Chapter 10

I was plenty warm as Alex took me to the eleventh floor, and started walking me down the carpeted hallway. I thought that he was taking me to my room, room 1115, but he just kept going on past that to a room at the far end. It was pretty quiet there, and my brain had a field day. He’d been on the same floor as me and I’d not known! What plans I could have made for meeting him at midnight, naked at his door.

But perhaps this was better because I was at his door, and I wasn’t naked. Alex’s arm was around me as he unlocked his door with one hand and ushered me inside.

His room was the same as mine, an overly big suite with a separate bedroom, a fancy bathroom, a fireplace and a balcony. Outside that balcony, it was pure dark, and I had a feeling that his view was a wintery hillside, complete with pine trees and magical Christmas animals decorating for the holidays.

“Come over here,” he said.

Still with his arm around me, he grabbed his cell phone and made a call. He said something about a tray and which room he was in, but that was all I understood. The rest of his words buzzed in my ears.

“Let’s get you warmed up,” he said.

This simple sentence resulted with me being gently led to the bathroom, stripped of my fancy robe and slippers, and the shower being turned on. When the water was steaming, which happened pretty much instantly because yeah, this was a fancy hotel with very good plumbing, I realized that Alex had stripped too, and was escorting me into the huge, marble-lined shower.

We were naked in a beautifully hot shower. The hot water glistened on his shoulders and streamed down his torso, making a path that my mouth wanted to follow.

Wow, and I thought his smile had been my only Christmas present. Stupid me. This was another present. Not that I deserved it but Jesus Fucking Christ, his hands felt good as he lathered me up. All over.

The soap was silky and his hands were warm and strong, and my dick almost decided to wake up and take notice, but no. Well, everything else was working (my heart for one, beating fast), and when he gently kissed me, his mouth tasted of soap and hot water, and he was utterly delicious.

“Easy now,” he said. “We’ll get that chlorine off you and get you dry and then we can watch Christmas movies in bed. How does that sound?”

At least that’s what I thought he said. Did he mean we wouldn’t be fucking?

“No,” he said, quite gently, with another kiss to my nose as he washed the icicles out of my hair. “Not until you’re sober.

Oh, he’d heard me. He’d been listening .

Jonah used to listen to me. In fact, Jonah used to drop whatever he was doing and listen to me. I used to be the center of his world and now I was floating out in space and all I wanted was to have sex with Alex and then I could go back to my rotten, shitty, lonely life?—

“Tell me about Jonah, Beck,” said Alex. “You mentioned him before. Was he your boyfriend? What happened?”

My brain turned off and my mouth engaged. As he rinsed me off, and dried me off, and dressed me in some pretty fancy man-pajamas (Was that a fox print? Was the fox wearing a red scarf and dancing in the snow? Were the fucking pajamas made of fucking silk ?), I started talking. Hell, I was a one-man, tell-all, Jerry Springer show.

No one had ever asked me how I felt about what happened between Jonah and me. Sure, I’d muttered my complaints, and then when Jonah’d been in prison, I’d yelled at him, and complained out loud. But that had never stopped him from changing and going in a new direction.

Nobody had ever cared enough to ask me how I fucking felt . And nothing I’d ever done or said had stopped the inevitable. Especially not after Royce had shown up.

To be honest, I wasn’t very good at sharing my feelings. Never realized I had any until all that shit started coming down. But I told Alex everything .

As he dried himself off and put on his bathrobe, I told him how I was raised (by wolves), and where, (in a barn). I told him how I hot-wired cars to steal them and then stripped them down and sold the parts. I told him how me and Jonah had been lovers, from time to time.

I even told Alex about those fucking ghost plates that Jonah had insisted on fucking around with. They’re what got him arrested when he’d driven over the Wyoming state line. They’re what got him landed in Wyoming Correctional, and then parceled out to the Fresh Start Program for ex-cons.

I told him about the good times when me and Jonah could be on our own, even at Farthingdale Valley, though in recent weeks, at Thackery Ranch, I could feel him pulling away. That he didn’t want that with me anymore.

Sure, at Thackery Ranch we had some good times, putting super big wheels on an old junker and driving it dangerously along the banks of the Yellowstone River. But that started to not happen. Jonah became more busy, him and Royce going off together all the time.

Then I told Alex how lonely I was, and I went on and on about it in a drunken flurry of feelings. I think by that time, his cell phone was ringing and there was someone at the door.

“I’m not a criminal anymore, though,” I said. “And that’s gotta be a good thing, right?”

“I’m glad you’re not,” he said as he tucked me into the giant, king-sized bed and propped about a hundred pillows behind me. “Give me a minute,” he said, kissing me gently, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’ll be right back.”

I guess there’d been some kind of confusion amongst the staff or whatever, but Alex sorted everything out, talking on his cell phone while he went to the door and opened it to allow someone to (Steve? Bret? Stan?) push in a rolling cart with a bunch of things on top.

In spy movies, a bad guy would be hidden beneath the draped cloth and spring out at the last minute. But that didn’t happen here. Alex finished his phone call and then directed Steve-Bret-Stan to bring the cart all the way up to the bed where I had been tucked.

I guess I was feeling a little better after that shower, and now I was in a dream state, warm and tucked into a bed, wearing silky pajamas while Alex strode around the very large suite, getting things done.

