I bend, tasting her, proving myself right—that she’s sweeter than frosting.
Lost to sensation, Audrey braces her heels on the table, lowering her knees, allowing me better access to feast.
In seconds, her earlier amusement is replaced with whimpers of need, then moans of urgency as I press my tongue deeper, savoring longer.
“Jack.” The word breaks from her, wrecked and pleading.
I kiss my way back up her trembling body, leaving a trail of lust and sugar smeared across her belly. Her hands drag at me, pulling me closer until I’m braced between her thighs.
She’s wild, radiant, spread out like temptation itself. The woman who has no time for nonsense but relishes holiday décor. Whose work ethic could rival a Fortune 500 CEO’s but who laughed through today’s failure. A woman who—most thankful of all—has stopped pretending she isn’t affected by this thing between us. This need.
My forehead drops to hers. “Audrey?—”
“Now.” The whisper is soft and urgent.
And God help me, making quick, yet sticky work of my belt and zipper, I’m right there, poised at her entrance, the world collapsing to sugar, steel, and the woman spread out beneath me like the sweetest sin.
Audrey
“Please, Jack—just… inside me.”
The words tear out of me, raw and desperate, like I’ve been holding them back since that first kiss under the tree. No—longer than that. Probably since he put his hand in my till box at the Christmas tree lighting and saved Skippy and me from feline annihilation.
“Protection?”
“I’m good.” I turn my head, licking frosting off his wrist where it braces beside my head. “And I’m on birth control.” I catch his eyes. “You?”
“Yes.” He drops his head. “Totally good. Promise.”
I reach down, wrap my hand around him—thick and hard and throbbing. “Now.” I touch the tip to my entrance and shiver.
“Fuck.” With one hard thrust, he’s inside me, stretching, filling, claiming, until my head tips back against the stainless steel and a broken sound escapes my throat.
“Yes,” I breathe, clutching his shoulders. “Yes, yes?—”
He groans, forehead pressed to mine, pushing deeper until the world blurs to sugar and heat, and everything else falls away.
I’m not thinking about margins. Or how closing the bakery this afternoon might cost me six dozen whoopiepies’ worth of sales or whether losing the Gingerbread Showcase was a PR misfire. For once, I’m not running a cost–benefit analysis on my own heart.
I couldn’t if I wanted to. Because he starts to move.
Each thrust rocks the table beneath us, steel squeaking against tile. My legs lock tighter around his hips, dragging him closer, urging him harder. A forgotten pan crashes to the floor, a bowl falls to the ground, making lazy circles on the floor, and my ass slides over a slick of icing.
We laugh, then moan—breathless, gasping, greedy. His mouth finds mine again, hungry, claiming, tasting like cinnamon and trouble. I arch into him, sticky and undone, choosing this—choosing him—over the safe, tidy spreadsheet of what my life is “supposed” to look like.
He grabs the edge of the table above me. Metal bites his knuckles as he braces, as if he’s anchoring both of us to this exact second. The angle shifts—deeper, sharper. My nails rake down his back. “God, Jack—don’t stop?—”
His other hand slides between us, fingers circling my clit. Teasing. Tapping. Circling. Pinching.
White-hot pleasure explodes low in my belly, building fast, sharp, unstoppable—my hips bucking as the orgasm tears through me, electric and inevitable, leaving me shaking and smeared in sugar like I’ve been blessed by the patron saint of bad but good decisions.
Jack thrusts once more, stilling on a groan that echoes around us, his breath hot against my neck, his body heavy and perfect.
The refrigerator humming and the tiniest jingle from a renegade cookie cutter settling under the table are the onlythings tethering me to reality as the heat of him pulses inside me.
Then a lazy drip of frosting slides off the cart’s edge onto the table beside me with a plop.
I giggle, both of us moaning with how my muscle contracts around him as I do.
