Unholy Nights: A Twisted Christmas Anthology (10 page)

"If you're thinking handcuffs," I said, laughing, "then yeah, I suspect it does."

"I was thinking rope," he said, those green eyes gleaming. "There's this Japanese bondage thing. Do you know about that? Very intricate rope patterns. We could try it."

I wasn't sure what Japanese bondage would involve, but it sounded exciting. If he wanted to try it, hey, bring it on. I shifted fretfully. I'd lost count of the number of orgasms I'd had during the night, but it was beginning to feel as if I needed a few more.

The words from the Wicca chick came back to me.
"I got it from this other practitioner. She's into some dark stuff. Her spells are powerful. And they last."

"Each cold solstice till you're dust," Will mused a few hours later. He had the card from the mistletoe packet in his hand. We were both exhausted; we'd been up all night and all morning and the lust still hadn't abated. I hadn't gotten out of bed because I wasn't sure I could stand
.
"You don't suppose that means that for the rest of our lives, we'll have to get together and have sex during the solstice?"

"Sounds good to me," I said, yawning. It sounded, in fact, like a happily ever after, sex-wise.

"What if we're 85 and in a wheelchair?"

Since I couldn't seriously imagine ever being 85, I just laughed. "I guess we'll be chasing each other around the nursing home."

"What if you're in Singapore with your parents?"

I started feeling a little uncomfortable. "It wasn't magic mistletoe. Be serious. There's no such thing."

"You've got to admit, though, this has been weird. Think about it. We're like rabbits or something."

"It's like it was the first time," I reminded him, feeling a bit defensive. "In October. Crazy hot sex."

"True," he said, but his forehead was crinkled, as if he were puzzled about something.

What? We'd had great sex. We'd even tried that Japanese bondage thing that he'd wanted to do. Was he complaining?

"It wasn't even my enchanted mistletoe. We got it for Julie. She was in love with this guy, and he was the one she wanted to kiss. It wasn't meant for us." I hadn't mentioned the lust surge I'd felt toward the two older men. Or the way they'd both looked as me as if they were starving and I was supper. "Anyway, there's no such thing as magic. Jeez, Will, you're a scientist. You don't believe in that stuff, do you?"

"There's certainly no scientific explanation for a cursed sprig of mistletoe," he agreed. One of his hands coasted over my breasts, soon followed by his lips. "Anyway, the Longest Night is over now, and I still want you."

I turned to him and returned the caress. "Maybe we'll never get enough."

"I don't think I'll ever get enough of you," he whispered, kissing me.

That was last year.

Today, Dec. 21, is our first anniversary. It's been a great year. No dark moods or creepy obsessions—I've been happy, passionately so. Will and I are seniors now, in the process of applying to grad schools. He's decided he wants to be a vet, not a surgeon. He's a scientist, a good one. He doesn't believe in magic, spells, enchantments or the mystical powers of the moon during the Winter Solstice.

But he does believe in love, and so do I. We think we might be soulmates, considering how much we have in common and how compatible we are.

I'm not going to Singapore this Christmas because I don't have to. My parents are back in the States for the holidays this year, and they've invited Will to spend Christmas with our family. We're going to do that, then visit his family for a few days at the beginning of the new year. We'll be taking in one of his sister Clary's ice skating competitions in January before classes start up again. I'm fond of his little sister, and she likes me, too.

So everything is good. Compared to the angst I was feeling last year at this time, everything is magnificent.

There's only one little thing niggling at me.

Ever since I woke up this morning in my own dorm (Will was working late in his lab on some unfinished experiment), I've been feeling unusually horny. I mean,
really
horny. Like, if Will and I don't get naked soon, I'm going to explode.

Tonight is the Longest Night. And just like the verse said:

Wanting, yearning, merge you must

Your Longest Nights filled with lust

He just called me from his lab in the chemistry department. He said he has to see me right now. In bed, he'd added with a chuckle. And no, it absolutely cannot wait.

