Free Wishing On A Starr by Adrianne Byrd

grinning.
    “It’s sort of-”
    Bam! Gia was hit in the shoulder by another runaway snowball.
    “Hey!” Gia turned toward the snow battling children.
    “Sorry, Ma’am,” the kids called.
    “Now that was funny!” Daniel chuckled.
    “Uh, huh.” She knelt down and began gathering snow. “There are four of them, but I think we can take them.”
    “What?”
    “Hey, I’m a woman who believes in revenge.”
    “We can’t-”
    Bam! Another snowball smacked him in the chest.
    “Sorry, Mister!”
    “You were saying?” Gia asked, smiling sweetly up at him.
    Daniel knelt beside her. “You’re right. We can take them.”
    Gia launched the first snowball. With an astounding aim, it hit one of the boys in the center of his back.
    That was all it took to commence a war.
    Daniel sent his own snowball flying and caught the shoulder blade of one of the teenage boys.
    “Good hit!” Gia declared, but then was smack soundly on the side of her head by return fire.
    Squealing, she rocketed two balls in almost rapid succession. But nothing was as hilarious as watching Daniel take two in the face.
    Temporarily flattened on his back, Gia struggled to help him up, but she took four hits and toppled over on top of him.
    Laughing, the couple scrambled on hands and knees to find protection behind a parked car.
    “We’re surrounded,” Daniel chuckled.
    “We can’t give up,” Gia gathered more snow. However, the moment she stood up, she took a direct hit in the face and toppled right back into Daniel’s lap.
    “Yeah, that’s showing them.”
    They laughed as she sat up in his lap, but it soon faded to small puffs of frosted air when their eyes and lips were just inches apart.
    Daniel remembered the taste of her lips and, despite the cold, his body stirred to life. He didn’t want to move too fast or scare her off again, but he wanted to kiss her, too.
    To his surprise, she made the first move and close the small gap between them. The petals of her lips were softer than he remembered and their taste was intoxicatingly sweet. For a brief moment he was lost to a roaring passion that threatened everything he’d ever known. Nothing that tasted this good or felt so right could ever be wrong, he reasoned.
    However, their attackers had other ideas.
    “Ah!” Gia screamed when another snowball hit the back of her neck.
    The war was back on.
    However, it wasn’t long before Daniel and Gia had to reconsidered their position. Sure they managed to get in a few good hits, but the kids had speed and agility on their side. Defeat loomed before them.
    In the end, World War III lasted all of twenty minutes.
    “We surrender, we surrender!”
    Gia and Daniel waved their hands from behind a parked car and were relieved when there was a cease-fire.
    By the time, they returned to Gia’s apartment with bags of decorations, they were sopping wet and chilled to the bone.
    “I definitely could go for that coffee now,” Gia chuckled, lowering her bags onto the sofa.
    “That makes two of us.”
    Gia slowly peeled out of her coat, amazed at the amount of snow that made it inside of her clothes. “I’m going to change again. You might want to strip out of those clothes before you catch your death.”
    Daniel twisted his face in a fake frown. “Are you coming on to me?”
    She smiled, feeling flirtatious. “What if I am?”
    “In that case-” He settled his jacket over the back of his chair and moved closer until he could feel the gentle radiation of her body heat. “-I’d tell you that you don’t have to work so hard.”
    He drew her close and sampled her lips once again. Problem was, he couldn’t stop kissing her, nor could he stop peeling off her clothes.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter 9
     
    Gia was lost in a world of passion to a man she hardly knew. The array of candlelight had diminished somewhat, but it still provided enough light for her to watch as waves of ecstasy washed over his handsome features.