Unforgettable Christmas Dreams: Gifts of Joy Read online

  “Yes.”

  “Nobody ever said that to me before.”

  She laughed. “Because you grew up with a bunch of guys. I’m telling you from a woman’s point of view.”

  He took that in and said. “It’s not enough to be appealing. The man is supposed to do stuff to get the woman ready for sex.”

  “You know what those things are?”

  He flushed. “We all watched porn vids.”

  “They’re not such a great model for real life.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s no . . . caring. And no sense of commitment.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “But it’s different with us. We may have just met, but we both want this relationship to work.”

  “Yeah,” he choked out.

  Pressing her cheek against his, she asked, “Can you unbutton the front of my dress?”

  His hands went to the placket that closed her bodice, and she used her lips on his again as he freed her buttons. When the front of the dress was opened, she eased her arms from the sleeves and let the bodice pool around her waist as she reached to unhook her bra and toss it away.

  His gaze riveted to her breasts. She knew they were full, the nipples large and hard.

  “Fates,” he whispered as he brought his hands up to cup the full mounds, then brush his fingers across the hardened tips. She dragged in a breath, and his hands stilled.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  “No. That feels good. I love your hands on me. . . I’d like it if you put your thumb and fingers on my nipples and squeezed.”

  It was his turn to catch his breath. He did as she had suggested, and when she told him his lips and tongue on her would feel good, too, he sucked one crest into his hot mouth and circled it with his tongue.

  Unsteady on her feet now, she leaned her head against his shoulder as she undid the button at the top of his work pants, then lowered his zipper, reaching in to take the hot fullness of his cock in her hand.

  She was wet and ready for him, and she looked around for a place where they would be comfortable. When she spotted the worn couch against the wall, she led him over, easing him down, then pulled off her panties and swept her skirt out of the way so she could straddle him.

  As she came down on his cock, they both made a sound of satisfaction. His eyes met hers, and she knew he could hardly believe this was happening. It was the same for her.

  She was on top of him, his massive erection inside her. She brought his hands back to her breasts, and he played with her nipples while she plunged up and down on him. It didn’t take long to bring him off, and she pushed for her own completion, pressing her clit against him as she rode his penis, bringing herself to climax

  As she collapsed against him, dragging in air, she felt his hands clasp her shoulders.

  When she raised her head, he was staring at her with a stunned expression on his face.

  “You liked that?” she murmured.

  “I think you know I did.” He cleared his throat. “Was . . . was it good for you?”

  “Yes. Very good. On the way here, I kept thinking about you—wanting it to be good with you.”

  “You didn’t know me.”

  “I was reaching out toward you with my mind.” She swallowed. “Does that sound weird?”

  “No. I was sort of doing the same thing, looking at your holo and imagining being with you.”

  She shifted her body, nestling in his lap in the same position as when he’d carried her over the threshold.

  He stroked her hair back from her forehead. “Thank you.”

  “I thought, you know, we should get that first time over with. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about feeling awkward with each other.”

  “You were right.” He continued to stroke her, but she sensed that he wanted to get up.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I . . . have to take care of the animals.”

  “Should I come with you to see what needs doing? Or do you want me to fix us something to eat?”

  “Come with me. Then I can show you around the kitchen.”

  She looked toward the door, which was still open. “I should change into work clothes.”

  “I liked seeing you in a dress.”

  “I wore it for our first meeting, but I think it’s not real practical for farm work.”

  “Right.”

  He brought in her crate and took it to the bedroom, looking over his shoulder as he said, “I was going to ask if you wanted to sleep in another room. Now I guess there’s no need for that.”

  “Yes. I want to sleep with you.”

  He came back and crossed to the desk, where he opened a drawer and took out a comms unit, handing it toward her. “This belonged to my father. Tomorrow I’ll show you how to use it.”

  She noted the verb tense when he spoke about his parent. “He’s not here now?”

  “No. He was killed by one of those animals I warned you about.”

  She caught something flash on his face and said, “And you think it was your fault.”

  He went still, staring at her. “Am I that transparent?”

  “You looked . . . guilty.”

  He scuffed his boot against the wooden floor. “I don’t want any secrets between us.”

  Chapter Three

  Carin hoped her expression wasn’t as readable as his. But she’d had a lot of practice hiding her true thoughts and feelings. She guessed Gabe hadn’t needed those skills on his farmstead.

  He was speaking again. “Dad and I had a good relationship, but you know, kids get to a certain age and mouth off at their parents.”

  She nodded.

  “We had a fight. He went out to cool off, and he wasn’t paying good enough attention to defenses.” He gave her a fierce look. “Defenses are important. But you’ll be okay in the farmyard. We’ll have a lesson on the other perimeters later.”

  “How old were you when he died?” she asked softly.

  “Nineteen.”

  “And you’ve been alone here ever since.”