He should be here any minute. The romantic candles are lit, even though it's only three in the afternoon and not even dark yet. The bed is turned down. There are even some ropes. And some other stuff that I read about online.

Is it going to be like this forever? Every Longest Night?

Passion shared and bodies trussed

Each cold solstice til you're dust.

Is this our happily ever after? Is "ever after" possible when you're only 21 years old?

We're totally in love. But what if we end up in different cities for grad school? What if we break up some day and each end up married to somebody else?

But I can't think about that now. I can't think about anything except his beautiful, sexy body, which I have to have.

Merry Christmas. Happy Solstice. Get the fuck over here, Will, before I go out of my head with my crazy, insatiable desire for you.

A kiss is just a kiss. Especially a mistletoe kiss.

But sometimes a kiss can seal your fate.

~

A
Note from the Author

A Kiss Is Just A Kiss
is a novella that takes place in the same world as my
Night Games
series. Readers of the first book in that series,
Blazing Nights
, may have noticed that several characters from that novel appear in this story. Jeff Slayton's friend Kate and her boyfriend Daniel, who appear briefly in
A Kiss Is Just A Kiss
, are the hero and heroine of
Blazing Nights
.

Jeff Slayton and Stephen Silkwood, in addition to being good friends, are the heroes of their own forthcoming romances,
Forever Nights
and
Silken Nights
respectively. Holly's roommate Julie will appear again in Jeff's book, and may have her own story sometime in the future.

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http://www.lindabarlow.com

About The Author

Linda Barlow is the bestselling author of 18 novels, with more on the way. She lives in New England with her mysterious spouse (who sleeps during the day, which has often made her wonder if he's a vampire) and their equally enigmatic and nocturnal cat.

Her novel
Leaves of Fortune
won the Rita Award, and
Fires of Destiny
was a finalist for the same award. She loves reading, writing, computer games, and dark chocolate.

––––––––

I
n the bleak midwinter, she goes home without a sound.

*

S
he knows she's close to the house when the headlights of her car flash over the yellow warning sign:
here be deer.
For a moment the sign burns against her eyes, blinding her, leaving the dark figure of a stag leaping into nothingness seared on the inside of her eyelids. Rapidly she blinks it away and keeps driving.

Her hands are numb with cold on the steering wheel, and the lights of the dashboard cast an eerie glow around the front seat, green and dim. Her iPod sits on the seat next to her, but it is quiet and dark as a brick, unplugged from the system, so there is only the soft whir of her tires on the road, and her mouth is glued shut.

Silence surrounds her, a lack of sound, and, like a vacuum, her thoughts rise to fill it. Reaching out, her hand hovers over the dark iPod, but in the end she returns her hand to the wheel and continues on.

She knows this now: it had been a useless hope that music could help.

A fool's chore: standing in her dorm room, carefully picked the songs she wanted to bring with her, upbeat songs, songs about fighting, songs about screaming out loud, songs about angry women and angry storms, songs to shore up the soul, but her heart grew heavier and heavier the closer she got to home, sinking deep into her belly like a stone. She'd turned off the music when she crossed the border into Texas, her well-chosen armor sounding like a TV jingle at a funeral. Crude. Unseemly. Embarrassing.

Now she stares into the dark of the forest around her. Corps land, untouched by development. The old farmhouse is back here, easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for, and, for one moment, she hopes she has been away too long, forgotten the way. Moorless, rudderless, she could drift out into the world and alight anywhere she wanted.

Anywhere at all.

But there it is, the little turn-off, the long white gravel road. The old farmhouse at the end. The woods surround the house like a dark, hulking beast, barely visible against the clouded sky.

One light burns in the window, misted over in the fog. A lighthouse beaming out across the prairie seas.

A warning,
she thinks. If she ventures too close, it will break her.

She drives up the long driveway anyway. Gets out.

