How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas

I would sit halfway around the world with my own headset, sitting on some shitty chair in a green zone in the middle of the night, and play her, just so I could hear her voice for an hour.

“You want a drink?” she asked. “There’s beer in the fridge.”

“I’m all right,” he said. “Open your present.”

She opened the Tupperware and dumped the salad in a bowl. Checked the chicken potpie in the oven.

“You said I could yell at you.”

“While you open it.”

I shoved the box closer to her but she continued to ignore it and made herself another gin and tonic. A stiff one. The dead lime wedges from her previous drinks floating up from the bottom. Her face was stiff and I knew she was biting her tongue.

“Say it,” I said.

She glared at me with so much heat. And I knew it was anger and she was right to be angry, but I also knew that underneath that anger she was wet for me. Just like I was hard for her. And I refused, refused to give in to it. But the longer she stared at me the harder it was to resist putting my hands on her. Sliding my fingers right into those shorts.

She swallowed like she was thinking the same damn thing.

“Just…say it,” I said.

“We’re not friends anymore,” she said. I took the body blow and nodded. “I don’t like you.”

That wasn’t totally true and I smiled, just a little, because I couldn’t help it. Because she was mad and I was crazy for her when she was mad at me.

“Fuck you!” she snapped and stepped away from the kitchen island to walk past me toward the door, which she undoubtedly meant to throw open so she could kick me out. And…it happened again. My body, coiled and still and waiting, moved into action without my conscious thought. Without my brain processing the moment and commanding my body into motion, I was suddenly moving.

I put my hands on her, her elbows, and I spun her, rough, yeah, but not mean. Not hard. I heard the pull of her breath as I pressed her stomach into the island. I stepped up behind her, her body tiny against mine.

I was doing this. This was happening. Just like the other night. I was in the moment before my brain could even process the moment.

“You don’t like me,” I said into her ear, her hair brushing against my face, tiny little burns against my skin. I was hot in my coveralls, but they were protection against the heat of her. The feel of her.

“I don’t,” she said. So stiff against me. I felt myself smiling. The action before the thought. This wasn’t safe. Everything could go sideways at any minute.

But I couldn’t stop.

“But you like this,” I said and slid my hand over the tender, sweet skin of her stomach, just above the waistband of those tiny, tiny shorts. “Don’t you.”

“No.” Her voice was barely a breath and I could feel her tremble between my hand and my body.

“What will happen…?” I asked, my mouth at her ear, my teeth grazing her earlobe. She tasted like coconut shampoo and sweat. I wanted to eat her with a spoon. I wanted to strip her naked and feast on her skin, on her sweat, and every damp and delicious place on her body. And I wanted to do it for days. Years.

To make up for every second I’d been hungry for her over the years. To stock up for the lean years ahead when the taste of her was just a memory. “What will happen if I slip my hand…”

I put my palm over her pussy. Cupping the heat of her in my hand. I lifted and she was up on her toes, her ass pushed hard against my crotch. I groaned. And she made a sound in her throat. A moan she was swallowing.

“I want that sound,” I said and put my mouth against her neck.

“Sam,” she breathed.

“Give it to me.” I squeezed her in my hand and the sound she made, that whimper/cry, that she swallowed. That she didn’t want me to hear. “Or I can leave.”

She was silent. So still. Waiting. And man, there was nothing I had respect for like waiting. Like stillness.

“Do you want me to leave?” I asked.

“Fuck you.”

Yeah. I’d ruined everything. Even another chance at having her like this. I closed my eyes and stepped away, my hand trailing from her body, and at the last possible second she grabbed me. My wrist in her strong grip.

“Don’t—” She didn’t finish the sentence.

“Don’t what?”

Stop? Leave? Go? Stay? I had no idea what she was going to say. I held my breath. Waiting. Always, always waiting.

9

“Don’t stop,” she breathed and it was the gun at the start of a race. I was on her. I put one hand on her back, pressing her down on that island. Her ass, her perfect, perfect ass, peeking out from beneath that tiny tease of a pair of shorts. I unzipped my coveralls, letting them hang at my waist. The T-shirt I wore under it sweated through. I was so hot, so on fire for her, I was going to burn through my clothes.