Free Holiday Wishes by Nora Roberts

longer.
    But he took her hand and brought it to his lips. He quieted her tumbling breath with his mouth.
    â€œI hardly knew what to do with you the first time.” Gently he nuzzled at her throat until she moaned in frenzied anticipation. Raising his head, he smiled at her. “Now I do.”
    Then he took her places she’d never been. Higher, still higher he drew her, then just as suddenly plunged her deep where the air was thick and dark. Trapped in the whirlwind, she clung. She’d wanted to give, but he left her helpless. Tender, soft, easy, his fingers caressed until her body shuddered. He drank in her sigh with lips abruptly urgent, ruthlessly demanding, then patiently soothed her again. Sensations rocketed inside her, leaving no room for thought, for reason or even for memories.
    When they came together it was everything for both of them. Time didn’t slip back but trapped them and held them close in the here and now.
    He kept his arms tightly around her and they were quiet. With her eyes closed, she absorbed the unity. She loved, and for the moment there was nothing else. For him both ecstasy and contentment were troubled with questions. She was so warm, so free with her emotions. She loved him. He needed no words to know it and never had. But the loyalty he’d always understood as an intrinsic part of her had been broken. How could he rest without knowing why?
    â€œI have to know why we lost ten years, Faith.” When she said nothing, he turned her head toward him. Her eyes glistened in the shifting light but the tears didn’t fall. “Now more than ever, I have to know.”
    â€œNo questions, Jason. Not tonight.”
    â€œI’ve waited long enough. We’ve waited long enough.”
    On a long breath, she sat up. Bringing her knees to her chest, she wrapped her arms around them. Her hair cascaded down her back. He couldn’t resist taking a handful. She’d been his once, completely. No one else had ever touched her as he had. He knew he had to accept her marriage, and that her child belonged to another man, but he needed to understand first why she had turned to someone else so soon after he’d gone away.
    â€œGive me something, Faith. Anything.”
    â€œWe loved each other, Jason, but we wanted different things.” She turned her head to look at him. “We still want different things.” She took his hand and brought it to her cheek. “If you had let me I would have gone anywhere with you. I would have left my home, my family, and never looked back. You needed to go alone.”
    â€œI didn’t have anything for you,” he began. She stopped him with a look.
    â€œYou never gave me a choice.”
    He reached for her once more. “If I gave you one now?”
    She closed her eyes and let her forehead rest on his. “Now I have a child, and she has a home I can’t take away from her. What I want doesn’t come first.” She drew back far enough to look at him. “What you want can’t come first. Before somehow I never thought you’d really go. This time I know you will. Let’s just take what we have, give each other this one Christmas. Please.”
    She closed her mouth over his and stopped all questions.

Chapter 8
    Christmas Eve was magic. Faith had always believed it. When she awoke with Jason beside her, it was more than magic. For a while, she simply lay there, watching him sleep. She’d imagined it before, as a girl, as a woman, but now she didn’t need the dreams. He was here beside her, warm, quiet, and outside an early morning snow was falling. Careful not to wake him, Faith slipped out of bed.
    When he rolled over, he smelled her—the springtime scent her hair had left on the pillowcase. For a few minutes, he lay still and let it seep into his system. Content, he lay back and looked at the room he hadn’t been able to see in the dark.
    The walls were papered, ivory, with