Starting off with some seasonally good times…Mako and Neph.
Seduction: Part #1 – Fruitcake
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"Lita?"
The heavy front door creaked open, ushering in a chill gust of wind and snow that further tangled his chestnut curls. Small crystals of the stuff clung to his skin before melting.
Nikolas ungraciously kicked the door shut, locking out the ugly weather. He peeled his damp peacoat from his broad shoulders, casually brushing frost off the cashmere as he entered the warmth of their living room.
Chocolate. Bourbon chocolate. Red velvet. Nik surveyed their furniture ruefully; nearly every flat surface was infested with…cupcakes. Their familiar, sweet odor assaulted him. For a guy who never ordered dessert after dinner, only double espresso or cognac, his apartment smelled like this far too often. Most men would envy you, and not just for the cupcakes, he reminded himself smugly. Speaking of…
"Baby, are you ready to go? I told Kenneth we wouldn't be late to his, uh – " Nik grinned a little crookedly to himself, " – thing." Can't believe he let Mina talk him into it at all.
There was no response, and in the next few moments, Nikolas immediately heard why. Muted strains of "Winter Wonderland" drifted richly in from the kitchen, Lita's own honeyed-husk voice crooning just above Tony Bennett's. Obviously, she couldn't hear him. She's probably serenading Nigella with an eggbeater.
He grabbed a chocolate cupcake on his way to the kitchen. Nik didn't love dessert, true, but who was he to resist a masterpiece? Dark ganache warmed to the roof of his mouth, melted smoothly around his tongue, and he thought of her flavor after a little too much scotch, complex and muddy and sweet, giggling throatily as they swayed and stumbled into a cab, her back hitting the seat just as the door slammed shut. As silently as he could manage, he padded towards his wife's domain, breathing in…
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The tempting fragrance of mixed walnuts, pecans, Valrhona dark chocolate, cinnamon, and macerated cherries tickled Lita's nose as she poured brandy liberally over the mixture. She paused, gave the bowl a skeptical look, and – why the hell not? – added a few more glugs. Setting the mostly empty bottle down, Lita gently stirred the liquid in, careful not to tear the chopped fruits.
She always cooked by hand and instinct, feeling her way through a recipe written behind her eyelids.
I mean, it probably helps that I drink myself into a stupor throughout the entire creative process, Lita decided contentedly, tipping back what was left of the brandy and wiping her lips with the back of her hand. I'm Irish; it's practically my duty.
Lita lifted the bowl close to her face, inhaling the resultant perfume, awash in chocolate and pungent spice. It reminded her of his ambered cologne, of his gentle hands cupping her face and his less gentle teeth dragging out her lower lip.
Cooking, she knew, generally conjured up unflattering visions of frazzled housefraus with flyaway hair. Not so for Lita. Whatever she baked, braised, or flambéed, it always emerged generously and surprisingly flavored. She always tended toward too much salt, heaping lumps of butter, substituting bourbon for vanilla. Great, greedy gulps of the burgundy she'd used in the boeuf bourguignon to slake her thirst as she watched steam curl up lazily from the pot. Her cooking was sensual in its excess, and she always felt no less in her kitchen, able to elicit moans and sounds of delight with merely the food she created. Lita cooked like…
"You cook like you make love," he told her with nonchalant certainty as they lay sprawled in her bed, long limbs sheened with sweat.
Lita propped herself up on her elbow, looking down at him with consternation. "Um. What is that supposed to mean?"
He'd blurted out the confident comparison without thinking about where it came from, but really, it actually made a hell of a lot of sense. Nik reached up to play with a russet curl, watching it turn red as he twisted it toward the sunlight. His movements were deceptively lazy. In an instant, he curled his hand around his girlfriend's nape, pulling her head back down to the pillow as he flipped her onto her back. Lita's startled gaze flew up to meet his.
"You always want to try something new. You'd never in a million years let me tell you what to do. And," Nik smiled wolfishly, bringing his face low, so that his lips just brushed hers, "you always, always want more."
"He might have a point," she muttered to herself, glad he wasn't there to see (and take advantage of) her blush. Lita swayed unconsciously to the old song, one blood red sleeve slipping for the hundredth time over her smooth shoulder. She'd be dancing like this with him tonight, she hoped. Pressing her cheek to his chest, hearing the baritone of his laughter in her hair, feeling his hands slide just south of propriety and pull her up against the length of him…somewhere a timer went off, and Lita blinked, suddenly aware of her surroundings, but not entirely.
