Cupid Has a Heart-On (The Holidays #2) (7 page)

My own hands fall from around his waist and I take a step back from him, even though I want nothing more than to launch myself into his arms and continue apologizing to him. I don’t like the looks passing between him and my father and I start to get nervous.

“It is too a big deal! You’re eating yogurt from the same box!” my father argues.

“What in the devil is going on in here?” my mother asks, stepping around my father with a plate of pink deviled eggs that look less than appealing to eat.

“Ask Noel’s gay boyfriend,” my father mumbles.

“YES! Praise be to God! My prayers have been answered!” Aunt Bobbie cheers, holding her arms up to the sky, palms up, and smiling serenely at the ceiling.

“I’m not gay! For shit’s sake, Reggie!” Sam complains, quickly turning to look down at me. “I’m not gay, Noel.”

“I’m pretty sure I already got that memo in the dressing room at the mall right before Christmas. And in Santa’s workshop. And my bedroom, and your car, and my car and your couch and your kitchen table,” I inform him. “Oh, and that one awkward time on the front porch in the middle of a blizzard when we got home from the movies.”

Sam winks at me. “That was fun. I almost lost an important appendage from frostbite, but still, good times.”

“So, you’re saying you DON’T need sex toys to spice up your sex life? I can’t believe you kept all of this from me,” my mother whines.

“You had me at sex toys, Bev.” Sam gives her a thumbs up and my father throws his hands in the air in annoyance.

“Wait, why does my father think you’re gay?” I question.

“Because…of THIS!”

With a great big flourish, my father pulls Sam’s backpack out from behind him and upends it, spilling books all over the floor in the hallway. Sam groans and puts his head in his hands while my mother, Aunt Bobbie, and I all creep slowly toward the pile, all three of us cocking our heads to the side to get a better look at the items on the floor.

“
Pucked Up, Fire in the Hole, Newly Exposed, Seduction and Snacks
,” my mother reads the titles aloud. “Oooooh, that last one is about the ladies doing the sex toy party tonight!”

Going by the half-naked men on all the covers except the seduction and food one, I guess I can see where my father got confused. Even
I’m
confused.

“Helena Hunting, Debra Anastasia, Meghan Quinn and Tara Sivec,” Aunt Bobbie states, reading the author names. “Never heard of them. Are they real authors?”

“One of ’em is from Canada,” my father states, crossing his arms in front of him. “They’re probably all from fake Canadia.”

“For Fontina’s sake, Reggie, Canada is a real place,” my mother admonishes. “I’ve heard of those authors, they’re definitely real people.”

“Um, so, you read romance novels. That’s…nice,” I tell him lamely.

“A lot of guys read romance novels, it’s not that big of a deal,” Sam explains. “The authors are really funny and I’ve gotten some good sex tips from those books. Remember that thing I did when I curled my fingers in your-”

“I WILL SHOVE EVERY ONE OF THESE BOOKS UP YOUR ASS IF YOU FINISH THAT SENTENCE!” my father bellows.

“That was a really excellent move,” I whisper to Sam, moving closer to him.

“It was, wasn’t it?” he whispers back softly. “That was the first night I gave you multiple-”

“That’s it, bend over!” My father growls, snatching up one of the books and stalking toward us.

Sam backs away with his hands in the air and my mother snatches the book out of my father’s hand, glancing at the front cover.

“This one has to be fake. It’s by someone named Katherine Stevens and it doesn’t have a title or a cover. Be honest, Sam, are you really Katherine Stevens, and you’re just pretending to be a Marine when you’re really a romance author?” my mother asks.

“It’s an advanced reader copy of her book that isn’t out yet,” Sam tells her, grabbing the black and white book without a title out of her hand.

We all stare at him in silence and he shrugs. “I’m in her fan group on Facebook. Everyone got one. Stop staring at me like that.”

