Coming Together: For the Holidays

By Alessia Brio

Coming Together: For the Holidays is a collection of holiday-themed erotic fiction edited by Alessia Brio. All proceeds benefit Stand Up for Kids.

CONTENTS:

Gravity on Thanksgiving (Daniel Burnell)
Solstice (Robert Buckley)
In December (Erzabet Bishop)
Holiday Hours (Lynn Townsend)
Fox's Holiday (Leigh Ellwood)
Honouring the Solstice (Skilja Peregrinarius)
Chaos and Comfort (Salome Wilde and Talon Rihai)
The Lesser Beatitudes (Robert Buckley)
Accosting Santa (Sommer Marsden)
New on the Naughty List (Delilah Night)
Last Minute Gift (Lisabet Sarai)
The Seven (Alessia Brio)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Coming Together
• Release date: Dec 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311844743

Alessia Brio

Take one part Appalachian redneck, one part aging wet dream, and one part filthy-minded wordsmith. Mix well and serve with chocolate-covered cherries. There you have the one and only Alessia Brio. Alessia writes all colors and flavors of erotica, from heterosexual to menage to same sex, and from twisted to humorous to deeply touching. (Sometimes, usually by accident, it even qualifies as romance.) Her work has earned her critical acclaim in the form of a few EPIC eBook Awards for Best Erotica, a couple Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and a Romantic Times Top Pick in addition to a plethora of glowing online reviews.Not all of Alessia's publications are allowed here on Smashwords due to censorship. Readers interested in the full catalog are encouraged to visit her label's website at www.PurpleProsaic.com

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Coming Together: For the Holidays

© 2014 by Alessia Brio, editor

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover art © 2014 by Alessia Brio

All digital rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by fines and federal imprisonment.

A Coming Together Publication

Smashwords edition

smashwords.com/profile/view/comingtogether

License Notes

Piracy robs authors of the income they need to be able to continue to write books for readers to enjoy. This ebook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of ONE reader only. This ebook may not be re-sold or copied. To do so is not only unethical, it's illegal. This ebook may not be forwarded via email, posted on personal websites, uploaded to file sharing sites, or printed and distributed. To share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each intended recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for you, please notify the author immediately. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this—and every—author.

Coming Together is intended for adult readers only.

Please keep this ebook away from children.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Gravity on Thanksgiving © Daniel Burnell

Solstice © Robert Buckley

In December © Erzabet Bishop

Holiday Hours © Lynn Townsend

Fox's Holiday © Leigh Ellwood

Honouring the Solstice © Skilja Peregrinarius

Chaos & Comfort © Salome Wilde & Talon Rihai

The Lesser Beatitudes © Robert Buckley

Accosting Santa © Sommer Marsden

New on the Naughty List © Delilah Night

Last Minute Gift © Lisabet Sarai

The Seven © Alessia Brio

About Coming Together

Introduction

Selecting a charity to receive the proceeds from a Coming Together publication is not difficult, simply because there are so very many worthy causes. However, since Coming Together is strictly intended for mature audiences, I'm always a wee bit concerned when selecting a charity that works with/for children.

To date, no charity has turned away our donations because of the adult nature of Coming Together's fiction. Then again, I haven't reached out to each charity directly to let them know I'm sending dirty money.

My desire to help, however, typically overcomes my impulse to avoid controversy. Therefore, this collection of titillating holiday-themed stories will benefit Stand Up for Kids, which fights youth homelessness. The holidays in particular are a time when all children should feel the warmth of home and family.

Thank you for your purchase! Happiest of holidays to you and yours. I hope you enjoy the collection.

Alessia Brio

November 9, 2014

* * * *

Gravity on Thanksgiving

© Daniel Burnell

And in my son Paul walked on Thanksgiving with Connie. She wasn't big and tall, like Paul is, like his father is, but petit and slender and the contrast was inciting to the imagination, provocative, sexy. Connie was medium short and kinetic, like a precocious eleven year old girl, with her ragged, cropped hair and quick, wiry, thin-wristed arms, a nymphet, a dark-haired Lolita. When she and Paul came in, I was at the sink looking across the foyer to the front door. What's this now? Paul didn't speak of Connie specifically, only that he was bringing someone for our annual Thanksgiving feast. Set a place. I dried my hands and went to say hello.

Nor was Connie knock-down gorgeous like most of the other young women Paul had brought home over the years. She was pretty, sure, at twenty-three a lot of girls can't help that, with high cheekbones and a slightly bent nose that was both strong and delicate at the same time, and a quick animal aspect; still very much a wild thing, I thought. Stand back from the cage. I saw the delighted, wry smile on my husband Jack's face as Connie strode across the room and her hand flashed out to shake his.

