Santa’s Mistletoe Playbook

Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

B ea sat on the sagging black couch. For the first time since he’d met her, she actually looked small. Normally, her personality filled the kitchen, a tornado of sweetness and dark wit, not unlike the cocoa nib truffles she was famous for. She also looked guilty. That was not okay. Bea would steal your streaming service password or your last clean cutting board with a smile and dare you to get her back.

God, he loved her so much his chest hurt.

“I’m an idiot. A shallow, sex-starved idiot.”

Why’d she have to open with sex-starved?

“Neal is the shallow one. If he’d had enough brains to fill a teaspoon, he would have been your loyal partner—and begged you to be his girlfriend. Why’d he pick Jasmine? Because she’s a size six.”

The remote landed on his knee with the force of a missile. “Ow!”

“You’re not helping!”

“I am pointing out how dumb he is!”

“I’m the dumb one! Look at me! How could I think that he… That I could ever…”

“Stop that! Shut up, Beatrice Kyung Miller! You are the most beautiful, talented…” He stopped.

Bea was giving him a look that he didn’t recognize. Disgust? Disbelief? “Hrm. You get the picture. You’re freaking awesome.”

“I thought he liked me. And he was using me. I even… I sort of thought he might be.”

“But you’re nice, and you give people a chance.”

“I’m nice, sure, and I wanted to prove that hot guys can like fat girls.”

Curtis pulled at his hair to keep from putting his hands on her hips and yanking her from the couch and into his arms. “Did it like… escape your notice that you are a hot girl?”

Bea made a sound like a lightning strike, a burst of harsh laughter. “Excuse me?”

“You. You are a hot chick. Ah! No talking back.” He held up his hand and looked at her, taking a long breath in. Be factual. Not a hormone bomb. “You’re stupidly hot. You are nothing but curves and cute. And you have a dirty mind and a dirtier mouth, and any guy with a brain and eyeballs would beg you to be his girl. Okay?”

“But Neal?—”

“Has two eyes, we can see that. It must mean he has no brain. He’s shallow. He picked Jasmine based on his idea that a thin girl would be a better choice—why? Sheer robot brain. He looked at her and thought that her size made her beautiful instead of looking at you and going, ‘Hot damn, I want that girl to be mine.’”

Bea swallowed several times, head cocking. “Hey. Um. Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“You have eyes. And a brain. And you think I’m hot?”

Oh, shit. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. When she just stared, he nodded harder, feeling his hair shake into his eyes from the force of it. He pushed his hair back and swallowed. “Yeah. I do.”

Another strange look. A staring match. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Like what? ‘Please, please, please let me out of the friend zone because I’m secretly madly in love with you’? You’d laugh at me. I know I’m just the ‘tall candy cane’ bestie who gets stuff off the top shelf. I don’t have big muscles. I don’t have the cool hair. I’m a foodie nerd with pictures of Alton Brown in his bedroom, who wants to honeymoon at Hershey Park.”

For a minute, he thought Bea was about to curse him out. Her cheeks were turning red and she seemed to be swelling up, her breath coming in little puffs.

“You love me?”

“Duh.”

“You love me like that? Like hot girls and honeymoons?”

“You mean I love you like I want you to be my girlfriend and I secretly write Mr. Curtis Miller-West in my notebook?” He tried to laugh and it fell flat. “Yeah. I love you like that.”

This time, it was his sneaker that came flying past his head and fell with a thud when it hit the bedroom door.

“Curtis! Why didn’t you say anything? You’re adorable and sweet and the best catch ever! I thought you didn’t like me like that!”

“I thought you didn’t like me like that!”

“Well… I didn’t. I wouldn’t let myself. No one gets friend-zoned more than the funny fat chick.”

“If you keep using ‘fat’ like it’s a negative—I’m going to dull every single one of your knives. I’m going to use them to cut felt and open cans,” Curtis growled in his most menacing voice.

Bea looked appropriately stricken. “I’m sorry! I can’t help what Hollywood and everyone else says about ‘perfect bodies.’”

“How do I put this?” Curtis walked closer to her, standing so close that he could feel the outermost edge of her breasts under her batter-stained apron. “What does every good chef know? Fat is essential. Fat adds flavor. It adds balance. Good food needs some richness .” His mouth caressed the word as his eyes disobeyed orders and started mapping the curves so close to him. “And I don’t see you as a size or a weight. I see you as…I gotta stop talking.”

Bea stepped closer. The brush of her breasts became a full-on press. “Why?”

“Um. Manners?”

“Throw them out.” Her head tipped back, and Curtis felt the room swaying.

Her. Looking up at him with desire on her face and a little smile on her parted lips.

His every fantasy come true.

