Chapter Twenty
Tristan
She’s been snoring softly for a while now. It should be annoying, but it’s cute.
I look down at her pretty face nestled against my jacket and I feel a pang of protective love that I hadn’t known I was capable of.
I don’t know what comes next. I’ve never really done something like this. Do I ask her to date me? Do I ask her to move in? Do I just allow her to stay until she decides that she wants to propose to me instead?
I look out the window as we start entering the city again, pondering what comes next. I decide that I just can’t know right now what we even are to one another.
However, what I do know is that we have a beautiful Christmas tree on the top of the car, Nancy is making a special dinner for us, and I bought an entire set of Balsam Hill ornaments a few years ago, which have never once been used.
And I have a beautiful companion to help me enjoy the evening. Whether she will still be living with me when Christmas rolls around remains to be seen, but for now, I’m just happy that she’s here.
“Are we home?” she asks, sitting up blearily and looking around.
Home . Does she think of my place as home already? I wish that I didn’t like the thought of that so much.
“Almost,” I say to her, pressing a kiss to the tip of her nose.
She giggles and shakes her head at me, then pouts up at me. “No fair sneaking up on me when I’m still half asleep.”
“You snore,” I tell her. “It’s adorable,” I add when she starts to argue with me that she doesn’t.
“I never used to,” she says a bit grumpily. “It’s probably something else that’s changed now that I’m…” She stops herself abruptly and looks at me with wide eyes.
I feel worried for a moment. What had she been about to say? I open my mouth to ask her why she didn’t finish her sentence when the limo pulls to a stop.
“We’ve arrived,” the limo driver tells us over the intercom. “Would you like help with the tree?”
“If you can just help me get it into the elevator, that’s good enough,” I say back.
“Won’t the lobby get needles all over the place?” Rachel asks.
“You need to stop worrying about all of this so much,” I tell her, helping her slide toward the door.
“Says the man with more money than God,” Rachel says back to me, but her tone makes it clear she’s joking.
I admit to myself that she has a point, however. There are certain things that are easier once you have enough money to make things happen.
I hadn’t missed out on much as a child, but I hadn’t enjoyed truly luxurious living until I got my company established.
The thing was, while the money was really nice, and I got to enjoy a lot of hobbies I had never been able to enjoy as a kid, it was also lonely being rich.
I was never sure if people were interested in knowing me for me or my money. Most people weren’t willing to treat me like everyone else, either.
That shit gets really old.
But it also gets really lonely. I hadn’t realized how lonely until Rachel had de facto moved in. In just a short amount of time, she had made my life more meaningful, made me look forward to coming home from the office, made me want to do spontaneous things like this.
It felt like truly living and I realized that I hadn’t been really making the most of life for years now.
“Sometimes that money comes in handy,” I tell her as we get into the elevator with the tree. She’s trapped at one end, while I am at the other, both of us being poked by needles and chuckling.
I manage to get my key card out of my pocket so that we can travel to the top floor, and then we spill out into my place in a flurry of pine needles.
“Oh my,” Nancy says as she walks toward the elevator. She smiles fondly at me as she watches me dust loose needles off my coat. “That’s a big tree.”
“We have the room for it,” I say with a smile, manhandling the tree over to the living room and leaning it against the wall by the fireplace. “Do you know where those ornaments are at, Nance?”
She purses her lips for a moment, then holds up a finger. “Yes. I’ll be right back.”
She vanishes for a few minutes and then she rolls in a multi-tiered storage container that is protected by a cloth cover.
“Oh my gosh!” Rachel squeals, hopping over to the storage cart and clapping her hands. “When I was a kid I wanted to get a set of these ornaments!”
It feels good to be able to offer her something that she feels this excited about. “They’re really pretty. You can check them out.”
I watch Rachel unzip the cover over the ornaments and start pulling out unique ornaments with care, smiling as she catalogs the set. She also pulls out a box of tinsel. No Christmas would be complete without it.
“Dinner is almost ready, sir,” Nancy says to me as she passes by on her way to the kitchen.
“Let me just get this bad boy into a tree stand, and then we can eat!” I announce, going down the hall to look for the toolbox which has a little saw in it, and to find the tree stand I bought yesterday.
Twenty minutes and some cursing later, the tree is perched in the tree stand, mostly straight upright, and looking ready for decoration.
“Let’s eat, then we can tackle the fun stuff,” I tell Rachel, putting a hand on the small of her back to bring her to the dining room table.
We sit down at the table, and Nancy pours me some red wine. Rachel waves her off with a smile. I could have sworn that I had seen her drinking when we first were getting to know one another, but perhaps not. I decide to ask about that at another time and tuck into my food.
