Mistletoe Kisses by Sam Mariano

Chapter Fifteen

Callan

Daylight fills the room.Noelle slumbers peacefully against my side, her eyes closed, her head resting in the crook of my shoulder. Her hair is a tangled, sweaty mess after a night of hard fucking; she couldn’t look more beautiful.

I can’t help smiling, remembering all the pleasure she wrung out of me last night. I thought one round would be the most I’d get out of a virgin, but I fucked her three times before we both passed out.

She’s going to be sore as hell for a few days, but I can’t say I’m terribly sorry. After all, I don’t know when I’ll have her to myself all night like this again.

It’s going to be tricky as fuck, dating a student, but I’m up for the challenge. Noelle is worth a little trouble. Hell, she’s worth a lot of it.

As if she can sense me thinking about her and she doesn’t want to miss it, Noelle stirs awake. Her eyes only crack open, then she sees how bright it is and squeezes them shut again.

“Ew, mornings are gross.”

I chuckle, absently trailing a finger along her jawline. “Not a morning person, huh?”

“Decidedly not. Only psychopaths like mornings, and probably only the hours of morning where it’s still dark so they can move around dead bodies when all the sane people are sleeping.”

“That’s a vehement opinion you have there.”

“I stand by it,” she states, bringing her hands up to rub her eyes. Finally, she opens them and finds me staring at her like a lovesick idiot.

"What are you looking at?" Her question is sleepy and self-conscious, maybe a little guarded.

My reply is solemn and simple. "You."

She wrinkles up her adorable little nose, trying to roll away from me and hide her head under a pillow. “Don’t look at me. I’m an ugly mess, I need a shower.”

Curling an arm around her waist and yanking her back against me, I lean down and press a kiss to the side of her face. “Don’t talk about my woman that way.”

That startles her enough that she gives up her hiding pillow and looks over her shoulder at me. “Excuse me?”

“You’re mine now,” I answer simply. “No returns. No exceptions.”

She can’t hide the pleasure dancing in her emerald eyes even as she tries to play it cool. “Now, wait a minute. I don’t remember agreeing to be your woman.”

“You did, last night.”

Noelle shakes her head, attempting a straight face as she presses her lips together in a firm line. “Listen, Mr. McLaren, you’re sexy and all, but would you really expect me to be satisfied with you? You, an excessively experienced man—practically an elder. And you know, they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, so do you really think you would be enough for me?”

My heart stopped for a brief second, but as I recognize enough of my own asshole words flipped around and echoed back at me, I realize what she’s doing. Cutting her off with a brutal tickling, I make her squirm and arch and cry out against me again—but this time, with laughter.

“Okay, okay, I give up!” she cries. “I give up! Mercy! Have mercy!”

I stop tickling her and pull her back against me, curling my arms snugly around her waist. “I’m not a merciful man,” I inform her.

“Well, you better be glad I don’t share that sentiment,” she tosses back.

“You have all the lovely qualities I don’t. You’ll balance me out perfectly, and I’ll keep you from wimping out on life. We’re a perfect match.”

“You were a fool to fight it,” she adds playfully.

I may not have been a fool to fight it, but I was certainly a fool to let the doubts I had creep in and threaten to ruin everything.

I could be found out, I could wind up in deep trouble and lose my job over being with Noelle, but it would never be because she turned spiteful. Noelle isn’t spiteful. She’s never proven herself to be anything but thoughtful and considerate of others.

As if I needed more proof that she’s not out to punish me for being a bastard, after the awful way I treated her, she still allowed herself to have fun with me last night. She still gave herself to me without hesitation, like I somehow deserved her when we both know I didn’t.

She’s intoxicating, like the purest form of an already potent drug, and I want more. I don’t care if she wrecks my system, I don’t care if she ruins me as much as I ruin her—I want her, she wants me, and nothing is getting in our way this time.

If by some chance being with her costs me everything else, to hell with it.

I’ve been with plenty of women over the years, but I’ve never enjoyed any of them the way I enjoy Noelle. There’s a brightness that radiates from her—from her mind, from her heart. It dances in her eyes; I taste it on her lips when I kiss her, feel it when I touch her.

I don’t know why I wasted time trying to be noble, trying to play it safe. That’s not me. If the spark between us burns down both our fucking lives… well, then it does.

Peace washes over me. I want to do things right this time, and that means no lies. She figures me out most of the time anyway, but just to fully wipe the slate clean, I lightly grab Noelle’s bicep and urge her to roll back over.

