Mischief Under The Mistletoe Read online

  “If you’re uncomfortable with any of this,” he told her gently, “tell me and I’ll stop.”

  Ailsa turned her face to the wall and didn’t say anything.

  He began with her back. Now that she was human, he could see all sorts of places still coated in flour. Adding water only turned it into a gooey paste.

  This would be easier if he got in the tub with her. Turned the shower on, washed her standing up so he could more easily reach...

  Stop that, he told himself, but physically, he was already reacting. Touching her, it was like touching a light socket. She was exhilarating; she charged him. Every nerve in his body was tuning into the very nearness of her until it felt... intoxicating just to have her this close. She was like a part of him and he couldn’t believe he’d tried to go a whole week with her shut away.

  “It hurt me,” she sniffled, hiccupping a shaky breath.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

  “We’re aligning.”

  He paused in the midst of trying to wash the paste from her hair. “What does that mean, aligning? Aligning how?”

  Raising her head out of her arms, she faced him reluctantly. “I’m for you. You called me and you don’t even want me.”

  “I... I don’t understand. I—” Calder stopped himself. “Look, I don’t know what I did or... or how I did it, but this...”

  She frowned, her brow pinching. “You do, too,” she said, only a note or two shy of accusing. “You know, or you would not have made my doll.”

  Unfolding her arms, Ailsa reached for him. She lay her hand against his cheek and for a moment, just touched him. Her hand was wet. He could hear the soft popping of the soap bubbles that clung to her fingers.

  “This is crazy,” he said gruffly, tingling awareness racing through his skin at her touch. “I’ve never created anything like this before in my life. But...” He hesitated, unsure whether he should admit out loud how badly he’d wanted this. Seven years. That was how long he’d been alone, although up until this moment it hadn’t really been so bad. But now, suddenly faced with a very naked Ailsa, cupping his cheek the way she was, staring up at him as if he were all she’d ever wanted in the whole of her life and he’d told her to get lost. Which he hadn’t. He wasn’t sure he could, and yet in the very back of his mind came the tiniest niggling doubt. “If I created you, Ailsa... and I’m not saying I did, I’m saying if... but if I created you—” Calder was almost afraid to ask. “—do you have a choice in the matter?”

  Eyebrows twitching together, she looked at him as if he were crazy. She snorted. “You created the vessel, doll-maker. And you placed the call. It was my choice whether or not to answer, and I did. I don’t have to, you know. I thought you wanted me. I thought you were sad.” She half bowed her head, although that didn’t hide the faintly rebellious glare she shot him. “I thought you were nice, too. You put me in a can.”

  “You destroyed my kitchen,” he reminded her. “And scared the shit out of me. The next time you want to announce to someone that you’re actually alive, I suggest you find a subtler way to do it than throwing flour everywhere.”

  The corners of her mouth pulled down in sullen pout. “The next time you don’t want me to be alive, I suggest you don’t call so loudly. Besides, I wasn’t throwing flour, I was making it snow.”

  “You,” he countered, as evenly as he could, “were throwing flour and I had to clean it up.”

  “You didn’t have to get mad at me. Especially since you’re the one who wanted to spank me and play sex games.”

  “There are easier and far less destructive ways to get me to spank you.”

  Again, she looked at him as if he were nuts. “No, there isn’t! Throwing flour was very easy, but you didn’t spank me at all. You put me in a can!”

  He almost laughed. “How badly do you still want that spanking? Because it is not too late to get one.”

  She looked at her hands, growing wrinkled now from sitting in the water. Pulling at the ends of her pale hair, she made a face at the pasty clumps that clung to her. All accusation and rebelliousness bled out of her as her shoulders sagged. Only the sadness remained as she turned her face to the wall. “I’m all gross now, and you don’t want me anyway.”

  Calder sat back on his heels, hands braced upon his thighs. No longer in a laughing mood, he shook his head, then shook it again. He didn’t know what to say or do about his ‘lack’ of wanting, but he could fix the gross part.

