Christmas Kisses

5. Christian

5

CHRISTIAN

H oly mother of God…

Brushed-out hair, a makeup-free face, and the tiniest towel in the history of towels make this an unfair fight. I should have demanded an increase in the astronomical fee Jimmy, my brother, usually charges for jobs like this while walking Mrs. Richler to the door.

I’m cocky as fuck and have the dick to back up my arrogance, but even he is down for the count while watching Angel’s prance across the living room floor.

My heart refuses to beat, fearing it’ll miss a single nanosecond of the spectacular show she’s putting on.

Angel is gorgeous clothed.

Out of them… fuck.

For the umpteenth time today, her curves have me wanting to backpedal on my plan to dominate Ravenshoe’s surging real estate market. This isn’t a good foundation for my brother’s infamous break-her-heart-and-watch-her-run-into-the-arms-of-the-closest-family-member ruse.

I should have gone with the neighbor-from-hell scheme. That was the plan until apartment 17A was sold for a record-setting price with no cooling-off period. Its sale increased the value of the apartments in this block by forty-three percent and tripled my eagerness to get this apartment into my name sooner rather than later.

Although I could have switched things up for the roommate-from-hell plot when Angel remained in the bathroom for almost an hour after Mrs. Richler left, my cock spoke before my head—as it is again now.

There are a hundred ways I can assist Mrs. Richler in removing Angel from the building’s occupancy register, but since this is the only one that will keep me in Angel’s presence long enough to work out why my cock suddenly has all the say in my business decisions, I act like my IQ isn’t as high as it is.

A singsong voice draws my focus from the risky flap of Angel’s towel.

“What was that?” I murmur, my tone hardened with lust.

Angel smiles like she knows the cause of my distraction before she murmurs, “The shower is free.”

I’d recently entered the apartment when Mrs. Richler called to announce that Angel was on her way up. I only had enough time to strip and wrap a towel around me. I could use a shower. I just can’t. Jimmy swears integrity is the quickest route to instalove. Since I need Angel head over heels in love with me in less than four days, I can’t call myself out as a liar from the get-go.

“Thanks, but I already showered. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” Angel stops prancing across the warped floorboards and then twists to face me. “Then what’s that horrid smell?”

Her nose twitches when she points it toward the kitchen and inhales a big whiff. She doesn’t seem bothered by the scent pluming from the half-full trash can. The same can’t be said when she enters the living room and flares her nostrils. She looks on the verge of being sick.

“Eww.”

Before checking the bottom of my shoes, I sniff my pits for the rancid scent responsible for her screwed-up face.

Both are free of encumbrances.

I don’t understand the source of her disgust, but I lose the chance to inquire when she asks, “What brand of aftershave do you wear? It smells like…”

She takes a moment to deliberate. Her verdict better include something of high monetary value since my aftershave costs over a thousand dollars a bottle.

I don’t get close to the reply I am seeking. “It smells like the toilet spray my grandfather used to cover up the aftermath of a Cancun Seafood Boil.”

I balk before sniffing myself again, attempting to discredit her claim.

Numerous whiffs produce the same results. I don’t understand a single gripe. I smell fresh. Luxurious. I’d even go as far as sexy. But again, since I have days to work my magic, I murmur, “I guess another shower wouldn’t hurt. It isn’t like this part of the world is on water restrictions.”

She gleams like my reply humors her before a stern mask slips over her beautiful face. “Wash your hair too. The plastic on the couch is to deter stains. It’ll do little for oil slicks.”

Ouch.

I should have stayed naked. She’s less picky when she struggles to veer her eyes from my abs.

While standing, I run my fingers through my thick mop, feigning my ego wasn’t scalded by her diss. “It was a long flight. Not everyone has the funds to buy a first-class ticket, and even if I did, not all planes have showers.” I flew first class, and my preferred airline has showers. I just can’t disclose that right now.

Guilt features on Angel’s face for half a second before she shrugs it off for nonchalance. “While you shower, I’ll order in. Is there anything in particular you’re craving?”

“You pick,” I reply, returning the ball to her court.