She does, looking up at me curiously.

“I need to tell you a few things,” I say to my beautiful girl.

Since she has come to expect more bad surprises than good ones from me, she frowns at me like I’m about to ruin her day. “Okay…”

“I didn’t go on a date with anyone the other night. I tried to, but I ended up parking at the restaurant and not wanting to go inside, so I turned around and went back home.”

Noelle’s lips curve up, a twinkle of pleasure in her eyes. “Oh. Well, that’s much better than what I was expecting you to say.”

“I also slashed my own tire.”

Her eyebrows rise in surprise. “What?”

“I overheard you talking about going out with some idiot kid. I didn’t want you to. Knew you couldn’t go on the date if I didn’t take you home, so, I… made sure you couldn’t.”

Now her jaw drops completely open and she elbows me in the stomach, causing me to grunt. “Oh my God, Cal. Literally all you had to say was ‘I don’t want you to go on a date with anyone else tonight’. You didn’t have to damage your car!”

“I hadn’t committed to pulling my head out of my ass yet, I had to do things my own way.”

Noelle grins, rolling over to face me and snuggling up against my chest. “You’re crazy, but I’m crazy about you, so maybe I don’t have any room to talk.”

I offer her a little smile back, curling my arm around her waist and pulling her snugly against me. “I also want to say: I’m sorry for the way I treated you the other night.” At some point while I slept she must have put her robe back on, so I have to peel back the top and push it down her slim arms to get a look at those lovely breasts again.

Blinking in apparent surprise, she utters a soft “Oh.”

“I was awful to you, and you did nothing to deserve it,” I continue, bending to kiss the ball of her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she says softly. “I mean, not the stuff you said to me, that was all terrible,” she adds quickly. “But I was totally fine with the bedroom stuff.”

My mouth tugs up with dry humor. “Yes, I could tell.”

Narrowing her eyes at me, she shoves me in the shoulder.

“Anyway, you’re mine now, and I take care of what’s mine,” I assure her, grabbing the back of her neck and pulling her in for a kiss.

There’s a dreamy smile on her face when I pull back. “You sure do.”

“Being with me won’t always be easy, especially for the next few months. Obviously, no one can know about us. I can’t get away with dating one of my students and keep my job, so we’ll have to hide our relationship.”

“I can do that,” she says a little too eagerly. I don’t think she understands how hard that will be once the blush of a new romance has worn off, after months have passed and I can’t do the things with her that other girls her age are able to do with their boyfriends.

It doesn’t matter, though. We’ll figure it out together. If the alternative is fighting this attraction we both feel and watching her date other people, I’ll take a little difficulty.

The simplest solution would’ve been to wait until she graduated, sure, but it’s too late now that I’ve felt her naked body pressed to mine, felt the heat from her needy pussy as she writhed against me and begged for my cock.

I’m thoroughly satisfied with that decision now, as I untie her belt and slide my hands inside her white fluffy robe. My fingers skim her soft skin, and I remember a couple of the questions I forgot to ask her last night, in the heat of the moment.

“Are you on the pill?”

Noelle nods her head. “Sure am.”

“That’s good. Pregnancy might have been hard to explain.”

“Hey, it’s Christmastime. We could go super traditional with our excuse—virgin birth. How dare anyone question my miracle?”

My lips curve up faintly. “How far had you gone before last night?” I ask, running my fingers along her jaw and drawing her gaze back to me.

“Only as far as I went with you. I had a boyfriend for part of last year, but it wasn’t super serious. We never made it past, like, over the clothes action.”

Pure as the driven snow, then.

“I intend to dirty you up quick,” I warn her.

Offering me a playful smile, she says, “I’m a very fast learner. You can ask my teacher if you don’t believe me.”

“Nah, that guy’s a dick,” I joke.

Scowling in jest, she pokes me in the shoulder. “Hey, don’t talk about my man that way.”

My gaze drops from her face and follows the trail of her robe. I push the rest of it off her and slide my hand down her side, caressing her bare hip, then running my hand over her smooth little ass.

Noelle sighs softly and wraps her arms around me, curling a leg around my thigh. “Are we going for round four?”

I nod as I lean in to kiss her. “I think we have to,” I murmur against her lips.

“I don’t have to do anything,” she brags, mocking me again.

I roll my eyes and push her onto her back, pinning her little ass to the bed and showing her just how wrong she is.