabric. “It reminds me of high school.”
“I was just thinking that same thing earlier…”
“Mmm…” He had found her nipple with his lips and gave a firm suck, drawing a soft cry from Elyce as the pleasure resonated between her breast and her pussy, where Karl had started rubbing subtle circles over the silk of her panties. Now and then he dipped his fingers toward the elastic at the edge of the fabric, but never pul ed the material aside. She wanted him to, badly, wanted to reach down and do it herself. But again she stopped herself, knowing that the teasing would only make it better in the end, and wanting this strange middle ground they seemed to have found to last as long as possible.
“If I’d known you in high school, would you have let me do this?” Karl asked suddenly, flexing his hand against her as if she might not have already known what he meant by