Kissmas Wishes (Love In All Seasons 3)

I can’t help myself. I pull her to me, needing this. Her. Me. Us. I know she wants it -- she wouldn’t look at me like this if she didn’t.

My mouth crashes against hers. It’s been so long. So fucking long. And yet I’ve waited for her since the day I left.

It has always been her.

She whimpers, her body sinking against me. Her lips part, my tongue finds her and I hold her at the base of her neck, the small of her back, dragging her closer still.

I want the kiss to last forever. But it doesn’t -- she pulls away. Shock and desire swim in her eyes.

She’s scared.

Scared of this need clawing inside her; a need I know she’s never given into. But fuck, how I see her need. For me. A need only I can satisfy.

“I can’t,” she says, a whisper a heart beat, a lie. “Truman.”

“You love him?”

She gasps, covering her mouth, as if shocked by her own carnal need. “I think … I …” Then she blinks, fast, straightening her shoulders -- remembering herself -- her old self. The Holly that wasn’t just kissed.

“Did you want to see the things I found?” she finally says.

I look at her, knowing I’ll take my time if that’s what she wants, but praying to the God I know she still believes in that it won’t take long. I need Holly. I need her by my side. Through thick and thin. Forever.

I love her.

“Of course,” I say, stepping back. “Show me.”

We climb the stairs to the second floor, my eyes on her ass the entire time, and when she pushes open my old bedroom a flood of memories flash before my eyes. “Fuck, it’s been a long time.”

She turns to me, smiling -- hesitant, but hopeful. She remembers too. “I would lie in bed at night, imagining you in here,” she says pulling a cardboard box from the floor. “I would try to picture what you were doing. You were such a mystery.”

I smirk. “I was probably getting off thinking about you.”

Her eyes go wide. “Really?”

I laugh. “Holly, I lived here as a seventeen and eighteen-year-old teenager. I thought about sex every ten seconds. You were the only thing ever on my mind.”

Her cheeks go red, and to distract herself from what I’ve just said, she unpins her hair, unfurling the red braids. The strands catch the light in the room. She looks so damn beautiful.

“And now?” she asks, stepping toward me -- just when I thought she was bound to step away. “What do you think about at night?”

“You, Holly. It’s only ever been you.”

She looks up at me, her lips part and I can practically taste her wet pussy. I’ve been dreaming of it for so fucking long.

“The box,” she says, looking over her shoulder. “We should go through it.”

“Of course,” I say, stepping back, knowing she has always been timid, a little shy. Needing room to think things through.

We sit on the bed, the box between us, looking at a few old photographs, my yearbook, a pair of socks she knitted me, the crappy journal of mine where I wrote bad poetry. “Not much here.”

“I know, but … it’s something.” She reaches into the box. “Look, a mix-tape. Remember how you scoured thrift stores for old cassettes? You’d painstakingly record them.”

“And your father hated it. Said it was the devil’s music.”

“Well it was the 80s.” She laughs softly, resting her hand on my arm. “You were so nostalgic for a time you never even lived in.”

“I think I just always craved something more simple. My own life felt so complicated,” I tell her.

“Does it still?” she asks.

I shake my head. “No. Now it feels like all the puzzle pieces fit. All but one.”

She swallows hard, looks away. I know she’s thinking about Truman. Probably wondering how in the hell I fit in with her life. The silence kills me and finally I clear my throat, too many things unsaid.

“I don’t have much else. Thank you, for these,” I tell her. “It would have been easy to throw them away.”

“Where have you been?” she asks, getting to the heart of what we’ve been tiptoeing around.

“I went to school. College.”

“Really?”

I nod. “Yeah. And I didn’t want to come back until I knew I could--” The front door opens, stopping my words.

“Holly?” Fucking Truman. “You here, sweetheart?”

She swallows, looking torn. “I’m here,” she says.

Truman enters the room, looking me up and down. “I wasn’t expecting you to still be here,” he says.

I stand, taking the box from the bed. “Just about to leave.”

“I don’t want you to go,” Holly says.

Truman raises his eyes. “I thought this was going to be our night?”

“I didn’t know an old friend would be back home.”

I stiffen. Friend? Hell no, our kiss was not at all friendly.