The Twelve Hot Days of Christmas Page 10

  “Annie,” Sanj said and laughed. “You are breaking the rules.”

  But it was too late—my finger was in my mouth and I savored the sweet cream. “Sorry,” I said and laughed.

  “That Annie is a rebel,” Karen commented.

  “In oh, so many ways,” Jenna said and laughed.

  “Hey, remember the time she danced topless on the bar?” Karen said.

  “Okay guys,” I said. “We don’t need to go into my sordid past.”

  “Annie?” Sanj said. “I don’t believe it.”

  They were mocking me. The truth was, of course, I was shy and mild mannered—a typical accountant. I liked things to line up neatly in columns and rows, especially my life, but my life was not lining up so neatly. Dan wasn’t supposed to die at thirty-eight. There was supposed to be time for children. I wasn’t supposed to be alone at forty and I wasn’t supposed to be unhappy in my career. It had always my dream to be a CPA. Yet here I was, and day after day I dreaded going to work. I had always fought the unpredictability and surprise of life, but somehow I was losing the battle.

  “Okay,” Sanj said, after we placed the pastry cream in the refrigerator. “While the cream is chilling, let’s make the pastry.”

  As we mixed the pastry in our individual bowls, the room smelled of cold butter and flour.

  “One of the tricks to good flaky pastry is to only touch the dough with your fingertips,” Sanj said, reaching for my hand and guiding it over the dough. “Like Annie. Look at that, those beautiful fingers…”

  I looked up at Sarah, who was right across the table from me. As our eyes met and she raised her brows. I felt the heat creeping up my face. Oh God. Was I blushing? Sarah, who still held my gaze, snickered.

  I watched him poking at the fleshy dough and it returned me to my dream, reminded me of the way he folded back the lips of my vagina, the taste of his own cream still on my tongue. Those same brown fingers spreading me open. The image lingered in my mind as I watched him.

  We placed our puffs of differing shapes in the oven. I wanted to make éclairs, and so did Lydia and Sarah. The others fashioned balls of dough for cream puffs. Jenna made beautiful little crescents.

  “Snack time!” Jenna yelled but I didn’t want a snack. I just wanted a drink of water and to sit down. I wandered into to the living room. A fire blazed in the fireplace and I could smell the scent of fresh pine from the Christmas tree in the corner. It was decorated in red ribbons and shiny balls and the fire shone in them. I was enjoying my solitary time with the tree and the fire when my friends started to trickle in with plates of fruit and bread and suddenly I was famished.

  Sanj was still in the kitchen at the stove, stirring something that smelled of eggs, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  “Mmm,” I said piling grapes and brie onto my plate. “That smells heavenly.” I walked up behind him and the intoxicating smell made me feel cozy, safe, and warm.

  He turned to me and smiled. His smile was punctuated with deep dimples, one on each chin. His eyes were deep and calm, oceans of tranquility.

  “Annie,” he breathed. I thought I saw a spark in his eyes. But it had been so long since I had even noticed another man, I wasn’t sure.

  “It’s a treat for later. It needs to go in the fridge for a while. You call it boiled custard,” he said.

  “Boiled custard?”

  “Yes,” he said. I saw that he used a glass double boiler.

  “My ex-mother-in-law made that every year for Christmas,” I told him.

  “Ex?” he said, turning back to the frothy mix.

  “My husband passed away,” I said.

  “I am so sorry to hear that.”

  “It was five years ago. I guess I should be moving on,” I said, something catching in my throat. I could not believe I was standing here at the stove with a total stranger, telling him this, holding back tears. It was the fucking custard. The smell of it seemed to grip me and hold me in place next to him, taking in his presence along with the memories flooding through me. It opened my wounds and laid them bare for him.

  Sanj turned back to me. His eyes met mine and his free hand touched my cheek. He whispered something in another language. It made my heart race, though I had no idea what he’d just said.

  “What?” I mumbled. “What did you say?”

  “It’s hard to translate, but it’s something like: Such exquisite beauty trembles before such terrible pain. Let it go. Take my hand,” he said, but it was still on my cheek, where it burned my skin. I felt as if I could drown in his eyes at that moment.