“I can’t remember the last time I had schnitzel,” Rachel says, taking a big bite of her dinner.
“I hoped you would like it,” I say to her. “It’s one of my favorites. You haven’t been eating much, so I wanted to make sure that we had planned a dinner you could enjoy.”
She gives me that same slightly startled, almost guilty look again, but then she looks down at her plate and focuses on inhaling her dinner.
I suppose that whatever is making her look at me like that will come out eventually. I don’t want to ruin our fun by worrying about what it means.
“Do you two want treats while you decorate the tree?” Nancy asks as she clears up dinner.
“Please!” Rachel exclaims happily. “I cannot wait to get my hands on those ornaments!”
We drift into the living room, and I turn on the fireplace. I also find some Christmas music on Spotify and connect my phone to the home speakers.
“Do you even know the words to these songs?” Rachel asks as she takes the cover off the ornaments and stands there plotting her next move.
“Yes,” I say, singing along to “ Jingle Bell Rock” , and swinging her around in a circle. She squeaks but then allows me to dance her around the room. The tinsel she had been holding wafts through the room.
She’s breathless by the time I stop whirling her all over the place and she shakes her head. “You made me dizzy!” she says accusingly.
“Good. Then both of us can be off-balance for once,” I say to her, lifting her chin with my finger. I don’t hesitate and bring my lips down on hers.
She doesn’t resist at all and melts into my kiss with a little moan. It’s all I can do to stop myself from tumbling her onto the sofa and fucking her right now.
I force myself to go slowly, teasing her tongue with mine, running my hands down her body to cup her round ass and squeeze.
“Tristan,” she mumbles against my mouth, “you make it so hard for me to say no to you.”
“Then don’t,” I whisper back, kissing her more deeply.
A small noise from the doorway makes us break apart sheepishly. I look over Rachel’s head at Nancy and give her a wink. She smiles back and drops off the tray of cookies and hot chocolate that she made.
“Do you need anything else before I go to bed?” she asks me.
I shake my head. “No. Thanks for cooking a special dinner for us, Nance.”
“Yes, thank you,” Rachel adds, her voice sounding breathless.
She gives us a little wave and heads down the hall toward her room that is partitioned from the rest of the house to give her some privacy.
“Poor Nancy,” Rachel says ruefully. Her cheeks are very pink.
“Poor Nancy, nothing,” I argue, giving her a quick kiss, before stepping away and starting to take ornaments out of the storage container.
We dance around the tree for an hour, decorating, talking, and having a generally festive time. My place has never felt like a real home to me until this moment.
I step back and look at the Christmas tree and grin. It looks beautiful.
I’m sure that I could have gotten immaculate results if I had hired a decorator to take care of this, but I don’t care. I love that Rachel and I did the work ourselves.
“I never asked about my apartment,” she says, breaking into my thoughts. She takes a sip of her hot chocolate and whipped cream lingers on her top lip.
I step closer and wipe it off, sucking my thumb into my mouth afterward. She goes red and ducks her head.
“The damage is pretty bad,” I tell her with a little frown. “The leak is extensive and the apartment above yours is involved. I don’t think it will be taken care of until the end of January, honestly.”
“Shit,” she says, and I chuckle. “Sorry,” she adds with a little half-smile. “It’s just that I can’t break my lease…I just got moved in and it’s for a year. And I can’t afford a hotel for so many weeks either. It just figures. I have had such bad luck lately.”
I shake my head and step in closer. I take her hot chocolate out of her hands and put it on the coffee table. “ I’ll be Home for Christmas” is playing on my phone as I push her hair out of her face, pulling a stray piece of tinsel from her blonde locks and swaying us back and forth gently.
“I’d say you have good luck. After all, we met, which means that you have a place to stay, and you get to live by Cara, which I know that you love. Also, we have had some incredible times together already. We decorated a Christmas tree together, for goodness' sake.”
She laughs softly and puts her hands on my shoulders as we rock back and forth. “You’re not wrong,” she says. “I guess I just…don’t trust easily these days.”
“Fair enough,” I say. I pull us backward until my knees run into the couch, and then I sit down, bringing her with me. She spills into my lap with a little squeak, her blonde locks flying all around us.
It’s just like in my wet dream this morning at the office. She looks good enough to eat as she straddles me, her cheeks pink, and her bright green eyes open to me for once.
“Tristan,” she says to me as I rock my hips up so that she can feel my hardness pressing into her. “What are we doing?”
“Right now?” I say, running my hands up her sides to palm her breasts. She makes the sound I knew she would and leans into my palms by instinct. “Right now, I’m trying to make love to you.”
She sighs with pleasure as I squeeze her breasts a little while rocking my hips against hers.
“No, I mean, in general,” she says breathlessly, her head tilting back.