“You said sex-starved?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Me, too. And real men like curves, Bea. We can’t stop thinking about how soft you’d be wrapped around me, under me, on top of me…”

“You switched from men and women in general to one man and one woman specifically, Curt.”

“I did. Oh.” His head moved as if magnetized, the shining pink of Bea’s lips calling him home. “Must’ve meant it then…”

“You really want to?” Curtis was scrambling out of his shirt, revealing a long, pale torso dotted with a few freckles here and there.

“So much.” Her apron flew into the corner and her leggings rolled down after them. When she straightened up, Curtis was behind her, hands around her waist, coming up to cup her breasts as he bent himself to kiss her neck.

She wanted the lights off—and then she didn’t care, when he started talking.

“I don’t think I’m going to last too long the first time. There are going to be lots and lots of times. I just… I’m already about to burst being so close to you. Finally.”

“Finally? How long have you been wanting me like this?” Wanting. Me.

Head rush.

“Since the beginning of January.”

“That’s almost a whole year!” she squeaked in surprise.

“I’ll make up for lost time. Right now.” His hardness slipped against the swell of her rear as his hand slid into her black panties, gentle fingers working in circles, making her moan.

The best part? He was moaning back. “You feel so soft. You’re everything delicious, Bea. Meringue. Tiramisu. Spun sugar. Hey… How about if we do spun sugar around our cabin? We can make it look like it’s snow.”

“I love it. I love you.” She escaped long enough to lead him to the bed, gasping when she saw his erection throbbing out of his boxers, longer than average and still perfectly thick. She sat first and her hand moved to grasp his cock, only to have him pull back before she could slide him into her mouth.

“You’d better not. I’d come on the spot.”

The idea that she could do that to him was an incredible rush of power. She couldn’t resist bending forward and letting her tongue dart around his tip just once. “Fine. Later, then.”

She was pink and soft and tighter than any woman he’d ever been with. Bea’s slippery walls clung to him and sucked him instantly as soon as he moved between her legs. He wanted to be suave and slow, teasing hours of pleasure from her. And instead, he was a clumsy twenty-three-year-old who could barely put protection on before losing control.

To be fair, Bea was the one demanding he rush ahead, saying she couldn’t wait either. From the wet, slick sound of her as he buried himself inside, he’d say she was telling the truth.

“I’ve been dreaming about this for so long,” he sighed, settling into a rhythm.

Bea’s legs, short and thick (some might even say ‘stubby’), curled over his hips. “What else have you been dreaming of?”

“Covering you in whipped cream.”

“Ooh, naughty.”

“I guess you don’t have any fantasies about me, yet, but?—”

“Oh, yes, I do. And they all involve you moaning ‘yes’ and my name.”

“Beaaa,” he sighed out, half-laughing.

“Good boy.”

When she said ‘good boy’ like that… Oof. New kink unlocked. “I’ll always be good to you.”

“I know. I can tell. My brain finally wised up—and my body is so very happy about it.” Bea pulled him in for a kiss, and then there were no more intelligible words until much later.

“You know how you say you want to get out of your parents’ place?”

Bea finished sketching and looked up as Curtis came back from the store. His arms were full of grocery bags, and snow dotted his curls and the black ski jacket he wore.

That’s my boyfriend. I’m gonna go kiss him.

So she did.

“Wow.” Curtis smacked his lips a few times.

Bea giggled and wiped her lips. Her lips felt puffy, and Curtis’ were bright red. “You were saying?”

“I don’t care what I was saying. The sheets are done. Let’s go make the bed—and then go mess it up again.”

“No!” Bea giggled. “Well. Not now. I have another batch of roof shingles in the oven. Come on, tell me.”

“Oh! Right, you know how you want to move out of your parents’ place?”

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t you move in with me? You’re over here all the time, anyway. And I don’t mean right away! Like, when you’re ready to.”

Bea retrieved the paper she’d been drawing on and held it up. The new gingerbread cabin was not the pretty, quaint design she’d originally intended. This was a cabin that time had forgotten, that the woods had reclaimed. Snow made of sugar would be banked around it. Pine trees made of marzipan with carved almond pine cones stood like sentinels, and caramel cup tree stumps and pot au creme and sablé toadstools led up to the porch.

“Babe! That’s a masterpiece!” Curtis cried and squeezed her, rocking on his toes in his excitement.

Bea looked up at her best friend turned lover. How had she never fully appreciated Curtis for the work of art that he was? “Mm. Takes one to know one,” she purred, kissing his neck. “This has been the best worst day ever. Found out Neal is a scumbag who is just using me and that my best friend is a sex god who not only bakes but is almost as obsessive as I am about it.”

“Win-win?” Curtis asked, pulling a chocolate rose wrapped in gaudy red foil from one shopping bag.

Bea took it and twirled it coquettishly under her nose, fluttering her lashes up at him. “All the wins.”