Paul bear-hugged his father as always and kissed me on the lips, no air kisses for us, ever. I liked how he still found my mouth kissable and made his lips soft, and lingered a second. I liked how we both consciously played around with the taboo sensations.

Mom, this is Connie.

Out thrust the girl's quick hand, again.

Hi, Mrs. Drucker, thanks for having me over.

It's our pleasure, Connie, I said, taking her lively hand in mine. Welcome to our home.

I've heard a lot about you.

I looked over to Paul. He was smiling, waiting. Go ahead, bring it on, make some crack, knowing me. Like: Well, he's been very secretive about you or yeah, he tells all his girlfriends the whole sad, lurid story. Something.

Good, I hope, I said, settling for typical.

Mostly very good.

Hmm, I thought, landing on the mostly instead of the very. Connie smiled at me. She had made me curious about their intimacies and made no bones about it, a girl after my own heart. I should have liked that--and her--but something else was going on.

Go ahead. Paul said to me. Ask.

No, I won't. Mostly sounds pretty good today. After all, it is Thanksgiving. Time to count our blessings.

Are you feeling all right, Mother?

Very funny.

Next came the complicating part, the up-the-ante, review-your-whole-life-passing part, that I wasn't able to feel thankful for. Connie undid her raincoat belt, cinched around her thin waist, took the coat off and there they were; not large, medium sized in the absolute sense but seeming bigger on her small frame; her round and swelling, unbridled and upstanding breasts making perfectly high and symmetrical nipple dents in her maroon cashmere sweater. Connie's breasts were so alive and so revealed in their aliveness you could feel them, absolutely feel them, with your eyes.

I had several unkind thoughts about gravity and what it had done to my body lately. I used to have breasts like that, their lack of size made up for by their high, proud, uplifted bearing. I always considered my breasts beautiful and never that they would be any other way, but after two kids and turning fifty the year before, they had gotten bigger, added padding like the rest of my body and started sagging and pointing off in their own directions, losing the proud, upstanding swell of Connie's breasts, riveting all our attentions in the foyer.

I felt the final leaves of autumn drift down through a cold void in my chest, a dying inside. Gravity and weight outside, emptiness inside, I shivered inwardly at the sensation. I had been vain and was paying for my vanity now. Of course, I should have been beyond all this at my age. I should have gained more self-acceptance over the years, but there I was, having a cranky, immature, jealous, oedipal fit.

My husband wore his wry grin. My son, clearly smitten, seemed positively giddy, his eyes shining with thanksgiving. Connie's breasts were, I don't know, magnetic. They were treasures gathering light to themselves in the foyer, trembling to be touched. Heck, I wanted to touch them. They were gifts. They were threats. They truly deserved the lively name tits as they jostled with outrageous life on her way to the coat rack.

Can I help you with something, Mrs. Drucker? the girl said, turning, knowing, I felt sure, the effect she was having on us.

Let Connie have my job this year, Mom, Paul said. A betrayal? A declaration of new loyalties? Let her snap the beans.

The situation was secretly fraught and humorous and my husband, the dear cad, channeling the complex vibrations and finding them ticklish, as is his wont, let out a laugh.

Yes, Mrs. Drucker, let her snap the beans, he said, dryly.

Innuendo. Layers of meaning. It felt like the foyer was filled with a big, overheated brain.

Sure, the girl said. I'd love to snap the beans and a glass of red wine while I'm at it. This way?

Connie picked up the tote bag of wine she and Paul had brought and walked toward the kitchen with her angular, thrusting stride, and I saw my butt, my shapely butt from years ago in those tight blue jeans. My butt, that gravity hadn't done any favors either, beautiful and lost. Coup de grace.

Of course, I drank too much.

The meal eventually became a blur, a train everyone but me was on. My train was slower and stopped at all the stations of low self-regard and regret, especially of the last few years of working too hard and being tired all the time, putting a kid through college and helping one in graduate school, letting myself go in this final push toward retirement and losing something in the process.

I felt strange, distant from people and from myself, watching the meal I'd prepared unroll like a foreign film. I lagged behind, missing details of stories, not getting the jokes. Normally, I am right there in the thick of things but not on that Thanksgiving night. It was as if I was reading subtitles rather than participating in the conversation. So, after a while, I settled for watching: I watched my mother and father hog Paul and Connie mid-table, in that intent, no-time-to-waste way they have. Even though I need to take my parents in spread out doses, I listened, hurt, when they invited their grandson and his girlfriend over to their apartment for brunch the next day. They hadn't invited me. I watched Paul and Connie, sitting close, touch each other's arms as they spoke, igniting sparks in their eyes. I couldn't manage to hear the intimate things they said to each other. I watched Connie eat with such relish that I imagined other appetites. I watched Paul watching her and felt happy and sad in equal measures, alternate and deep. I watched my wonderful neighbor Lila, a real Earth mother, lovingly cut the turkey for her husband Ren, who had broken his arm bike riding the day before. I meanly watched Lila's breasts jostle heavily as she worked the knife. She is short and squat with big breasts designed to sag while my pert ones weren't. I'd always been slender, never fat, never layered, never dumpy, with great legs. Not anymore.

