“Spill it, Cupcake.”
“Spill what?”
“Whatever it is that miraculously stopped your gums from flapping.” I pulled out the chair next to her, spun it around backward, and straddled it, leaning in close. “It’s not like you.”
Maddie finally smiled, and it lit up her whole damn face. I couldn’t stop staring at her freckles. I wanted to count them. To kiss them. To peel off her clothes and find out if she had freckles anywhere else.
“It’s just… okay,” she said, the spot between her eyebrows crinkling. “Christmas is, like,epicin my family. My parents go all out. Costumes. Decorations. Enough lights to drain the power grid, enough food to feed a small country, presents galore, caroling—”
“Caroling? As in, you all sit around the fireplace singing Christmas songs to each other?” I grinned. It was like something right out of one of those fucking Hallmark movies. “Do you do that thing with the popcorn on a thread, too?”
“Yes on the singing, no on the popcorn. Popcorn is one of the things I’m allergic to. Also, I hate needles.” She squeezed her eyes shut and did a full-bodied shiver. “Hate-hate-hate’em.”
I thought of the jagged white scar gouged into my right thigh. Hatchet wound, pre-wolf. I’d stitched myself up with a 1960s field kit and some duct tape in the middle of the Bolivian jungle after an opium kingpin’s bodyguard got the drop on me, icing two of my best men in the ensuing fight.
Guess I won’t be telling herthatstory tonight.
“Anyway,” she said, “even if the storm breaks,andthe phones come back online,andI can get a tow truck to come all the way out here, I’m already missing all the good stuff. And my sister and her family are leaving right after lunch tomorrow, so I might not even get to see my nieces and my new nephew, which is the whole reason I got the costume in the first place, and now I’m stuck here, and everything is…” She closed her eyes as the tears slipped out. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. It’s just… it’s been a tough couple of years. This year was supposed to be different.”
Fuck.What was I supposed to say to that? I had no idea how to make her feel better, or why I even cared all of sudden. All I knew was that for some stupid-ass reason, I was missing that kid-on-Christmas smile of hers something fierce, and the whole thing was about to make me wolf out.
“Hey.” I cupped her face in my big hands, wiping away the tears with my thumbs. “You’ll get there. I can’t promise you when, but if it’s in my power to do it, I’ll find a way.”
When she finally opened her eyes, she was smiling again, anddamnif it didn’t get me all twisted up inside.
“Thanks,” she said softly, curling her hands around my wrists. Her touch was electric, sending an instant message to my dick, which had been suspended in a state of perpetual hardness ever since she’d passed out in my arms. “You’re not half bad when you drop that whole brooding, bad-boy thing.”
The teakettle whistled, and I got up to brew the coffee, grateful for an excuse to put some distance between us. Another fifteen seconds up close like that, and I would’ve kissed her so hard it would’ve left a damn bruise.
“Brooding bad boy, huh?” I laughed. “Newsflash, Cupcake. It’s called my natural state. Don’t like it? There’s the door.”
Maddie finished up the nutrition bar in silence, then let out a sad little sigh.
“You know what?” she said. “I think I’ll wait on the coffee. Do you mind if I take a shower and change? I can’t seem to get warm.”
I could think of about ten different ways to get her warm, and Ireallydidn’t want her to change out of those hot little stockings, but I shelved those fantasies for later.
“Yeah, no problem. Bathroom’s upstairs, second door on the left. Try not to hog up all the hot water—the tank takes hours to refill.”
“Fine.” She got up from the table and unzipped the jacket I’d loaned her, revealing the tight, sparkly elf dress underneath. I was dying to know if those stockings went all the way up, or stopped at the tops of her thighs, leaving the tender curve of her ass exposed.
“You need any help getting out of that dress?” I asked. “It looks a little… tight.”
Maddie rolled her eyes. “I’ll be sure to let you know if I get stuck.”
“Hey,” I said with a wink. “Here to help.”
She draped the jacket over the back of the chair, then crossed the kitchen to the stove, where I was still messing with the teakettle.
“Thanks, Hawke.” She stood up on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to my cheek, her perfect tits brushing my arm. “For everything.”
My skin fuckingburnedwith the fire of that chaste kiss. I could only imagine what it would be like to have her whole mouth, to shove my hands into her hair and pull her close, slide my tongue between her glossy pink lips as she moaned my name.
She held my gaze for a beat, her eyes darkening with something that looked a hell of a lot like desire, and I wondered whether she’d felt it, too—the slow-burn heat simmering between us, my suddenneedto feel her skin, to taste her, to make her melt all over my cock.
But then she lowered her eyes and sighed, and I let it go. It was for the best. She didn’t need my kind of darkness in her life—not even for one night.
Maddie bit her lower lip, her cheeks heating with fresh color. “I should probably…”
“Yeah,” I said. “You probably should.”
I watched as she walked over to her suitcase by the door, her tight little ass bobbing beneath the poof of her ballerina dress like a pendulum, hypnotizing me with every step.
Fuck, it was gonna be a long night. And we hadn’t even discussed sleeping arrangements yet.
Deep inside, the wolf growled to life once more, the need to claim her rising to the surface. If I let him out, even for one fucking minute, she’d be done for.
I couldn’t let it happen. Not tonight. Not ever. Best to just keep things friendly and polite—no complications, no accidents. Let her shower in peace, then give her that coffee and maybe a hot meal, wish her a Merry Christmas, and fuck off to my bedroom alone, just like always.
