Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups Read Online Free Page A

playing hard to get, are we? Or maybe we're just getting hard. Is that what this is about?"
    "No more, please."
    "Shall we see just how hard we're getting?"
    "Don't, please don't." But in the physical struggle she had begun, her playful combativeness made her body shift and arch in alluring ways and Santa felt the demon again, the not-Santa in him, surge up, robbing him of all resistance.
    Now her fingers snaked down his paunch, past the shiny black belt to the bright red bulge in his trousers. His buttons must have undone themselves, for in no time, the ineffable thrill a man feels when a woman grips his loveshaft surged through him.
    "No," he gasped.
    Santa's hands felt numb and alien. His left splayed across her shoulderblade like a starfish on a beach. This is not happening. His right sculpted her neck, her hard-tipped breasts, her belly, then plunged beneath the orange silk and found the swell of her desire. Please God, let this not be happening.
    Thus they led one another, by hand and lip—though Santa kicked and screamed inside like a caged saint—to the brink of orgasm.
    With a shudder, she gripped his inserted middle finger and bellowed out a world-splitting groan. That sound was enough to tilt the balance for him as well. Santa's low taut baritone came up under her full-throated gasps, and his seed arced out of him and spattered the topmost branches of the tree, dripping downward in dribs and drabs.
    Oh Lord, I'm damned indeed , he thought, but it didn't stop him from wanting suddenly to embrace the Tooth Fairy in all her monstrosity. His massive red arms encircled her to hold her tight. And closed on nothing. His sex hung suddenly free and unstroked and spurting, and his mouth, still a-tingle, gaped empty and unkissed.
    Fighting back tears of humiliation, Santa gestured toward the tree and watched his semen turn to gleaming white candycanes on the branches it had befouled.
    He fell to his knees. "Heavenly Father," he prayed, "give me strength. Help me withstand the temptress. Be with me in my hour of need. This I pray by all the saints in heaven and on earth. Amen." Then he gathered his things together, dematerialized through the front door, and dove into his sleigh.
    Lucifer took one look at him and rolled his eyes at Prancer. But Santa's whipsmack split the air above his antlers, distressed shouts of "Up and away, damn you!" filled his ears, and before he knew it, his hoofs had left the snowy lawn and the sleigh was airborne.
    The Gilberts' Christmas that year was the best any of them could recall. It wasn't so much the presents, nor the food, nor the folks who dropped by, though all of that was tinged as usual with the special clarity and goodness of Christmas Day. It seemed rather that the house itself, from attic to basement, from front porch to back, was infused with the deepest comfort and warmth.
    But the girls' favorite moment was Karen's discovery of the off-white candycanes on the tree. They went wild over them, the young ones especially, licking the stiff glistening columns of white like Ponce de Leon indulging himself at the Fountain of Youth. They smuggled some of them to school to share with their closest girlfriends, and Julie pressed one upon her mother.
    Sandra had never tasted anything like it. Despite a dominant strain of treacle, powerful barbs of nutrition jagged out here and there into her taste buds. There were hints of salt mingled with a sugar so pure its taste made her eyes glisten with tears of joy.
    Paul Gilbert reaped his reward that night when Sandra slipped into bed beside him, peeled off his pajama bottoms with her teeth, and spent the next five hours lining her stomach with his outpourings of love. Sandra had always blanched at the very notion of oral sex, which was one reason her husband spent three lunch hours each week with Debbie Travers, a woman who loved to lick and be licked, though she refused to let him come in her mouth.
    From that night, Paul swore off Debbie and stayed