Good Elf Gone Wrong: A Holiday Romantic Comedy

“You’re making gingerbread houses with her?” Anderson asked, walking into the venue as I poured water into the last of the Christmas tree stands.

“Someone’s getting into the Christmas spirit,” Lawrence joked.

“Fa la la la la! We should get a Christmas tree for the office,” Jake said, grinning.

“No Christmas decorations.” I wiped my hands on my pants.

Something about Gracie was triggering some sort of weird protective instinct in me.

It’s because she’s completely useless.

“Glad to see you took my advice to be nice,” Anderson remarked.

“I’m not nice. It was a strategic change.” I picked up the empty buckets.

“You better go before you miss your big gingerbread house moment.”

My brothers were smirking.

“Remember, slow and steady with the icing,” Jake said cheerfully. “Use your pinky as a balance when doing intricate details.”

The front door was unlocked when I arrived at Gracie’s parents’ house.

I dropped my bag on the floor with a thud.

Christmas carols played softly in the background as the Norman Rockwell scene played out.

Multiple generations gathered around an impeccably decorated dining room, garland over the doors, wreaths in the windows, a fire burning merrily in the hearth. It was warm and cozy.

It was also quite a bit different from the drafty house I’d grown up in that was crumbling from neglect around me and my siblings.

My heart clenched. Gracie looked up at me, delight on her face, like she was happy to see me.

“You made it.”

I strode over to her.

The expected thing to do would be to tip her head back and kiss her. A part of me desperately wanted to, wanted to feel her cave to her desire for me.

However, I also didn’t want her to freak out at me.

You’re going to have to kiss her eventually.

Maybe, or maybe I would find what I needed before it advanced to that point.

The Christmas carols were streaming from a laptop that was perched on one of the side tables. I gazed at it hungrily.

There it was, what I’d come here for.

“Do you have anything other than Christmas carols?” I asked Gracie.

I let my fingers trail over the touchpad of the laptop, pretending like I was looking for new songs when really all I wanted to do was search for evidence that would end this mission and let me escape the heavy blanket of Christmas.

Unfortunately, she was still watching me with those big soft eyes.

“Don’t you want to make a gingerbread house?” she asked hopefully.

I came up behind her, tipping her head back, some of the icing in the piper squirting all over her fingers.

The ghostly memory of the touch of her hand on my zipper chose that moment to conspire against me and make me wonder what it would be like to watch her lick my cum off her fingers.

Stay the fuck on mission.

“You sure you don’t want to ditch the gingerbread and come upstairs and let me lick frosting off of your pussy?” The words were soft enough not to freak out Grandma Astelle but loud enough that Kelly heard.

I did allow myself to hold up her hand and lick the sweet frosting on it before sitting down beside her.

Her hand was shaking slightly.

“Do you want gumdrops on the chimney?” she asked. On the floor by her feet, Pugnog, wearing yet another Christmas sweater, begged and drooled for food.

Impulsively, I reached out and broke off a piece of the gingerbread house chimney then tossed it to Pugnog, who nosily gobbled it up.

“You—” Gracie’s mouth opened and closed; her eyes looked at me in horror.

I suddenly felt like absolute shit.

“Oh no, poor Hudson,” Kelly cooed at me. “Is Gracie making you help her with that stupid little gingerbread house? Gracie, he doesn’t want to make a gingerbread house.”

“It’s funny watching her tongue stick out while she paints with the icing,” I said as Gracie turned back to the house and tried to fix the chimney I’d broken.

“Just stick some gumdrops there,” I said, tossing a handful on the table in front of her.

Gracie gave me a dirty look.

You’re not actually trying to make Gracie fall in love with you, I reminded myself as I took a seat next to Gracie. Remember? The plan changed.

Kelly perched on the table beside me, one of her bare feet resting on my thigh.

“Gracie gets so anal about all her little Christmas traditions.” Kelly laughed as Gracie hunched over the gingerbread house, trying to fix the chimney.

You’re a fucking asshole, Hudson.

“I mean who wants to sit there decorating a cookie house when you could instead put that frosting to good use and let a hot guy with a big Christmas package lick it off of you?”

Kelly’s bare foot crept up my thigh.

I grabbed it before she could dig her toes into my crotch.

That’s how James found us, me with my hand on his fiancée’s ankle.

He looked between Kelly and me.

She slowly withdrew her foot.

“What’s for dinner, Gracie?” James demanded.

“Hudson,” Kelly said, with a smirk in my direction.

“Let’s just go out for dinner, Kelly,” James said, taking her hand.

“Do you want to come with us, Hudson?” Kelly asked, running her hand through my hair. “You’ll have to clean up a little bit though first.”