My brain was a little frazzled, still, and my mouth was tired from complaining. I also guessed that Alex would be kicking me out in the morning, now that I’d stupidly admitted to him that I was a freaking criminal. Still, might as well enjoy it while I had it.

“Did you bring the bed tray?” asked Alex. He pulled out a fold of bills and handed them over before he’d even gotten the answer. “And I can’t find the remote.”

“Here it is, sir,” said Steve-Bret-Stan. “We keep it in the drawer at the night table. Makes the room look more tidy.”

Steve-Bret-Stan set a bed tray over my lap. Of course, the tray was solid wood and heavy. There was even a little mini-tablecloth that he spread out before putting several covered dishes on top of it. Then came cutlery, rolled in a real napkin, a collection of roses in a short glass vase filled with a bit of water, and then he spread a napkin over my chest.

“There’s not enough room for all of it, sir,” said Steve-Bret-Stan. He pointed at the rolling cart and said, “There’s a pot of coffee, a carafe of freshly squeezed orange juice, and a pint of milk. A bowl of sugar. Some desserts. Please call down if you run out of everything, Mr. Westmore.”

“Thank you,” said Alex, Mr. Manners. “I appreciate it, especially on Christmas Eve.”

“My pleasure, sir,” said Steve-Bret-Stan. And then he quietly left himself out.

I was all alone and in Alex’s godlike hands, warm from the glow of him, his handsome face. His lovely smile. He was still dressed in his robe, though, and looked a little frazzled.

“Get in bed with me,” I said, inhaling something that smelled amazing. “Join me.”

“I will,” he said. “But first I need to get this going.”

Getting this going meant turning on the simply enormous smart TV and clicking a few times to find what I guess was the Christmas Channel. A Christmas Carol was playing, because of course it was.

“Which version is this?” asked Alex, though I figured he was talking to himself.

Squinting at the screen, I said, “I think it’s an old one. Alistair Sim stars as Scrooge. Nineteen fifty-one. It’s called Scrooge , but it’s really just A Christmas Carol .”

“How do you even know all that?” Alex asked me this as he let his robe drop and he got into—wait for it—a gray t-shirt and some gray sweat pants. Which told me that I was wearing his pajamas and he was left wearing his ultra sexy gym clothes.

I’d have felt a whole lot guiltier as he climbed into bed with me (from the other side, so as not to upset the covered dishes on my tray, or the roses in the little vase), but it was fucking hard to do anything but goggle and stare at him, his lushness, the way his muscles pressed against the gray sleeves and the front of that t-shirt. The way his dick bounced around in those freaking sweatpants cause, yeah, he wasn’t wearing no underwear.

“Let’s eat,” he said, scooting close to take the lids off those dishes.

There was, of all things, freshly made BLT, and a bowl of tomato soup, and a grilled cheese sandwich, cut along the diagonal. Cups of coffee in thin china mugs.

“The BLT is for me,” said Alex. “Unless you want half?”

“I haven’t had a BLT in ages,” I said.

“Let’s trade halves, then,” said Alex.

On the TV, Alastair Sim acted his heart out in black and white, and Alex and I chowed down on all that great food. From time to time, he’d get up to refill my coffee cup (making sure there was plenty of milk and sugar in there), and then he found two slices of pie, one pecan (with a dish of ice cream on the side), the other pumpkin (also with a dish of ice cream).

We stuffed our faces until finally the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol turned into the Mr. Magoo version of A Christmas Carol .

“We can change it if you want,” I said, because while I loved this version, I figured Alex had more sophisticated tastes and would want something different.

“No,” he said. “I like this one. It’s the best version.”

“It is, really,” I agreed, licking some ice cream off my spoon.

But maybe it was a mistake to watch this version, and maybe I still had some drunk left in me, because by the time the movie got to the part where little Ebenezer was singing as he languished in his boarding school, all alone, I was undone.

“Jim Backus is the voice of Mr. Magoo,” I said right out loud, though nobody had asked me, in an attempt to distract myself from that viciously sad song. “He played Thurston Howell the Third on Gilligan’s Island, you know.”

“What’s that now?” asked Alex. He turned to look at me, flush from the warmth of the room, his lips sticky with crust from his pie. I wanted to kiss his mouth clean and then devour the rest of him.

“This is my song,” I said, my throat closing up as little Ebenezer sang and wondered where the voice was to answer him back, or the shoes that would click to his clack. Damn it.

“Beck,” he said, his voice soft and low. “I think we’re done eating. It’s time for cuddles.”

I kind of like being waited on hand and foot, as the staff had been doing to me from the second I arrived at The Anchorage.

Even better, I liked Alex taking care of me. Maybe that would be too much to ask for, but the thing was, I’d never asked for this. Not Alex slipping off the bed to take the bed tray away and to kiss me as he removed my cloth napkin and brushed the crumbs from the bedclothes.

The best part was when he tucked me in, then climbed over me, grabbing the remote as he went. He eased himself into bed, sidling up to me, wrapping his arms around me, making himself my pillow. Strong and muscled and handsome. Best pillow ever.

“You can rest now,” he said. “Okay if I fast forward past this part?”

“Sure,” I said.

I let my head fall into the curve of his shoulder. It felt filled with lead, and there were weights on my eyes. I think I fell asleep even before the Ghost from Christmas Past sang the last note of the Winter is Warm song.