Good Elf Gone Wrong: A Holiday Romantic Comedy

“I see what you mean about her,” Grayson remarked on the phone that evening when I was lying in the bathtub packed in bags of ice.

“You see what I mean about her,” I repeated tensely.

He sees what? That Gracie was pretty, that it was bliss when she wrapped her arms around you and kissed you and looked up at you like you were her hero? How you could get lost in her eyes, how soft and warm she felt in your arms?

I’d watched her and Grayson, how she couldn’t keep her eyes or her hands off of him.

The Hallmark movie practically wrote itself. Big city billionaire tries to ruin pretty small-town girl’s company with the help of his obnoxious sidekick. Billionaire saves girl in a fight. Girl teaches billionaire the true meaning of Christmas. They fall in love and move to the small town and live happily ever after with lots of money while the sidekick gets thrown in a lake or kicked by a donkey in the Christmas pageant or something.

I couldn’t compete with Grayson; he was every woman’s dream man.

“You’re such a liar,” Grayson said conversationally. “You do have it bad for her.”

“Gracie is nothing to me.”

“All those bruises on your face say otherwise, but sure, wallow in your self-deception. As long as you give me what I want, I don’t care.”

“Uh-huh.”

“No, I see what you mean about her being observant. It was like she was cataloging everything she saw about me. And the cookies? She’s not going to show up somewhere and start asking questions, is she? She could become a real problem.”

“I’ll keep Gracie distracted,” I promised.

“We should take some cookies to your friend after we drop these by the EnerCheck office.” It was late morning in the O’Brien house. Grace was piling dirty dishes by the sink.

I shrugged off my jacket, wincing slightly, turned on the water in the sink, and filled it up so I could help her wash up.

“You don’t have to. Here. Sit down. I made you a plate,” Gracie said.

She had saved me food. Of course she had.

“It’s okay,” I said gruffly. “I can eat after.”

Gracie beamed at me.

It was like being drowned in warm caramel.

I let my hands settle on her waist and leaned in to kiss her.

I wanted her.

Soon.

“Where does your friend live? We can stop by his house.”

“Richard’s already left,” I said, the lie and fake name spilling off my tongue. “He went to go see his brother’s kids. I’ll save him some cookies though.”

“Do you have any other friends? We should take some to your brothers and maybe a few more to the nursing home,” she said, stacking boxes neatly wrapped with green-and-red paper on the kitchen table.

“You can’t spend all day delivering cookies,” Kelly complained, waltzing into the kitchen. “Mom said you were going to come by and decorate James’s house for the company Christmas party.”

“It’s going to be your house soon, Kelly,” Gracie said desperately. “Don’t you want to decorate?”

“Mom said you would do it. I have my hands full with this wedding. Besides, I don’t work at EnerCheck; you do. So you should decorate for your company party.”

She flounced off, not before pausing in front of me.

“Poor Hudson. Your face. Were you in a fight? Naughty boy.” Kelly slapped me lightly on the ass.

“I thought you had another wedding dress fitting,” Gracie said through her teeth.

“Someone has to take care of poor Hudson,” Kelly said, grabbing an ice pack out of the freezer and dabbing it on my face. “Making him do dishes when he’s injured. You’re such a bad girlfriend, Gracie. Here. I’ll kiss it and make it better.”

Gracie’s sister reached up and pressed lips like plastic to my forehead.

“Are you coming to the party, Hudson?” she asked me.

“Depends. Is it one of those crazy Christmas parties where people get drunk and have sex on the copy machine?”

Kelly twirled her hair. “It could be.”

Gracie seemed quiet as she sat next to me in the truck, box of cookies on her lap.

“I don’t know why I’m bringing cookies to the office,” she sighed.

“Because then everyone will know they’re from you,” I reminded her. “Otherwise, your sister or mom will take credit.”

“No one’s going to even be in the office.”

“Even better because then you can send out an email.” I glanced over at her.

“You need to let everyone know when you did the work because otherwise someone else is going to put their name on your effort, and you won’t get the credit,” I told her as we drove through town to the EnerCheck office.

I was trying to keep it casual, light, that this was just another instance of me hanging out with her, just keeping the fake boyfriend revenge plan in motion, and not letting her sense the tension and excitement. I was close to completing the mission. I could feel it.

The EnerCheck Inc. office was in a restored old factory that had been converted into office space.

They were at the far end of the complex. I parked the truck in one of the empty spaces then took the boxes from Gracie.

I’d snuck people into this office before with the same maintenance scam. However, they’d been unable to find anything useful on the accounts they’d been able to access. We hadn’t tried Gracie’s company account yet.

“Man, you weren’t kidding by no one being here,” I remarked as we headed through the empty office. “Guess everyone’s pregaming for the company holiday party.”

“There’s never anyone here.” Gracie rolled her eyes.

“Which one is your desk?” I asked her.

“There.”

“Someone put Sugarplum in a corner.”

“James said it was because I worked out of the New York City office,” she said, lips thinning. “Except that even so, I’m in the office more than most of my cousins who live in Maplewood Falls.”

I sat down in her chair and pulled her on my lap.

The desktop computer was dark.

“They still have you guys on desktops?” I asked, silently sending her the thought to turn on the computer.

