CHAPTER ONE
Christmas can kiss my ass.
As I stalk down my upstairs hallway, my heart is beating out of my chest. It’s Christmas Eve, I’m freezing-fricking-cold in my little red plaid pajama shorts, and I’m starting to wonder if a replica medieval broadsword was the best form of self-defense I could have grabbed. Knowing my luck, I’ll swing and miss, and probably get the blade stuck in the wall. Great.
But the fucker is walking around downstairs, sneaking around in the dark, chuckling to himself, and rustling through the meagre pile of presents beneath my tree. I can’t just do nothing.
I’ve lived alone for five years, dealt with hitherto untold heaps of bullshit, but this is my first time getting burgled. And, incidentally, it’s going to be my first time murdering some dude with a sword.
“Fuck,” I whisper, tightening my grip around the hilt. Silver moonlight streams through the hallway window, lengthening my shadow as I creep closer toward the top of the stairs. What I lack in height, I make up for in thickness. I’m fairly confident that if I tackle the guy, I can sit on him until the cops show, but that’s only going to work if I can surprise him and knock him off balance. And if that doesn’t work, then he’s getting an ass-full of Mr. Stabbity.
Tiptoeing down the stairs, I’m just about blacking out from fear and stress. Waves of heat crash over me, my vision tilts and blurs.
I hate this.
Hate this asinine holiday. I hate that my parents named me Holly, so everyone just assumes I love Christmas. I hate the same sentimental movies shown every year, I hate jingle bells, I hate waking up on Christmas morning knowing I’m going to spend the day being asked why I’m still single at thirty-four. And most of all, I hate that I now feel unsafe in my own home.
Well, this guy is going to regret this night for the rest of his miserable life. All ten seconds he has left of it.
At the bottom of the stairs, I take a moment to steady my nerves. His footsteps are heavy and lumbering, thudding on my threadbare carpets. He sounds big and he isn’t going anywhere in a hurry.
Holy shit. Holy shit.
I remind myself that the bigger they are, the harder they fall. He isn’t expecting me, and that gives me something of an advantage. I hope.
God, I hope so.
I close my eyes and pull in a deep breath and hope it isn’t my last. My fingers curl tight around the leather-wrapped hilt of the blade. This is it. I’m going in.
“Fuck you, asshole!” I scream as I leap around the corner and into my living room.
My vision fills with blurring multi-colored fairy lights, sparkling tinsel, and the biggest man I’ve ever seen. I stop, frozen in place.
It isn’t his size that freezes me.
It isn’t the fact he seems to be adding presents to the small pile beneath my tree, or that he’s completely undaunted by me running at him with a replica sword.
No.
It’s the big red coat, the big black boots, the luxurious white plush of his beard. It’s the way his eyes rake over me, starting at my ankles, tracing the bare length of my legs, my thighs, and up and up until he reaches my eyes. My pajamas aren’t the most modest, but by the time he’s done with me, I feel stripped bare.
“Are…” I feel so ridiculous as I lower my blade. My chest is heaving. “You look like—You can’t be—”
He sets a box down beneath my tree, and turns to face me. He has to be at least seven feet tall, and so broad he would have to tuck in his big, bulky arms to get through the front door. A thick, dark grey eyebrow arches as he waits for me to regain some semblance of eloquence.
But I can’t finish my sentence. I can’t say what he looks like, because it’s absurd. He isn’t real. He can’t be real. Even as a kid I knew it was all pretend.
And yet…
I can’t take my eyes off him as he shoves one of his enormous hands into the pocket of his thick red coat and pulls out a scroll of paper. Not paper, parchment, like something a wizard would write on.
As if by magic it unfurls in his hands. He puts on a pair of half-moon, gold-rimmed glasses, and peers at me above them. My breath catches, and the gentle, barely perceptible tingles in my belly begin to roll through me. Specifically, downwards.
God, he’s a stern Christmas daddy.
“Holly?” His voice is deep, but soft and gentle.
“Yeah?” I reply.
He frowns. “Holly Parson?”
“No…” This isn’t happening. This is not happening! “Holly Pearson.”
“Ah, shoot. Wrong house.”
