Winter Tales Read online

  “Fionn is my son,” Zach said. “If the day comes when he learns that he has a different biological father, he’ll still be just as much my son as before he knew. You won’t be taking his father away from him, if that’s what you’re worried about. But there is a very good chance he won’t appreciate some strange woman from America inserting herself into his family. Don’t be surprised if he wants to shoot the messenger.”

  “Why do you think I brought you with me?”

  “Well, if explaining our own complicated family situation helps, I’m happy to do it.”

  “I meant you could stand in front of me and take the bullet if he does shoot.”

  Zach threw his napkin on the table, feigning a French hissy fit.

  “C’est ça,” he said. “I won’t be treated like this.” He spoke in a mock French accent.

  Giggling, Nora reached for him, grabbing his wrist.

  “I forgot to tell you something very important,” she said.

  “There is nothing you can say to me that will change my mind.” Say was zey and change was shhange.

  “Grace said you and I could sleep together this week. If you want.”

  Zach’s right eyebrow shot up like a rocket.

  Slowly, he sat back down again. Returning to his impeccably posh English accent, he said, “Shall I get the check, then?”

  Chapter Two

  They returned to the hotel and Nora collapsed, dramatically and seductively, onto the sleek black sofa in their suite. She unzipped her boots and tossed them off, then laid on her side, using her arms as a pillow, facing Zach.

  “Really?” he said, settling into the black-and-white striped armchair.

  Nora nodded slowly, but didn’t smile.

  “When did this conversation take place?”

  “That night.” Playing the vixen, she ran a hand through her wavy black hair and tossed it over her shoulder.

  He cocked his head. “You mean ‘that night’ as in the night my son was conceived while I was on the other side of the planet?”

  “After what we went through… Well, you know how it is. Sometimes you need a good stiff drink. Sometimes you need some good stiff kink. I had a bruise the size of a soccer ball on my ribs so I couldn’t do it.”

  “So you volunteered my sweet, darling, gentle, schoolteacher wife for the job.”

  “She’d been there for him at the worst moment of his life. I sent her to him. I guess you could say she earned him.”

  Søren had told her what Grace had done, how she’d walked with him at dawn, keeping him company on his way to his certain death. But Grace had refused to accept Søren’s sacrifice. She’d run back to Kingsley to tell him what Søren had done. To give him one last chance to save them all.

  And Kingsley had, thanks to Grace. Together, they’d saved them all.

  “It’s a blur mostly,” Nora lied. She remembered the moment like it was yesterday. “But I do clearly recall saying something along the lines of, ‘I’ll let you have Søren for a night if I can have Zach for a week.’ And thus the unholy deal was struck.” She giggled wickedly, the only way she ever giggled.

  “Now wait.” He furrowed his brow. “How is one night with him equivalent to a week with me? Are you and my wife implying I’m one-seventh of the lover that he is?”

  Nora shook her head solemnly. “I drive a very hard bargain. One night with him was enough for her. One night with you wasn’t nearly enough for me.”

  “It wasn’t, was it?”

  She shook her head again. Zach groaned. His head fell back and he stared at the ceiling.

  “What?” Nora sat up on the sofa, tucked her legs under her. “I won’t make you do it. I’m only saying we can. I even checked with Grace before we left.”

  “You did what? When?”

  “Before we left, when you were saying goodbye to Fionn. Grace gave us her blessing. Call her. Ask her. Text her. Sext her. I’m not kidding. Your sweet, darling, gentle schoolteacher wife isn’t nearly so sweet as you think she is. Do I need to remind you that she spent a night with Søren? Willingly? Dare I say…happily? As happily as you spent a night with me that time?”

  Zach slouched in his chair, looking like the sexiest college professor in the long and storied history of sexy college professors. “Point taken.”

  “You’re the best anal I’ve ever had, you know.”

  The slouching immediately ceased. “I am?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Really?”

  “You need this in writing?”

  “I wouldn’t mind it in writing.”

  Zach was joking but Nora rose off the sofa anyway. She went to the desk, far too modern for her taste, found the pad of hotel stationery and wrote a quick note on it.