The air has the snap of a cold dark night in the midst of December, sharp in her throat like a blade. Gravel crunches underfoot, like tiny shattering bones. She leans in and pulls out her suitcase, the only one she's brought for the entire winter break, and closes her eyes. The light of the house disappears into the blackness behind her eyelids. The leaping stag is gone now, faded into oblivion, and there is no sound but the wind in the trees, the leaves whispering to each other.

She doesn't want to be here, but she has nowhere else to go.

Slamming the car door, she turns and walks to the house. The front door is unlocked, and she lets herself in.

Her father is sitting in the easy chair in front of the television. A bottle of whiskey sits next to him, and she can smell it from across the room, cheap enough to strip the varnish from wood. The sole lamp in the window sends a harsh light over the dilapidated interior of the house, stuffed with dust and dirt, dead insects in the corners and cobwebs high on the walls. Ancient furniture sags around her, threadbare and faded. The air is thick, gathers in her lungs like smoke.

Her father turns his head. The shadows from the lamp in the window fall across his features, elongating, shortening, the light of the television dancing on his cheeks.

He looks older, frailer. But if he stands up, she knows he will still be just as tall, just as strong, just as terrifying.

He smiles at her. "Welcome home, Ayla," he says. "I've missed you."

*

H
er old bed on the second floor. The small hours of the morning. The wind outside rising, battering against the walls of the house. The wood creaks and groans, remembering what it felt like to be a tree, strong and full, branches swaying in the gale, leaves whipping away into the ash-gray sky.

It's cold. Prairie winters have a certain kind of bitterness to them. She hadn't known they were remarkable that way until she finally escaped to college, to another place, another state, another world.

Burrowing down, she listens, her ears straining against the sound of the trees in the woods around her. They rustle and sway, the murmur of waterless waves. In the next room she hears her sister, Julia, mumble and turn over in her sleep, bedsprings creaking.

Julia. Eight years old. Stuck in this place.

She'll see her tomorrow morning, but really she wants to sneak out of her room and steal into Julia's, wake her up, make sure she's okay. She must be okay. She has to be.

Otherwise there will be no forgiveness for her.

Shouldn't have left,
she thinks. And then,
Can't fall asleep.
She gets up, rummages through her suitcase in the dark, and pulls out a sports bottle, still new, with her college logo emblazoned on it. She drinks half of it, then hides it away again and climbs back into bed.

Pulling the old quilt, musty and mothballed, around her face, she lies in the bed of her childhood, the bed where she dreamed as a girl, the bed where she had nightmares as a young woman, the bed where she lost her virginity, and stares at the ceiling, waiting to hear the sound of footsteps coming down the hall.

*

I
n the bleak midwinter, she knows she will be found.

*

"T
here's a boy in the woods," Julia says.

No sleep has left her brain wrung out like a rag, and she barely registers that her sister is talking. Instead she stares at the piece of toast in front of her. White bread burned almost black by the ancient toaster. Some jelly—grape—to soften it. It still tastes like nothing when she puts it in her mouth and chews. She does it anyway, her actions automatic, mechanical, drained of will.

"Did you hear me? I said there's a boy in the woods."

Her sister again. She blinks and tries to bring Julia into focus. Across from her at the breakfast table, its laminate top bubbling and peeling from years of misuse, sits her sister, swallowing spoon after tranquil spoon of oatmeal and watching her with disarming clarity. She is dressed for school. She has a week left before her Christmas break.

I will be alone in this house,
she thinks.
Alone with him.

But that is not what her sister is saying. That is not even on Julia’s mind. Her eyes are wide and blue and clear, just as they have always been. She has not changed. Or rather, not
been
changed.

Yet.

“A boy in the woods?” she repeats. She is stupid, slow. She has been awake now for over twenty-four hours, and she feels it. Each second of lost sleep falls on her shoulders like snowflakes—so light on their own, but accumulate enough of them and branches break. Roofs cave in. Ice ages come.

Julia smiles. “Mm-hm.”

She blinks again. She is nodding into her toast, and she forces herself to stop, to lift her head. “What’s his name?” she asks.