Mateo peeled his fluffy red suit jacket down provocatively, rounding his hips in sensual circles and singing along to the rich notes of festive jazz. I hooted from the couch, cupping my hands over my mouth to egg the pair of them on. My cheeks burned with laughter, the muscles in my jaw aching.
Natalia picked up and whipped Mateo’s jacket around her head like a banner when it hit the floor.
“Fuck it.” Frankie gave in. His fingers went to his chest, slipping the clear buttons through their holes in succession until his full, tanned upper half and the outline of his muscular torso were on full display.
My insides contracted, a slow swirl of heat pooling low in my stomach. Every sinewed vein on that man was working double time apparently, because my eyes found and registered each and every root from his hips to his shoulders.
“Take it off!” Natalia roared as Mateo’s fingers snuck beneath the stretchy band of his pants and teased them up and down, his green briefs peeking out every few seconds.
“This is so twisted.” I giggled, enjoying every sordid second of it.
My attention whistled back to Frankie as he tossed his dress shirt to land in my lap. Unsure as he might have been, we locked gazes and he trailed his perfect hands slowly toward the buckle on his belt. “Eyes over here, Trouble.”
“Yes sir,” I mumbled suggestively. My legs felt like gelatin, and every inch of me from the waist down buzzed.
He worked himself open, black leather sliding like a greased conveyor through one loop and then two, deft fingers curling around metal and loosening the buckle until it hung near his zipper like an invitation.
My chest rose with an inhale…and it stayed there, the breath caught in a limbo of concentration. The less air that got to me the more incessantly aroused I found myself. I needed to be alone with him. My eyes flitted from his belt to his face and that same echoed expression was there looking back at me, thickening the air in the room to fog.
I lifted the champagne flute to my lips and took one long, slow pull of liquid down my throat, emptying it.
The final lines of “Santa Baby” faded out and Mateo lifted his girlfriend off the ground, wrapping her legs around his waist. His red pants pooled at his feet and he didn’t even shimmy out of them, hopping toward the hallway as Nat cackled, holding onto his neck for dear life.
“See you in the morning, Phee!” she squealed over her shoulder.
“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!” Mateo sang back before burying his face in her neck.
I peeled my eyes away from them and back to Frankie. The weight of a few moments before was just as pressing and even heavier despite our distance.
A muscle in his jaw clenched and softened, a timid smile stretching itself across his cheeks. Then, he did the opposite of my expectation and crouched down, sitting alongside the gifts beneath the tree. “I got something for you.”
“Me?” I perked up, floating on a cloud across the living room to take a place beside him on the carpet. His bare skin glowed even brighter up close, the flames from the fire rippling gold and yellow against shadow.
Adonis, I thought, embarrassingly. The man was my living, breathing, mythical god.
“Something to commemorate your Christmas in Coconut Creek,” he said, pulling a small box from under the tree that had obviously been wrapped by his hands. The crinkled edges and overlapping tape were veritably charming. “It’s very lame, now that I think about it.”
“It’s not,” I assured him, twisting the gold foiled box in my fingers. “Should I open it?”
“Go ahead.” He nodded.
I tore the paper, unveiling a white box with a bow around it. The top popped off as I tugged the fabric away and that airless, tight-chested, speech-disabling thing I’d found happening around Frankie more and more often came on with force.
My lips parted, the singular expression of vitality.
“It’s a Blue Morpho,” he explained as I lifted the gorgeous, crystal-like butterfly by its necklace chain out of the box. Teal wings spilled into black, angular tips. “Like the one that you wanted to take off with at the museum.” He chuckled quietly. “I figured it liked you for a reason.”
“Frankie…” I didn’t know what to say. My fingers quaked nervously, handling the piece as if it were glass. “What the fuck?”
He paled. “I know, I know—what the fuck was I thinking.” He moved to take it from me and I yanked the necklace closer to my chest.
“No—what the fuck? I got you pajamas,” I scoffed. The last thing anyone had ever one-upped me on was gift giving. “Plaid pajama bottoms to replace your holier-than-thou ones.”
Color returned to Frankie’s face, slipping down his neck, resuscitating the near-dead moment. “My heart just stopped,” he huffed. “Don’t fuck with me like that, O.”
“I’m not fucking with you. We need to go to the mall tomorrow.”
“The mall is most definitely closed on Christmas Day,” he reminded me.
“The day after.”
“The twenty-sixth is the biggest return day of the year.”
“I need to fix this.”
“Or…” He reached for the hand still pressed to my chest and peeled it away delicately, loosening my fingers from their tight grip around the chain. “You can stop being a crazy person, turn around, and let me put this on you.”
My heartbeat began a steady climb, thrumming in time with my movements. First hesitant, pinning Frankie with a wary glare, and then more deliberately as my body twisted away from him and I felt the first touch of warm fingertips across my nape. He brushed my hair off my shoulders in sweet, useless strokes.
“Hold on.” I gathered my curls in a ponytail, lifting it to expose the long lines of my throat and every nerve ending across my neck ignited in anticipation. I had always loved being touched there. My skin was sensitive to the attention in a cruel way; it disabled me, loosened my muscles, waking up every last untouched part of my body until it was nothing but craving.
There was silence behind me before two hands passed in front of my face and I got a perfect glimpse of the blue butterfly as it lowered to settle in the dip between my collarbones. The charm was colder than I’d expected and I pulled a quaint breath through my teeth. I was on the edge of a cliff in my mind. Dangling, I wanted to fall—I wanted to fall.
Frankie’s knuckles brushed against my pulse and my eyes drooped closed. He must have felt the adrenaline coursing through my veins, and I would own the fact that I didn’t give a damn anymore. The clasp snapped together at the top of my spine but his hands remained and the quiet lingered, so deafening I could hear the candle whispering across the room.
Neither of us moved a muscle. My stomach hollowed out like a cavern.
Then I felt his lips claiming the curve where my neck met my shoulder. I sighed out a sound that could only be described as a whimper as my hair fell back through my fingertips. Somehow one of the most innocent things he’d done to me felt the most sultry.