ROMANCE • CONTEMPORARY • PARANORMAL
Throwback Thursday to last year and the serial release of
the Twelve Dates of Christmas.
This sweet holiday romance was presented on each of the twelve days of Christmas last year, beginning on Christmas day.
You can read all twelve installments now, beginning with day one:
http://lmsylvian.com/the-twelve-dates…as-christmas-day/
On the fourth day of Christmas I woke up happy. Stupid stinking happy. Princess movie happy, birds were chirping, cute little chubby rodents made my breakfast and made me an entirely new wardrobe kind of happy.My lips were still a little tender after all that kissing. But man, oh, man, oh man. It was so worth it.
The stupid happies carried me all the way through my morning commute (a miracle by LA driving standards). It wasn’t until I went to take a sip of coffee I realized I didn’t have one. That’s the power of stupid-happy.
I turned on my computer and opened my email as I moved into my cubicle for the day. I stroked the side of my monitor in response to an email request from Blake, clearly a habit now.
I slid open the bottom desk draw to drop in my purse when my desk phone started ringing. “This is Nat.”
“Did your drive in go incredibly smooth? Mine did.” It was Chis, sigh. He sounded stupid-happy too.
“I’ll see your good commute and up you a coffee-free morning.”
“Seriously?” I could hear the smile in his voice. That of course, made me smile more.
“Yeah, no coffee. Are you having a good morning?” I asked.
“I am now.”
“What are you doing for lunch?” Lunch seemed like hours away, but I wanted to see him again.
“I have an all-day meeting. That’s why I was calling. I need to drop off some forms to your department, and was wondering if you wouldn’t mind meeting me halfway?”
“North stairwell in five minutes?” Oh a clandestine meeting in the stairwell, I wondered how much making out we could do.
“Make it three.” He countered.
As calmly as I could, I hung my phone up, finished putting my stuff away, and tried not to run to the stairs. Once in the stairwell, I pounded up the stairs. Chris was running down just as quickly. We met on the landing between the two floors.
His hands were empty.
“Looks like you forgot your paperwork.” I cooed. I played with the front of his shirt.
“That was just a ploy for anyone who was listening. I couldn’t very well say I wanted to make out with you some more over the company phone. You know those lines are monitored.”
I finished in a stilted computerized voice, “for quality assurance.” He smiled a dazzling grin at me. “So you want to kiss me some more?”
“Yeah. I really liked that last night.” His hands slid onto my hips, and he stepped in closer. His head tilted down, and his eyes closed. We heard footsteps on the stairs. He stood straight and stepped back. I stared at the floor. I didn’t see who passed us.
“You know,” Chris’s gaze landed on my chest. “These are very distracting. I honestly keep thinking about them.”
“Oh really?” I arched my back, giving the boobs a bit of a lift. “You didn’t seem very concerned with them last night.” It was true. I had half expected him to be super handsy, yet he had barely even gotten close.
“Truth? I am in awe, and a bit intimidated by them.” His fingers barely brushed the tops of my breasts as he zipped the front of my shirt up another few inches. I had worn the zipper a bit lower than usual for him.
I laughed. “Intimidated? It’s not like they bite. Actually, they like you.”
“Oh yeah?” He moved in a little closer.
“Yeah, they would like to play with you sometime.” I can’t believe we were talking about my breasts as if they were a complete and separate entities. I mean, at times I swear they are, but for the flirting, it was kind of lame. Lame, but it was clearly working for the two of us.
He smiled and nodded. The rest of our conversation was mostly just mooning at each other and sighing. His watch beeped, pulling us out of our mutual gazing stupor.
“I’ve got to go. I’ll call you when I’m out.”
I nodded, bit my lip, and watched him sprint back up the stairs. I went from stupid-happy to lonely despair in the blink of an eye. I slogged back to my desk. When I got there Blake the Beautiful swiveled back and forth in my chair. He was so pretty with his smoky skin and his dapper beard. But he didn’t make the butterflies in my lower abdomen flutter anymore. I leaned against the opening to my cubicle.
