Page 28 of A Mustang River Christmas

And as his tongue slid over the most sensitive part of her, she cried out his name, and then he kissed her lips, thrusting deep within her. Their eyes met, and it felt more like a promise than it was maybe supposed to.

But she didn’t want to look away.

He claimed her over and over again. Until he cried out her name, until he collapsed beside her, sated.

He rolled over onto his back, and she looked down, and saw a squish of frosting around his hip.

“You made a mess,” she said, laughing.

“Is that an offer to clean me up?”

“We just finished. And I have it on good authority that men your age⁠—”

He growled and pinned her to the mattress. And she could feel that he was already getting hard again.

“What do you know about men my age?”

“Only what you’ve taught me.”

“I haven’t taught you very well then.”

“Then I hope that you’re committed to the act of my continued learning.”

Lucky for her, he was.

He kissed her, deep and passionate, until they were both gasping for air.

And then she went and turned the shower on, dragged him inside. Got to her knees in front of him and worshiped that most beautiful part of him.

She licked him from base to tip, took him in deep, swallowed him down until he was begging her to stop, until he was saying her name over and over again, until he shuddered his release and she swallowed every drop.

And then took her to bed for the rest of the night, but neither of them slept.

Chapter Eight

Before the official opening of the Gingerbread Jubilee, Laney walked through the barn and marveled at all the entries.

There was a Victorian house festooned with peppermint, a quaint log cabin made of chocolate with spun sugar smoke coming out of a pretzel chimney and a train made of sugar cookies, each car decorated with different colored buttercream and glimmering sprinkles.

Each creation was magic. Of course, the people in town who had contributed to this weren’t professionals, but it didn’t matter. The pieces were gorgeous, glorious. Quirky in many cases, and too lovely to resist.

Then in the barn next door, there were trees. Trees decorated in every theme you could possibly imagine, from a famous space opera to mermaids.

It was so beautiful.

It made her heart ache for childhood Christmases that she hadn’t really had. She thought of Lila’s pink bike, and the Easy-Bake Oven she’d wanted as a kid and had never gotten. So funny now, she worked in a kitchen and had no need to bake cake with a lightbulb. But something about even imagining the box made her feel a deep longing she couldn’t quite explain.

And when she joined Chloe in the kitchen a little bit later, they ended up on that subject.

“I like Christmas,” Chloe said. “Now anyway. It used to be kind of sad. I’d wish my dad could come every year, but then he didn’t.”

Laney’s stomach twisted up. “Your dad feels... guilty, about the years that he missed.”

She felt a little bit bad saying something, confiding in Chloe when Pike had shared those things with her as a lover.

She was Chloe’s boss, not her stepmother.

Though, the idea of that... Chloe was grown. And it would be very different than being a stepmother to a child, but there was something about that, the idea of being a mentor, a mother figure that made her feel happy.