sixteen
AMANDA
By the timethe house was quiet with everyone tucked away in their rooms, I was exhausted. And salty. Henry had gotten me all wound up in the morning, and then he’d buggered off all evening. When the clock ticked past midnight, I was still surrounded by patterned wrapping paper, scissors, and tape stuck in small strips all around the tabletop. I winced at another papercut as I wrapped one of the final gifts.
Every gift needed to look perfect for my clients. And I’d already prebought and wrapped the lists of small but expensive presents that could easily be packed in suitcases, but they had all come home from the village market with armfuls of hand-selected gifts.
Which would have been sweet had they also hand-wrapped them. Instead, I’d been stuck in the smaller dining room all evening, wrapping while they had a Scottish folk singer in to entertain them.
My eyes stung from the smoke from the log fire, and I was likely tired too. Or annoyance. Had Henry gone to bed? Leaving me stewing for the night. Perhaps our little tete-a-tete in the orangery had affected him far less than it had me.
‘Get a grip,‘ I scolded myself, wrangling double-sided tape that refused to detach from its roll. I was acting like I should be writing Henry and Amanda in arrowed hearts on the front of a jotter rather than a grown adult.
My elbow caught a gift box, knocking it off the counter and sending it skidding across the floor.
‘Oh, fuck off.’ I told the box.
I didn't hear Henry come back, not until a low voice broke the quiet, sending me jumping half out of my skin.
‘Burning the midnight oil, Amanda?’
My breath caught as Henry leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms and letting those blue eyes drag slowly over my frame. Snow dusted his shoulders, clinging to his sweater, and the wind had mussed his hair into even wilder curls. He took one look at the chaos surrounding me, then at me - tape stuck to my sweater dress, ribbons tangled around me and to the stack of gifts in the corner.
‘Needed something to fill my night.’ My voice was more petulant than I’d intended.
‘Did you have something more riveting in mind?’ Henry crossed the room.
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’
Henry closed the space between us, penning me against the table. I swallowed as I looked up at him.
‘I imagine it’s much like the thoughts that have been plaguing me all day. About me, between your thighs, making you whimper until you scream. Yes?’
My thighs clenched as I nodded. Then I stood on my tiptoes and grasped the back of his neck, pulling him into a kiss thatburned with hunger. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t wait one more god damned second to touch him.
Henry let out a dark growl, scooping my hips against him and deepening the kiss, those full lips of his driving me crazy. I don’t know who taught him to kiss so fucking well, but I needed to send them a bloody gift basket.
‘Are on the table,’ he demanded when our lips broke, his hands gathering me and lifting me onto the edge of the wooden tabletop.
‘I can’t, it’s covered in?—’
Wrapping paper crinkled beneath me when he pulled me roughly against him, his hand supporting my spine as he rocked himself against me.
‘Henry,’ I moaned, pleasure rocking me. Confirmation I wasn’t the only horny one, at least.
‘Be a good girl and lie down.’
‘Here?’
‘If you want to come, Princess, lie down.’
I did. I really,reallydid.
Ribbons shifted, and paper crackled, tape stuck to my tights, and I glanced at the door, which still stood open. Henry followed my look and stormed over to it, closing it and locking it with the large, old key which sat permanently in the lock.
When he made his way back to me, his palm over my lips as he nudged my thighs wide, taking place between them. Lying back and looking up at him, with himthere, had me trembling.
‘You’re so wound up, look at you, so needy.’