“What can I do for you, Blake?” Blake never visited for the sake of a chat.
He continued to spin around, his fingers steepled together tapped against his pretty mouth. I had wanted to kiss that mouth the first time I met him before I knew he liked boys. Heck I had wanted to kiss him even after I knew he liked boys, he is just that pretty. Now, it was just a good looking mouth, like it belonged to some actor in a movie, nothing more. It wasn’t Chris’s mouth.
“So,” he began. Twist. “What did I see you and Chris Jones getting up to in the stairwell? Hmmm?” He continued to twist around in the chair.
Busted. I flushed.
“Oh it was something, look at you blush.” He leaned forward in the chair.
“What did you see?” I asked. He saw nothing because Chris and I did nothing.
“Somebody was a little too close, a little too predatory.”
“And?” I prodded.
“And someone else seemed a little too pleased with herself.” He continued.
“And nothing else, because nothing else happened.”
“You aren’t denying it? You aren’t going to say it was a random meeting while you were running errands?”
“Blake what’s the problem? You caught us flirting. No big deal.”
“I love a good juicy office romance.” I had not pegged Blake the Beautiful to be sassy office gossip. He always seemed so aloof.
“Out!” I pulled him from my chair and shushed him from my cubicle. “Be gone purveyor of whatever it is you’re purveying!”
A week ago I wouldn’t have been able to deal with the fact that Blake was sassing off to me, let alone been able to actually grab his arm to pull him out of my chair. What can I say? My hormones act funny around pretty boys. And really hot men.
I sat and quickly typed an email to Chris. “Blake was in my cube, he basically thinks he’s busted us on some hot office romance. FYI, I did not deny it.”
I hit send and hoped I handled the situation right. It hadn’t occurred to me that Chris might want to keep this on the down-low until that very second.
I stared at my monitor waiting for a response ping. Chris was in a meeting. I had to be patient.
I was in the middle of sorting my email inbox when it pinged with a new message. “Good. I’m not worried about keeping it a secret if you aren’t. – Chris.”
Big sigh of relief. Double sigh, because it always bothered me when a guy wanted to keep the beginning of something a secret. I kind of wanted the world to know that I got to make out with Chris Jones, and hopefully on a regular basis. This also meant he didn’t have another girlfriend that I didn’t know about. Triple sigh.
I spent my day sorting and matching invoices to packing slips, and forwarding the matched sets on to the people who handled the money. It was a very long day.
My phone rang again just before I decided to head out for lunch.
“This is Nat.”
“I have a hot minute, and wanted to say hi.”
I smiled, the stupid-happy flooded me again. “Hi, Chris.”
“So that was Blake in the stairwell?”
“Yep,” I confirmed.
“Well everyone should know we are dating by the end of day tomorrow. He’s pretty fast.”
“But.” I stopped. Dating. Yeah. “I didn’t peg him as the gossip monger. He’s so quiet.”
“Stealthy, the man is stealthy.”
“Hey Chris? What ya doing this evening?” I wanted to ask him if we were really dating. But it seemed stupid, he had just said we were.
“Work. It looks like this meeting is going to last a few more hours. Then, I’m going for a run. Do you want to join me?”
“Running? Have you seen my boobs?”
“Yeah.” His voice was kind of breathy.
“These boobs were not made for running.” He started to make a noise on the other end of the phone, and I panicked. I didn’t want him to stop dating me because I didn’t run. “But I hike, and I skate, things that don’t jostle or cause multiple black eyes.”
He laughed. I really did like that sound. “Skate like roller blades?”
“Yeah, like roller blades.”
“Cool. If the weather holds let’s go skating this weekend. I have to go, they’re starting up again. I’ll call you later.”
The rest of my afternoon lagged.
My evening was lonely and dull.
I lounged across my couch watching mindless TV. A soft tapping knock sounded on my front door. I slid the chain across before opening the door to peek out.
“Chris!” I closed the door so I could unchain it, and open it all the way. He stood there in his sweaty running clothes. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to say good night.”
I stepped back so he could come in.
“You could have just called me.”