Almost dreamily, she danced her way over to the small ball of dough awaiting her expert touch.
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Melting-dark eyes widened as Nik gripped the wall with increasingly bloodless knuckles. He watched his wife work, her movements fluidly sure. Her smell was of sun-warmed, shamelessly open roses, dusted with an ever-present and unexpectedly innocent smattering of flour. It was just like her.
The dark red thing he'd given her for her birthday (he liked how the claret color smoothed her skin ivory, set her hair aflame – but really, he loved her flushed disbelief when he told her that redheads looked beautiful in red) cleaved tenderly to her lean arms and rounded hips, hugged her thighs to the knee. Lucky for him, Mina possessed exceptionally good taste. The long, demure sleeves were the exclamation mark, he knew, to the generous cleavage in front and nearly indecent expanse of flesh at the back. The latter was proving quite the tease for Nik, as the zipper dangled just below the small of her back. His fingers itched to curl over the fine wool and pull, to expose just a bit more of that lightly gold-freckled skin.
Leave it to her to leave a dress like that half-zipped, practically falling off, shoes kicked off…to spend her last few minutes in front of the stove instead of the mirror.
Nikolas felt flame coiling up his belly, jeans growing uncomfortably tight as Lita's fingertips sank aggressively into the pliant dough, reminding him entirely too much of something else altogether.
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Lita caught her breath harshly as she kneaded the yielding mash of marzipan and floury paste. The tiniest of smiles graced her lips as she remembered her palms smoothing over his tawny back – so long ago, it felt like another lifetime.
He'd been gone almost all of their first Valentine's Day, stuck in meetings with his manager and people from his record label. Lita didn't mind at all, not being particularly sentimental in that way, but he impulsively showed up at her door at 1:30am anyway, bursting in with a luxuriant bouquet of blushing roses, kissing her nearly breathless before she could even manage a hello. When Nikolas finally broke away, she immediately saw the worry in his eyes, and almost laughed out loud.
"I'm so sorry."
"It's fine."
"No, I mean it – I fucked up."
Lita silently guided him to a chair by the low embers and eased her hands over his stiff shoulders, massaging away the strain she felt there. They maintained a companionable silence for a few minutes before Nik turned in his seat and took her hands to crush them against his kiss, breath tattooing her sensitive skin (smelling of cloves and espresso she remembered irrelevantly). His slow grin against Lita's tingling fingertips was…naughty, to say the least.
"Can I at least make it up to you?"
He did.
"I should fuck up Valentine's Day more often," he laughed the morning after when she brought him breakfast in bed. They lay tangled in her sea-green sheets, trying to keep Nutella and croissant flakes off the pillows. Lita made a mean espresso, and she had difficulty hiding her supremely smug expression as Nikolas downed it in seconds and then eyed the little demitasse with suspicious surprise. "What did you put in here, heroin?" he demanded.
Lita shrugged, lashes demurely downcast to conceal her pride. "I hope you're full?"
"No," he said softly, promisingly. "No, I'm still hungry."
He pushed aside the discarded lingerie, the dainty porcelain breakfast tray, handsome face intent. Lita readily met his embrace in the middle of the bed, bottle-glass irises sparking, shoving at his chest so that he landed with a soft thump on his back. Nikolas did not protest, watching her with heavy-lidded eyes. She lavished him with kisses, lower and lower; finally wrapping her lips around him, smugly feeling his palm heavy on her head and fingers brutally twining her curls. A particularly clever twist of Lita's tongue made him hiss and yank too hard, but she ignored it and took him deeper. On the verge of explosion, Nik dragged Lita up by the hair just in time. His other hand grasped a handful of her lushly curved bottom as he firmly guided her onto him, slid home, felt her helplessly shudder around his length. "I'm supposed to be making it up to you, remember," he told her, closer to a growl, and her low, husky moan was his answer.
Lita shivered with elated recollection. We ate nothing but Thai takeout in bed that day, it took him so long to "make it up to me." She'd always thought of musicians and artists as rather Machiavellian in their self-absorption – (see Mina), she thought with an indelicate snort – but since they'd met, Nik never failed to surprise her with his constant, spontaneous, and uninhibited generosity. Lita suspected she'd been lucky enough to find the only flesh-and-blood man as medievally, recklessly romantic as those that had populated her teenage-era romance novels, not to mention fantasies. I hope Ami's enjoying all those old Harlequins...okay, come on, come on, Lita, focus. Allowing the vivid memory to fade with the last notes of the song humming through the speakers, she folded in the brandy-soaked mixture, savoring the salty-sweet smell of the dough before it was drowned in, well, mostly booze.