“We’re having a date night,” James protested. “He can’t come.”

“She’s trying to rescue me from gingerbread house purgatory,” I drawled, leaning back in my chair, ignoring the guilt I felt for hurting Gracie.

“Gingerbread houses can be fun,” Granny Murray said from where she was drawing snowmen with huge erections all over her gingerbread house.

“Mom!” Bethany scolded and tried to smear icing all over the Christmas porno. “Gracie, give me more gingerbread and throw these away.”

“That’s my masterpiece. I didn’t even get to take a picture,” Granny Murray complained as Gracie swept the plate away.

“Hudson, can you come help me with something?” Gracie said.

I stood up, hand on my belt, and followed her into the large butler’s pantry.

Grace slammed the plate with the gingerbread on the counter and grabbed the side of my leather jacket, eyes flashing.

“I don’t care,” she hissed, “that you hate Christmas or that you’re not my real boyfriend. Decorating a gingerbread house is the height of the holiday season, and you will not ruin it for me. So get back in there and help me make a gingerbread house.”

I glanced down at the penis-covered house on the sideboard.

“Not that kind,” she warned.

I gave her a lazy salute.

“Yes, ma’am.” I followed her back into the dining room and accepted the bag of gumdrops without comment.

“You can hand me red and green ones.”

“Isn’t this adorable?” her grandmother said—the fun one, not the one that was silently sending me death wishes from across the room.

“Smile for the Gran Gram! Not you, Hudson. Give me a sexy scowl. Flex those biceps! Yeah, baby, that’s the ticket! Hudson is getting me lots of likes. Way better than my ex-husband. Fuck that guy. Lazy bastard. You know, I bet I’m still on his life insurance.” She tapped her chin. “Hey, Hudson, you ever kill anyone for money?”

“Gran, that’s rude. And also you can’t post photos of him online. You didn’t get his consent.” Gracie was exasperated.

Dakota snickered. “Granny Murray posted a video of him on her Instagram stories.”

Gracie looked at me in horror. “I am so sorry.”

“This is why I tell you kids not to sext,” Gracie’s dad said.

Kelly rolled her eyes. “People who look like me and Hudson don’t care if people see our photos.”

“Right.” I smirked. “Did it get a lot of hits?”

“Are you kidding?” Granny Murray whooped. “I had all sorts of companies wanting to do sponsorship deals. You should quit being a maintenance man and start doing porn. There’s quite a market for cougar content, if you know what I mean.”

“Don’t worry,” Gracie assured me. “I won’t let her take photos of you in your sleep.”

“Of course not,” her mother said in a too-bright tone. “Hudson’s not sleeping here, and my mother is hardly going to sneak into whatever crack den he lives in.”

I handed Gracie a red gumdrop.

“I’m staying here tonight.”

Gracie dropped the candy, and it broke several of her carefully applied icing icicles.

“You are? Where?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Unfortunately,” Bethany said loudly, “we’re old-fashioned in this house. We have rules about opposite-gender guests staying the night.”

“Amen,” Gracie’s mean grandmother stated.

“We ask that our children be engaged or married before we allow overnight guests,” Bethany continued brightly.

“You didn’t with Kelly,” Granny Murray insisted.

“To be fair,” Gracie’s brother said with a snicker, “James was already engaged when he started spending the night with Kelly. Just not to her.”

“Dipwad!” Kelly shrieked at Logan.

“Piper and James aren’t engaged either,” Dakota added.

“Well, uh …” Rob stammered. “It’s a little different. Piper is from out of town. We can’t make her pay for a hotel.”

“Hudson lives in town,” Bethany said firmly, “so it’s perfectly fine if he goes home by curfew.”

“You’re kicking out a grown woman’s boyfriend at nine thirty, Bethany?” Gracie’s aunt Giana raised an eyebrow.

“Hookup,” Kelly corrected.

“Kelly’s had boyfriends here overnight before, and that was when she was in high school. Gracie is a grown woman in her late thirties,” her aunt continued.

“I’m only twenty-nine.”

“You act like you’re fifty,” Kelly snapped at Gracie.

“So,” I said slowly, turning to Kelly, “what I’m hearing that is if you were riding my cock that I’d get to stay here free and clear?”

“The dinner reservations.” James tugged on Kelly’s arm.

“Uh, well …” Rob squirmed in his seat. “I guess when you put it like that, maybe we can relax the rules.”

He patted his forehead with a red-and-green towel embroidered with Christmas trees.

“Gracie can give you a rundown of the house rules.”

“Hard pass. I don’t do rules.”