Perfectly Kissed Read online

  Perfectly Kissed

  Lacey Silks

  MyLit Publishing

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Afterword

  Also by Lacey Silks

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Perfectly Kissed © 2015 Lacey Silks

  Images © Depositphotos

  Published by MyLit Publishing.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form of by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be constructed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.

  This book is intended for ADULT AUDIENCES only. It contains sexually explicit scenes which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  ISBN: 978-1-927715-37-6

  To those with perfect lips

  *everyone shakes their head*

  Introduction

  Mistletoes suck.

  My best friend sucks.

  That old lady down the street sucks.

  And it’s all because they all want me and Dave Mayers, the only man I’ve ever loved, to get back together.

  And this season, they may just get their wish.

  Their tricks are shameless and advice persuasive.

  Welcome, to Millie Cartlon’s Christmas and the best gift she’s received in a long time - a perfect kiss.

  Chapter 1

  “Let me go!” I slammed my fists into Dave’s hard chest.

  “Easy there, buttercup,” his deep voice vibrated above me, sending an uncomfortably delicate chill up my arms.

  “I said, Let. Me. Go.”

  He finally released his tight grip from around my hand. It didn’t hurt – in fact, I sort of regretted pulling away from him – but being so close to this man was too dangerous. Way too dangerous. It brought up too many memories, both good and bad.

  “You know, there was a time when you begged to be in my arms.” He stepped closer and I backed away, losing my footing on the icy porch once again. Dave caught me and I fell right into him for the second time.

  “You mean, when I was young and stupid?” Despite my resolve to be strong, my voice quivered.

  “No, I mean, when you still believed in us.”

  Us. There was no ‘us.’ There never could be an ‘us.’ But as I tried to hold fast to my argument for why we could never be together, I connected my gaze with his, which was a mistake. His beautiful green eyes were doing that magical thing where I couldn’t look away. And I didn’t even believe in magic. Earth’s orbital cycles; twenty-four hour days; fresh rain hitting your face on a cloudy day; the smell of spring — those things were magical, but real. Nature was real, and life was balanced until men disturbed it. Where was I? Oh, yeah, Dave’s eyes. They were like a cat’s – better yet, a wild black panther’s who’d never seen humankind and wanted to sink its teeth into their neck. Actually, make that my neck. He’d lick before biting and kiss before sucking the skin, tasting it before he owned it. That’s how I remembered Dave’s lips, tongue, and the gentle scrape of his teeth on me.

  The spicy smell of cinnamon and nutmeg caught my nose, and the heat of his lips touched near my dimple. Oh, God!

  “Merry Christmas, Millie.”

  Danger! Danger! The alarm bells in my head weren’t loud enough to overpower the sound of his voice and the thumping of his heart. See what I meant about magical? Dave had a way of zapping me right out of this world with one long look. Actually, he completely whacked my life out of orbit each time he was close, making it that much more difficult to stay away.

  “Dave, please…”

  “Why, Millie? Just tell me why we can’t be together so that I can move on. It’s been seven years. Please?” His eyes were sad, begging for an explanation I couldn’t give him. How could I tell the only person I had loved in my life that he couldn’t give me what I needed? What I needed was something safe and a way not to ever hurt anyone again. Zen was my middle name, and if my emotions remained balanced, the natural energy surrounding me would lead me forward.

  “I… I’m sorry. I should go in.”

  “Wait.” He held me steady and pointed up. I followed his gaze up to where a sprig of mistletoe hung underneath the porch roof.

  “We gotta kiss.” He still had that same sly smirk on his face, identical to when he was eighteen, the year we met. Jesus, that was so long ago. So many years later, he still affected me the same way he did when I walked into that high school. “It’s tradition.”

  No way. Kissing him would be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb falling on top of me. I couldn’t control the outcome of his lips on mine. It would be a disaster; a wonderful disaster, but still - a disaster. I’d melt, disintegrate, fall apart, and no one could ever put me back together again. I shook my head, creating the maximum distance he would allow between us—which wasn’t much. It was just enough to get a breath of frozen air inside my lungs and frost my heart all over again.

  “I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and shit a better argument than that,” I spat back. “You’re never touching my lips again.”

  I finally managed to wiggle out of his comfortable arms and pushed past him into the cabin.

  Aha! The culprit behind it all was hanging another one of those green and red plants in the hallway.

  “You’ve got to stop doing that, April.” I ripped down the mistletoe.

  “But it’s tradition.”

  I shook my head. Being best friends – actually self-adopted sisters – with the baby sister of the man whom you had once loved had its consequences. Sometimes they were too alike. I had come into the Mayers family over a decade ago, and they never made me feel like an outsider. We were all one, and I was grateful for all the love they’d given me. Yes, often, and especially the past few years that Dave and I weren’t together, it would get awkward, but there was no way I’d cast these people aside because of one bad relationship. This family was everything to me. They were all I had.