  Sarah walked in and we jumped. “Oh geez, sorry,” she said and promptly left the room.

  Sanj, in his embarrassment, turned fully back to the stove. He lifted the cream-coated spoon. “Hand me that pitcher, please,” he said to me as the women in the next room laughed.

  “Your friends are laughing at us,” he said as he poured the custard into the pitcher. He smiled.

  I shrugged. Ripples of embarrassment shot through me. “I’m not worried about it.”

  “No.” He placed the pitcher in the refrigerator, as the smell of baking pastry filled the room.

  “Can I see you this evening?” he asked me after shutting the refrigerator door.

  Me? I wanted to say. I must have been ten years older than this gorgeous hunk of man. But something in me seemed to shed whatever concerns I had.

  “You know, after dinner?” he said under his breath with a look of absolute hunger.

  I was stunned, but found myself nodding my head yes.

  When I walked back in the living room, the conversation abruptly stopped and all eyes were on me.

  “Christ,” I said, “What’s wrong with you people?” I slipped down next to Arianna, who was drinking a glass of wine—her empty plate resting on her knees.

  “What’s going on?” Lydia asks. “Seems like he has the hots for you.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Annie,” said Sarah and grinned. “I know what I saw. Sanj was touching you and looking at you with lust.”

  “Lust?” Arianna said. “Really?”

  “Oh, she’s embellishing. I was…we were talking…that’s all,” I told them. “Yes, his hand touched my face and yes, I’ll never wash that side of my face again!” I tried to joke. There were a few nervous giggles, but nobody was biting. They knew me too well. Every one of them knew I had not been with a man since Dan had died. They knew I’d had one relationship and that I could not bring myself to have sex with him—which, of course, he very soon lost patience with. It was just too soon. He didn’t want to hear it, so fuck him.

  “Be careful, “Arianna almost whispered to me.

  “Yes, you know those tantric dudes – they do all kinds of funky shit with their dicks,” Lydia said and we all laughed.

  “Ladies!” Sanj called us back into the kitchen. He was pulling out the pastry. I grabbed a baking mitt and helped. The warmth from the oven was almost unbearable and I blinked several times against the heat.

  The puffs were perfection, little brown balls all neatly aligned in a row. God, I don’t know what I loved more, the perfect symmetry of my friends’ creations or the delicious smell seductively rising from them. My éclairs turned out just right too, lightly browned and light as air. I marveled at them as they cooled on the rack. While we waited for our baked goods to cool, we filled our pastry bags with the cream. None of us had ever used one before and the process was a bit awkward.

  The bag finally loaded, my pastry cooled, I gently squeezed the bulbous end and nestled the tip into a tiny hole in the éclair, watching as the cream began to ooze from the edges. By the tenth pastry, my hands were shaking slightly from the strength it took to force the creamy goo into the oblong pastry and the exhaustion of doing ten in a row. I realized it was time to reward myself with a lick of the thick custard, and so I edged my teeth over the end of a filled pastry and nibbled. I was almost sinfully delighted in my pastry—and nobody else seemed to notice.
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br />   Sanj appeared behind me. I felt him before I saw or even heard him. “Annie,” he said. “Breaking the rules again?”

  Startled, I jumped, smearing cream all over my face. I reached for a napkin. Lydia and Susan, nearest to me at that moment, both rolled their eyes and laughed.

  “How could you not take a bite?” I said to defended myself. “It’s such a temptation. I can’t manage.”

  Sanj laughed. “You love food, don’t you? Why are you an accountant? Why not a baker?”

  In that moment, it was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes. Why, indeed?

  “She makes a lot of money,” Sarah volunteered.

  “Yes, but she could make money baking, as well. Have her own business,” Sanj said.

  “A new business is very risky,” Sarah said to him.

  “I like the idea,” I announced suddenly. What was I saying? “I’m going to check into it.”

  I shot Sarah “the look,” which I hoped would tell her to mind her own business. The thought of having my own bake shop did somersaults and pirouettes in my mind. I held it there and played with it as I finished eating my éclair. I earned a good living and had substantial savings, had even paid the airfare for two of my less financially fortunate friends to be here. I loved being able to help them out. I couldn’t deny that my salary would be difficult to leave behind…but happiness.

