Chapter 3: Operation White Christmas

SHANE

"Say my name," she cooed, teasingly lowering her fingers to spread apart the slick, wet lips of her cunt.

No man could resist an invitation like that. With my painfully erect cock leading the way, I crawled across the bed, mounted her naked body, and slid myself effortlessly inside.

Her exquisitely hot gash gripped me like a vice. My hands fell to her full, shuddering breasts, and I held on for dear life as I fucked her—harder and harder—no longer in control of my own actions, desperate to come. My lover moaned in ecstasy.

"Mmm! Say my name!" she cried again. "Say it!"

The name rose in my throat, crackling like pop-rocks when it hit my tongue. Heart pounding, I grabbed hold of her hips, forcefully buried my cock to the hilt, and screamed out:

"Tracy!"

"Oh, yes!"

I shouted her name again and again, with every thrust of my hips.

"Tracy! Tracy! Tracy!"

Of course, it wasn't ACTUALLY Tracy I was fucking. It was my beautiful and exotic wife, Ria. But after finally fooling around with our two best friends on the night before our wedding, Ria and I couldn't stop fantasizing about them. After years of secret, unfulfilled fantasies, we'd had a taste of what we'd been missing—and now it was all either of us could think about. Our honeymoon was nearly over, and we'd spent at least half of it role-playing that I was Connor and Ria was Tracy.

As the world around me blurred to a haze of agonizing pleasure, I closed my eyes and imagined what it would be like to actually have sex with my wife's voluptuous best friend.

I imagined Tracy's playful, girlish voice as she moaned and screamed. Pictured her big green eyes, dizzy with rapture. Her pale skin, flushed with excitement. Teeth, nipping at my shoulder. Fingers, clawing at my butt. Those enormous, pillowy breasts of hers, squashing up against my body—

"Tracy! Tracy! Tracy! Aaahhh!" my cock spasmed, erupting deep inside my lover's body.

The fugue of my orgasm was so intense that I was almost surprised when I finally opened my eyes again and remembered that it was my wife beneath me. She grinned and gave me a super sexy kiss on the lips.

"You seemed to enjoy that quite a lot," she giggled.

"Yeah."

"Are you really able to imagine I'm her? I mean, Tracy and I look nothing alike. She's tall, she's blonde, she's got boobs out to HERE..."

"Honey, I spent two years pretending that my right hand was Tracy. Imagine how easy it is when I'm with a world-class gorgeous woman like you."

Ria laughed and rolled me onto my back.

"Okay, fair enough. Now let's make-believe that you're him."

"Him" meant Connor, of course—my best buddy in the world, and the frequent object of my wife's fantasies.

As Ria slipped my exhausted cock between her lips and went about reviving me, I lazily asked "You think they do this same thing, but with us? The role-playing, I mean."

"After what happened the night before our wedding? I'd be insulted if they didn't."

I closed my eyes and lazily daydreamed about Tracy, passionately riding her hunky boyfriend—but crying out my name as she came.

RIA

Shane and I were a bit anxious about seeing our friends again once we returned home from our honeymoon. We hadn't really had much of an opportunity to talk as a group about what had happened between everyone—screwing around with each other's partner, I mean—and I wasn't exactly sure how things stood. Connor and Shane had apparently agreed that it had been a "once-in-a-lifetime" kind of a night, but was that really what everyone wanted?

After discovering how horny Shane and I got when we role-played about swapping partners with our friends, I wasn't so sure. It was a tough topic to broach in casual conversation. In any case, I just hoped there wouldn't be any awkwardness when all met up. I honestly wasn't sure what to expect.

But it definitely wasn't this.

"We're breaking up," Connor said quietly.

At first, I thought I'd misheard him. It was a ridiculous notion, after all—he and Tracy were perfect for each other. I looked over at Shane, who like me had been so caught off guard by this revelation that his mouth was literally hanging open in disbelief.

"You can't break up!" I stammered. "You're supposed to get married someday! You guys even caught the bouquet and garter at our wedding!"

Tracy sighed, "Come on, Ria, that's just a silly old tradition. We talked it over and this is what we want."

"But it's bullshit!"

I don't know why the situation was pissing me off so much, but my blood was boiling. Shane, on the other hand, got unusually quiet. He leaned in and asked, "Is this because of what happened with us?"

Tracy looked guiltily down at the floor.

"A little, I guess. Please don't take that the wrong way, it's just—we liked it. I mean, really liked it. And then the next day, when we saw you two up there, taking your vows and everything, it was kind of a wakeup call. Connor and I both realized that we absolutely are NOT ready to go through that ourselves. Settling down, I mean."

Shane frowned at them both. "You two are in love. The genuine article. That's not the sort of thing you take for granted. Some people go their whole lives without finding that. There's got to be a better solution here."