  “I go into town for stuff. And I can communicate with my friends on the comms unit.”

  “How did you meet your friends?”

  “We went to school together, in the down season.”

  “But mostly you’ve been here—since your dad died.”

  “There was no choice, really.”

  She tried to imagine it. In the city there were always people around. Not here.

  “What if you have an emergency? What if you got hurt?”

  “Hopefully, I could call for help.”

  She absorbed that as she went into the bedroom, opened her crate and got out rough slacks and a work shirt. She pulled on the shirt first but left the tails dangling over the pants. It was a look she planned to use a lot, and she thought it wasn’t a bad idea to establish it right away. She also donned the practical shoes that were part of the bride’s package.

  Gabe looked at her outfit with approval, then took her out to the farmyard where she met the pigs in their pen, the chickens who had their own yard for the daytime, and the cows who were grazing in a pasture not far away. Gabe used his comms unit to check the setting on a meter attached to a fence post. Then he went in to get the cows, who followed him back to the barn to be milked.

  He did that by hand, into a pail, then transferred the milk into large cans, most of which he set in an outside cold unit.

  He saved one smaller can, which he set at the edge of the yard. “What happens to the big cans?” she asked.

  “A drone will come by and pick them up and take them to the city. He’ll credit my account with the payment.”

  It seemed like a good system. In fact, Gabe seemed to have a lot of good systems for getting work done quickly and efficiently.

  After feeding the pigs and getting the chickens into their little house, he took Carin back to the kitchen where he set the small can of milk in the fridge.

  “What do you want for dinner?” he as
ked.

  “I think that’s my line.”

  “Can you cook?”

  “I was raised in the city, and we had a lot of food that came out of cans and boxes, but my mom liked to make dishes from scratch, and she taught me some of the skills. I can make us a meat and vegetable skillet, if you show me where to find everything.”

  He gave her a quick tour of the kitchen.

  “You have a good setup. You do a lot of cooking?”

  “Yeah,” he gave her a direct look. “You think that’s strange for a guy?”

  “Of course not, if you want to eat good food.”

  “Yeah, it’s better and cheaper if I do it myself.”

  “I hope I can meet your standards.”

  “I didn’t mean . . .” He stopped.

  “I’m not offended. You can give me pointers.”

  She turned away and started sautéing chopped meat and onion.

  Hoping she wasn’t going to screw up, she continued with the meal preparation, adding canned tomatoes, corn and beans.

  “Do you have any Mexican seasonings?” she asked.

  “What are those?”

  “Chili powder. Cumin.”

  “I do have those. I didn’t know they were called Mexican.”

  “It’s a kind of cooking from a country on old Earth.”

  She added the seasonings and let the skillet simmer for about twenty minutes before turning off the heat and dishing out two portions.

  They sat across from each other at the small table, and she watched nervously as he forked up some of the food.

  When he said, “This is good,” she let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

  Feeling more relaxed, she said, “I learned about Mexican food from my mom. She liked to read books with recipes from different cuisines.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Carin went very still, wishing she hadn’t brought up the subject of family—which she knew was going to lead to less pleasant revelations. “Mom was unlucky. She was down by the river cooking for some guys on a riverboat when a terrible rainstorm came through. There was a flash flood, and they were all swept into the river and drowned.”

  “I’m sorry. What about your father?”

  “He left us a long time ago.” She dragged in a breath and let it out before saying, “I was sixteen when I lost Mom. I went into foster care for a while, and the government taught me office skills. Then I was on my own. But I guess you could say I fell in with a bad crowd. You said you were rebellious. There were a lot of ways to rebel on Danalon.” She turned toward him and cleared her throat. “Did they tell you I was in prison?”

  ***

  Carin watched him stiffen, watched him raise his head and look at her.

  “No, they didn’t tell me that. What did you do?”

  “Something stupid,” she answered, then swallowed hard. “I told you I got training in office work, and they gave me a job in the Danalon spaceport. I wasn’t making enough to live on my own, and I went looking for a roommate.”

  She swallowed again and clarified. “Well, by roommate, I mean a guy who wanted a relationship. I wasn’t the best judge of men, and Phil Waskom was a good talker. I thought he cared about me, and maybe he did, a little. But after I’d moved into his unit, I found out that he wanted to steal cargo coming into the spaceport. He wanted me to give him the records of shipments, so he could choose which stuff to take.”

  Again, she stopped, wishing she hadn’t started the conversation. Did she have some kind of death wish? Did she think she didn’t deserve to be with Gabe Cooper, and she was trying to give him a reason to take her back to Port City?

  Since there was nowhere to go but forward now, she finished the story. “I felt trapped. I knew he was going to kick me out if I didn’t do what he wanted. So I finally started giving him the data he was asking for. When he got caught, he said it was my idea. I don’t know if the judge believed that, but he sent me to the hole on Amati. I was there for nine months before some recruiters came around to tell us about the brides program on Palomar. I saw it as a chance to start over.”