  “Nora.”

  “Hush, I’m writing,” she said. “You’re my editor. You know how hard it is to get me to sit down and actually put words on paper.”

  “That’s an unfortunate fact.”

  She finished her note, folded it, slipped it in an envelope and presented it to Zach.

  He unfolded it and read aloud, “Dear Zach, You gave me the best ass-fucking I’ve ever had in my life. And that is saying a lot. Love, Nora (and her ass).”

  Zach returned the note to the envelope and tucked it into his jeans pocket. “Well. I’ll be saving that for posterity.”

  Nora waited. She didn’t push or prod. This was Zach’s decision. She’d already made up her mind to go for it if he was in. Why not? This was going to be a rough week, trying to convince a total stranger to let her upend his entire life. Having something to look forward to every night—sharing a bed with Zach, specifically—would make this trip much more fun. Why not mix in some pleasure with their business?

  “You sure about this?” Zach asked, eyes narrowed. “Really sure?”

  She looked away from him, past his shoulder, out the hotel window where a cold winter rain was beating softly against the glass. If she opened that window and breathed in the cold clean air, she would smell Søren’s skin.

  “I love Søren so much it scares me,” she said. “Not a day passes when I don’t go back into that house, and gunshots are ringing in my ears…but I know I’m going to live through it—because Søren has shoved me into a tiny corner of the room and put his own body between me and the gunfire.” She blinked and tears ran down her face. Without a word, Zach stood and came over to her, sat at her side on the sofa. “He’s my everything.” She turned her head and met Zach’s eyes. “Still…sometimes, when you and I are on the phone fighting about something, I have this wicked little thought…well, just like I said. One night wasn’t enough.”

  Zach collapsed back on the couch, groaned, laughed, then groaned again. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said.

  Nora turned, straddled his lap and put her hands on his shoulders. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.” Nora put her mouth to his ear. “I can.”

  She thought if it would happen, Zach would kiss her, then and there. He didn’t. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her back and pulled her into his lap. He held her to him then, just held her. She rested her chin on his strong shoulder and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  He was one of those men who always smelled like he’d just stepped out of the shower, like cedar and verbena soap. He had half a day’s stubble on his cheek and she pressed her face against it, relishing the gentle friction.

  “What are we going to do?” His voice was soft, almost a whisper, a question for her ears only.

  “Run away, you and me,” she said. “I hear Tuscany is nice. We’ll get a crumbling villa with no telephone, change our names, spend all night eating and drinking and all day in bed.”

  “Sleeping?”

  “Not just sleeping…”

  “Very tempting.” He kissed her finally, but only on top of her temple.

  “You want to go to Italy?”

  “You’re very tempting, but I’d never
survive the heat in Tuscany.”

  “You’d never survive leaving Grace and Fionn,” she said. “Any more than I’d survive leaving Søren.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “I know I should be. It’s like I’m too scared to be angry. I thought I knew what the rest of my life looked like.” Nora pulled back, met Zach’s eyes. “I thought I had it all planned out. King and Juliette are moving to New Orleans to raise Céleste. Søren’s teaching at Loyola. I bought a house there. We’re starting a new life in a new city and it was supposed to be our new normal. Søren won’t be in charge of a church anymore. My house and King’s house are on the same block. We were all going to be this nice little family. Finally.”

  She laughed at her own naiveté, that she really thought it would be that easy.

  Now, anything could happen and everything was up in the air. Would Søren tell his superiors in the Jesuit order he’d fathered a child? Would he be defrocked for it? Would he leave the priesthood and move to London? Would he press for joint custody? Would Søren insist he and Nora get married, for the child’s sake? Would she leave him if he tried? She had before.

  “Now there’s Fionn,” she said with a shuddering breath, “and I have no idea what the future looks like anymore except there’s this baby boy in it.” She smiled. “And maybe another not-so-baby boy.”

