Hostile for the Holidays

26. Jasper

TWENTY-SIX

JASPER

“No one’s at my house.” Stella pulls my hand, urging me across the street. “Sadie and Tom are at the hotel. Daniel’s with Cady, and my parents, of all people, went downtown with some of the wedding guests.”

It feels like we’re teenagers sneaking around.

She opens the door to her house, then guides me upstairs, and I wonder if this is what it would have been like if we hadn’t been fighting all those years.

I lie on the bed waiting for Stella as she instructed, and try to imagine what her room looked like when we were younger. Currently it’s light gray walls and a white duvet. It’s exactly as she described—guest room number one. I can’t wait to see her place in New York. I can’t believe she asked me to move in with her. That might have been the Cognac talking but I’m hopeful she was serious, because I want to wake up next to her every day and fall asleep next to her every night.

Stella comes out of the bathroom. She’s wearing a fuzzy blue bath robe, and her face is now free of makeup. With no preamble, she crawls over me and straddles my lap.

“I love you,” she says, unbuckling my belt, and a moment later she’s got me in the palm of her hand. It’s only a few strokes before I’m impossibly hard and leaking at my tip.

I cup her jaw and pull her close. “And I love you.”

She parts her robe, and then I’m sinking inside her.

Her mouth parts on a gasp, and I groan at the feel of her tight walls clamping down around me.

Stella St. James loves me and she’s riding my cock so fucking well, I can’t believe my luck.

It doesn’t take much to send us both over the edge, and once I’ve cleaned her up, Stella stands at her window, looking out across the street at my parents’ house. I step in behind her, wrapping my arms around her and snuggling into her fuzzy robe.

“You know how much this pains me to say it, but your house is the official winner of the Whistler Lane holiday lights display contest this year.”

I smile against her neck.

“Don’t rub it in. You sabotaged my house with mediocre light installation.”

“It’s not a contest.”

“Actually, that’s exactly what it is.”

“Not for me.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, her eyebrows melting together in confusion. “It’s always been a contest. You’ve always put up an impressive display because you wanted it to be better than mine.”

“No. I knew how much you love Christmas lights so I wanted you to have the best display to look at.” I motion across the street to my house. “The light display is one thing, but really, anything I did, it was always for you, Stell.”

She turns to me and wraps her arms around my neck, her expression one of contemplation. “I feel like an idiot for not noticing what was between us.”

I shake my head. “You shouldn’t. I was good at making sure you didn’t know. It was my armor.”

She presses a soft kiss to my lips, then one to my jaw. “Well now I need to show you just how much I love you.”

“What did you have in mind, Sparky?” I ask, my hands dipping inside her robe to fondle her ass.

“I think you know, Snowflake.” She turns and pulls me back toward the bed where I peel off her robe.

There, under the glow of the Christmas lights shining through the window, we sink into each other. We let go of the past, and all the baggage from our old rivalry to ring in the new year exactly how I’ve always envisioned, in each other’s arms.