I close my eyes as he starts to gently plant kisses all over my face, dragging his mouth down to nuzzle into my neck, but he pauses when he sees the box of baubles sitting unopened beneath the scraggly tree.
He shifts beneath me, nudging me until I’m sitting more upright. “You didn’t decorate it… was this a stand against festive capitalism, too?”
I shrug, fiddling with the edge of the throw blanket. “My mom and I used to do it together. Every year, even when I moved to Toronto. I’d come back for it and she’d wait until I got home.”
Mason stays still.
“It wasn’t about the tree, really,” I add. “Just… the ritual of it. Picking out ornaments. playing the same Christmas playlist. Arguing about tinsel placement. I loved it. And now…” I offer a weak shrug. “Now that memory just kinda hurts.”
He’s quiet for a long moment, then he nods once.
“Okay. So we don’t decorate the tree.”
I tilt my head with a smirk. “Duh.”
“We decorate you instead.”
“We what?”
“You heard me.” He stands and offers a hand, tugging me to my feet. “We don’t decorate the tree, but we can make a new memory for it. One that’s just yours.”
“Mason Fletcher, that’s the worst pick-up line I’ve ever heard.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then lower, until I feel heat bloom across my skin. “Let me decorate you, Frankie Monroe.”
I huff a laugh, but nod, even though I’m confused by what he means. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”
His smirk curls, and gestures at the shirt I threw on earlier.
“Strip.”
Okay, I am no longer confused by what he means. My lips part, but nothing comes out, not even sarcasm.
Mason steps back just slightly, dragging a hand over his mustache as he takes me in..
“I said,strip.”
My skin prickles at the demand in his voice. Slowly, I reach for the hem of my shirt and peel it over my head, letting it drop to the floor and feeling my nipples peak against the air.
I keep my eyes on him as I shimmy out of the soft lounge shorts next, until I’m standing in nothing but the red lace panties I threw on after breakfast.
He licks his lips. “All of it.”
I slip the panties down my legs, and the tension in the room stretches like sugar pulled to the edge of shattering.
Mason’s gaze rakes over me, and I swear I can feel it—the heat curling through my limbs, desire building hard and fast.
“Come closer.”
I step forward and he picks up a single bauble from the box beside the tree. A shiny red one the size of an orange, glittery and cold from the drafty corner.
“Now be good and hold still.”
The bauble touches my collarbone first. I jump slightly at the graze of it, but he’s already rolling it lower. Between my breasts, over my stomach, down to the tops of my thighs.
He skims it across my hipbone, then back up. It leaves a subtle sheen of glitter in its wake. My nipples tighten, and I’m already wet, despite the fact he hasn’t touched me properly yet.
He leans over and reaches into the box again, this time pulling out a silver snowflake, the kind with pointed metal tips that you can clip onto branches.
