Winter Kisses Read online

  CONTENTS

  Winter Kisses

  Winter Kisses

  NEWSLETTER

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  Extended Epilogue

  NEWSLETTER

  Warming Up to Love

  A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS

  BRATVA BEAR SHIFTERS

  LAIRDS & LADIES

  RUSSIAN UNDERWORLD

  IRISH WOLF SHIFTERS

  Collaborations

  About the Author

  WINTER KISSES

  AN OLDER MAN YOUNGER WOMAN ROMANCE

  _______________________

  Warming Up to Love, #2

  FLORA FERRARI

  Copyright © 2020 by Flora Ferrari

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  WINTER KISSES

  A New England blizzard leaves me stranded on the side of the road as I’m driving up to my big sister’s house for the holidays. My plan is to use the break from my barista job to write a bestseller, but my beat-up old car has other ideas.

  I think I’m lost. But then he finds me. And my world will never be the same again.

  I don’t know who this silver fox is at first, with his iron hair and smirking lips, his seven-foot body rippling with muscles that all the heavy winter clothes in the world can’t hide. But my car’s busted and I haven’t got much choice but to trust him. I could be making a mistake. And yet somehow it feels oh-so-right.

  Locked away in his winter cabin – more like a freaking mansion, spanning three stories and built into a formation of icy rock – I learn that he’s Wayne Wakefield, one of the richest, most powerful men in the world. He’s a forty-three year old billionaire who’d never be interested in a curvy, shy, nineteen year old dreamer like me.

  But then things get so hot they could melt this cozy season. When this possessive alpha tells me I’m his, and his alone, I can’t quite believe it. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m a virgin and haven’t got any experience with immature high school douches, let alone a seasoned conqueror of the business world like Wayne. What the heck am I supposed to do?

  But the inside of his cabin becomes our own private world. With an outdoor hot tub and a view of a frozen lake, with his gorgeous dog Rusty and a crackling fire, I learn that maybe I do deserve happiness. Maybe I do deserve love.

  But what if I’ve let my imagination get the better of me again? What if Wayne Wakefield loses interest once he’s satisfied his carnal, irrepressible desire?

  What if this winter is just too cold?

  *Winter Kisses is an insta-everything standalone instalove romance with a HEA, no cheating, and no cliffhanger.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Winter

  I grip the steering wheel hard and stare through the windshield at the snow lashing down, getting thicker now, becoming a sheet of white that stops my high-beams about ten feet in front of me.

  I take slow breaths, the air cold, this piece-of-crap car not doing much against the impressive New England winter.

  The drive up from New York went well at first. I packed a lunch and fled the city, glad to have a break from the poor, week-to-week barista lifestyle I’ve been living. Waiting for my week’s paycheck just to scrounge enough together to make my way to the next week, coming home exhausted and then dragging myself to my old laptop to try and hammer out a few hundred words before collapsing into a messy lump on my Goodwill couch.

  No, now I was going to stay with my older sister, Anna, the woman who had basically raised me after our parents died when I was just a little kid. I’m nineteen now, a grownup, and a smattering of snowfall isn’t going to make me quiver in defeat.

  But as the car chugs along – with more miles on the odometer than I care to think about – I feel like a tiny insect crawling across a world of snow.

  All around me, all I can hear is the rushing waterfall of the elements, and even if I could see through the windshield full of snow, I’m surrounded by a forest of pines that are coated with layers of barrier-like ice.

  It would be beautiful, if my car was an SUV with snow-tires and I was speeding toward my sister’s house, where she lives with her fiancé. Anna’s always seemed to have life more figured out than me, and I don’t think it only comes down to the decade she has on me age-wise.

  Somehow, I doubt that Anna would ever get stuck in the middle of a freaking blizzard in the middle of a freaking ice forest in the middle of freaking winter.

  Winter is stuck in winter.

  How poetic.

  I sigh and glance at my map, seeing that I’m at least eighty miles from my sister’s house. I don’t think the car is going to make it that far. I’m thinking about pulling over and checking for a nearby town, blowing my last savings on a motel room, when—crank, the car shudders and starts to slow.

  I curse and guide it to the side of the road.

  “Well,” I whisper, “this is definitely not good.”

  I sigh and sit back, hugging my jacket more tightly around myself and looking around the New England forest. Or, really, looking around the imposing whiteness that used to be a forest. Now I’m shrouded in a winter-wonderland blanket.

  I take out my cell phone and call Anna.

  “Winter?” she answers, on the second ring, her voice pitched high and crackly with the poor reception. “Don’t tell me you’re stuck out there in this snow.”

  I bite my lip, pushing down the urge to whine to my big sister for help. Ever since I was six and she was sixteen, Anna had been my life raft, the person I clung to whenever things got difficult.

  When she moved to New England to be with her fiancé, she felt so guilty leaving me behind. She even offered to have me move in with them, but of course that was madness. I didn’t want to be the third-wheel.