The more control she believes she has, the faster our exchange will move on to the skits Jimmy assures me is where the real magic happens.

Don’t ask me why, but my eyes drop to Angel’s tiny towel at the end of my sentence. I know why I’m looking. I just don’t want it explained to me since it will most likely see me wanting to sue myself—my thoughts have never been more corrupt.

Liaising with leaseholders sexually is not a part of my contracts. It specifically states that it is off the agenda during and after their tenancies. So why do I keep looking at Angel as if she is a snack I can’t wait to devour?

Because according to Mrs. Richler, Angel doesn’t have a lease.

Needing a moment to think, I jerk my head toward the kitchen. “My wallet is on the counter. I cashed a money order at the airport, so there are plenty of funds for dinner.”

This is part of the integrity I mentioned earlier. Giving her underhanded permission to snoop through my things announces that I have nothing to hide. It will lower her defenses and have her eating out of my pants in no time.

Palm . I meant to say palm.

“Okay. Great.” Angel twists to face me, her smile heart thumping. “Enjoy your shower.”

The purr of her last sentence raises my suspicion. It seems more uneased than genuine.

I guess that can be expected. Her Airbnb advertisement announces that she invites strangers into her home on a regular basis, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be a little apprehensive.

“Thanks. I won’t be long.”

“Take all the time you need. Just don’t forget to wash your hair. I don’t want to have to call Greenpeace.”

Laughing, I enter the hallway while working my belt through the loops of my trousers.

After I enter the bathroom, I guide my pants down my thighs while striving to gauge Angel’s response to my business attire. She doesn’t seem the type to dig a suit, but her cheeks were as flushed when she exited the bathroom as when I let her into her apartment in only a towel, so my theory could be a little awry.

As I twist the faucet, I recall how there were no pictures or knickknacks on the dining room buffet or the living area mantel. A lack of personal belongings usually announces severed ties between family members, but I don’t get spoiled, entitled brat vibes from Angel, so I doubt that is the case.

She appeared physically hurt when Mrs. Richler mentioned her mother rolling in her grave. She loved her mother. I just need to work out if that love extends to her father, and if so, where is he?

It’ll be impossible to push her into the arms of her loved ones if she doesn’t have anyone to lean on.

While stepping over the rim of the clawfoot tub, I take a mental note to bring up her father during dinner. Her whitening cheeks when Mrs. Richler mentioned her mother means I can’t direct my focus toward her anytime in the next twenty-four hours. I need to regain some of the ground I lost when I couldn’t help but ogle her tight body. Reminding her of what she has lost won’t do that.

Thank god I packed gray sweatpants. Even a trained undercover CIA agent would struggle to hide her interest when cock-hugging sweats are whipped out.

Once the water temperature is pleasant, I step under the spray. The bathroom is an adequate size but dated. None of the décor inside Angel’s apartment matches the extravagance of the foyer and numerous hallways, hence the lower price tag.

I plan to renovate and flip it, but I can’t put a penny into this project with a non-paying lodger. Not a single investor will drop millions on a crash pad they can’t use. That’s why, as much as Angel fascinates me, I have no choice but to move her on.

This is purely business. It isn’t personal.

I just need my dick to get the memo. He’s still aching over the image of her clothed, so I won’t mention his response when her semi-naked frame pops into my head.

With Angel’s comment about oily hair bruising my ego more than I care to admit, and needing to take the focus off my cock before I stroke one out in the shower while thinking of a practical stranger like a psycho, I snag a bottle of shampoo from the tub’s edge and pour a generous dollop into my palm.

It lathers well, but no matter how hard I strive to remove the suds my scrub caused from my in-need-of-a-trim hair, the situation worsens instead of improving.

“What the fuck?” I mumble to myself while tugging up the shower faucet, hopeful an increase in water pressure will thin the shampoo clogging every hole in my face and swamping my beard.

My eyes, nose, and mouth are inundated in seconds with ghastly-tasting shampoo. I’m practically inhaling it, and it tastes and smells disgusting.

With water offering no solution to the excess suds, I snag a towel off the hook outside the shower curtain and drag it over my face.