  Seven years ago when he’d first taken possession of his grandfather’s estate, the isolated cottage had neither indoor plumbing nor electricity. Now it had both, and Calder had very little savings left. But one could do without all the little luxuries in life, like the occasional beer or cable TV, so long as one had the necessities, like a flushing toilet, hot running water and a showerhead that detached from the wall to more easily reach one’s naughty bits, not to mention sad Scottish doll sprites that were huddled in the bottom of his tub.

  Taking his down, he turned the water back on, testing the temperature against his hand until it had reached a pleasant spray. “Tip your head back.” Perching on the edge of the tub, he angled her head so the flour and water would not run into her eyes. She gazed at the ceiling rather than at him, and they neither said a word as he soaked down her hair, combing his fingers through the long pale tresses to loosen as much of the paste as he could before shutting the water off again.

  Pouring shampoo into his palm, he washed her hair.

  “I’m very sorry for putting you in the can,” he finally offered. “If I could, I would do it over again and find a different way to deal with the situation.”

  She sniffled. “You said you were going to spank me,” she reminded.

  Working through a thick knot of hardened flour, he paused to look at her. “You mean just now? That was more of a threat.”

  “No,” she said. “Before. The first time we were aligning. A proper good skelping you said, out in the woodshed. You promised you were going to bare my bottom and you’d hold me over your knee, so you could watch while I kicked and fussed and you smacked my bottom until it was a lovely shade of red. A sorry girl’s shade of red. You thought that very clearly in your mind, I heard you. It stiffened your rod.”

  Her hand dripped as she lifted it from the bathwater long enough to point. The tip of her finger touched the front of his jeans and he’d be damned if he didn’t feel another of those tingling shocks jolt straight through his cock, his balls and all the way up into the pit of his already tightening belly. The tingling didn’t stop either. He hardened in an instant.

  Her finger left a wet spoke on the front of his fly when she took her hand away. The tingling remained a long time afterward.

  “You liked the thought of spanking me,” she said. “You think it will be very enjoyable.”

  “Much more so for me,” he said thickly, hardly believing he’d admitted that aloud. “Less so for you. Have you ever had a spanking?”

  “No.” She shrugged. “I liked what you showed me in your mind. I looked quite fetching in red, really. And I liked the sex games afterward. Like now. You’re thinking about ordering me to grab my ankles and while I am bent over, you’ll grab me by the hips and—”

  “I need you to stop reading my mind right now.” The energizing tingling grew beyond his ability to bear. He abandoned the tub and paced the short length of the bathroom, because if he didn’t get distance between them and he didn’t expend some of this excess energy with movement, he was afraid he’d cum in his pants all over again. “That’s inappropriate.”

  He didn’t mean to sound as angry as he did. Especially since he wasn’t angry, not at her, anyway. He was more appalled for letting his thoughts drift that way. That she had read them was mortifying.

  “I-I liked those thoughts,” she objected, hurt. “I can’t help reading your mind. We’re aligning.”

  “So no matter what I think, my own priva
te thoughts, you know what they are?”

  Swiveling around on her hips, she gripped the side of the tub and she rose onto her knees. She still had shampoo in her long wet hair and soap bubbles clung to her right breast. “Yes.”

  Unbidden, his brain turned traitor against him. The image of her standing up in the tub flashed through his mind and before he could react to it, up Ailsa stood. He clapped a hand to his forehead, but his wayward thoughts had been locked in this cabin every bit as long as the rest of him had, and in snips of erotic fantasy, he had her cupping her breast, wiping away the soap before framing her own beading nipples with her fingers.

  Immediately, Ailsa offered her breasts and damn if his mouth did not run dry at the thought of bending his head to roll his tongue around the nearest tip, drawing it into his mouth for a long and suckling taste.

