Christmas in Coconut Creek (Dirty Delta, #1)(25)
Tally pulled Mateo by his arm out the front door while Cap’s grumbling voice complained the entire way. I hung out in the little arch between the kitchen and the foyer waiting for Ophelia to dry the last of the sink water from her hands on the usable kitchen towels before she joined me.
“The house looks great, O.”
Her cheeks flushed. She had to know it looked good, because I wasn’t being facetious at all. I’d genuinely forgotten the magic of the holidays until that very moment, staring out at my candle-lit living room under the golden blanket of light. It wasn’t like Mateo and I didn’t celebrate, but we weren’t the types to decorate on our own. Up until a few years ago most of our Christmases were spent on a deployment somewhere, and it had always been secondary on account of it. But this… This was nice.
“Thank you.” She smiled up at me. Her eyes were crystal blue, but that close I found yellow in them. Sunshine in the sky.
There was a singular part of me that knew I was fucked at that very moment. Comparing a woman’s eyes to the goddamn sky. Most of me, though, was in complete denial. All I knew was that I wanted to kiss her. Which was a very normal, healthy, biological reaction to a beautiful girl looking up at you like an innocent little doe. Wasn’t it?
Fuck, I was going to kiss her.
I had to know if I was reading things wrong.
Just a kiss. If she rejected me, then that was that. We could have a very friendly, PG Christmas, and I could move on to the next dead-end dating app that Mateo found to haggle me about.
It was like the fat man himself was rooting for me when I glanced up and to find a mistletoe hanging from the archway. Surely Ophelia didn’t intentionally meet me underneath it.
“How’d that get there?” I pointed toward the hanging leaves.
Her attention flitted upward, eyes narrowing. Another creeping flood of blush pinkened her fair skin, but she didn’t react negatively. In fact, that bright gaze drifted down to my mouth after a moment before leveling with me again. I still saw the ample curiosity in it, no matter how fleeting the moment.
I wanted to know exactly what Ophelia tasted like so badly, it almost fucking hurt. Was she tender? Would she wind her arms around my neck, or hold my face? Would she tease with her tongue or leave the pace up to me? I wanted to know these things the same way I wanted to know why, despite all, I was harboring this grade-school crush on a woman so inconveniently unavailable to me.
“You’re always up to something,” she murmured.
That mistletoe had nothing to do with me, but I’d let her believe it. “And you’re always just out of my reach.” She darted her eyes away. Self-conscious, embarrassed, nervous—who cared. I wanted her to look at me again, and I didn’t want to wait. “Ophelia.”
The second her chin lifted I leaned down and cut whatever string of words she was about to say in half with a sweet press of my lips to hers. It blindsided her. Our eyes were slow to shut, but when they did, the rest of her opened up. It was like the warm buzz of a first sip of whiskey, the kind that tempted you into drinking a whole lot more. Her body pressed to mine. My hand tangled in her hair. With little coaxing, Ophelia tilted her head to better reach me, dragging a curious palm up my neck that settled on my jaw as she slid her tongue against the seam of my lips, asking to be let in.
Gotcha, baby.
I was on the verge of giving her exactly what she was asking for. I’d have gladly swept that sweet ass right up and made a night out of getting her naked down the hallway behind closed doors. But that was too much, too fast, and this was just testing the waters. I wanted her, but I wanted her to want me more. If not because that kind of shit made me hot—because then I wasn’t the only one in danger of getting too involved. As selfish as it was.
Instead I pulled away, eyes remaining closed for a prolonged second with our foreheads connected. “Easy.” I smirked. “Don’t let me catch you slipping, O. Wouldn’t want me getting any ideas now.”
She hummed in response, recognizing she’d let those ice-cold walls down at my first touch, but hardly caring in the moment. “Definitely not.”
“Let’s get outside, Trouble.” I pulled her along behind me and whisked us out the door.
“All right, what’s this big surprise?” Mateo asked impatiently as we congregated in the driveway. I stood skeptically beside my roommate and his girlfriend, analyzing O’s expressions under the glowing Christmas lights.
A breeze had blown in when the sun disappeared and everyone but her was wearing a sweatshirt, as if it weren’t seventy degrees. Ophelia and I were different in that very trivial way. I felt things too hot, she was used to the unending cold.
“I figured since we’re doing things a little bit differently this year, and you guys graciously opened your home to me to decorate all day long, I’d also add a little bit of a tropical feel to match the weather.”
“The house is surrounded by palm trees,” Mateo pointed out.
“Technicality.” She waved it off. “Anyways, without further ado…” Bending down to the extension cord on the ground, Ophelia plugged a smaller wire in her hand into the butt end of it, sending a low thrumming spark through the cable.
I winced on impact. “Oh, fuck.”
Above the garage, a neon yellow and green pineapple glowed to life where she'd anchored it secretly. It was ten times brighter than the rest of the colorful Christmas lights Cap and I had spent all afternoon hanging, and Tally snorted out a laugh as her boyfriend looked on horrified.