  Nicolas and his strange celadon eyes flashed into her mind again. She caught herself sneaking looks at his picture a dozen, two dozen times a day. She’d already convinced herself he was Kingsley’s son…so why couldn’t she stop looking at him?

  “Søren and I were talking in bed last week, about what happened to me in that house. The ‘ordeal’…”

  The ordeal—that was what they called it, their euphemistic shorthand for the time when Kingsley’s supposedly long-dead sister returned with a vengeance, determined to punish both Kingsley and Søren for deceiving her about their relationship. Months of taunting culminated in Nora’s kidnapping. Easier to give it a name, to file it away under O for ordeal.

  “So much good came out of the ordeal,” Nora said. “Kingsley and Søren finally figured their mess out. Wes and I…well, that was long overdue. I figured out who I belonged to, now and forever. Søren, if you were wondering.”

  Zach smiled. “Wasn’t wondering.”

  “And Kingsley and I had some issues, too. We finally worked those out. But even with all that…it didn’t quite feel like the ordeal was worth the terror and the nightmares and the therapy bills. Then I held Fionn and suddenly…suddenly, it was all worth it. At least for me. Do you know what I mean?”

  Zach ran his hand through her hair, captured a curl, tickled her chin with it. “I know what you mean.”

  She believed him. He’d been through an ordeal of his own. She’d watched him with Fionn, rocking him to sleep, and when he’d caught her watching he’d smiled and said to her, “Thank you.”

  Nora hadn’t needed to ask him why he was thanking her. She’d sent Grace to Søren that night. She’d set the wheels in motion. Nora had whispered, “You’re welcome.”

  “Juliette says King’s still having nightmares about it.”

  “The ordeal?” Zach asked.

  Nora nodded. “I can’t help but think this will make it all okay again. If I can find him, and he is King’s son...then all of it, the whole ordeal...it will finally go away. For all of us.”

  At the café, Zach had been skeptical, reasoned, trying to temper her out-of-this-world expectations. Now he said exactly what she needed to hear:

  “We’ll find him.”

  Nora kissed him. She had no expectations for how he would respond. No hopes or dreams. She wasn’t trying to seduce him anymore, either. He’d simply said a kind thing to her, what she needed him to say, and she’d kissed him to thank him. Lips on lips, soft and warm. He returned the kiss, as softly as she’d given it. A kiss that didn’t say everything was fine, but rather a kiss that said everything, someday, would be.

  The kiss ended. The room was quiet. Nora looked at Zach and Zach looked back at Nora.

  “Say something,” she said when she couldn’t stand the silence anymore. The silence and the suspense.

  Zach kissed her again, soft and warm and deep. She opened her mouth and let him slip his tongue between her lips, touched his tongue with hers in reply.

  Zach broke the kiss and laid his head back on the sofa. “I’d forgotten what a good kisser you are,” he said.

  She kissed him again, so he wouldn’t forget it.

  The kiss was soft and warm and deep and wet this time. A kiss that couldn’t be taken back. A kiss that had big plans for the night. A kiss that meant business.

  Nora’s body warmed and she became aware of her cashmere turtleneck sweater prickling against her hot skin. She pulled the sweater off and tossed it onto the floor. Zach ran his hands up and down her back, over and over, and before she knew it, her head was on his shoulder again.

  “If I told you I needed this, would you believe me?” she asked. “Or would you think it was a line?”

  “I need it, too.”

  “I’m thinking too much, about too much.” Søren. Fionn. Kingsley. His son. This trip. This quest. The future. The past. “Can you get me out of my head?”

  He stroked her hair, kissed it, and whispered, “Let’s find out.”

  Chapter Three

  Gently he pushed her up and off of him. She stood and he stood. He kissed her and she kissed back. He went to the bedroom. She followed.

