9
YASMINE PEERED out the kitchen window at the gray Christmas morning while she heated water for instant cocoa in the microwave. She recalled the feeling of being watched that she’d had in the past few months, and realized that having Kyle here with her had eliminated that paranoia. For the first time in a long time, she felt completely safe and at ease.
She mixed the cocoa in steaming hot water, poured it into two coffee mugs and was about to carry them into the bedroom to wake up Kyle with when a hand slipped around her waist, and she felt herself pulled back against the firm warmth of a large male body.
“Ho-ho-ho, Merry Christmas,” Kyle said.
“Hey,” she said, her heart racing at the surprise. “I almost spilled your cocoa.”
“Sorry, I woke up and felt lonely to find myself in an empty bed.”
“Ready to open presents?”
“Before breakfast?”
“It’s Christmas morning!”
After returning home from the party, they’d wrapped up the cheap souvenirs they’d bought at Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39 and put them all under the tree to keep things looking festive.
“Oh, right. And Santa might have brought me that new surfboard I told him about.”
“Not if you’ve been bad.” She elbowed him in the ribs, and he held her tighter, splaying his fingers across her belly.
“I don’t know why he got so freaked when I sat on his lap,” he said, and Yasmine smiled at the image of Kyle balancing on a disgruntled Santa’s knees.
“Santas these days have too much attitude.”
“That’s not what you said last night.”
“True, and now that you mention it, I happen to know for a fact that Santa was way too busy last night to be hauling a surfboard down my chimney.”
“You don’t even have a chimney.”
“Santa’s a nasty boy, always looking for some tight space to get into.”
“I think you’re the nasty one,” he said as he swatted her on the backside.
“So I’ve been told. Now grab your coffee and get your ass over to the Christmas tree.” She swatted him back as he turned toward the tree.
Chilly as it was in her drafty apartment, Yasmine couldn’t very well let Kyle sit around in his boxers—today’s pair covered with snowmen. They were festive, but they wouldn’t do much to keep the chill out. She grabbed a couple of blankets from the closet and gave him one before wrapping the other around herself and settling in next to the tree.
“I call elf duty,” she said as she grabbed the nearest gift.
“It’s all yours, babe.” He leaned back against the couch and sipped his coca, clearly enjoying himself more than he wanted to let on.
Yasmine had to admit, this was turning into the most fun weekend she’d had in a long time, Christmas or not. A few nights of great sex clearly had a positive effect on her mood, and she was just about as jolly as she could get.
She knew the gift she’d grabbed was for Kyle, but she made a show of examining the tag anyway. It was the box of See’s Candies she’d gotten him before she knew anything about him but what a great ass he had. Only a few days ago, but it felt like a lifetime.
“For you,” she said.
He unwrapped the package and withdrew the box of chocolates, then pried off the box lid.
“There’s a companion gift for that.”
He picked up a chocolate and bit into it. “Mmm, raspberry,” he said. “My favorite.”
Yasmine’s grin must have been huge. “They’re almost as good as sex, aren’t they?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t know about that. I mean, they’re tasty and all—”
“I’ve always wondered if eating them during sex would heighten both experiences.”
“We can test the theory out,” he said.
“All in the name of science, of course.”
“Because that must be the kind of thing scientific minds puzzle over.”
“Of course.” She handed him the box containing the furry handcuffs. “When they’re not inventing life-saving gadgets like this.”
“I get to open two in a row?”
“It’s the companion gift.”
He tore into the paper, then opened the white box and pulled out the leopard-print handcuffs. “Ah, of course. Chocolates and handcuffs.”
“I’ll let you solve the riddle. Major bonus points if you do.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Let me get this straight, you bought this stuff before you even knew we’d end up sleeping together….”
“To declare my intentions, of course.”
“You planned to take advantage of me all along!” He was doing a really bad job of acting offended.
“Give it up, Bad Santa. It’s not like I’ve stolen your virtue.”
He twirled the handcuffs on one finger. “I’ll need a demonstration of how these work later. Your turn to open something.”