I watched my husband, who was getting ready to lighten his teaching load permanently at the end of the year, my Jack, who I loved, a hundred miles away down the table, orchestrating the conversation and the passing of the dishes and making sure people ate and drank too much and, every once in a while, throwing me a glance that was both knowing and questioning at the same time. Of course, he knew. He knew.

After coffee and too many kinds of pie, after the communal clean up to a CD of girl groups from the Fifties and Sixties, a gift compiled by Paul and Connie, after everyone had gone home, I stood in our bedroom feeling as round and heavy as an ancient tree trunk under the cinched belt of my bathrobe. Jack was laying back against the pillows watching as I senselessly rearranged the jewelry cases on my dresser. His arms were behind his head, his big chest exposed and naked and ready to crush me under him. Nothing needed to be said. Because it had been a long time, what with the holiday and busy times at our schools and my begging off, I knew Jack wanted to fool around. After almost thirty years of marriage, you know these things, as surely as you know the turns of the halls of your house in the dark. But that was the problem, I had been mainly uninterested the last few years, and sex was something I submitted to because he wanted it. When was the last time I really wanted it?

That night, at a crossroads of loss and acceptance, I was feeling so many different things, I just wanted to curl up in bed and sooth myself to sleep. I was certain of the scene about to take place: Jack would make his desire plain. I'd say no. He'd try, get little response from me and I, feeling heavy and unattractive and guilty, would compromise with a blow job. I still liked blowing him. Not obligated to be responsive and enjoy myself, I could still enjoy my husband's big hard cock in my mouth and the pleasure I could give him.

Don't look at me, I said, standing at the foot of the bed.

I love to look at you.

Gravity is cruel. Gravity sucks. I hate gravity.

What are you talking about?

Gravity! Damn it!

Take off your robe and come to bed.

Jack can be as dense as he is smart, but I suppose that's true of everyone, when needs aren't being met.

I used to have breasts like that. I used to have a perfect butt like that.

Oh, yeah. Connie. I liked her a lot, didn't you? What a pistol. She reminds me of someone. The resemblance is pretty striking.

Not anymore. I hate my body.

I love your body.

That doesn't matter.

Now you're being ridiculous.

So I'm ridiculous. I tell you the truth of how I feel, and I'm ridiculous.

A feeling is just that, Sweetie. A feeling comes and goes.

Not this one. Stop looking at me like that. Why do you think we hardly make love anymore?

You're tired from school. You're distracted and busy these days.

Years.

I don't know...

What's behind all the blow jobs, Jack, did you ever wonder about that?

Don't look a gift horse…

Not funny. Why do you think that when we do make love, we don't do it in the daytime anymore? Why do you think I won't get on top or let you come in from behind unless the light is out?

Why?

Gravity. I don't want you to see the cellulite dimpling my belly and butt. I don't want you to see my tits sagging. I don't want you to see my old face hanging down.

Everybody gets wrinkles, Sweetie. It's no big deal to me.

I'm not talking about wrinkles. This is much worse.

Jack went quiet and wouldn't look at me. That's what happens when his feelings are hurt.

You don't care that I love your body? he asked after a while.

If I don't see myself as beautiful, you're not allowed to either.

My husband slid down in the bed, defeated, no longer proud of his manly bulk and power. Poor Jack. He was right. I was being ridiculous, immature, unenlightened, and needy.

I went to brush my teeth. When I returned to the bedroom, Jack said, sheepishly:

I suppose my old face hangs down too when I'm on top.

How do you think I knew I didn't want you to see me like that? I said, cruelly.

Nice. Thanks a lot.

If you can't take the possible answers, don't ask the question. But I don't care about it on you. I care about it on me. Turn out the light, I said. I took off my robe and slipped into bed. Now do you want a blow job or not?

No, I don't.

You're kidding me, right?

I said I don't and I don't.

First time that ever happened.

Now we were laying in bed, stiff on our backs, side by side but not touching, like two recently parked cars, growing cold in the garage, our engines ticking with thoughts in the dark. I didn't want this but had brought it on as surely as if I did want it. My husband and I lay there, aware of each other, our disappointments clashing in the darkened air above our heads.

I still liked his body, the taste of his flesh, his relaxed comfort in himself. Though he'd added some extra padding like me, he was still strong and trim for a fifty-eight old man--at least from what I'd seen around. Jack was aging well, with vigor and self-acceptance and a shrugging, what-me-worry grace. I found his new, more generous belly, warm and