She checked the microwave clock, fully alert now. They'd be late, but it didn't matter. They were always legendarily late, sometimes for good reason. And sometimes not, she laughed knowingly to herself. Their friends knew this. What do you expect from these useless artsy types, bakers, music makers, Jacen always teased. Then again, he and Rei didn't have enough creativity to half-ass a stick figure between the two of them. She'd bring Mina a cupcake or ten to make up for their tardiness, and all would be forgiven.
Lita's adroit fingers quickly spread the slightly oozing mixture throughout an aluminum pan, and she slid the fruitcake into the preheated oven. Finally finished with the last of her evening's work, she inhaled deeply and turned to meet the familiar eyes that had been searing twin holes into her spine for a good five minutes now.
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She faced her husband, who leaned indolently against the opposite wall, his stare totally unabashed, hot on hers.
They stayed put for a few moments. The only noise in the room was the click of the record player needle, and it seemed deafening.
Lita tried to slow the rise and fall of her chest, to conceal the reddening of her creamy skin. It was futile. She knew her efforts hid nothing from his frank, fully aware gaze, and so Lita very deliberately turned her back to her husband and started to clean up, gathering mixing bowls to put in the dishwasher. She was surprised her husband had managed to keep quiet so long - Nikolas was not, and never would be, a man of stillness.
Her ears pricked up slightly, waiting and wanting to hear a sound from his direction.
Sinatra eased his way into the silence, dreaming of his white Christmas.
After a seeming eternity, Nik uncurled himself from the far wall and advanced toward his wife, softly as a panther. His hands settled firmly on either side of her neck, and Lita let her auburn head fall slightly back with a sigh. Nikolas noted, as always, that his tan seemed darker against her lightly freckled skin. Tiny goosebumps scattered all over, and he yearned to nip at each one.
One finger dipped lower, fingering the zipper of her dress. He made to pull it up.
"Don't." The word came out on a whoosh of breath.
Lita twisted slowly into his arms. His hands cupped her bottom and reflexively tightened, hauling his wife up against him as he saw the naked desire written plainly on her face. Nik felt his heart slam into his ribcage almost painfully. She stood on the tips of her toes, tall even without heels, her lips just touching his temple. Her husband bent slightly to hear her words, already planting fevered kisses in her fiery hair. He knew what she had to tell him.
"What do you think of just…staying in tonight?"
The zipper was decisively tugged down.
Nikolas let his palms drag over those creamy shoulders, rich fabric crushing pleasantly in his grasp. Down over her arms, skimming her hips, until Lita was able to step out of her dress completely. Underneath, nothing graced her skin but a bare scrap of cloth and matching lace hose that hugged her thighs. Her breasts spilled over overburdened demi-cups, straining magnificently against the silk.
I see garters, but if my guess is right…Nik could swear he almost tasted her, like ozone in the scarce air between them, felt her velvet wet against his rough tongue. He immediately dropped to his knees before her, not-so-gently shoving his wife back against the kitchen counter, mouth already watering before her throaty little sound of mixed apprehension and eagerness.
Thought so. No panties.
Lita gripped the squeaking faucet with one hand and the refrigerator door with the other, arms shaking with the effort of holding herself up. Her knees felt like dough, and the more she concentrated on his supple mouth, wet on wet, the less her legs served her. Nikolas flattened his hands against her thighs for leverage, steadying her some, but if he didn't stop…
"Don't," she found her voice. "N – Nik! It's – it's – too soon – "
"It's not too soon." His decisive murmur, right up against her heat, nearly undid her.
In a few moments, Nik felt the telltale tremble start in her thighs, the warmth of her sweeter than anything she could make with her hands. He stood swiftly, before she could react, and hoisted Lita onto the counter in the same motion. His wife's interminably long legs locked familiarly around his hips, and she ground herself mercilessly into him, both seeking her release and urging his on.
Lita grabbed haphazard handfuls of his shirt, nearly yanking him onto the counter with her – Nik's right hand freed himself from his pants, not bothering to drop them, while his left crushed against her full breast – ruthlessly tweaked the hard peak – her mouth tasted of brandy – his, of her chocolate and her salt.
The record player carried on, oblivious to its unhearing audience.
Baby, it's cold outside…
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