I watch as Sam quickly scoops up all of the books and shoves them back into his bag, zipping it closed and tossing it into the corner of the living room. My mother and Aunt Bobbie go back to adding more Valentine decorations to the room and my dad stomps away, grumbling under his breath about crazy people.

Sam gently wraps his hand around my arm and pulls me into the hallway, out of earshot from my mother and aunt. We stand by the front door staring at each other with goofy grins on our faces until he finally closes the distance and kisses me. His warm lips against mine are like a bolt of electricity through my body, and I eagerly wrap my arms around him and pull him close.

I love this man so much and I need to stop being so neurotic before I ruin everything. His tongue slowly sliding into my mouth and circling around my own tongue makes my toes curl and a blast of heat explodes between my legs. I can feel his hard cock pressing into my stomach, and I smile against his lips, happy to know I didn’t break him last night.

He slides his hands down to my ass, cupping it and pulling me harder against him, and I try to remember what it was I needed to talk to him about, but all I can think about is getting naked with him as soon as possible.

The ringing of the doorbell behind us makes us jump apart and laugh, acting like a couple of teenagers getting caught doing something they shouldn’t. Which is pretty much exactly what it’s like a hundred percent of the time living in this house, and reminds me about everything I need to talk to Sam about. We can’t keep living like this or we’ll both lose our minds.

I open my mouth to tell him we need to talk, but I’m cut off by my mother running down the hall and pushing in between us to get to the door. Sam reaches out and grabs my hand and we take a few steps down the hall so she can open greet whoever it is.

“Are you ready for some sex and chocolate, Bev?” one of the two women standing on the front porch says to her with a smile.

“Liz! It’s so nice to see you again. Come in, come in!” my mother excitedly invites them inside, holding the door open wider for the two of them to enter, their arms each filled with a giant blue tote.

“It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these parties, the pleasure is all mine,” Liz tells her with a smile.

“Get out of my way, bitch ass, this box of sex toys is fucking heavy,” the other woman protests, shoving roughly against Liz’s arm and pushing her into a wall.

“You’ll have to excuse my friend, Claire. She’s an asshole,” Liz says with a smile to all of us.

“Oh, this is going to be so much fun!” my mother says with an excited clap of her hands. “Sam, go outside and help bring in all the boxes of dildos!”

Sam sighs, leaning down to press a quick kiss to my cheek.

“Words I never thought I’d hear out of your mother’s mouth,” he whispers, giving me a wink before heading outside to help carrying things in.

“Good Goat Cheese, Noel, go change your clothes. It’s bad enough Sam had to see you looking like this, I won’t subject the dildos to such a mess,” my mother complains before following behind Liz and Claire to help set things up in the living room.

So, I guess I’ll be fondling sex toys all night instead of talking to Sam or having sex with him. Yay.

You’re a Pussy

Sam

“I
don’t know
what’s happening right now, but my dick is hard and I like it,” Alex whispers from behind me.

We both stand in the hallway peeking around the corner into the living room where twenty grown women are screaming, laughing, and doing something so strange, I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking at.

“Why is my sister bent over a folding chair while her best friend slams her hips into Noel’s ass? I’m very uncomfortable right now,” Nicholas, Noel’s older brother, states as he rocks his four-week-old daughter from side-to-side in his arms.

“I guess it’s a game,” I speak softly, unable to tear my eyes away from the chaos in the living room. “They blow up a condom and their partner has to try to pop it against their ass without using hands. It’s fascinating. Like women in the wild, behaving as if no one is around to see them.”

The three of us continue to stare wide-eyed at all of them, still screaming, laughing, and humping against each other’s asses until we hear a loud
pop,
and Scheva and Noel start jumping up and down, high-fiving each other in victory.

“Weird,” Nicholas muses. “I don’t usually high-five my partner when I explode against her ass. Bitches be trippin’.”

When the women start reassembling back into their seats around the living room, the three of us quickly duck out of sight and head back to the kitchen, where we were banished to when the party started.