  “Tradition, my ass. How can you put this up when your brothers are in the house? Do you really want to risk kissing one of them? That’s like… incest. Gross!” I stuck my tongue out in disgust.

  “First of all, I’m putting these up for you,” she looked at me knowingly. “And second of all, blood relatives kiss on cheeks, hug, and make good wishes.”

  If Dave had kissed me on the cheek already, why was he insisting on another one?

  “Can I wish to be elsewhere?” I whined.

  Zen, balance, no whining – or you’ll end up in a pig pen.

  “Come on, Millie. Where’s your Christmas spirit?” Dave pushed past me and slapped me gently on my ass. I should have known that he’d take my comeback – in fact anything I said to him – as an invitation to get closer.

  “Hey!” I said. “I am the Christmas spirit.”

  Would he ever giv
e up? I guessed deep down inside, somewhere near that frozen heart of mine that had to be sealed off from Dave Mayers, it felt nice to be wanted. But it also hurt at the same time, especially when you knew there was nothing you could do about it. Well, technically I could, but that would definitely end in an apocalypse. A big bang-type of a catastrophe, actually. Of course, the big bang wasn’t a catastrophe; it was the beginning – but each beginning had an end, as well. Maybe April was right and I should just slow down with the teachings of Dalai Lama because it just all kept messing with my brain. That’s what happened when someone like me, an uneducated former foster kid, tried to process too much information.

  Having been without a stable family of my own ever since I could remember, each year I was blessed to celebrate the holidays with April, her son Parker, Dave and his twin brother Justin, as well as their father and the patriarch of the family, Christopher Mayers. They took me in and treated me as if I were one of their own. And things had been good for a little while. In fact, they were really good — probably the best years of my life. But now I was older and wiser. Now I understood that my true destiny was to be alone. That way, no one would hurt me — especially the male half of the population. And more importantly, my troubles were less likely to follow others.

  “What you are is all talk, pancake.” Dave winked.

  “What I am is annoyed.” I rolled my eyes. “I thought you were supposed to be helping Justin get the wood.”

  “I’ve got all the wood I need when you’re around.”

  He lowered his hands on his hips and jutted out his crotch. Only from my experience, I knew that the generous bulge there wasn’t even hard. If he were hard, he’d be tearing at the seams.

  “Oh, come on! Gross! I’m still here. Why don’t you two get a room, hump the heck out of each other, let go of the stress, let bygones be bygones and all that crap, and everything will be right with the universe again.”

  Sometimes I wished my widowed friend would find herself a man. That way she’d have someone else to concentrate on.

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” Dave said with pride.

  “Remember when I asked your opinion? Me neither.” I then turned to April: “You’re a traitor, and karma is a bitch!”

  “Isn’t that what you want, Millie? For the universe to finally be balanced?” Dave echoed behind me, following me like a puppy dog. It’d be cute if he were a puppy, but Dave was a mature hound, all the time focused on me as if I were in heat twenty-four seven.

  And a balanced universe would be one where the hunky-dory piece of meat that was Dave Mayers would turn into an ugly toad so that I could easily resist him. This buff cop was a sin waiting to happen. I probably should have seen that as a good quality, but not when the money he made was one of the many reasons why we weren’t together.

  “The day we are in bed together is the day that the universe gets sucked into a black hole.”

  “Sucking and holes - now we’re talking.”

  “Shh, there’s a child in the room!” I pointed to Parker, my godson (who also happened to be Dave’s godson), who was sitting by the dimming fireplace in the family room with his beats on, bopping his head. I guessed he’d gotten those from his uncle as an early Christmas gift.

  Dave sighed.

  Yes, I had a tendency to mention Parker to change the subject. He was like the best contraceptive against Dave, if there ever was one, because Dave and Simon - Parker’s deceased father - hadn’t gotten along. Dave blamed himself that he hadn’t stopped April from marrying Simon just because she’d gotten pregnant. But now he was gone. And like I said, the universe had a way of finding a balance. It selfishly made me happy for April that he was gone, but I wasn’t about to ruin Christmas for my best friend by mentioning her deceased husband, whom she still thought about. But between me and Mother Earth, well, we were grateful that he’d made space for another, better human being, and himself became compost over at Crossover Cemetery.

  I put the kettle on and set the cup with a pouch of chamomile tea, waiting.

  The front door opened and Justin stepped through, carrying a load of wood for the fireplace. He looked so much like, and yet was so different, from his fraternal twin brother that sometimes I wondered whether they’d sprung from the same womb. Although a cop, Justin at least had the right idea about life. Live free; don’t worry, be happy; let the Zen guide you. When I was still with Dave, April often teased us that I’d fallen for the wrong brother. I disagreed. Opposites attract, even if they weren’t always meant to be. Looking at the brothers as they stacked the wood at the side of the fireplace, I had no regrets. Our relationship had taught me an important lesson: that not all pain was worth it.