  “Okay, ladies, we are finished for the day. See you at seven for dinner,” Sanj said.

  “What are you going to do?” Lydia was suddenly beside me. “We thought about going to this goat farm, checking it out.”

  “I need to have a shower and lie down,” I told her.

  “We aren’t leaving for a while. We’ll check in on you before we go,” she said.

  “Okay.” I headed for my room.

  Flour was everywhere—in my fingernails and hair, lightly dusting my eyelashes, even in my bra and panties. I slid them off and mindlessly tossed them in my laundry bag. Flecks of flour snowed down onto the brown tiled floor. It was a mess. Type-A me would usually feel compelled to wipe it up, but not today. I felt lighter, unencumbered somehow.

  A bakery—did I mean it? What would I name it? What kind of baked goods would I offer? What would my specialty be? Would they all line up perfectly on the display shelves? With every thought, I felt a sense of clarity and recognition. This was my dream all along—and I had not even known it.

  I fell into my bed naked, parts of me flour speckled, like the first moments of a fresh fallen snow. My new self did not need a nightgown. I needed to be free. The cotton sheets felt so soothing on my skin and for a moment I wished I had brought my favorite vibrator with me. I rolled over onto my belly, spread my arms under the pillow, and closed my eyes.

  A rapping at my door awakened me. How long had I been out? “Yes?” I said, slightly disoriented, thinking it must be Lydia gathering the ladies to go to the goat farm.

  “Annie?” It was Sanj, his deep male voice and slight accent undeniable. My heart began to race. I was naked on my bed and a gorgeous hunk of a man stood no more than five feet away from me, with just a door between us. The old Annie would have remained silent, not responding, I mused.

  I sat up in bed. “Yes,” I replied, firmly—empowered.

  “Would you like to come down for dinner?”

  “Dinner?”

  “Yes.”

  I glanced at my clock. It was seven. Where was everybody?

  “Annie? Can I come in? I’m trying to talk to you through this door…”

  “I’m in bed. I’m not dressed” is what I would have said if I were still the old Annie. But I was the new Annie, a naked baker surrounded by beautiful cotton sheets and a huge down comforter, lying on a brass bed made for at least two people. I took a deep breath. Butterflies crept into my stomach.

  “Come in, Sanj,” I sat up with the bedding pressed close to my chest.

  “Are you okay?” He spoke into the dark room.

  I flicked on the bedside table light. A glow spread across the room.

  “Annie,” Sanj said, his eyes meeting mine. “You are in bed.”

  “Yes, I guess I was more tired than I thought. Where is everybody?”

  “They went to the goat farm. You were sleeping. They didn’t want to wake you,” he said.

  “Shouldn’t they be back soon?”

  “They won’t be. Since they left, we’ve gotten some snow.” He walked to the window, pulled back the curtains, the lights from the building illuminated the winter wonderland beyond. There must have been two feet of snow on the ground.

  I gasped.

  He turned to look at me. “Annie, I must be honest with you,” he said, walking toward the bed and sitting on the edge. ‘I’m glad they are there and we are here. I’ve felt a pull toward you that I don’t often feel. I am not like Ben.”

  I knew what he meant. I had read about Ben DeFranco’s exploits with his students, as I suspected, had a few of my overly optimistic girlfriends who had all too eagerly agreed to come to northern New England in December with me.

  I reached for Sanj’s face, which was a little rough by this point in the day, and leaned forward. His eyes glanced hungrily at my face and traveled to my covered beasts. The new Annie boldly let the covers fall away—and I watched the young man’s face change as passion enveloped him. He pressed himself softly into me, and his mouth found mine, his tongue flicking against my own. His hands gently massaged my breasts, and my nipples became hard and alive.

  I felt a hunger swell in me and pulled him closer, wrapped my legs around him firmly, and tore at his shirt until at last it released itself from him, revealing a hairless, glistening brown chest with dark chocolate nipples. I ran my fingers over them, each one springing upward at my touch. His arms pressed me down—each one well muscled, the sinewy forearms on display. He lifted one arm first and then the next, guiding my fingers to his full lips and kissing them so gently, one at a time, it almost made me cry.

