Unwrapped

By Jessica Gadziala

Lyra was determined to have a classic, good old-fashioned, traditional Christmas this year complete with snow, gingerbread houses, lights, and wrapped presents. Even if that meant she had to have it completely on her own. 

And that was the plan as she drove out of the City and up into the steep hills of Vermont toward some secluded cabins where she could have what was totally not going to be a depressing head-in-the-oven-Christmas-For-One. 

She never quite made it to the cabins. And, along the way, found that while a Christmas alone wasn't all that great, a Christmas for two, yeah, that was pretty amazing…

* This is a short, sweet, insta-lust, insta-love story with a ton of sweet moments and a lot of steam. Very explicit sexual content. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jessica Gadziala
• Release date: Dec 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781393785439

Book preview

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Dedication:

To all the women of my family who filled me with the Christmas spirit from an early age and had me so excited for the holiday in AUGUST that I had to sit down and start to write this story.

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One

Lyra

I was determined to break the tradition of bad Christmases.

I was born to two people who dove into a bottle and spent their lives trying to find the bottom of it. As such, whatever money there was laying around generally went to lining the liquor store owner's pockets and not to buying a tree and gifts that they wrapped in festive, happy paper and forged Santa's name on. When I was ten and they got drunk and plowed into a guard rail two days before Christmas, killing themselves and leaving me alone in the world, well they didn't exactly have anything for little traumatized me at the group home.

From there, I went to a few foster homes over the years. Unfortunately, the money they made from the government for the upkeep of me and the other kids very rarely went to buying us stuff and more likely went to buying themselves flatscreen televisions and paying their mortgages. Then, of course, I aged out of the system. And, well, I always thought it was far too depressing to celebrate a holiday all by myself. So, instead, I took the ever-dreaded shift manning the emergency room reception desk on both Christmas eve and day, making holiday pay that I socked away and told myself that some day, one day, I would use it for Christmas.

Well, my thirtieth birthday was one month away and I couldn't, I absolutely could not be on the Earth for three decades and not know what a proper Christmas was. So, with that thought, I cashed in my three years' worth of vacation days at the hospital, grabbed every last penny of holiday cash I had stashed in a savings account, and set the plan into motion.

That put me in my car in a snowstorm on some backwoods, nowhere part of Vermont, land of maple syrup and, if the fact that I hadn't seen another living soul in over forty minutes was anything to go by, little else. Forty minutes. I couldn't walk four seconds anywhere in New York without seeing another person. Or, at the very least, a rat. Something.

My hands were a death grip on the wheel, so unaccustomed to driving in any kind of severe weather. I reached over and turned down the Christmas playlist on my radio, remembering reading somewhere that if you dull one sense, the others make up for it. Which was why people automatically turned their radio down when looking for a street sign when they were lost... without knowing why. My heart was lodged pretty thoroughly in my throat as the hill just kept going up up up, never seeming to end, taking me up into the mountains toward Coral Cabins.

I hadn't been stupid; I had checked the weather report before I made the reservations then again before I hit the road that morning. They had said there was a chance for flurries.

Flurries, my Aunt Fannie.

It was like Jack Frost was having a snowball fight with Elsa from Frozen.

It was taking everything in me to keep my little, beat-up clunker of a car on the road. It was too late to go back down. I had been on the road for way too long. Forty minutes since I saw another car, sure, but it had been almost twice that since I saw a town. In this weather, it would be stupid to be on the road any longer than absolutely necessary. Coral Cabins was only supposed to be another half an hour away. Granted, that was all uphill. But it was still shorter.

In my backseat and trunk was, well, several thousands of dollars worth of Christmas supplies. When I said I wanted to do Christmas, I meant do it all. I wanted to decorate a tree so I had lights of varying kinds and about a dozen boxes of different ornaments. I wanted to bake so there were a ton of bags filled with supplies needed to make cookies and gingerbread houses as well as books to teach me how to do such things. I wanted to have a big, sprawling Christmas dinner so there were groceries and pans and tableware. I wanted to open presents so I bought myself some and, despite knowing what they all were, I was going to wrap them and put them under the tree and open them with a cup of cocoa like everyone else got to do. Just because I was alone did not mean I couldn't have a heck of a holiday.