  So why was I always so sad on the inside? What was missing in my life? I’d searched for that feeling of completeness, and nothing ever fit the bill. Nothing… except Dave. Well, that was a lost cause anyway. I walked to the first step of the staircase, fastened the mistletoe back onto the ceiling, and then hugged my friend.

  “I’m sorry, April. You’re right. It’s Christmas. And I promise you that I’ll be the green little elf of happiness this season.”

  At least I would try.

  “And you will kiss on the cheek and wish luck to anyone you meet under here?”

  I sighed, kissed her on the cheek, and hugged her, making a mental note to walk around that spot for the remainder of our three-day stay.

  “Of course I will. I wish you happiness,” I then leaned in closer to her ear, “and for you to find Mr. Healthy Zucchini and dump Mr. Pinkie.”

  She gave me a look of warning not to talk about the man she’d just dumped, and rightfully so. Pinkie, as we’d nicknamed him, wasn’t worth it for all the reasons that his nickname implied.

  “I wish for you to find that happiness as well. I love you.” She squeezed her arms around me.

  “I love you too,” I said to her, yet my eyes flew to Dave’s sad emeralds. Sad but determined - he held my gaze until I looked away.

  Chapter 2

  I popped two pills with a glass of water. The excitement of the next day’s preparations was likely to keep me up all night, and I really needed to get some deep sleep. Expecting vivid dreams from my sleep-aids, I readied myself against the pillow and closed my eyes. I hadn’t let out a third relaxing breath when I heard the gentle tiptoeing into my room.

  “Parker? What’s the matter?”

  He carried his flashlight with him and shined it right into my eyes. “Can I sleep with you, Aunt Millie? Mom’s taking most of the bed, and I’m having trouble sleeping.”

  I shaded my eyes, and he lowered the beam to the ground.

  “What about grandpa?”

  “He snores.”

  “And I guess there’s no space in Uncle Dave’s or Uncle Justin’s rooms?”

  “No. Their beds are tiny.”

  “Hop on in, Parker. But I’m an early riser.”

  “That’s okay, I don’t mind.”

  “Good. Try to get some sleep. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow.”

  “I love Christmas Eve,” he sighed.

  I had a feeling this had something to do with the fact that we had a tradition of opening the presents that evening instead of on Christmas morning.

  “I’ll try not to wake you.”

  “Thank you. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  It couldn’t have been longer than ten minutes, right at that point where I almost fell asleep, when Parker threw his right leg over me. How could one skinny limb feel like the weight of an elephant? I gently pushed him off me and shifted in the bed, but no matter how I lay, it seemed like he was trying to sleep perpendicular to me. Apparently, taking up most of the bed ran in the family.

  I finally crawled out of bed, pulled the covers over him, and headed to April’s bedroom. At least I could elbow her in the ribcage if she tried to hog the bed. Actually, I had a better idea. Thank goodness my sleeping pill hadn’t kicked in all the way yet, although
I was beginning to feel groggy.

  “April…” I shook her gently. “Parker is sleeping in my room. He asked for his mommy.”

  “Oh, okay. Thank you. Do you mind if I sleep in your room?” she asked.

  “Mi casa es su casa.”

  “Okay. Thanks. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Satisfied, I sank my body into the queen-sized bed and put my arms underneath my head. This was way better than the double in my room. Hey, it wasn’t my fault that April and Parker couldn’t find enough space here and now had to deal with a smaller mattress. Too tired to feel guilty, I closed my eyes and, with the little aid I’d popped in my mouth earlier, drifted off into a fond dream: I was still together with Dave during the best few years of my life, when it still made sense to date and the universe was truly balanced.

  Back then, we’d spend each night together, me in his arms, peppered with his kisses, squeezed against his body until I couldn’t breathe. When we slept, his arms would be around me the entire night as he spooned me from behind. I had a special drawer of panties at home just for sleeping with him, because I knew that there was a high possibility they’d be removed at night. And fancy panties and hot nights of sex blended together like honey in tea on a frosty winter morning. He’d snuggle in, and the game would begin.

  There was a specific pattern I recognized when things were about to heat up between us. It would start with our feet brushing against each other. While innocent at first, the strokes of skin against skin grew more fervent, my toes sliding up and down his shin, his smoothing over my calves. It was the best game of footsies ever. Soon enough my ass would tilt, pushing into his hard erection, rubbing him and teasing him, while he’d return the affection with his hands wandering over my body, starting with the thigh. The feel of his calloused fingers gently scraping upward, over my lace panties, settling there for a moment, before continuing the upward journey over my tummy and underneath my tank top onto my breasts, aroused me instantly.