Yasmine recognized most of the boxes as things they’d wrapped last night, but one small box caught her eye. “What’s this?” she said.
“Open it and find out.”
It was unmistakably Kyle’s wrapping job, with too much tape and uneven paper alignment. She tore off the packaging and found a box filled with a little stack of computer-generated coupons.
The top coupon read, “Good for one free sensual massage.” She flipped to the next one, which read, “Good for doughnuts in bed.” And the next one, “Good for unlimited fantasies fulfilled.”
“Wow, I get to redeem these whenever I want?”
“Maybe not whenever. I mean, in the middle of the workday would be bad timing for most of them.”
She smiled, touched that he’d taken the time to create a homemade gift. “Is this why you got up in the middle of the night?”
He shrugged. “Well, I couldn’t sleep, and I felt bad for having woken you up.”
“Didn’t you ever see the episode of Friends when Joey gives coupons as gifts?”
“No, why?”
“Oh, nothing. Thank you,” she said, and she meant it. “This is the sweetest gift anyone has given me in a long time.”
She handed him his next gift.
“Is this one mine?” He made a big show of acting as if he had no idea what was in the package, even though he knew it was only the dumb key chain they’d bought yesterday.
“Wow,” he said, holding it up for her to see. “It’s in the shape of a cable car. Get it? Cable cars represent San Francisco.”
She laughed. “You’re such a dork. A cute dork, but still a dork.”
They finished unwrapping their assortment of goofy little gifts and sat on the floor beside each other, drinking cocoa and playing with their stuff. Yasmine shook up her San Francisco snow globe and watched the glitter fall on the city.
“What’s with you and the snow globe?”
She smiled. “I’ve got a collection of them. It used to drive my parents nuts that everywhere I traveled with them I could have picked out some tasteful, authentic souvenir—a piece of pottery or a local artist’s sketch or whatever—and I always wanted a snow globe instead.”
“Show me your collection sometime?”
“Absolutely!” She beamed. No one ever asked to see her snow globes.
“So, are you ready for that surfing lesson?” he asked.
“That what?”
“Didn’t you see your last coupon? It’s for a free surfing lesson.”
“Only if you meant that in a figurative sense, like you’re comparing surfing to sex again.”
“No, I mean a real surfing lesson, with ocean and waves and wetsuits.”
Yasmine looked at him as if he was speaking a foreign language. “I don’t know why you think I’d want to do that.”
“Because it’s something new? Bet you’ve never gone to the beach on Christmas day before.”
“As a matter of fact…no, I haven’t, and I don’t see any reason to break with tradition.”
“Come on, this is the antitraditional Christmas celebration. You’ve got earrings hanging from your tree, we just exchanged sex coupons for gifts, and we’ve known each other for only a couple of weeks.”
“And what does any of that have to do with surfing? Besides, I doubt any equipment rental places are open today.”
“Doesn’t matter. We can swing by my place on the way to the beach. I’ve got an extra board and a wet suit that’ll fit you.”
“Surf boards won’t fit in my car.”
“We can take my SUV.”
“Jeez, you’re persistent.”
“Aren’t you even a little bit curious about what it’s like to ride a wave?”
“After all your sex and surfing metaphors, no. I think I’ve got a perfectly good idea, and I’m happy to stick with the sex side of the experience.”
“Then come to the beach and watch me surf. Maybe next time you can try it.”
Next time, as if they’d have more than just this weekend together. The idea intrigued Yasmine. There was nothing not to love about Kyle. Aside from his slightly furtive behavior that first night at his apartment, he was altogether a dream guy.
Finally, after years of dating guys who never saw past her appearance, she was starting to let herself believe that Kyle might be a real winner. It was a crazy idea, and totally unexpected, but what the hell. Kyle seemed to be genuinely interested in her.
So, yeah, maybe they would have more than just a weekend together. Maybe this thing that had started out as purely sexual would grow into something more.
“Okay, fine. I’ll watch you surf, but if you freeze your private parts off, I have to tell you, you’ll be of no further use to me.”
