Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86828 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86828 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
I had never been so shocked, panicked, and horny in all my life.
I didn’t think anything could come between my rampant need for Zane to move his finger an inch higher and his demand for me to remain quiet. Then a familiar Christmas greeting filled the air, and a jolly man in a big red suit appeared out of nowhere on the sidewalk next to the carriage.
I would have worn hot chocolate for the second time in a week if Zane hadn’t guzzled it down at the start of our romantic gallop through the main streets of Ravenshoe.
I’m returned to the land of the living when Zane checks that I’m out of the firing zone. “Ready?”
I inch back a little more before replying, “Ready.”
Zane doesn’t push the tree into my apartment. He crash-tackles it inside, his maneuver as effective as our revenge fuck.
I once thought revenge fucking was made up by people wanting to excuse the swiftness of their ability to move on, but I know it’s more than that now. It’s about acceptance more than anything and that it’s okay to admit when something isn’t working.
I would have preferred if Peter had done that in a better way than me walking in on him kissing Noelle’s neck while ringing her Christmas bell with his thumb, but he got the message across better than the multiple times I tried to walk on both our relationship and my job position the past two years.
“Grab the stand,” Zane requests, returning my focus to him.
“The stand…?” I breathe out slowly while peering at him in unease. “Would that be the stand we should have purchased with the tree?”
“It works.”
“It does,” I agree with Zane, smiling.
Since I haven’t had a real Christmas tree since leaving home, I didn’t have a stand to keep her hydrated until the New Year, so Zane improvised with a steel bucket and some bolts from the maintenance closet of my building.
It was a fix-it job most couples would fail even after years of wedded bliss, but Zane and I cruised through it without a single hiccup. We talked, flirted, and sang along to the corny Christmas carols thumping out of my neighbor’s apartment like this has been our tradition for years.
Today has been so different from my last three Christmases. I’m almost grateful I arrived twenty minutes early for my appointment with Noelle. Peter’s betrayal will always sting, but shouldn’t the guilt of that weigh solely on his shoulders? I didn’t do anything wrong, so why should I be shamed by his actions?
I shouldn’t, so I won’t.
“Are you happy with where she’s sitting?” Zane asks as he steps back from the tree. “My mother spends more time aligning her tree than she does picking out her next husband.”
He has joked about his mother’s constant quest for new love multiple times over the past few hours. I don’t think he realizes how often he brings it up, but it is clear it bothers him.
“The position is fine, but do you think we should spin her to face the other way?” I step toward the tree that is so curvy and beautiful she’s hogging the entire main window of the living room. “She has a massive scrape down her trunk from her dramatic entrance and is missing a limb.”
“I think she looks good as-is. Naturally perfect and free of any encumbrances.” I realize Zane is talking about me and not the tree when he whispers, “You’d have no clue she drank all the other elves under the table last night.”
When I toss a reel of switched-on Christmas lights at his chortling face, he uses the long strip to lasso me toward him.
The crash of our bodies leaves me as breathless as his handsome face the first time I saw him.
“Mm…” He breathes heavily against my lips like he did before he monopolized the hot chocolate we shared on the way back from the Christmas tree lot. He mumbled something about tasting my toothpaste on the lip of the lid before he polished off the last three-quarters of our shared beverage. “I’ll never again smell hot chocolate and mint and not get hard.”
“Then why are you all the way over there?” I tug him closer like there’s more than an inch of air between us. “Come closer. Smell more.”
His laugh rumbles through us both since we’re standing so close before he takes me up on my offer by dragging his nose across my lips.
When his impressively large appendage forces a gap back between us, excitement burns through me. My chocolatey breath made him hard, but instead of answering the silent pleas of his body like he teased during the carriage ride, he returns to the chivalrous stance he commenced last night.
“Why won’t you kiss me?” I ask, my voice almost a whine.
I’ve been dying for his lips on mine all day, but even with his flirty nature keeping me in a constant state of arousal, he’s yet to answer the numerous hints I’ve been tossing his way since breakfast.