How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas - Molly O'Keefe Page 0,45

a drink and I thought…I wished it was you.”

All those locks I’d put on my heart after the last time he split me open started to ease.

“You want the lights on?” he asked.

I nodded.

He dropped his hands from around my face and pulled off his hat. Unzipped his coat. Pulled his shirt over his head. And I realized what he was doing.

Lights on. Face to face. Naked.

He’d kept his shirt on last time, but this time…oh my God.

His chest…his shoulders. The bare, tender skin under his arms. The muscles of his stomach. Covered in so many scars. So many. Countless. I tried not to make a sound or react, but how was I supposed to do that?

“They’re nothing,” he said, running a hand over his chest like he was embarrassed. “Shrapnel. Rock. The rocks slice through everything. They’re sharp.”

“From the bullets?” I asked. “The bullets hit the rock and the rock…hits you?”

“Sometimes. Yeah. Half the time you don’t even feel it,” he said, like that made it better.

“This one is new?” I touched one at his collarbone.

“From the last deployment. The bullet hit my spotter, grazed my collarbone, and I fell back and cracked open my skull.”

“Your helmet?”

“I’d…taken it off for a second. Stupid. My spotter was being…” he swallowed “…well, I thought funny at the time, but it was just dangerous.”

I had a million other questions but I knew when to push and when to ease off. It was time to ease off.

There was thick one near his armpit, at the edge, and I ran my thumb over it. To my surprise, to my utter delight, he twitched away, a smile ghosting over his lips.

I sucked in a breath. “You’re ticklish.”

“You try and you will be sorry.”

“Gonna kill me with your bare hands?”

“No, but you’ll be bent over that counter and it will be my hand against your bare ass.”

“Is that supposed to deter me?” I lifted my hands my fingers, wiggling like I was going to go after him, and he dodged a little but grabbed both my hands in one of his and yanked me to him.

He smiled at me, and that top lock on my heart, the weakest of the three, just popped open.

“I didn’t expect this.”

“Yeah. I leave my shirt on a lot—”

“No. I didn’t expect to laugh…like this…I mean. With you, like this.”

He smiled, so sweet. “You’re my best friend, Soph. Of course, this would be fun.”

And he kissed me again. And then again. And his hands were under my sweater, cool against my skin and then warm. Then hot. He walked me away from the door toward the kitchen. We ran into a chair.

“Boots,” I said. “You’re wet.”

“One of us is,” he whispered, his hand cupping me through my jeans. I felt the the second lock tremble.

“Boots.”

He laughed and we both ducked down, unlacing his boots, yanking them off, in a hurry to get back to each other. He was so warm. So alive. Touching him, holding him felt like being plugged into a battery. His fingers made quick work of the button on my jeans and I shimmied them off, kissing his chest. He took off my bra, lifting me so he could get his mouth on me, and I wrapped my legs around his waist and let him carry me into the bedroom.

He turned on the bedside light, holding me with one hand, laying me down on the bed. I felt like I was made of light in his arms. And when he kissed my skin—where he kissed my skin the light broke through and we were bathed in it.

I opened the buttons on his jeans, pulling them off him, wanting to see what happened when I touched him. When I put my lips to his skin. If he was made of light, too. I made him stand, pushing his pants down so he could kick out of them. The underwear went with them and I held him in my hands. Kissed him. I didn’t know if this beautiful, sexual, intimate thing was going to happen again. I didn’t even feel like it was happening now. It was like some kind of dream.

But he was real in my hands. In my mouth.

“Fuck, Soph,” he breathed, his fingers threading through my hair, pulling my hair out of the way so he could watch his dick fucking in and out of my mouth. “I…Soph.”

Sam said nothing, as a rule. To say he was a man of few words was an understatement, so hearing