  “No!” he told her, his voice deep and husky with the force of will it took not to give in to that driving need. His mind continued to play with the fantasy though, and Ailsa obediently dropped her hands from her breasts, swiping away the sheen of bubbles on her trim belly before parting the folds of her sex and showing him the way inside her. His will waivered, but thank God his hands were made of sterner stuff. Suddenly filled with a life of their own, he grabbed the towel from where it lay discarded on the floor. Snapping it open, he wrapped it all the way around her. Seizing her shoulders, he gave her startling shake. “Stay out of my head! Do not read my thoughts and, if you can’t help catching a glimpse of something you shouldn’t, for God’s sake, don’t do anything my thoughts are telling you to do. Do you understand?”

  “But I want to do them,” she cried, wide-eyed and confused. “Why are you angry? I am for you, Calder! Play with me!”

  “No!” He gave her another shake. “I’ll not play with you, Ailsa. Don’t you see? I made you! That means you have to do what I want, and that makes you no better than a slave.”

  “I am not a slave.” She recoiled, offended.

  “Prove it,” he demanded. “Defy my orders. I want to see if you can.”

  She folded her arms too, hiking her chin though her brows were quirking together and she looked extremely uncomfortable. “A-all right, then. I-I-I choose... no.”

  “No?” he echoed.

  She folded her arms the other way, drawing herself up to stand as tall as her diminutive frame would allow. “No,” she said firmly. “I-I will not defy you.”

  “Drop your towel,” he ordered.

  She immediately let the towel fall.

  Grabbing it up again, Calder wrapped it firmly around her and forced her hands to grip the halves between her breasts. “Keep it on,” he told her.

  Swallowing hard, she nodded, but when he barked again, “Drop the towel,” she let it fall.

  “I knew it.” Calder shook his head at the ceiling, angry at her and angry at himself. “Seven years on my own and what do I do? I flushed all self-respect and common decency down the crapper. I’ve made myself a sex slave.”

  “I’m not a slave!” Ailsa insisted, stamping her food.

  “Prove it!”

  “I don’t want to!”

  “Don’t want to or can’t?” He wrapped the towel tight around her again and forced her uncooperative hands to grab the seam and squeeze it tight. “Hold onto this, Ailsa. Don’t you dare let go. If you do, I’m going to punish you. I’m going to punish you severely; do you understand?”

  Big watery tears flooded her eyes. Her bottom lip quivered, but she grabbed the towel tight with both hands and nodded.

  “Drop the towel,” he said, both sick to his stomach and pissed as hell.

  Ailsa did. She also vanished, transforming back into her clay doll form so abruptly that he fumbled both her and the towel and very nearly dropped her. She’d have shattered had she hit the floor. He’d dropped enough of his sculptures to know, and the closeness of that near fatal fall shook him badly.

  His heart took the worst of the shock, staggering in his chest as he clutched her protectively close. He’d have sworn it truly had skipped a beat, and that was funny considering he’d always thought that little more than a saying. The reality of it felt more like a mini heart attack and it didn’t immediately get better because he caught her in his arms.

  Her retreating wail whipped through the house, seemingly vanishing out through the stone and mortar seams until he couldn’t feel it anymore. The starkness of her absence punched through his chest all over again, but he didn’t call her back. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. Why? If she couldn’t resist him, then she couldn’t consent either. Every fantasy he’d harbored from the moment he’d started carving this damn doll was nothing more than physical, mental and emotional rape. That she seemed incapable of understanding that, meant he was doing all that to a child at best and at worst, someone who was mentally-stunted.

  He doubled over, certain he was about to be sick. His stomach rolled, but he didn’t vomit. Straightening slowly, he looked at the doll in his hands, at the beautiful face he’d created and the flawlessness of her form, and for the first time harbored zero erotic fantasies toward the woman she represented.

  This was his fault. He’d bound them together, somehow; somehow, he had to find a way to unbind them, too. For better or worse, he had to set Ailsa free.