  “Your hands,” he breathed. “Your hands are so beautiful.”

  He ran his tongue along my wrist, slowly circled around the inside—a sigh escaped me. Such pleasure at my wrist—it astounded me as the need in me rose with my pulse. The moistness between my legs felt like a river of desire flowing from me.

  Sanj pulled back and looked at me. “You are beautiful. I…are you sure about this?”

  I felt his cock hard against my hip pressing into me through his jeans. I knew he wanted me as much as I needed him.

  “Are you sure you want…this?”

  I place his hand between my legs. “Don’t ask,” I pleaded—no, demanded.

  He audibly sucked in air as he felt my hot, wet slit. His baker’s fingers, which expertly kneaded dough and braided intricate pastries, twirled and pressed my clit as his mouth found my nipples. I came hard and fast, bucking against his hand. Moans and cries of pleasure came from deep in my throat. I was so used to the cold hard vibrator that I had forgotten what a warm, hungry hand could do for me.

  “So ripe,” Sanj said.

  I reached for his cock, still in his pants. He grabbed for a condom, which was in his back pocket. His pants slid off, along with his boxers, and I gasped at the beauty of it—long, brown, and pulsing before me like a charmed cobra. I pressed the condom into the sheets next to me, ready to be used in a moment. I wanted him in my mouth first. I tongued the head of it and Sanj gasped, “Annie, oh...” I knew it would not be long as I took it in. I found my rhythm and sucked him until I felt his hot, salty bounty in the back of my throat.

  I thought about what he’d said earlier about drinking happiness and I had to admit, I was happy. His hand at the back of my head—not forcing me to his throbbing member, but instead somehow holding onto me for comfort—quivered and shook as the post-orgasmic ecstasy washed over him, rendering him much like the mounds of dough we’d baked hours before. How does this fit into his family’s ancient tantric practice? I wondered.

  Sanj collapsed next to me. As he rega
ined his senses, we tangled under the goose down comforter in a heap of sweat and stickiness and watched as the snow fell in big white fat flakes just beyond the window. I thought about Christmas, just around the corner, and the new year not far behind. I knew what the new year would hold for me and I was happy and content for the first time in since Dan’s passing.

  “Your friends may be there all night,” Sanj’s words tore me away from my thoughts.

  “That’s fine with me,” I whispered.

  “Me too.” He bent forward and kissed the nape of my neck. “Maybe they will get to milk the goats in the morning,”

  I smiled at the thought of my seven city-slicking girlfriends milking a bunch of stinky goats and reached for Sanj’s cock, already beginning to rise again.

  I had some milking to do of my own.

  Nine Ladies Dancing

  by Rhonda Leigh Jones

  Grinning mischievously, Lisa brandished her makeup wheel at one of the Harper twins.

  “Oh come on, Daniel. We can’t just jump into a full dress rehearsal tomorrow night. At least let me put on your little red cheek circles.”

  The two ballet dancers stood in the theatre’s large communal dressing room, which had tables and lighted mirrors on all four walls. Because it could be a madhouse when the entire company was there fighting for space and losing each other’s applicators, Lisa had gotten there early and began pinning up her bright red hair. She hadn’t known the Harper twins would be there early too.

  Daniel lowered his head, but kept his eyes on her and grinned. He was the gentler of the two, the proverbial “good” twin, with soft brown eyes and hair that fell in golden ringlets. “You can put the whole thing on me if you want,” he said. “Do you know how?”

  Lisa nodded. At twenty-one, she was experiencing her first season as a professional ballet dancer, but this was definitely not her first Nutcracker. Since the age of ten, she’d had a fascination with stage makeup and had practiced on herself many times. She knew conservation was always the key to good stage makeup application.

  “All right then,” Daniel said. At twenty-eight, the Harper twins were veteran dancers and consummate professionals, when they weren’t on the hunt for primitive pleasures. Lisa, of course, had heard a few stories from the older ballerinas, accompanied by whispers, giggles, and knowing glances, especially when she was around. But she was still innocent, and didn’t know what men like this were capable of. Innocence was magical though, especially at Christmastime—especially during the Nutcracker—even though they weren’t doing the “traditional” production.