“Yeah but I can’t kiss you over the phone. And I really missed not kissing you today.” He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me to his chest.
The kiss was warm and searching. One of his hands found its way to one of my breasts.
“Good night,” his voice was raspy after the kiss. He let me go and headed out the door.
“Good night.” I managed to say after I got some of my wits back after that kiss.
Oh, I liked this guy. I liked him a lot.
The story continues on the Fifth Day of Christmas
©2016 Lulu M Sylvian. The Twelve Dates of Christmas
On the third day of Christmas, I lay on the couch contemplating the meaning of that not-quite-a-kiss kiss. Would Chris have given me a proper kiss if that jackass hadn’t threatened to tow his car? Or had Chris seen it as an opportunity to get away and give me a nothing of a kiss when he felt pressured to kiss me but really didn’t want to?
I had barely felt him at all. A slight pressure, then nothing. My lips longed to feel his lips. I wanted a real kiss; a real kiss and a good word to describe his hair. Another beer commercial– what channel was I watching again? All the ads were for beer, cars, or ED medication. Malted barley, roasted hops, liquid amber ale. The color was close, but the connotation of beer wasn’t sexy enough. It didn’t play right across my tongue.
Beer just didn’t stir my loins the way a good description of Chris should: kind of blondish, with dark blue eyes. It just didn’t do him justice. Dark blue almost wasn’t the right color either. His eyes were indigo. Now that’s a sexy color, mysterious and comforting. Sigh. I was enjoying hanging out with Chris, last night’s date had been so much fun. I just hoped I wasn’t reading more into all of this. There are girlfriends, and there are girl friends. That space between words is all the difference. That space is the “friend zone,” a wonderful platonic location or the pit of hell. In my case, that space is the writhing cesspool of doom. And that kiss, well, it really wasn’t enough to properly close that gap between words.
My phone rang.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Movies start in forty-five minutes, I don’t have time to come get you. Meet me?”
Sigh. Chris had the nicest voice. I closed my eyes and let the tones of his voice caress me. I hadn’t heard a thing he said. “What?”
“Movies, you’re still doing this right?”
“Oh right, yeah.” I sat up forcing my body to focus.
“Meet me at the theater. I ran out of time and I can’t pick you up.”
“We never really arranged that, but yes, I’ll meet you there in thirty.” I shoved my feet into sandals. Fortunately, I was already dressed, even though my hair was still wet. Oh well. I didn’t have time to get all gussied up. Chris would have to take me as I came: damp hair, no make-up, and ratty jeans.
Unfortunately, on the drive to the theater, I had time to panic about my wash and wear state. Look if Chris didn’t like me this way, then he really wasn’t interested. This was how I was on most non-work days, and pretty much as soon as I got home from work. I wasn’t going to change for him. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel a touch of panic for not dressing to show off my better assets, read: the boobs. It just meant I accepted that this was me. I needed a boyfriend who accepted me this way. I more than kind of hoped that would be Chris.
Somehow, overnight I forgot how cute Chris was. He stood there with his hands in his pockets waiting for me. For me! Broad shoulders and beer colored hair. I started to pull my wallet out of my bag. Chris’s big hand was on mine and pushing my purse down.
“I’ve got this.” He said reaching for his own wallet.
“I invited, so I pay. Besides, you paid last night.”
“Last night was practically free, thanks to your clever chest.” He smirked. He made a circling gesture in front of his own. “How’s the burn? They gonna be okay?”
“It’s still a little pink, but it will be fine. You get the tickets, I’ll get the popcorn?”
“Sounds good,” he nodded and proceeded to purchase the tickets for the two movies we agreed to see.
Lunch was theater hot dogs and more popcorn.
We sat shoulder to shoulder as the credits of the second movie scrolled past. We were the only ones left in the theater.
“I always stay till the end,” I said munching on more popcorn.
“You never know.” Chris completed my thought. I really liked this guy. But I still didn’t know was I in the friend zone gap or not?
“Man those guys are unreal. I think they have CG muscles.” He tossed another handful of popcorn into his mouth.
“You’re pretty buff.”