Walking by the guest bathroom in the hallway, I stop in my tracks and do a double-take.

“Reggie, are you shitting with the door open?” I ask in horror, unable to look away at him planted on the toilet with his pants around his ankles, flipping through one of my romance novels he was so pissed about earlier.

“It’s my house. If I want to shit with the door open, I will shit with the door open. Holly shits in public and no one bats an eye,” he complains, pointing to his granddaughter fast asleep in Nicholas’ arms.

Yes, Nicholas and his wife, Casey, named their daughter Holly. Holly Holiday. Obviously they forgot how miserable Noel was her entire life growing up with a name like Noel Holiday and decided to torture their own daughter.

“Holly is a baby and can shit wherever she wants,” Nicholas says from behind me. “And what the hell are you reading?”

Reggie flips the book over to look at the cover and shrugs. “This Seduction and Chocolate thingamajiggy. It’s not bad. It’s not good either, but it’s not bad. The word
vagina
is in here an awful lot. I think the author might be one of those lesbos.”

Holding my breath, I reach in and grab the door handle, slamming the door closed so no one else has to witness the horror of Reggie taking a dump while reading porn.

The three of us continue heading into the kitchen, Nicholas and Alex taking a seat at the table while I grab my cup of tea I left on the counter. We try to block out the loud, ear-piercing noises still coming from the living room, but it’s impossible.

“It’s really not fair we can’t stay in there and watch them fondle dildos,” Alex complains. “And what the fuck do they need those things for anyway when they’ve got us? We should just go in there and let them fondle OUR dildos. Pass them around, rub them a bit, maybe even have a few taste-tests.”

I’ll be honest here. I know I joked about Noel and vibrators earlier, but I’m not gonna lie. I got a little jealous when I watched the owners of the company pull out one called Chocolate Thunder. What if Noel would rather spend her nights with
that
beast instead of me? I must not have been able to hide the look of worry on my face when Noel gave me a kiss and told me nothing could compare to having the real thing. I sucked it up and still told her to snatch one of the smaller ones and meet me out in my truck as soon as she could sneak away.

“So, what’s everyone’s plans for Valentine’s Day?” Nicholas asks nonchalantly, to which Alex immediately snorts. “What? Why is that funny?”

Alex shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “One does not simply
make
plans for Valentine’s Day. One goes to a bar and finds the one group of women who hate Valentine’s Day and have decided to make it a
Girl’s Night Out
and drink away their misery at not having a special someone to buy them expensive flowers and chocolates. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, dude.”

“Really? Didn’t you already break your
hit-it-and-quit-it
rule by having dinner with Scheva tonight AND coming here together?” I laugh. “I bet you already bought her a cute little card with a picture of cupid on the front, didn’t you?”

Alex’s face gets beet red and I’m honestly shocked. At the fact that he did indeed see Scheva again and that he seems to be embarrassed about it.

“I told you, I’m only there for the pussy. The fact that I picked up a red, lace nightgown and heart-shaped box of chocolates when I happened to spot them on an end-cap at the store today means nothing. I am free to give them to anyone,” he explains.

“Do I even want to ask what you’re getting my sister?” Nicholas questions, taking his eyes off his daughter long enough to shoot me a questioning look. “Or, are you just going to propose?”

I laugh and shake my head. “Um, I already did that, genius.”

“You
fake
did that. It doesn’t count.”

“I’m pretty sure it does,” I argue. “I told her to keep my mother’s ring. That means we’re engaged, even if I was pretending to be that other douche fuck when I did it. She knows I meant every word I said to her on Christmas Eve.”

“Get a load of what this dummy was going to do,” Alex chuckles, looking at Nicholas and pointing his thumb in my direction. “He put a key to his
house
in a ring box and was going to get down on one knee and ask her to move in.”

Alex continues laughing and Nicholas lets out a soft, low whistle.