It removes the shampoo suds by replacing them with an itchy, wiry substance. It is as eager to cling to my skin as my gray sweatpants, and a handful of the tickly strands lodge into the back of my throat.

The way its wiry threads irritate my tonsils reminds me of the first time I went down on a woman. She was twelve years older than me and lacked basic maintenance skills.

My sixteen-year-old self didn’t think to check the depth of the wiry mess between her legs. I buried my face headfirst into a carpet of muff and almost mufficated myself.

Her pussy was hairier than my head, and she shed pubic hair like a Husky losing his winter coat. It took weeks to cough up the final hairball our one night beneath the sheets caused, and several more months for me to learn that that much pubic hair isn’t the norm.

She scarred me for life, and I’m suddenly fretful that I am about to be hit with another long absence of pussy-eating. The towel I used to clean the shampoo suds can’t dispute this.

Groaning, I pull the towel away from my face before slowly opening my burning eyes. It is covered with fine blonde hair that stand out against my burnt orange beard. They’re not curly like unkempt pubic hair, but there’s enough to announce their wiry wisp won’t leave the back of my throat anytime within the next week.

“No, God. Please. A woman as beautiful as Angel can’t have a hairy beaver. There should be laws against a travesty of that depth.”

When I lift my eyes to the mirror to assure myself that God wouldn’t be so cruel to the same man twice in his life, another shocking fact smacks into me.

My hair is yellow. It’s not a cute, I-spent-too-much-time-in-the-sun-during-summer yellow. I mean yellow like Big Bird and just as fluffy.

I snap my eyes from an empty bottle of peroxide on the vanity sink to my canary-yellow hair and back numerous times before the truth slaps me hard across the face.

Angel’s shampoo is tainted with peroxide.

Does that mean what I think it does?

Does Angel know my arrival at her apartment was staged?

Peroxide in shampoo is a ruse Jimmy has used numerous times in the past six years, so she could know.

Desperate to find out, I march out of the bathroom. I only make it two steps out before my campaign is ended by tiny knives being stabbed into my feet.

Whoever thought star-shaped Christmas lights would look cute on a tree should be shot. Those fuckers are sharp, and when left on the ground, they have no issue dropping a six-foot-three man to his knees like an overloaded Santa sack.

“Oh my goodness,” says a cutesy, ear-piercing voice from above.

Angel races to me like the blood oozing from my feet doesn’t give her home some of the Christmas charm it is missing.

“With how stinky you were, I wasn’t expecting you to finish showering so soon, so I thought I’d use the hallway to lay out the lights to make sure they’re functioning. You’re not meant to step on them, silly.” She gasps when her eyes shoot up to my hair. “What happened to your hair?” As quickly as surprise leaps onto her face, it is replaced with fake remorse. “Oh no. I should have told you not to use my shampoo. The peroxide bottle cracked when I dropped it earlier, so I used an empty shampoo container to store it in.” She fans her hands across her hips as she twists to face the bathroom. “I could have sworn I left it under the sink. It was right next to the wax strips I haven’t got around to using yet.” Her eyes are back on me, full of humor. “A cool change arrived out of nowhere weeks ago, so I thought, what the hell, you’re meant to wear a winter coat when it’s cold.”

“ Wear a winter coat.” I cough, certain I’m about to be asphyxiated by a rogue pubic hair. “You’re not meant to grow one.”

With a wave of her dainty hand, she pffts me. “Why wax a natural warmth that removes the chill anytime you get undressed?”

Before I can tell her personal hygiene isn’t optional, a doorbell buzzes.

Angel claps two times while bouncing from foot to foot.

She appears to be having the time of her life.

I don’t feel the same way.

“That’ll be dinner.” She darts down the hallway, dodging the landmines some fools call Christmas lights. “Be careful where you step. I don’t want you getting hurt so close to Christmas.” Her hair slaps her red cheek when she jackknifes back to face me. “How will you slide down the chimney feet first if they’re cut and bleeding?”

What the fuck is she talking about?

She can see I am confused, but she does nothing to ease it. With a smile as evil as it is beautiful, she exits the hallway with a spring in her step, leaving me to navigate World War III alone.