I pulled the shirt over my head and tossed it aside, leaving me in nothing but the socks. The cool air hit my skin, pebbling my nipples, but Teddy’s gaze was hot enough to keep me warm.
I felt powerful. Alive. Like I could do and say anything without fear of him judging or thinking less of me over it. This was what I’d needed—the freedom to be shameless. To want without apology.
“Well,” I began, leaning in close enough that my breath ghosted across his lips. “First, I want you to come down my chimney.”
He barked out a sharp, startled laugh before catching himself. “I see,” he managed through twitching lips. “Go on.”
“Then, I want you to stuff my stocking.” I punctuated the words by grinding against his erection and licking a line up his throat to his beard. “Stuff it so full there’s no room left for anything else. Until it’s overflowing.”
The growl that rumbled through his chest went straight between my legs. “Keep talking like that, and Santa’s gonna give you everything on your list,” he rasped, his hands already moving to cup my breasts. “Even if you have been on the naughty list since 1989.”
I could hear Bing and the gang singing “Snow” as they took the train to Vermont. But I wasn’t dreaming of snow. I was dreaming of Teddy—of his hands on my body, his mouth on my skin, his voice in my ear telling me all the filthy things he wanted to do to me.
“Fucking soaking my jeans,” he murmured, showing me the dark patch I’d left. “Getting yourself all nice and wet for me.”
I’d never had a problem in that area, although I’d expected it to go the other way during menopause. Given the hell my faultyreproductive organs had put me through for decades, I’d earned the reprieve.
“What else is on that list?” he prompted, rolling one nipple between his thumb and forefinger before brushing my hair back to take the other in his mouth.
Pleasure flooded my body, making my thoughts hazy and hard to grasp, but I fought through the fog to moan, “Want you to jingle my bells… all the way. Really make ‘em ring.”
“Christ, it just keeps getting worse,” Teddy muttered with a low chuckle, sliding his fingers between my legs. “And no panties? Santa’s gonna have to keep you on the naughty list for sure.”
“Good.” I gasped when his thumb found my clit, my forehead dropping to his shoulder. He worked me with steady, deliberate pressure, knowing exactly how to touch me—the speed, the angle. An art form he’d perfected over thirty years.
“That everything on your list?”
“No. Want you to—oh God—make it a not so silent night,” I gasped out, my thighs starting to shake. “And hang your—your ornament on my?—”
I couldn’t finish. His fingers slipped inside me, one at first, then two, stretching me in a way that made my eyes roll back.
I was already close, embarrassingly so. But I didn’t care. Didn’t care that I was grinding against him like a teenager in heat, didn’t care that I was spouting increasingly ridiculous Christmas euphemisms, didn’t care about anything except the way his fingers felt as they worked me over.
“That’s it, baby,” he praised, his voice like gravel. “Look at you, riding my hand, begging for it. You gonna show Santa what a naughty girl you’ve been?”
I nodded frantically, beyond words now, just sensation and heat and the coiling pressure building low in my belly.
His free hand came up to cup the back of my neck, pulling me down for a kiss that was all tongue and teeth. “Let me hear you.”
I bit my lip, trying to stay quiet because old habits died hard and some part of me still worried about being too loud, too needy, toomuch. But then his hand slid up to tangle in my hair, tugging gently until I met his eyes.
“Said, let me hear you, Kels,” he repeated, his expression making it clear it wasn’t a request.
“Yes,” I whimpered, chanting and moaning the word on repeat.
“Then take it,” he commanded, adding a third finger and curling them just right while his thumb maintained pressure on my clit.
My movements became erratic. “Teddy, I’m—oh fuck, I’m?—”
“Yeah? You gonna come all over my hand like a good girl? Show me, baby.”
That did it. I came with a breathless sob, my body clenching and pulsing around his fingers.
Teddy’s mouth moved over my temple, my cheek, my jaw, drawing out the orgasm until I was shaking and oversensitive, and clinging to his shoulders to keep myself upright.
He withdrew his fingers slowly, bringing them to his mouth and sucking them clean. “There’s one item off your list. What else you want, baby?”
I pulled back enough to meet his eyes—the man who’d been my husband, my ex-husband, and was now somehow both and neither, something new we were still figuring out—and felt something shift low in my belly.
