12. Milo

TWELVE

MILO

I woke with a start.

The room was filled with the glimmering, dancing lights of the candles. It was warm—impossibly warm. Had something caught fire? My brain skipped over the thoughts, and I realized that the heat was coming from within.

My body experienced a crushing pressure that descended onto my chest. I had dreamed the sweetest dream. A familiar dream. There had been a time in my life when dreams such as these haunted all my nights.

By the time I blinked, the haze lifted off my consciousness, and I located the source of the heat. Next to me, breathing in and out slowly, lay Christian Underwood. My Christian. His body was partially covered with a thick comforter, and his upper torso was bare, skin taut over his muscles and nipples dark.

Was I still dreaming?

Christian blinked. “You’re not sleeping.”

“What time is it?” I asked, resisting the urge to pinch myself. It couldn’t have been late. The candles were still burning after the things that absolutely weren’t confined to the realm of dreams. He was as real as anything. I made sure of it when I rested my long-fingered hand on his bulging biceps.

A tingling, vibrating sensation made itself known down where I had taken him. It was a wonderful feeling, unlike anything I could compare it with. It wasn’t purely physical, either, but a feeling that involved the knowledge of what we had done together. It reached all the way up into my heart.

“Just after one,” Christian said. A heartbeat of time had passed since I had asked.

He gazed at the ceiling, his expression neither pleased nor concerned. There was something peaceful about the way he looked at it, but something else existed beneath the surface.

“And…” I ventured but hesitated in fear of an honest answer. “How do you feel?”

Christian thought about it, chewing his lip and staring at the ceiling. It tugged my heart down into my stomach. And when he held his breath, I braced myself for the worst. “I can’t stop thinking,” he said. “About the choices I made and…well, things I regret, I suppose.”

I pulled my side of the comforter higher up my torso. I was too naked, too revealed. Still, I made no sound.

Christian noticed the gesture, panic setting into his eyes as he turned to his side and faced me. He was abrupt in the way he put a hand on my cheek. “God, Milo, talk about the wrong choice of words.”

I lifted my eyebrows fractionally.

“I regret running away from my feelings, Milo,” he said heavily, sadness filling those big, chocolate eyes. It was a devastating look, a sacrilege to mix sadness with such beauty. “I couldn’t bring myself to stay in touch with you all those years ago because it was easier to be without you than to have you so far away. I never…I never realized what that meant.”

“What did it mean?” I asked timidly, fearing that my idea of the answer wouldn’t match his.

Christian smiled gently at me and caressed my cheek with the thumb of his left hand. “It meant this.” Letting his body speak instead, Christian moved closer to me and pressed his lips against mine. It had a potent sobering effect. Every cell in my body was alert in an instant. I was no longer sleepy as if the hour of sleep I had stolen charged my batteries to the maximum.

Christian kissed me slowly, the sound of our wet lips touching now the loudest thing in the room. The rustle of bedsheets under our naked bodies and the uncontrollable sigh of pleasure added to the harmony.

Unfiltered joy filled my heart to the brim, welling deeper and spilling through my entire body. His hand on my face, his lips on my lips, his brown eyes glimmering with sadness that we had let fifteen years pass, it all combined in a heart-wrenching wave of melancholy. It wasn’t the bad kind, either, but that sweet vintage that you wanted to hold close and never let go.

What had begun as a reassuring kiss—a spark you’d never think could bear so much fire and power—spread quickly through the rest of our bodies. In eager, impatient moves, I held on to him, kissing him with urgency as if dawn would take him away from me forever. I clutched him, pulled him closer, let our limbs tangle and our bodies press together.

He was hard again, and I had been hard since waking up and thinking it had only been a dream.

We kissed and rolled in the bed, grappling to be on top. The tenderness of that first kiss was long gone, and lust took its place.

Christian laid me out flat on my back and took my wrists, spreading my arms wide and trapping me under his body. I lifted my hips, thrusting my crotch against his, pressing my flat stomach against his abs. It was a small gesture, yet it made Christian moan with strained desire. He rammed harder against me, pushing me deeper into the mattress and covering me in ferocious kisses.

In a moment of weakness, his hands let go of my wrists, and I slipped free of his hold. Instead of letting him have his way, I put my hands on his round shoulders and rolled him onto his back, swinging a leg over him and tangling myself in the comforter. With a little bit of frustration, I pulled the comforter aside and sat on Christian. He let out a shuddering breath of air and put his hands on my hips, simply holding me as I swayed back and forth, rubbing my body against his hard length.