  “I’m an adult,” I told her firmly. “I can take care of myself.”

  I wanted to make her proud. I wanted to make it so that she could relax into her life and not have to drive herself cuckoo worrying about me all the time.

  I still want all of that, even if the cold is starting to seep through the car windows and through my jacket and sweater.

  “Winter?”

  “I’m fine, sis,” I say. “I’m just calling to let you know I might be delayed a little bit. I’m going to hunker down in a motel and wait for this to pass.”

  Anna sighs, relief flooding the sound. “As long as you’re not stranded in the middle of the forest in a busted car.”

  I almost laugh, her what-if is so accurate.

  “No,” I say awkwardly. “Of course not.”

  “Hmm, it’s a shame,” Anna murmurs. “I was looking forward to seeing you tonight. But I guess one day won’t make that much difference. I get you for two weeks, after all. And by the end of it, sis, you’re going to be a bestseller writer.”

  “Ha, ha,” I grunt. “Somehow I doubt that, but thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  The whole point of my journey north is so that I can have some peace and quiet to work on my book. Ever since I was a little kid,
I’ve felt more comfortable in make-believe worlds than the real one, populating my mind with fantasies so that I don’t have to live in reality.

  Anna’s always supported me, even though neither of us had enough money for me to go to college. Forget about community college and loans. I needed somehow to live before I could even think about any of that.

  Anyway, a writer doesn’t need college, just a pen. Or a laptop. And her imagination.

  The wind howls outside the car, whistling against the icy metal. The trees rustle. I feel winter pressing down on me, as though any second the snow could pierce the car and start blanketing me.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?” Anna asks.

  “Yes,” I say, not wanting her to worry, because she’s worried enough about me over the years. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Or I’ll call you to let you know what I’m doing. Just don’t stress, okay?”

  Anna snorts. “Yeah, sure. I’ll give that one a try.”

  “I love you,” I say.

  “Love you, sis. Bye.”

  I hang up and let my head fall back on the headrest, peering through my windshield at the hood of my car.

  Smoke is seeping out from underneath it, which I take as a bad sign. And then, as I try to navigate to the map application on my phone, it blinks and dies.

  Crap.

  I turn back to the old-fashioned map, trying to find a town, wondering if I can walk it anyway.

  This is bad. This is really bad.

  My writer’s mind starts conjuring up scenarios to torture me.

  Woman Freezes to Death on New England Road: The Early Christmas Gift Nobody Asked For.

  The headline blares in my head, taunting me, as the accompanying images make me want to scream. I grit my teeth together and blink a few times, assuring myself that my eyes are dry, that I’m not going to cry.

  Anna never liked it when I cried growing up, so I got good at pushing stuff down. Maybe that’s not the best thing to do, speaking from a mental health perspective, but it does help in situations like this when feelings aren’t going to do any good.

  I consult the map again.

  Okay, about ten miles down the road, there’s a town … at least, I think it’s ten miles.

  I can walk ten miles, right? In the snow? In this hellish blizzard?

  Yeah, sure, and next I’ll become pole-vaulting champion.

  I step from the car and immediately the blizzard hits me like an icy wave, blasting over me with the force of nature.

  I pull my hood down over my eyes and walk around to the trunk, and then shake my head.

  This is serious now.

  I can’t haul my bag and walk the ten miles to town.

  No, I’ll have to walk down there and then arrange a tow. There’s no way I’m going to work out why my car is suddenly spewing smoke on my own.

  I’m no mechanic. The mechanic of a plot, maybe, but actual real-world fixing? No chance.

  I walk to the driver side and reach down for my gloves, pulling them onto hands that seem far too frozen already.

  I turn to the road, staring at the blankness of it, the snow so thick it looks uniform in places, like a giant white sheet of paper has been slid across my vision.

  I walk forward and then stop.

  Off to my left, in the forest, a dog is yapping softly, and then it gets louder, and louder.

  I hear a man’s voice rising over the constant hum of the snow.

  “What is it, boy?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Wayne

  “What is it, boy?” I say, pulling down my scarf and letting the cold blast me in the face.

  After the heat of the cabin, the cold is refreshing, infusing my bones and my lungs with an invigorating blast. I only intended to take Rusty out on a short walk to relieve himself, since the little caramel-colored Jack Russel terrier wasn’t the biggest fan of the snow.

  But no sooner had I walked a few steps from the cabin when Rusty ducked his head and started sniffing at the ground, tail stuck straight up in the air, ears pricked and alert.

  Then he darted off into the forest, stopping and turning to me after thirty or so feet, staring at me like I was the world’s biggest idiot for not following.

  I shrugged and shut the cabin door.

  Why not?

  For the first time in a long time, I had nothing to do. I was free to just wander off into the snowy forest and see what my dog wanted to explore.

  I’m forty-three years old and I can’t remember the last time I just did something for the sake of it, for fun. I wonder if there’s something wrong with that.

  But then, I’ve got my business to take care of, thousands of employees, a board of directors who seem intent on twisting the company into yet another morality-lacking cesspit.