  The hotel was modern, chic, the suite black and white and très élégant. Zach switched on a light hidden inside a silver sconce next to the large bed. Nora turned off the overhead light. Parfait. He sat on the side of the bed and she stood in front of him. He kissed her again, between her breasts, on the rounded tops of them, his hands roaming all over her stomach and back, shoulders and arms. She could only take so much enjoyment of her own before she had to give some of it back in return. Grasping his sweater with both hands, she tugged it up and off in one smooth motion. Then she pushed him on his back, climbed onto the bed and straddled his stomach. With her palms pressed to either side of his head, she dipped her lips to his mouth and kissed hard, harder, hardest…

  With no warning, Zach grabbed her by the hips, rolled her onto her back, and rolled himself on top of her.

  He pointed down at her face and said, “Behave.”

  “Oh, goody. Zach’s in a toppy mood tonight.”

  She rubbed her fingers together like a mad scientist brewing a potion.

  “I’m on holiday,” he said. “The reason we go on holiday is so we can do things we can’t do at home.”

  “You’re going to tie me up and fuck my ass, aren’t you?”

  “The tying up is optional.”

  “Says who?”

  He kissed her to shut her up. Nora didn’t mind. Not when he pulled the strap of her bra off her shoulder, tugged down the lace cup, and kissed her right nipple. Kissed it and licked it and ran the tip of his tongue around it. She arched her back and he took the hint, pulling the nipple into his hot wet mouth and sucking deep and long. While he worked on her breasts, she licked and bit his shoulders. If he’d forgotten how good of a kisser she was, she’d forgotten how delectably bitable his shoulders were. Under her teeth and tongue, she felt him flinch, heard him gasp. She ran her hand up his arm, feeling the strength of his biceps, the curve of his shoulder-blade, the long line of his back to his hips. So much warm male skin. He’d been nothing but a voice on the phone, an invisible, playful email correspondent for the past two years. She’d forgotten he was a body, too. A body that pressed her hard into the bed, a body that rubbed its hips up against her hips, a body that pushed its erection insistently against her wet aching crotch through their clothes.

  She had to touch him, had to feel him in her hand. She reached down, wiggling and wriggling to get enough room to find the button of his jeans, the zipper, the soft cotton of the boxer briefs she remembered he favored, and then…hi
m. She slipped her hands into his pants and wrapped her fingers around his cock and stroked up and down, down and up, taking as much pleasure in feeling him as he took in being felt. He tilted his head back, eyes closed, and Nora smiled at his male delight in this, the simplest of erotic pleasures. The tip of him was wet, and dripped on her fingers.

  “Been awhile?” she whispered into his ear.

  “Ever had a newborn at home?”

  “So that’s a yes.”

  “If I don’t get inside you soon, there’s a very good chance I’ll come in your hand.”

  “That would be such a waste.”

  Zach pushed up and rolled off her. He peeled her leggings off, then her black lace panties, which he was wicked enough to sniff before tossing over his shoulder. She laughed and he slid off the bed to remove his jeans. Then she wasn’t laughing. He was naked, and so hard that his cock was red. He crawled back onto her, kneed her thighs apart and settled between them, putting his full weight onto her. She lifted her hips and opened her legs wider. His cock slid between the wet lips of her vulva and nudged at her entrance.

  “I think we forgot the foreplay,” Zach said. His hips pulsed into hers, and with each pulse he moved a little more into her; just a little, one centimeter at a time.

  “We’ll do foreplay after.”

  “Fore, short for ‘before.’ ”

  “When you’re planning on fucking my ass, fucking my pussy is the foreplay.”

  They moved together, just moved, pushing up, pressing in, not trying to make anything happen, simply enjoying the slide and slip of his hardness over her wetness. With the slightest lift of her hips, Nora took him deep inside her. Her vagina opened, and she drew him in even further, grinning as Zach groaned into her ear.

  Nora sighed. “I love foreplay.”

  After that, there was no more talking. No quipping. No pretending this was two friends playfully misbehaving. They were fucking and they were taking it fucking seriously.

  Zach shifted up, pulled her legs around his lower back, spread his knees and went at her with slow, hard thrusts. It felt too good. Nora could barely give back the pleasure he was giving her. Her head lay on the bed, her eyes closed as he dropped long kisses into the hollow of her throat. He kissed a path to her ear. “You have lube, I suppose?” he whispered.