Laughter bursts from me. I let my sword rest against the wall and take a nervous step toward him. “Are you—? Are you really Santa?”
“Yes.” There’s a darkness in his voice now. The softness is gone, replaced by something more primal. He smells manly; like smoke, leather, and wood shavings.
I’m certain he hasn’t climbed down my chimney, because the flue for my wood burning stove is only about seven inches in diameter. I attempt to collect myself. “You’re real?”
His moustache quirks as he smiles and pats his broad, thick torso, as if making sure he has a solid form. “Last I checked.”
My head is swimming. Not only is Santa real, not only is he casually standing in my living room after I charged at him wielding a sword… he’s also HOT. He has an accent I can’t place, sort of European but not like anything I’ve heard before. All I know is that I dig it.
His eyes meet mine, and I can’t turn away. They’re absurdly vivid sapphire blue, the same blue as a crisp winter night sky. I’ve never seen eyes like them. His nose is quite large and he has a definite kink in the middle, as though it has been broken and reset slightly wrong. I’d always thought Santa was supposed to be a jolly old man, but he doesn’t appear to be old or jolly at all, other than the big white beard and the soft curls of white hair beneath his hat. But he doesn’t look young either. He’s sort of… ageless, I guess. In any case, he’s gorgeous.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice just a throaty whisper. “I must have got the addresses mixed up. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Hmm?”
Shit. I snap back to the room and realize I was staring at him with full-blown heart eyes. Turning back toward the tree, I try to regroup. A small pile of presents, perfectly wrapped in immaculate red wrapping paper and topped with golden bows, lie by my feet. They’re easy to distinguish from my lumpy silver snowflake paper wrapped monstrosities. Each one of his gifts bears a golden tag, with the neatly written words, To Holly, Merry Christmas, from Santa.
For a moment, my heart flutters, but then I remember I’m the wrong Holly.
“I doubt you’d really want them anyway,” he chuckles, as though he can read my mind. “The other Holly is five years old, and she’s only interested in ponies and pots of slime that make farty noises when you poke them.”
“Farty noises?”
“Apparently so. But she’s a good kid, and I should get these gifts to her.”
He kneels down and begins picking up the presents, placing them carefully in a big brown sack next to him.
“Oh my god,” I hear myself whisper, even as I tell myself to chill. “Is that the sack?”
Another chuckle, another glance from his twinkling blue eyes, another round of flutters heading south. The apples of his cheeks grow rosy.
“Let me help,” I say, dropping to my knees beside him.
“Thank you. This mishap has left me pretty far behind schedule.”
“Can you catch up?”
His eyes narrow as he calculates something. “I’m about fifteen thousand houses behind.”
“Fifteen thousand?”
He shrugs a massive shoulder and tightens the string fastening the sack. Of course, his arms and shoulders are big and strong. They have to be to lug that huge sack of toys around. “I’ll catch up. It’s no problem. This isn’t my first rodeo.”
He’s so confident, so self-assured, and I can’t help but to wonder what it would be like—and I can’t believe I’m actually thinking this—to fuck Santa Claus. And I want to, I realize. Desperately. I never wish for anything at Christmas anymore, but now, beneath my tree, I find myself wishing hard.
A longing breath leaves his lips as though he hears my thoughts. Can he read my mind?
“Look,” he says, pulling himself to his feet with a strained groan. I stay on my knees in front of him, watching his cheeks redden. “I’m going to be honest with you. I know exactly what you want. Knowing your desires is one of my abilities.”
Shit. Now it’s my turn to blush. And just like that, my treacherous brain switches from vague wishes, to full-blown vivid fantasies. God, I want to straddle those wide hips, feel him thrust up into me, filling me. I want him. I need him. My pussy tingles and tightens, and I know I’m getting wet, kneeling before Santa Claus in front of my Christmas tree.
Ugh. Fuck this holiday, seriously. And also, hopefully, literally.
His big, broad chest swells above me, and his lips part beneath the soft, snowy mass of his beard.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my voice thick and husky with desire. “I can’t help thinking about it.”
“I know. And I can’t help but listen. I know you’d probably much rather keep those thoughts private, but I can’t just turn it off.”