  Rusty stands lightly in the snow, where my weighty body causes me to sink shin-deep with each step, soaking my jeans, but my feet are dry, courtesy of my chunky boots.

  “What is it, boy?” I ask again.

  He yips at the air, and then noses toward the road. I click my tongue to let him know to wait. The last thing I need is him charging out into the middle of a low-visibility road and getting hit. He makes the whining sound that lets me know he’s annoyed, that he wants to just sprint ahead, consequences be damned.

  “I know,” I laugh grimly. “But you’re not as smart as you think you are, Rust.”

  He whines.

  When I catch up with him, he pads forward.

  The snowfall is so thick I don’t see it – or her – until I’m almost standing next to the car.

  Smoke seeps from the hood in a steady stream, but I barely even notice the car as my eyes roam over her.

  Something erupts inside me, something I never thought I’d feel, something carnal and primal and possessive.

  It roars at me, She’s yours. Kill any man who touches her. Don’t second-guess yourself. This woman belongs to you now.

  She laughs and kneels down as Rusty pads over to her, yipping proudly, enough to let me know that this is where he was leading me all along.

  A crazy thought strikes me.

  Did he know how I’d feel the moment I laid my eyes on her?

  She’s wearing a thick army-green jacket and khaki pants with boots, but the wind has blown her hood down to reveal waves of luxurious blonde hair, slightly wet and messy in the snow. Her eyes are wide, friendly and emerald-green, and her body is curvy, so curvy I feel my hands twitching for those child bearing hips, for those milk-giving breasts, for those sweet-as-hell ass cheeks.

  “Car trouble?” I manage to growl, when all I want is to fist that golden hair and bend her over the steaming hood, snow or no snow.

  “How could you tell?” she says, a note of sass in her voice. She strokes Rusty behind the ear and then stands up, staring at me. “You’re not a serial killer, are you? Your face looks familiar.”

  I’m glad she doesn’t recognize me and, strangely, I feel another stirring inside when she sasses me. I like the way she smirks, the way it contrasts with the genuine kindness in her eyes. A glorious contradiction.

  “I just have one of those faces,” I tell her, moving forward slowly, not wanting to freak her out. “Mind if I take a look?”

  “Are you a mechanic?”

  “Are you always this sassy?”

  Her eyes twinkle, her cheeks flushing red. Her chest rises and falls quickly, causing her breasts to heave in the jacket, and my manhood to flood and pulse solidly.

  I bet she’s hot as fucking fire under there. I bet her nipples would burn my tongue as I sucked them, sucked them hard until they were red and she was quivering with her endless releases, her cream sliding thickly down her thighs.

  “You could say I use humor as a defense mechanism, if you wanted to get all psychobabble about it.”

  I chuckle and nod to the car. “Pop the hood?”

  “Can you give me your name, at least?”

  “Wayne Wakefield,” I tell her.

  I see her pause, lips p
ursed, as my name moves through her consciousness. I can tell she’s trying to place me.

  “And yours?” I ask.

  “Winter Reed,” she says. “Though I’m not sure I should be telling you that.”

  She walks to her driver’s side and leans inside, popping the hood. Rusty jumps up on the seat and she giggles as he laps at her face.

  “Friendly doggie,” she says, stroking him. “What’s your name?”

  “Rusty,” I tell her. “And he’s not normally so friendly with strangers. He must like you.”

  My mind thunders ahead a million miles a minute. The amount of times I’ve wished for a child to carry on my legacy, to give a middle finger to the cutthroat assholes who think life is a game to be played at other people’s expense.

  I open the hood and glance down at the engine.

  Immediately, I can tell that she’s screwed and is going to need a mechanic.

  “That bad, Wayne?” she asks, glancing at me over the top of Rusty’s head.

  My dog looks content in her arms, snuggling close to her, even as the snow continues to lash down like a godly punishment.

  “How could you tell?” I smirk.

  “Uh, just your face,” she says, smiling shakily. “Am I right in thinking there’s a town ten miles up the road?”

  “From here? More like fifteen, but yeah, there’s a town. Snowy Crescents. But I wouldn’t advise walking there in this blizzard. It’s only going to get worse for the next twelve hours.”

  She glances up at the sky, frowning. “I know it’s only four in the afternoon, but it feels like freaking midnight. You know, with the snow, it’s all so shiny all the time anyway. Sorry, I’m rambling. I guess rambling is a pretty good way to come to terms with the fact that I’m stuck in the middle of the forest with a man who could very well be a serial killer, right?”

  I stare at her, captivated, as her smile wavers and her leafy eyes glimmer. It’s like I can see into her, scenting her nervousness and her sassiness with a tinge of fear.

  “Winter, I’d never hurt you,” I say.

  She blinks. “Woah, okay,” she says. “That was suddenly super-serious.”

  “I know it must be strange for you, being out here with a complete stranger. But I just want you to know you’re safe.”