“I’m not ripped like that. That’s almost inhuman.”
I laughed. “You could get like that with focus and training.”
“Naw they are too unreal. Their shoulders are so freaking wide.”
“Only in comparison to their hips. It’s these muscles here.” I reached under his arm to poke him in the ribs. “That make them look so wide.” He squirmed and giggled. I tickled him some more.
He reached over and began tickling me in the ribs. Next thing I knew, the armrest between our seats was up and out of the way, his hands were on my back, and his mouth was on mine.
I sank my hands into his hair, whatever color it was. And pulled him in. I consumed him hungrily, and he consumed back. Tongues twined and breath mingled. He tasted like popcorn and salt.
A light hit us in the face. “Hey movie’s over! Get a room.”
Chris grabbed the bucket of popcorn and my hand. We were both laughing as we ran past the kid who had hit us with his high-beam flashlight. I smiled like an idiot. No gap, no friend zone. That was definitely a girlfriend kiss.
We ran all the way to the parking lot. Chis stopped by his car, dropped the popcorn, and pulled me back into his embrace. I liked kissing him, I liked being pressed against him. He was built like one of the movie guys with nice broad shoulders and big muscles. Okay, maybe not as big. He didn’t work out professionally, but he was still firm and hard, and I liked being squished against him.
“Now what?” I asked when I came back up for air.
“Dinner and more necking.” He suggested.
I couldn’t think of a better plan.
“I buy dinner, we neck on your couch?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Roommates. I buy dinner, we neck on your couch.” He countered.
“Sounds like a plan. What do we want to eat?”
We both said tacos at the same time. We laughed and he looked into my eyes. “I like how you think Natalie. Where to? Lead and I will follow.” Why did I want to think he was talking about more than tacos?
I led Chris to a corner with a terrific local taco truck. I ordered three chicken tacos, he had four. We ate them leaning against the hood of his car. I kept blushing and glancing over at him. He kept doing the same.
Back at my apartment, my nerves got the better of me. I turned on the TV for a distraction. “You want something to drink?”
“Sure what you got?”
“Beer, wine, soda, water.” I gave him an inventory of my kitchen.
“Wine.”
“Chardonnay ok with you?” I asked as I brought out the bottle and two glasses.
He smiled and watched me sit down, then pour and hand him a glass.
I watched him over the rim of mine as I took a sip. He reached forward and took my glass. I followed his motions as he set it on the coffee table next to his. He reached for me again, this time hooking his hand around my neck and pulling me forward to him.
“I’m done with wine. I’m here for you.” His lips slid across mine. I closed my eyes and breathed him in. My face began to feel raw from all the kissing. His hands never traveled higher than my ribs. He kissed the side of my face and sucked on my ear. I know I moaned. It felt wonderful.
We didn’t come up for air for what seemed like forever. And when we did, it was never for very long. Mostly it was tongues and lips, and teeth.
Chris pulled back and looked at me. His mouth was red, and beginning to look like it might be getting sore. His hair was a mess. I’m sure mine was too. I gently ran my fingers across his lips. He closed his eyes and kissed my fingertips, “I,” his voice was raspy. He cleared his throat. “I should get going.” He said.
I nodded. I would have loved to have him stay, but we were clearly still in the necking phase of things. Of course, I could change all that by pulling my shirt off. But I didn’t. I kind of liked that this developed on a daily basis.
We stood up and awkwardly adjusted our clothes.
“I have a long cold shower to take.” He said as he made his way to the door.
I followed him, a smile on my lips. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow?” I asked.
“Absolutely.” He leaned in for another kiss. “I’ll see you tomorrow Nat.”
“Night Chris.” I leaned against my door as I watched him walk away. It was a really nice view.
Sigh. Tomorrow was work after a long weekend. I sighed again. I looked forward to getting back to work, the first time since that new job honeymoon phase had worn off. Tomorrow I would see Chris again. And maybe we could neck some more in a back stairwell.
the story continues tomorrow with the fourth date
©2016 Lulu M Sylvian. The Twelve Dates of Christmas.