The Snow White Christmas Cookie

“I’d like to play a game today,” she said. “Is that okay?”

“Sure thing.” He loved her games. “What kind?”

“I want you to punish me.”

“Punish you?” This was something entirely new. “Why would I want to punish you?”

“Because I’ve been a bad girl.”

“You have? What did you do?”

She shook her head. “That’s not part of the game.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?”

“Whatever you feel like. I’ll do whatever you say. Just make me pay, okay?”

“I don’t understand.”

She sighed impatiently. “Then I’ll make it simple for you. Just this once pretend that I’m the ’fraidy cat.”

“I’m not a ’fraidy cat,” he shot back.

“It’s just an expression.” She studied him curiously. “You’re awfully thin-skinned sometimes.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for yourself. I don’t want you to be a yutz. I want you to make me pay, damn it!”

“Okay, here goes…” He felt himself growing taller, his chest puffing out a bit. “Stand there and close your eyes.”

She obeyed him.

“And don’t move. Not a single muscle.” It was he who moved toward her. First, he unzipped her jeans and yanked them down so roughly that she let out a yelp. Then he put his hands up underneath her turtleneck sweater, grabbed hold of the sleeveless cotton thingy that she wore instead of a bra and ripped it from her body, tossing it aside.

She started breathing heavily, her breasts rising and falling. “Don’t stop!” she whispered urgently. She was actually into this. Liked what he was doing. “Keep going!”

And so he did. He shoved her down onto the sofa so hard that she bounced a foot up into the air. Pulled off her slip-on snow boots. Yanked her jeans all of the way off and hurled them aside. His own chest was heaving now, and he was aroused beyond belief. Couldn’t get out of his clothes fast enough. Naked, he took hold of her panties and tore them from her body, too. All she had on now was her turtleneck sweater. He pulled that over her head- only he was so rough about it that his knuckles struck her left eye, which instantly began to twitch and water.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize! How many times do I have to tell you?”

“But I–I think I just gave you a black eye.”

“It’s okay. Really, it is.”

Except it wasn’t. Because she was crying now. Hell, she was sobbing uncontrollably. Something was really bothering her, he realized as he heard a siren off in the distance. Another car accident, no doubt. There’d been so many on these snowy roads.

“Maybe we’d better stop.”

“No!” she pleaded, clutching at him with great urgency. “Just make me pay, will you?”

He kissed her hungrily. She kissed him back. And then they were together in each other’s arms and he was buried deep inside of her. Never had he been so deep.

“Is this what you wanted from me?” she gasped in his ear.

“Yes,” he groaned. “Oh, yes…” He’d never wanted anything or anyone as much as he wanted her right now. In fact, he was so consumed by pure animal desire that he was barely even aware that the siren kept getting louder and louder.

Not until he heard the screech outside.

Not until his whole world came crashing down upon him.

THE PREVIOUS EVENING CHAPTER 1

“Master Sergeant, have I told you how incredibly hot you look tonight?”

“Exactly eight times so far,” Des responded as she and the unlikely man in her life strolled arm in arm through the Dorset Street Historic District, taking in the wondrous sights.

Truly, there was no lovelier time of year in the historic New England village of Dorset than the Christmas season. Especially if enough snow had fallen for it to qualify as a genuine white Christmas. And this December had delivered an epic amount of snow. Three monster blizzards had already blanketed the village in forty inches of the white stuff, and Christmas day was still a whole week away. The gem of Connecticut’s Gold Coast had been transformed into an idyllic winter wonderland, one part theme park, two parts Currier and Ives print. Giggling kids were riding their sleds right down the middle of Dorset Street. Families were out building giant snowmen in their front yards. Red-cheeked carolers went from door to door spreading Yuletide cheer as the eggnog flowed at house parties throughout the village. Horse-drawn sleighs took giddy revelers to and fro. Candles burned in the windows of the Historic District’s colonial mansions to welcome them.

Yet another nor’easter was due to blow in by tomorrow morning. But tonight was frosty and clear, with a bright half-moon and stars twinkling in the sky. And so they strolled, swaddled in their winter coats, scarves and hats. Des Mitry, the Connecticut state resident trooper, a lithe, long-limbed, six-feet-one-inch woman of color. And Mitch Berger, the weight-challenged Jewish film critic from New York City whose only experience with violence before he’d met Des had consisted of the films of Mr. Sam Peckinpah.

“Well, I just may have to mention it a ninth time,” he said. “I’m still in a state of awe.”

“Mitch, I’m just wearing my new jeans.”

“Your new skinny jeans. Do you have any idea how spectacular a double-bill this is-your booty and a pair of skinny jeans? Hell, you’re lucky I don’t throw you down in that snow bank over there.”

“Yeah, good luck with that, wild man.”

“Don’t you know what a hottie you are?”

“I know I’ve never worn pants this tight in my life. They feel like dark-washed Saran Wrap. Are you sure they don’t make me look like a skanky teenager?”

“Yeah,” he said dreamily.

“Yeah what?” She came to a halt, shoving her heavy horn-rimmed glasses up her nose. “You’d tell me straight up if I looked silly, right?”

“Of course. But how can you even think that?”

“Because I’m not fifteen years old anymore.”

“And I for one am glad. If you were we’d have zero to talk about plus I’d be a felon and … hold on a sec, you’ve got something on your face.”

“What is it?”

He took her in his arms and kissed her. “Just me.”

She touched his beaming face with her fingers. Never before had a man made her feel this happy. “Doughboy, are you ever going to act your age?”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Good.”

They were on their way to an eggnog party at old Rut Peck’s house. Rut had served as Dorset’s postmaster for thirty-seven years and seemed to be related to everybody in town. He definitely knew everybody. And he’d lived across from the firehouse in the same upended shoebox of a farmhouse on the corner of Dorset Street and Maple Lane ever since he was born. Until last summer, that is, when the eighty-two-year-old widower got lost driving to his dentist across the Connecticut River in Old Saybrook. When the police stopped him for running a red light two hours later he was sixty miles away in Bridgeport and not sure how he’d gotten there. A small stroke, his doctor