“Terrible idea,” she said, though she was tugging at my shirt and making soft sounds that suggested she was as affected as I was.
“The worst,” I murmured, kissing my way down her neck while she arched against me. “Completely inappropriate festival behavior.”
“Scandalous,” Holly agreed breathlessly, and then her hands found the button of my jeans and all pretense of rational thought disappeared.
My hand slid to the waistband of her leggings and dipped inside, cupping her pussy and giving it a squeeze as she moaned into my mouth. She struggled to lower them, giving me access, despite her legs being restricted by the fabric. None of it mattered. I released my cock and was buried inside her in under two seconds. She gasped against my lips, her fingers digging into my back under my coat as I thrust into her. The storage room was cramped, dusty, and completely inappropriate for this, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was the way her pussy felt around my cock, the way she was looking at me like I was everythingshe’d ever wanted. She was hot and wet, and I groaned, thrusting harder, slamming her against the wall.
My decision was made in an instant, and it felt like a weight had been lifted.
She came hard, clamping down on me with enough pressure to nearly break my cock in half. The orgasm tore through me a second later, and I buried my face in her neck to muffle the groan that erupted from somewhere deep in my chest.
We stayed frozen like that for several moments, both of us breathing hard, our bodies still pressed together in the cramped storage room while reality slowly filtered back in, and voices in the hallway reminded us that we were in a public building during a community festival, and getting caught fucking in a storage room would probably require more explanation than either of us was prepared to give.
“We should...” Holly said, though she was looking at me like she was reconsidering the wisdom of returning to public responsibility.
“Yeah,” I agreed, though what I was thinking was that being with her in inappropriate places was becoming a dangerous habit that I had absolutely no interest in breaking.
We straightened our clothes and tried to look like people who’d been engaged in an innocent meeting about the pastry stand queue rather than semi-public sexual activity, though Holly’s hair was definitely going to require some attention before we returned to the crowd.
“Declan,” she said as I reached for the door handle.
“Yeah?”
“Whatever you decide about New York... I want you to know that these past few weeks have been...”
“Yeah,” I said, understanding exactly what she meant. “For me too.”
Before I could ask her about her own plans for Chicago, she turned the handle and emerged from the storage room, trying to look casual and probably failing spectacularly. Matt strode over, and I thank God he hadn’t arrived moments earlier.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Yup,” Holly said firmly, though her cheeks were pink and her hair was still slightly messed up despite her attempts to fix it.
“Excellent,” Matt said, grinning at both of us. “Because Mom’s looking for you to help with the cookie decorating station.”
Real life, in other words. Festival responsibilities, community obligations, and all the normal things that didn’t include making life-altering decisions about career and love while playing hide the cock in storage rooms.
But as we walked back toward the festival, I realized that my phone conversation with Richard felt like it had happened years ago instead of an hour ago. The choice that had seemed impossible this morning was starting to feel inevitable.
I just had to find the courage to make it official.
And figure out how to tell Holly that she was the reason I was finally brave enough to choose happiness over everything else and hope to fuck she said the same.
Thirty
HOLLY
Truth Telling
Daytwo of the festival was a roaring success, and it was winding down with the kind of magical evening atmosphere that made small-town Christmas celebrations feel perfect. The vendor booths were twinkling with fairy lights, the hot chocolate station was doing steady business, and couples were wandering through the snow-dusted town square with the kind of dreamy expressions that suggested the holiday spirit was working its romantic magic on everyone.
Everyone except me, apparently, because I was currently hiding behind the cookie decorating station, stress-eating a gingerbread man that some small child had decorated to look like it was screaming, while trying to avoid thinking about the video interview I had scheduled for tomorrow morning at 9 AM with Hartwell & Associates in Chicago.
The same Chicago that was approximately eight hundred miles away from Declan, who was currently helping Mrs. Peterson pack up the caroling supplies and looking unfairly hot in the glow of the Christmas lights.
The same Declan who’d spent the afternoon making me question every life decision I’d ever made, especially after our impromptu storage room encounter that had left me wondering if it was possible to die from sexual neediness and emotional confusion simultaneously.
“You know,” came Matt’s voice from behind me, “most people eat cookies because they taste good, not because they’re having existential crises.”