  CHAPTER THREE

  CALDER LAY ON HIS BACK in the bed his grandfather had made, on the mattress Sleep Number had, surprisingly enough, been willing to ship all the way to Kinloch Hourn. His hands were folded behind his head, adding to the height of the small mountain of pillows that propped him up. He could see the ceiling rafters. Used to be he couldn’t sleep if the room wasn’t pitch dark, but winters in Scotland could freeze the balls off a penguin. Shutting out all the lights meant no fire in the hearth. He needed that fire; he liked his balls where they were.

  So, again, Calder could see the ceiling rafters. He could see the wood-beam threshold of his bedroom door and the shadows of the open entryways to both the bathroom and the kitchen, and all the rustic bulges and lines that made up that cottage hallway all the way back through the main room to the front door. He could see everything...

  Except for the source of the occasional scuttle that he was halfway convinced might be a trick of his imagination, but also equally as convinced was Ailsa. Could she move in doll form? That was a freaky thought. He might have a mouse. He wasn’t sure which disturbed him more. Not that he was afraid of mice. He wasn’t afraid of Ailsa for that matter, but nor did he care to share a kitchen with the kind of mess either might make in them.

  There was a small table in the hallway, one only big enough to hold a picture of his father and grandparents back when his Da was a boy. Used to be, a thin vase and a dead flower was set beside that picture, back when he’d first moved in. Not a vase and flowers kind of guy, he’d tossed the flower, packed the vase into the wine cellar and left the picture there. Which was where it had sat for seven years, right up until tonight. Calder rubbed his eyes when he heard the table bump the wall and then the picture clattered to the floor, sending the soft scuttle-er into a panic of brief but rapid movement. By the time Calder sat up far enough to see over his own feet, there was nothing in the hallway but shadows.

  “I’m not doing this tonight,” he told the darkness, and lay back down again. He tried to close his eyes, but they opened again when he heard the picture thunk lightly back into place on the little table, only to get immediately knocked back off onto the floor. The frame clattered even more loudly, the table bumped the wall again, the picture thunked with firm authority back on top of the table for a final, no-nonsense time, and before he could get his elbows propped under him enough for a look back down the hall, all was silent, still and void of movement.

  He wasn’t fooled. Laying back down, he folded his hands behind his head and heaved another sigh. “What are you doing?”

  I’m cold, her voice whispered through his mind.

  She would be, running about in naught but her skin. He ought to get her clothes,
but which one did he dress, the woman or the doll?

  He hadn’t heard her move, so he fully expected to find the hallway empty as he rose up onto his elbows. “I’ve got a t-shir—Jesus! Mary, Mother of God!” He came all the way up, kicking off quilts and landing with a back-smacking bang into the headboard of his bed. There was a pale head peeking up over the foot of the mattress at him. “Ailsa!” He grabbed his thundering heart, pressing hard to keep the frantic pounding from breaking out through his chest. “Woman, don’t do that!”

  Her eyes were huge. She rose enough for him to make out her mouth and the paleness of her fingers as she alternately plucked at the blankets and then smoothed the wrinkles away. “Don’t be angry with me, Calder,” she pleaded. Very slowly, as if expecting him to cast her back to the kitchen, she crawled up to kneel on the tiniest square possible at the foot of his bed. “I don’t want to sleep in the can.”

  This was a three-room cabin, four if one counted the wine cellar. He only had the one bed, a queen-sized which was the largest that would fit in his grandfather’s tiny bedroom. There was barely room enough as it was to edge between the bed and the walls, and the dresser was pretty much there for show. All his clothes were hanging neatly on hangers from the rafters because his socks, underwear and thermals took up the top two drawers and the bottom two could not be opened without first leaning the bed up against the wall.

  Of course, she wanted to sleep in here, his brain told him. The only other comfortable surface was the chair in the main room, and it was only comfortable until one actually sat in it. He’d have replaced it years ago, if only he hadn’t run out of money.

  You could be a gentleman, his angel half whispered. He could take a pillow and a quilt out to that chair and sleep there the night, or for however long it took him to come up with better arrangements.

  Or she could take a pillow and blanket and go sleep in that chair, his back argued, because it already knew there was no comfortable position to be had in it for a man his size. He’d be crippled before the night was out.