He laughed and pulled her onto his lap. “Is that all I am to you—a sex toy?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” she said, but her wide smile betrayed her.
ALEX STRETCHED OUT on the bed, enjoying the ache in his muscles from having spent the afternoon on his board. Yasmine had walked the beach, picking up shells, and by the time he’d finished surfing, she’d gathered a pocketful of perfect, unbroken shells that she’d insisted on showing him one by one now that they were back at her apartment.
She lined them up on the blanket. “Think I can make some kind of mermaid bikini out of these?”
“Hmm.” He rolled over and grabbed two sand dollars. “Lie back and let me see if these fit you,” he said as he held them up against her nipples.
She peered down at the shells. “They’re a little small, huh?”
“Looks just right to me.” He placed a seashell over her pubic hair, and she laughed.
“Unless I go for a full-frontal wax, that one’s definitely too small.”
“I don’t know….” Seashells or no seashells, she looked amazing to him.
“Okay, no bikini.” She scooped up the shells and put them on her nightstand, then lay back down beside him.
They’d stopped at a Turkish restaurant for dinner, and they’d planned to find a Christmas movie on TV to watch after returning to Yasmine’s apartment, but instead they’d ended up in bed again.
Alex traced his fingers from the space between her breasts to her belly button, then made lazy circles around it. He loved the perfume she wore, something like spiced fruit, and he loved watching how she responded to his touch, her expression softening, turning dreamy.
He didn’t want to spoil the moment, but now was as good a time as any to dig for information.
“Tell me about what you were like growing up,” he said.
She laughed. “I’ll spare you the boring details. I was a spoiled only child, my family traveled a lot, and that’s about as interesting as it gets.”
“Come on, those are just the facts. I mean, what were you like? Shy, extraverted, happy, sad, tomboyish, girly—that kind of thing.”
“All of the above?”
“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
“I hate talking about myself.”
“Which clique did you belong to in high school?” he asked, moving dangerously close to the important topic.
She cast a crooked smile at him. “I was a computer geek, of course.”
“I have a hard time seeing you as a geek.”
“Well, maybe I wasn’t the stereotypical awkward nerd in glasses and bad clothes, but I was bored in school and tended to do my own thing.”
“Bored, as in you were too smart for your own good?”
“Something like that. I got into trouble, partly to entertain myself and partly to remind my parents I was alive.” She covered her face and sighed. “See how boring this is? I’m just the typical spoiled little rich girl, desperate for my parents’ attention.”
“It’s interesting to me. I don’t think there’s anything typical about you.”
And that much was true. She fascinated him far more than he would have liked.
“What about you? Were you the homecoming king?”
He sighed. “No, I was actually kind of a skinny geek myself. I didn’t really get into decent physical shape until college when I took up surfing.”
“So which crowd were you in?”
“I thought I was the one asking the questions.”
“I answered.” She draped her bare leg over his as she turned onto her side, propping her head on her elbow and smiling. “But if you want every boring detail, we didn’t have the traditional cliques most schools had. We had the rich girls and the really rich girls, the old-money girls and the new-money girls, that sort of thing. I’d like to say I rose above it all, but actually I mostly hung out in the rebellious crowd.”
Now they were getting somewhere. Getting her to admit past offenses was a big step toward her admitting any more-recent ones.
“How much of a rebel were you?”
“Not that bad. Just kind of a petty criminal. Shoplifting and smoking cigarettes were my big rebellions, until I got hold of my first computer.”
He shouldn’t have felt sorry for her, but her expression reminded him of the girl she’d been, the girl who hadn’t completely understood the consequences of her actions. She’d had to learn the hard way, and knowing her personally now, he felt bad that she couldn’t have had an easier lesson.
“After you got out of juvenile detention, you were never tempted to…test out your skills any more?”
“God, no. Aside from what I told you last night, I’ve lived in complete fear of doing anything wrong again. I nearly screwed up my whole life, ruined what there was of my relationship with my parents and missed out on having a normal senior year of high school.”