If I made it there, of course.

Honestly, the snow aside, it was really kinda eerie to not see people. Maybe a part of me that watched way too many horror movies was half-expecting some crazy lumberjack to come out of nowhere, take me, keep me in his specialized torture room, and maim and rape me until he killed me and maybe made a flesh suit out of my skin.

Keep it together, I told myself, tossing another empty cup onto the passenger side floor where there were already at least a dozen others resting. Out of coffee was never a good way to be in my humble opinion. It was almost a bad omen.

But... Coral Cabins had coffee pots in each cabin; I had checked. I hadn't thought to ask about if they had a place to do laundry, but I had asked about the coffee pot. Worst case, I could hand wash my clothes in the tub. I couldn't make coffee without a machine. I had also asked if there was anywhere nearby where I could cut down a tree. That made the guy on the phone laugh and inform me that the entire place was surrounded by pine trees and I could help myself.

I took another deep breath.

But it got caught in my throat.

Because I saw a bright light to the right of my car. And it didn't seem to be stopping.

The impact was to the center of the passenger side of my car, making my airbag deploy and my head slam hard against the window to my left.

I guess I had always expected accidents to be loud. You'd swear they had to be with all the damage. But all I heard was a quick crunch, the shatter of glass, the pop of my airbag, then nothing but the labored sound of my own breathing. The world, blanketed with snow, was freakishly quiet.

I let out a whimper as I lifted my head from the glass, feeling the gash and the drip of blood down the side of my face, trying to convince myself to stay calm. I worked in a hospital; I had seen people missing limbs who kept their emotions under control. But there was a sledgehammering sensation in my temples and my eyes felt like icepicks were being driven into them as I turned my head.

It was probably a concussion. And head wounds always bled dramatically even when they weren't bad. I was alright. I needed to make sure that whoever hit me was too. I glanced out my shattered passenger window, seeing nothing but a giant, very slightly bent grill to a huge truck. But that was it. I couldn't see past that.

There was a gust of frigid air and I turned my head quickly to see the source, the pain in my head blinding me for a second.

Hey. Hey, you alright? I heard a deep, gruff male voice ask.

My vision cleared and I felt a mix of fear and humor spark inside. Fear because, well, I was a woman alone in the middle of nowhere, hurt, and there was a strange man beside my wrecked car. Humor because, yeah, it seemed like my worst nightmares were bringing themselves to life. Because the man leaning in my doorway with snow steadily falling on him? Yeah, he was a lumberjack. But in the very lumbersexual way. Meaning, he was tall and broad with dark hair and a dark beard and there were little charming crows feet next to his eyes like he spent a lot of time squinting at the sun. But his hair and beard were kempt, his jeans and red and black flannel jacket were clean, and he had the most hypnotic brown eyes I had ever seen in my life and they were, of course, framed with thick dark lashes.

You don't have a torture room where you bring young women you hit with your truck on the side of the road to rape and kill, do you? I blurted out without thinking, as was my nature. My mouth always ran away from me.

I think that is a bit specific for a torture room, he said, lips twitching the barest bit, drawing my attention for a second.

That's not a serious answer.

It wasn't a serious question, he shot back. What's your name, dollface? he asked, surprising me with the pet name, effectively wiping my mind blank for a long second.

Lyra, I answered when it came back to me. You?

Jack. To that, I laughed, even though the action sent sparks of pain all through my brain. And it only seemed to make his handsome face twist up in concern.

A lumberjack... named Jack, I let him in on, shaking my head and wincing at the movement.

He shook his head right back at me. Can you get your belt off? he asked and I sat there dumbly for a second. When I didn't respond, he reached in past me and did it for me, the