“I want you again,” I said, my hands pressing his swelling pecs. It was like all of him grew bigger when I spoke those words. His chest inflated, his muscles hardened, and his eyes widened.

“Always,” he whispered.

I reached over to the nightstand and took what I needed, never letting Christian move from under me. I slipped the condom on him quickly, a skill that probably made him wonder, and poured lube over my fingers generously.

My body accepted him easily; the barriers between us were gone. He kept his gaze locked on mine as I held my breath and took him in. Our bodies merged, and I sank on him slowly, carefully, wrapping my slick hand around myself and stroking gently.

Our breaths synchronized.

Christian put his hands on my hips firmly, following the motions of my body, never taking the lead while I was on top. He was a generous lover, although far more careful than I would have imagined. I figured it was the novelty of it all that made him so timid about trying things. What could he do when he didn’t know all that was possible? Yet he still ventured into the unknown with nothing but blissful joy on his face.

Questions filled me, but I pushed them away. What am I to you? I wanted to know. Yet I wasn’t ready to put my heart on the scales and have him weigh it against the life that he had always wanted to have. I didn’t want to know what my place was in his world—not now, at least. Now, I only wanted one thing. I wanted this feeling to last forever.

Christan took my hands in his, fingers threaded, and moved his hips just enough to meet the motions of my body. He entered me deep as I swayed sensually against him. Each thrust led me to a happy place far from the real world. Each breath of air was the sweetest breath I’d ever breathed.

What are we going to be? The words welled in me, but I only tightened my hold on his hands, sinking lower on him until I felt his length deep within, rubbing against my prostate in a way that filled my chest with abrupt joy and made my toes curl. My voice, tiny and soft, rose an octave higher as I gasped, my eyebrows contorting while my gaze held his gaze.

Earlier, we had been driven by lust that had, in my case, been in the making for a decade and a half. Now, I was driven by something much more intimate. I was led by the desire to feel him inside of me, to feel every inch of him and to know the warmth of him and to remember his contained throbs. I wanted him, body and soul, and I wanted him to know it. Not through words and conversations but in his body and his heart. I wanted him to feel just how adored he was.

Our hands separated, and Christian sat up, wrapping his arms around my waist, pulling me in, and letting me move back in a slow and deliberate rhythm. If we had fucked earlier, we made love now. We savored the movements, the sensations of two bodies forming a single unit, a completeness that didn’t exist elsewhere in nature.

He kissed me again, one hand rising to the back of my head, fingers running through my hair. The heat of our bodies mingled, our lips pressed together in a tight, needy way, our hearts galloping in wonder.

Hold me. Fuck me. Love me. Touch me everywhere you want, and let your lips explore me . Words welled, but I remained silent, making soft sounds of pleasure when holding them down seemed unbearable.

I put my hands on Christan’s neck, sliding them over his traps and onto his shoulders, then around his upper torso to his shoulder blades. His muscles bunched under my fingers. His hips thrust upward with a quickening pace, grinding our bodies together. He held one arm tightly wrapped around my waist, supporting me as he rose and impaled me deeply.

When I came, it was in the blinding heat of passion. My cock throbbed hard between our bodies, rubbing against his stomach and mine, hurting with the desire to be touched. My voice ripped from me in a strangled moan as cum spilled hotly against my skin.

Christian’s black eyebrows twisted longingly, and his lips parted as he brought himself deep into me, feeling the glimmering pleasure my body experienced. My hole tightened around the base of him, sparking the last, unbearable bold of pleasure in him and making him throb, all of his muscles shuddering as he came.

We held one another for a long time after, neither of us moving. I leaned forward, my brow resting on his, and we caught our breaths. He was inside of me, pulsing occasionally. The sensation spread through us both. At each throb, my toes tingled, and Christian’s muscles tensed.

And when he was soft again, slipping out of me with painless ease, he took the condom off, tossed it on the floor, and rolled me over to hold me tightly. The mess of cum and sweat on our stomachs was cooling, but the comfortable desire to remain like this was stronger.

We didn’t sleep. Neither did we talk. There was audible satisfaction in every breath I drew.

After, we showered together. It hadn’t been an idea one came up with but a spontaneous move out of the bed, hands held together.

I wondered if my younger self, the hurting boy I had once been, would find solace in knowing that all his dreams would eventually come true. Would the waiting have been easier? Would the weight of hoping have been any lighter? And would the depth of the following hopelessness have been any less devastating?

In the shower, we faced one another, bodies close and arms on one another. It wasn’t exactly a dance, although we moved in a shared rhythm. Hot water poured down our heads, torsos, and legs. We caressed each other sensually until the bathroom was so full of steam that even breathing was a small struggle.