Another stab of guilt hit Alex. He’d never known he’d helped drive a wedge between Yasmine and her parents. Was there no damn end to the ways he’d negatively impacted her life? Sure, she’d been guilty of hacking, but some nagging voice inside him had always wondered if she’d deserved to be made an example by giving her the maximum sentence.
Hadn’t he done enough?
He knew he had. He’d done more than enough. He shouldn’t have insinuated himself in her life again.
What the hell was he doing here, besides trying to prove to himself that he wasn’t inept as an investigator? Indulging his long-held desire for Yasmine? Was that what this was really all about?
He saw himself clearly for the first time, reflected in her gaze. He saw how low he’d sunk. His actions were not just underhanded, they were sleazy, despicable, unjustifiable…
And he couldn’t go through with it anymore.
He’d already had more than enough of an impact on Yasmine’s life, and he needed to stop before he did any more unintended damage.
Okay, admittedly, her stint in the juvenile detention center might have scared her straight, and if it really had, then he’d helped do some good in her life, too, but clearly, she’d paid a hefty price for her crimes.
Another problem remained. If he wasn’t seducing her for information anymore—then where did that leave them, besides lying naked together in her bed on Christmas night?
“You’re being awfully quiet,” she teased. “Did I bore you to sleep?”
“No, I was just thinking it’s sad you and your parents are so disconnected.”
“Everybody’s got their problems. Mine are pretty small in the great scheme of things.”
“But still—”
“This is exactly why I didn’t want to go into all this crap. I really didn’t want you to feel sorry for me, or to think I’m damaged because I spent a year in juvie.”
“I don’t. I just hate that any of that stuff happened to you.”
“I brought it on myself—end of subject,” she said, smiling as she brushed her fingertips across his cock, her obvious and very effective attempt at distraction. “Now can’t we think of something more interesting to talk about?”
His groin stirred at her touch, but he couldn’t go there now.
“So long as it’s not my dark and sordid past,” he said, forcing his tone to remain light, joking.
“Do you need to call your family today?”
“Oh, right,” he said. “It’s still daytime in Hawaii, but I’d better call before long.”
Yasmine had talked to her own parents this morning briefly, but Alex had put off calling, dreading thinking of what he’d say when they asked who he’d spent the holiday with.
Part of him wanted to flee the scene of his crime before he got caught.
And yet it was Christmas. He couldn’t just abandon her, and he didn’t want to. He wanted to stay and make love to her all night, all weekend, wanted to forget his real identity and become whatever man she imagined him to be. Clearly, he wanted too damn much.
He needed to tell her the truth, but now wasn’t the time. He had to find the right time soon, though, before their emotions got any more complicated. Even at this level of intimacy, the fallout could be major.
“But seriously, stop joking around. I want to know all about you now.”
“I’m the one with the boring past. Not much to tell.”
Except that he was a lying, sneaky, good-for-nothing fraud.
“All I know about you is that you know how to survive in the wild, you surf, and that you started in college. Where’d you go to college?”
“William and Mary in Virginia. I grew up in Virginia Beach, went to school for a year at Old Dominion before I decided to make the switch to a school away from home.”
“So you’re a mama’s boy?”
“Not exactly. I had to pay my own way through school, and living at home helped, but I got sick of it and decided to eat the cost of room and board.”
“That’s what student loans are for, right?”
“Exactly.”
“So I guess between teaching survival skills and surfing, you’ve managed to stay a lot more fit that the average programmer.”
“I have?”
“Haven’t you noticed you’re nearly the only guy in our office who doesn’t have a paunch?”
Now there was a detail of his disguise he’d failed on. Not that packing on the pounds would have done much to help attract Yasmine’s attention.
“Um, no. You’re pretty much the only person at the office I’ve checked out.”
“I’m flattered,” she said as she brushed her fingertips along his bicep, sending chills through him. “I was just wondering, would this be a good time to start redeeming my coupons?”
His will to resist Yasmine lasted all of a nanosecond. “Absolutely.”