How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas - Molly O'Keefe Page 0,28

lifted my fingers, wet from her body, to her stomach, where I felt the trembling of her muscles. “Is there a reason you’re not fucking me?” she asked. “Like at the warehouse and earlier. Is this…all you want to do? Because that’s cool, but if there’s a chance I can get this cock inside—”

Action before thought. I rolled on top of her, shoving her knees out wide with mine, and I thrust so high and hard inside of her that she screamed, arching like a bow between me and the bed. “Oh fuck, yes. Yes!” she cried. Her fingernails deep in my back. Her legs a vice around my hips.

It was heaven. It was everything I’d never had the balls to imagine with Sophie. She fit me like no woman had ever fit me before. I gritted my teeth against the tide of my orgasm and braced my head against her chest.

“Fuck,” she breathed. “What…” She thrust her hips, fucking me in shallow little motions that made my brain go blank. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Not one fucking thing.” I took a deep breath, looked up into her glittering eyes. “Condoms?”

“I’m on the pill.”

Oh sweet Jesus. Yes.

“I’m clean. Medically—”

“Me too.”

And that was all I needed. On my knees, her hips in my hands. She braced herself against the headboard and I fucked her like I was dying. Like I was living. I fucked her until the orgasm was on me and I put my fingers against her clit, just the way I’d learned she’d liked, and she exploded. Her body a fist around my cock. Her body shaking and sweating. Everything so good. So perfect. A man like me didn’t deserve this kind of moment. I didn’t know what to do with it. How long I could hold on to it. What came after it?

My brain and the demons inside of it almost took this away from me, but I held on to her. Held on to Sophie.

I came, shaking and shuddering and grateful, against her. And when her hands came up to hold me, I’d never been so happy.

And I knew I never would again.

This was stolen time. A stolen Christmas. I could keep it but I’d never get another one.

11

Sam

The dream came like it always did. Noah, my spotter, my pain in the ass, the mouthpiece who, when shit hit the fan, is the steadiest goddamn hand I’ve ever known. We’re lying flat on our stomachs in a gully so shallow it couldn’t even be called a depression. He isn’t wearing his ghillie suit, but a neon hat and gold chain necklace.

“What are you doing?” I ask, agitated, trying to keep my head down, my heart rate low. My voice nearly inaudible.

“You gotta loosen up,” Noah says, practically yelling. Practically standing on his head. “We’re fine.”

“Get down.”

“Sam. Whatever happened to your dad?”

“My dad?”

And then, in slow motion and from far away, I see the flash of a muzzle. “Get—”

And then Noah’s head is in pieces and there’s a burning pressure on my head and my skin….

“Sam!”

I jumped up, the dark cloying. Suffocating. I was cold and hot, and the worms were alive under my skin. A hand touched me in the dark and I smacked out at it. There was a muffled cry and a thump.

Stop. Breathe.

The dream vanished. Reality snapped back cold and hard.

“Oh, fuck, Sophie,” I said. There was thin sunlight coming in through the curtains, the room not as dark as I’d thought it was. Proof that my dreams were so powerful that I couldn’t see what was real and what was the misfiring of the chemicals in my brain. “Tell me you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” she said and turned on a lamp.

“I hit you.”

“My hand. I’m fine. How are you?” She got up on her knees, naked and bathed in golden light. She reached for me, her fingers touching my arm, and I wanted it to be okay. I wanted it to feel like it should, like it had.

But it was all wrong. What was good was now terrible and I flinched away. And her face—her beautiful face—fell. And her hands jerked back and the room was suddenly cold.

“I’m…” A mess. Broken. Sorry. So fucking sorry.

“Yeah,” she said. “Sure.” She smiled as best she could and got off the bed. She grabbed the robe over a chair in the corner and pulled it over her body. Then she stood there, near the chair, pulling the tie around her waist tighter. “I’m going…” Away. Just away. She didn’t