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“Not really.” She picked up his
arm and placed it on her lap. “I like to experiment, but I haven’t had a lot of practical application for most of my fantasies.”
“Me either.” Reaching down with his free hand, he pulled the condom off and wiped his groin. Megs had always hated watching him do this, complaining about how gross it was. Kim simply smiled and increased the pressure of the massage. “I guess it’s all about finding the right partner to experiment with.”
“That’s the truth.” Kim kept her gaze lowered, and her strokes came to a halt. “Do you think you’ll ever find the right partner? I mean, I know your marriage didn’t go so well. But in the three years I’ve known you, you haven’t talked about dating at all. You need to put yourself back out there.”
“It wasn’t something I was interested in.” Blake had made a point of keeping the details about his relationship with Megs out of Naughty Nicks. He’d wanted to keep the poisonous feelings that emerged whenever he thought about his ex-wife out of his head, and away from the one place that gave him peace. He knew Kim had picked up bits and pieces over her time with him, he’d given her a few tidbits of himself, but nothing big.
Maybe it was time to finally open up.
“You’ve been amazing to work with, Kim. I don’t think you realize how much I needed someone like you in my life after my divorce. You knew when to push me and when I needed you to back off, without me having to tell you, or needing to explain.”
“I didn’t do anything.” A blush rose across her cheeks. “I was just so excited to have a job. Especially such an awesome one.”
“It’s pretty hard to turn down Santa strippers.” He chuckled, before rolling onto his side. “Lie down with me.”
If she was surprised that he wasn’t running out the door, Kim didn’t show it. Instead she looked at him for a long moment before sliding into place. Blake braced his head against his hand, allowing himself to look down. It gave him the perfect view of her forearm and her tattooed script. Life’s a journey, not a destination.
“That first year after Megs left I was angry. She’d broken my heart at Christmas, which is a cold thing to do. But you came into my life when I needed you to and you eased the pain with amazing sex. That first-year anniversary was hard, but you made that better by making me laugh.” She started to speak, but he pressed a finger to her lips. “Let me finish. I appreciated you for that. The second year, I was distracted. I needed to figure out who I was again. I needed to decide what was important to me. You made that better by asking the right questions and offering sound advice.”
Kim’s eyes welled up with tears, but they didn’t spill from her eyes. She swallowed before sucking on her bottom lip. He leaned in and kissed the tip of her nose, then her eyebrow, before moving down to her cheek.
“This year I realized I was lonely. I’d been so busy being angry at her I hadn’t realized how much time and space that anger had taken. With those feelings gone, the one thing I truly missed was companionship. I’m not a guy who’s meant to be alone. I love having a woman around I can laugh with, tease, talk to. I hadn’t been looking forward to this Christmas because it would be yet another year where I’d be on my own, the odd man out at the family gathering.”
He’d been prepared to go down that road too. That was until he finally realized he didn’t have to.
“I know I’m too old for you—”
“Wait a minute.” Kim reached up and cupped his cheek. “Okay, yes, you’re a bit older than me—”
“Ten years older—”
“But it’s not like I’m a kid. I know what I want from life and I can figure out who I want to spend my time with. I happen to have a thing for older men. And it’s not like you’re ancient. You’re thirty-five—”
“Thirty-six.”
“Not eighty. And I’m not a teenager. We can figure this stuff out as we go, but it’s not a valid reason not to give things a try.”
He knew it wasn’t, though he suspected there would always be that small part of him that would worry. “I’ve wanted to try for a while now, but I think I was too chicken-shit to go for it.”
She reached for his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. This wasn’t the same as yesterday’s kiss beneath the mistletoe. That was full of curiosity and repressed desire. Now they knew what each other tasted like, how their bodies fit together naked. No, this kiss was something else, something more.
He closed his eyes and let everything be. He absorbed every vibe she was giving off. The gentle caress of her fingers in his hair and how it sent shivers down his back. How the comfort of her arms around him seemed the most natural thing in the world.
Kim wasn’t only a friend, an employee, a lover...she fit. She was the piece of the puzzle that had been missing for a long time now.
With a final swipe of her tongue against his, she broke the kiss. “The last time I said this, it kinda slipped out. So I want to say it again, without you being tied to the bed, without my brain being sex drunk. I love you. It crept up on me over the years, but it feels right. I love a lot about you, your humor and work ethic, but mostly just you.”
He’d started Naughty Nicks as a way to thumb his nose at his ex, but instead discovered his amazing naughty elf.
Kissing her once again, Blake smiled against her lips. “I love you too.”
The look of tentative hope was blasted away by her grin. “You do?”
“I think I must. I wouldn’t take stripping lessons from two cocky assholes, a gay man and a giant human-shaped dog two weeks before Christmas for just anyone.”
“Ryan’s not an asshole. He’s just stressed about work and finding the right apprenticeship for his next work term—” His kiss interrupted her explanation and earned him a slap to the shoulder. “Don’t do that.”