“Do we need to put a title on things?” I ask seriously. “Would that make you happy? Would you feel safe with me then?”
“I don’t know,” she says softly, closing her eyes and grinding against me.
I want to press her for more, I want to know why she’s always holding back like this, but my cock is dying to get inside of her, and she’s making the most incredible noises as she bobs up and down above me.
I help her chuck her sweater on the floor, and I quickly release her breasts from her bra. Another piece of tinsel falls free as her breasts bounce loose. Her tits seem slightly heavier than usual, and they are clearly very sensitive right now if her little mewling cries are any indicator as I fondle them.
She starts tugging at my shirt, and we both unbutton it, laughing as our fingers tangle together and make a mess of the process. Her jeans are tugged off next, and I stand to finish disrobing.
We stand for a moment looking at each other in the firelight, naked, my desire for her evident from every angle. I back up and sit down again and gesture for her to come over to me.
“I have dreamed about this,” I say to her as I tug her into my lap. Her hair feels like silk as it falls over my wrists where they are gripping her waist.
“Oh, really?” she says slyly. She rocks back a little, dragging her wet pussy over the head of my cock.
I groan and lift toward her instinctively, but she lifts away teasingly so that I can’t sink inside of her.
“Yes, but in my dream, you weren’t being so mean to me,” I gasp out, my cock flexing with want.
She holds herself up on her palms, pressing up higher so that I can’t get inside of her.
“You must have been dreaming about someone else, then,” she quips, wiggling her hips and making her breasts bounce.
“I would never do that,” I say to her, and I mean it. “I only want you. Desperately.”
She looks like she wants to say so much, but she doesn’t say a word. She just starts to slowly lower herself down until the head of my cock is poised at her lips, nudging toward her heat.
“I want you so much each day that I can’t think straight,” she whispers to me as she sinks down a tiny bit.
I try to lift my hips, but she stops me with a hand pressed to my chest. She is so wet that she’s dripping onto my thighs. I think I might die if I don’t get to sink inside of her.
“I want to believe that this is real, that you actually care about me,” she continues, sinking another inch, taking me deeper.
“I want to think that this Christmas will be special,” she finally finishes as she slides all the way to the root of my cock.
She makes a sweet little sound of pleasure, closing her eyes and rocking a little as she enjoys being filled up to the brim.
“Fucking you is heavenly,” I say to her as I start to move within her. Her breasts bounce with each thrust, and her head lolls back as she gasps with ecstasy.
“But I enjoy your company. I like talking to you. I like learning about you,” I say to her. I’ve learned by now, that as an author, Rachel experiences so much of her life through the exchange of words.
I want her to feel everything, to know how I feel as we share this moment because I know it will make it that much more intimate for her.
I start moving faster, and she clings to me, her nails biting into my flesh. Her pussy is so tight that I’m afraid I might be hurting her, but then she grabs my face and kisses me intensely, moaning loudly into my mouth as she rides me.
Suddenly, she jerks back away from me. I feel bereft as I look at her standing before me with a tiny smile nestled in the corner of her lips.
“I’ve always wanted to do this,” she says to me, before she backs up toward me, looking behind her to stabilize herself by touching my thigh. It quivers where her fingers are pressed into it, just like my cock that is so close to release.
I help her to straddle me again, grinning as I realize that she intends to lean back against my chest as I fuck her. I grip her breasts as she leans back and reaches down to grab my cock at the root. She guides me inside of her, and we both cry out at the friction, which is intense and incredible at this angle.
“Oh, God, Tristan!” she cries out as she rocks her hips.
Her butt is pressed into my hips, and I lean her back even further to get more access to her body. As we press closer together, my cock sliding snugly in and out of her, I reach forward and run my fingers over her clit.
“Tristan!” She cries again and flies apart with a rush of heat that I feel all the way to my core. I work her clit through the orgasm, loving her shrieking release ringing in my ears.
When I can tell that she’s spent, I pump once more and come with a shout, pumping into her with painful intensity, feeling like I’m being torn apart and reassembled over and over as the orgasm goes on.
“Now that,” she says in between huffing little breaths, “was a Christmas miracle.”
We both laugh a little in between rough breaths, struggling to come down from our high.
“Should we take a shower?” I ask her, stroking my hand idly down her belly.
“Yes,” she says as she lifts off of me and slithers to the floor. “But only if you agree to fuck me again.”
“I would be honored,” I tell her, looking at her beautiful body highlighted by the flickering light from the fire.
We both have tinsel stuck to our asses which is a perfect addition to the holiday mood.
“Hurry up,” she says, then dashes from the room toward my bedroom.
Laughing, I jolt to my feet, slip on my boxers, nearly fall, and then race after her into the bedroom.