“This office is still stuck in the early two thousands,” she said as I slowly ran my hand up and down her leg. “The server system is a mess, and people store files on their personal computers. I don’t even store certain files on the server because someone will inadvertently delete it. Shoot. I’m the only person making backups.”

“I’m just a humble janitor,” I drawled, “but that doesn’t sound like a way to run a business.”

“Tell me about it,” she muttered as she stood up to remove her coat.

Turn on the computer, turn on the computer.

I could tell Gracie that I wanted to look up something? Maybe I could tell her I wanted to buy the engagement ring. But that was clumsy. And I would pull it out only as a last resort. I was hoping force of habit would make her turn on the computer.

Luck was on my side today.

“I guess I’ll tell people cookies are here. It will probably be the first time in months some of them will come into the office.” She reached down to turn on the desktop.

The flash drive with the Trojan horse program that was going to allow my company to remote access into the computer and scrape off the data was burning a hole in my pocket.

Gracie sat on my lap as she wrote a companywide email and attached a photo of the cookies.

I settled her back against me, letting her feel the hard bulge in my crotch.

When she went to go put them in the break room kitchen, I slipped the flash drive into the back USB port of the desktop and quickly stood back up. The program flashed up on the screen for a second then minimized.

The computer needed to stay on while the program ran. If Gracie started poking around in the computer, she would see it running. Fortunately, I knew a few ways to keep her distracted.

I caught her in my arms when she came back to the desk. My hand slid under her skirt to stroke her through the tights.

She squeaked as I pulled them down.

“Someone could see.”

“The danger makes it fun,” I whispered in her ear, stroking her hot, wet pussy. “Undo your top. Let me see your tits.”

Gracie looked around furtively, breath coming out in needy gasps. It was driving me crazy.

I nipped her ear.

“But there’s no audience,” she panted.

“You really want an audience for your first time, Sugarplum?”

“Here? Now?” she stammered. “That seems awfully fast. Don’t we want to, I don’t know, talk about it fir—Ohhh.” She let out a low moan as I found her clit.

I kissed her hard and plunged two of my fingers in her opening.

Her eyelids fluttered, and her fingers reached for the buttons on her blouse.

I grabbed one of her huge tits in my hand, rubbed her juices all over the pink nipple, then sucked it.

“You want to talk about it?” I bit her nipple, making her gasp, then rolled it with my tongue. I kissed her hard, still rubbing her tit.

“You want to talk about me spreading your legs? You want to talk about how you’ll whimper and moan and beg for my cock? You want to talk about the first time you feel a cock in your tight little pussy?”

Her hips were bucking against mine; my pants were tight, my cock hard.

“You want to talk about how I’ll stretch you, fill you, spread your legs and your pussy lips wide and ram you with my thick cock?”

“How big is it going to be?” she asked in a faint whisper.

“Feel it,” I breathed, guiding her hand to my pants.

I undid the belt, slipped her smaller hand under the waistband, and hissed as her fingers grasped the thick length.

“I don’t know if that can fit,” she whimpered.

The sound went straight to my cock.

“You sure do know how to make a man hard.” I ground against her hand. “But don’t worry. I’m going to make sure you’re dripping and ready for me, Sugarplum.”

I kissed her, my tongue claiming her mouth.

“You’re going to be on your knees, begging for my cock.”

I pulled her tights down further, giving me better access to her wet pussy, then I spread the folds, stroking her, driving her into a frenzy.

“Please,” she whimpered.

“Please what?”

“Please make me feel that again.”

“Sugarplum, you can’t tell me that was the first time you ever came.” I leaned back to look at her.

Face flushed, eyes glazed, she nodded.

“Well, don’t I feel special.”

“Prick.”

I kissed her hard and bit her lip.

“You have a filthy pretty mouth. I want to come in it.”

She made a strangled sound then cried out as I twisted my fingers around the hard nub of her clit.

The bell over the door jingled.

“Yoo-hoo! Gracie, is that you? I could only find my sunglasses, and I can’t see in here.”

“Shit.” Gracie hastily pulled up her clothes and hid behind the desk, in full view of the desktop monitor.

Fuck.

I practically dove behind the desk. Fortunately, she had turned away from the monitor to fix her clothes.

“I wanted to get some of those delicious cookies,” the older woman was saying to Gracie as she headed back through the open office. “Did you and your mom make those?”

“They’re just in the break room. Help yourself,” Gracie called, shoving her arms in her jacket. “Hudson and I were just leaving. I have to go decorate. I’ll see you at the party.”

“I’m so looking forward to the Christmas party,” the older woman chattered. “And look at these delicious cookies. How sweet.”

“We need to go,” Gracie whispered to me.

I ignored her, cupped her face, kissed her.

“Too bad. I want to finish what we started.”

“We almost got caught,” she hissed, reaching around me to turn off the computer.

The program was designed to make it look like the computer was turning off, but only turn off the monitor.

Sure, if you looked closely, anyone with half a brain would see the computer was still running, but I was going to make sure that more than half of Gracie’s brain was focused on me.

I pulled Gracie in for one more kiss. The computer fan was still whirring as the data copied over back to my office. I could feel her attention slide over as her brain tried to process what was wrong with the computer and if she should do a hard shutoff or investigate.

Neither of those options worked for me.

I cupped her face and locked eyes with her.

“I want you to go home,” I told her, “and shave your sweet little pussy, because I’m taking your virginity tonight.”