  “Uh huh.” Gabe pushed back his chair and stood. “I’m going out to check on the animals.”

  When he’d strode out of the house, she sat for long moments thinking about how she’d messed things up—again. Apparently, she didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut and when to spill her guts. Or was she trying to see how he’d react when he found out something worse about her?

  One thing she did know now. He wasn’t into confrontation. Instead of pressing her for details, he’d walked outside.

  She made a small sound as she pushed that thought out of her mind. Unable to sit still, she stood and began to clear the table. They’d eaten most of the meal, and she wondered what she was supposed to do with the food left on the plates. Probably he saved it for the pigs, but she didn’t know where he kept scraps. She left the scrapings in a little dish on the counter, then put the hash still in the skillet into the cold unit.

  ***

  Gabe sat on a bale of hay in the barn, thinking about the woman in the house. His wife—unless he didn’t want to keep her.

  That was a nasty way to think about it. But the contract they’d both signed gave either party the right to back out of the arrangement during the first year. A year was a long time. You ought to know if a marriage was going to work sooner than that. But he guessed the authorities were being generous.

  Carin had deliberately told him facts about herself she knew he wouldn’t like. Did that mean she wanted to leave?

  He was pretty sure the answer was “no.”

  She’d as much as said that coming to Palomar was her chance for a good life. Probably she was laying her cards on the table so he couldn’t say later that she’d hidden anything from him.

  But who was he to judge her old life? It seemed that she’d come from a background that stacked the deck against her. He’d been shocked—and he admitted, angry, when she’d told him about being in jail. Now he knew he had to give her a chance to show him what she was really like. Not because of what she’d done in the past but because of what she did now. And he had to be open-minded about her. Too bad it was hard not to judge her by the moral standards that had been drummed into him by his father—a man who had been loving but a stickler for honesty.

  ***

  When Gabe still hadn’t come back, Carin took a quick shower and put on a modest gown, then climbed into bed, listening for her husband to return. It felt like hours later when he finally came into the house, used the bathroom and climbed into bed. She could feel him lying beside her with his arms rigidly at his sides. She wanted to reach out and press her hand to his, but she stayed in her own space.

  She thought she’d lie awake all night, but after a while she drifted off—then woke before dawn to find that she and Gabe had rolled toward each other during the night.

  She knew he was awake, and she could feel his erection pressing against her.

  Hoping she was doing the right thing, she brought her mouth to his, turning her head, moving her lips as she kissed him.

  He lay still for a few moments, then responded to her.

  He was naked. She pulled her gown over her head, and tossed it away, giving him access to her body.

  He touched her breasts the way he had the day before, and she dragged one of his hands down to her sex, moving his fingers against herself.

  He responded with a low sound, then covered her body with his, and she guided him into herself.

  He began to move, and she matched his rhythm, trying to keep up as he pushed for climax.

  It was over too quickly for her, and when he rolled off her, she lay for a moment, wondering what she should do. Finally, she settled on honesty.

  “I’m not finished,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t get a chance to come.”

  She took his hand again and pressed it where she needed it, moving her hips to bring
herself to climax.

  She cried out when she reached orgasm, then moved to rest her head against his shoulder.

  For long moments, neither of them spoke. Then he said, “I guess I did that wrong.”

  “No.”

  “You needed . . . my hand . . . after.”

  “Women are slower than men.”

  “But it’s better if you come when I’m inside you?”

  “They’re both good. There’s a lot of things that are good. We just have to learn them together.”

  “I think you already know them.”

  “I know some things,” she admitted softly.

  “I want you to teach me.”

  Relief swept through her. Reaching down, she closed her fist around his cock, squeezing and moving her hand up and down his length. When he was fully hard again, she leaned over, circling the head with her tongue, then sucking him into her mouth.

  He gasped as she worked on him.

  “Is that something you want to do?” he managed to ask.

  She stopped long enough to say, “Yes,” then brought him to climax.

  The part she didn’t like was swallowing, but she did it because she didn’t want him to think she had given him a blow job as an obligation.

  “I can do that to you?” he asked as he lay beside her in the dark.

  “Yes, but not now.”

  “Why not?”

  “You might not like the taste of your semen on me.”

  “Do you like the taste?”

  She hesitated for a moment before saying, “No.”

  “But you . . .”

  “I like the rest of it, up till that bit. Next time, I can put it in the sink.”

  They both climbed out of bed, and she went to fix breakfast while he showered. She could have joined him there, but she thought she would save that for another time.

  At breakfast, there was no talk of her revelation from the night before, and she thought that things were okay between them again, thank the fates.

  After breakfast, he gave her the comms unit that he said had belonged to his father and showed her how to use the three-dimensional display. Then they practiced communicating while he was in the field and she was in the house.