But I don’t want him to stop hearing me. I kind of like letting him know how sexy he is, and how much I desire him. And from the bulge swelling beneath the hem of his coat, I guess he likes it.
He sighs a little. “I’m sorry, Holly. I have to go.”
Offering me a big, strong hand, he helps me up from the floor. Now that I’m standing, I’m sure he’s shrunk a little. Though still tall, he’s not quite as huge as he was before. He’s just the right height for me to kiss if I was to stand on my tiptoes.
His eyebrows bunch as he effortlessly slings the cumbersome sack over his shoulder. “Are you… do you have plans tomorrow?”
“Um… yeah kinda. It’s Christmas Day,” I chuckle.
“Ah, yes. I forgot about that.”
“You forgot Christmas Day?”
He laughs, a deep laugh which shakes his chest and belly. “I suppose I did. I’m more of a Christmas Eve kind of guy. And, in my defense, my head is currently filled with very unfestive thoughts. And believe me, not all of them are yours.”
The desire to press myself against him buffets against my back, and I have to fight not to step toward him. I want him. I want all that man between my thighs.
“I should be home around six,” I say.
He nods and pulls his bottom lip between his teeth. “I’ll be here. If you still want me, that is.”
“I will. I know I will.”
He smiles. “Until tomorrow then.”
It’s driving me crazy. I just want a taste, just enough to get me through Christmas Day. I want him to kiss me, to take me now. Pull aside the flimsy crotch of my shorts and bend me over the couch.
There’s an urgency in his eyes, a beastly hunger sending color flooding across his cheeks. As if in response my entire body floods with heat and I can’t bear it anymore. I know he knows what I’m thinking; I desperately want Santa Claus to fuck me, take me, absolutely obliterate me.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he reaches out, and brushes one of his big, warm hands through my sleep-tousled hair, before letting it drift down to firmly grip my chin.
“I’ll be back for you,” he says, teasing the plump pillow of my lower lip with his thumb. “And when I do, I’ll make sure the wait is worth it.”
This… should be weird, but it doesn’t feel wrong. It feels oh so right.
I want to suck his thumb into my mouth, tease it with my tongue and teeth, let him know what I intend to do to him tomorrow. He turns me on like no one I’ve ever met before. My nipples ache with the need to be touched, and my pussy pulses with the desire to have him.
“In good time,” he tells me. He closes the space between us with a step, pressing his big body against mine.
Fuck, I’m so horny I’m lightheaded.
“Tomorrow, I’ll give you everything you want, but tonight, I have a job to do. If I give in now, I don’t think my whole team of reindeer could pull me away from you. And there will be a lot of very upset children tomorrow.”
I nod. “I know.” In fact, I know that sadness all too well.
A shudder of breath escapes me as he pulls away his hand, and I immediately miss the sensation of his touch, the warmth of his body.
There’s agony in his eyes as he turns and heads toward the wood burning stove in the torn-out fireplace. “If I come back here tomorrow, and you have second thoughts, tell me and I’ll go. I won’t try to change your mind. But if you want me, then I’ll be here, and you’ll get everything you’ve ever wanted.”
The thought of fucking someone who knows my every wish and desire makes my stomach flutter. Christmas Day always drags, but getting through tomorrow while waiting for him to come back will be absolute torture.
“I’ll make it worth the wait, Holly,” he smiles, as he stomps over to the stove. “And while you’re touching yourself tonight, I want you to think of me.”
The groan of the woodburner’s iron door masks the sound of my breathless whimper. With a smirk he places one boot among the embers and I start to wonder if we’ve both completely lost our minds. But even as I begin to doubt, he disappears in a flash of brilliant white light. Silver snowflakes dust the top of the stove.
He’s gone, but the heat raging through my body isn’t. I stand there until the snowflakes melt, and though the logical, no-fun part of my brain tells me this can’t actually be happening, my body remembers his presence all too vividly.
I lie in bed later that night, thoughts of him running through my mind. I’m too excited to sleep, and far, far too horny.
Every year since I was four, I’ve hated Christmas, but I know tomorrow will be different. Because tomorrow, I’m going to fuck Santa Claus.
OUT NOVEMBER 3RD
Marie Lipscomb 