“Christian,” I said softly, the sound almost drowned by the pattering of water against the tiled shower floor.

“Yes?”

I swallowed. We were already in this. Perhaps it was too late to make demands. “I have wanted this all my life,” I said. “Whatever you do…”

“I’ll be gentle,” he promised. And when he kissed me under the pouring water, I believed him.

“Show me,” Christian said. His tone left no room for debate.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Or are you just asking because we had sex?”

He let out a chuckle. “Perhaps I’m asking because I want us to have sex again, and this is a way to seduce you.”

Butterflies fluttered in my stomach, but I lifted the whisker threateningly. “I don’t need to be bribed.”

“And I am actually interested,” he insisted.

So, I gave Christian a tray and raw hazelnuts. “You can start by roasting these.”

“Aye, aye,” Christian said, taking me back to the days we played pirates roaming the land for hidden treasures while our ship was docked and awaited our return. I’d had my own version of that game that I kept to myself as a teenager with nothing but imagination to keep me company.

The kitchen was filled with aromas ranging from cocoa and coconut to cinnamon and nuts. We’d had a light breakfast in my apartment, Christian wearing only a pair of sweatpants that were a size too small for him; morning light had filtered through thick clouds, giving him a dreamy look by the window. It was an image that would remain etched in my memory for the rest of my days.

While I turned on the big mixer to a low setting to move through the thick chocolate filling, Christian was busy with the hazelnuts. He was thorough and careful, never letting them burn and perhaps putting in more elbow grease than was strictly necessary. Still, seeing him packed into my clothes and wearing my spare apron in my kitchen was the kind of thing I’d never let myself dream about.

“You know, I could look at your accounts if you’d like,” he offered. “I did marketing, but I often ended up sitting with the accountants to review budgets and spending.”

“What could you see in my accounts?” I wondered.

He shrugged. “Where to direct your efforts for a start.”

“I’m not against the idea,” I admitted. The truth was, if he could tell me one thing that made a fractional difference in the way I operated my shop for success, I would be in his debt forever. And I had a few ideas about the repayment plan, so that was all good.

The bell above the door rang just as I had put the latex gloves on and got busy with a time-sensitive part of pouring chocolate into molds. “Could you get that?”

“On it, boss,” Christian said as he removed the nuts from the heat, wiped his hands on the apron, and walked to the front.

“Well, well, well,” Marigold Fairchild said in a tone that hinted at a depth of knowledge only a professional spy might have obtained. “How surprising to see you here so early, Christian. Trying for a job?”

“Something like that,” Christian replied. “I might as well be useful while I’m in town.”

A few drops of chocolate drizzled around the molds as my hands shook. Odd, that.

“How nice of you,” Marigold said. “Nicholas sent me. He’s so busy with children lining in front of his shop that it gives me all the free time in the world.” The old competition between their shops had never gone away despite them being something of a couple. “If you’d give the message to Milo, I can be on my way.”

Christian returned to the kitchen a few minutes later. “Apparently, Santa was in town,” Christian said in a confused tone. “Whatever that means.”

I held back a happy smile. It was another gift delivered, thanks to Nicholas’ patience and understanding. He was somewhat of a Santa already, so having a secret little pipeline for his Nice List didn’t hurt anyone.

Christian looked at me with slight bewilderment, but I winked at him and pointed at the nuts. “We still have work to do.”

He saluted me with two fingers touching the spot above his eyebrow and returned to work.

The people of Christmas Falls were genuinely good. A small town like this didn’t have the capacity for evil, I believed. Instead, Christmas Falls was brimming with the potential to do good. It was clear from my gentle nudges and careful pulls of strings that people were ready to leap at any opportunity to help each other if only it was done the right way.

My part in all this was negligible. I couldn’t leave a wad of cash in front of every poor person’s doorstep or buy a pet for every lonely child in this town. I wished I could do more. I wished I could actually do what Nicholas did. The man had gifted his toys to children in need almost as much as he had sold them to the parents. And the trouble with making chocolate was that toys made way better gifts this time of year.

In my inability to do what clearly needed doing, I found another way. I believed in people. And I told people, as close to openly as I could, what things needed to be done. And that was all it took.

Christian finished another batch of hazelnuts and stepped behind me. His arms wrapped gently around my waist, and he pressed his front against my back. He buried his nose in my hair and inhaled. “You smell like lavender and chocolate.”

When he kissed me, I thought that some cosmic scales had been tipped in my favor. My own Christmas miracle was coming true.