Connor took Tracy's hand in his and somberly shook his head. "We talked about this a lot while you guys were away on your honeymoon. This whole 'long-term monogamy' thing just doesn't feel natural to us. Before this, the longest relationship either of us had lasted six months. It's been two years now, and we want to start seeing other people."

"But, you're like the other half of us!" I cried. In spite of myself, my voice choked up and tears started streaming down my cheeks. "This is gonna change everything!"

"No it won't," Tracy insisted. "Connor and I are still gonna stay best friends. This won't change a thing as far as the four of us are concerned. I promise."

Her promise lasted about seven days.

As much as our friends claimed to be uninterested in frivolous things like love and romance, it was obvious how much it pained them to be around one another after the breakup. They didn't even really fight, there were just these constant, depressingly awkward silences. We'd all be having fun one minute, like always, but then their eyes would meet and it would suddenly vacuum all the joy out of the room.

Connor moved out of their apartment soon after the breakup. Tracy wound up subletting to a repulsively unpleasant grad student named Deborah, and a week later they both started dating other people. From that point on, it became a Herculean task to coordinate any kind of get together where all four of us would be in one place at the same time.

"The double date that didn't end," finally had.

The worst part came when Tracy and Connor tried to forcibly recreate the magic of our old group dynamic—but with new people. They constantly invited us out on double dates with whatever random idiot they were seeing in a given week. It never took, of course—chiefly because neither of our friends ever managed to date a single person who wasn't an obnoxious, mouth-breathing douche.

Or maybe Shane and I were just biased, longing for things to go back to the way they'd been before.

Then Thanksgiving came and went, with Shane and me awkwardly driving back and forth across town so that we could attend separate dinners with Tracy and Connor. I went to bed crying in my husband's arms.

"I miss them so much!" I sobbed. "It isn't fair! For two years, it really felt like we all had a family again, and now it's gone. Now we just have two ... friends."

"I bet they feel the same way," Shane said, hugging me close.

"I bet this is how kids feel after their parents get a divorce. It sucks! We're split in half. And Christmas is gonna suck, even worse."

"Ria—"

"I just wish we could all spend Christmas together again this year. Them and us. Like how it was. The double date that didn't end."

Shane frowned at my tears, and firmly whispered, "We will."

"What are you talking about? They're both adults; we can't force them to get back together."

"Well, luckily for us, Christmas is a time for miracles."

I rolled over in his arms, trying to read his expression.

"You're not even a little bit religious, Shane. You don't believe in that stuff."

"Of course I believe in miracles," he answered, kissing me tenderly on the lips. "I married one."

SHANE

We got our Christmas miracle the very next day.

After I got back from lunch, my boss took me into his office, closed the door, and said, "Shane, I've been thinking—I don't know if you and the Missus have got anything special planned for your first anniversary this year, but if you're interested, you'd be more than welcome to spend the week at my cabin in the Sierras."

I was shocked. He and I had always gotten along well enough, but we weren't exactly buddies. His offer came completely out of the blue.

"Really?" I asked. "You wouldn't mind?"

"Not at all. Turns out, I'm gonna be spending the holidays with my sister's family in Utah this year, so we wouldn't even miss it. Shame to let the place go to waste, it's got a beautiful view of the mountains."

I hugged him like he was Santa Claus, and didn't let go until he whispered that I was making him uncomfortable.

Maybe that sounds like an over-reaction on my part, so let me explain why this was such a big deal:

A few hundred years ago, the closest most Europeans could ever get to seeing a lion or an elephant was in a painting of one. Sure, they knew that both these animals were real, but that didn't change the fact that, deep down, the creatures they saw in those paintings must have seemed every bit as impossible and extraordinary as a dragon or a unicorn.

That's how I felt about snow.

Growing up in the arid, desert wasteland of Southern California, I had never once in my life enjoyed a white Christmas. Hell, I'd only ever been someplace with actual snow on two occasions, both before I entered Kindergarten. There's a photograph my parents took when I was three—all of us building a snowman together somewhere near Tahoe—and I look like the happiest kid on the planet. But it was so long ago, I have no memory of it actually happening.

So, when my boss offered to let Ria and I spend Christmas at his place in the Sierra Nevadas, it was a minor dream come true. And, because December 25th fell fortuitously on a Tuesday, Ria and I only had to use up a few of our days off to arrange an entire week of vacation up in the mountains.

But we didn't intend to spend the holidays alone.

It didn't take a psychology degree to see that Connor and Tracy were each miserable without each other—floundering about from one meaningless fling to the next. They were my best friends, and I was onto their bullshit. Deep down, they both equated the idea of a committed relationship with "getting old" or something—so as they approached their thirtieth birthdays with rising terror, they fought back harder and harder against the idea of settling down. Tracy deliberately dated assholes, Connor deliberately dated bimbos, and they both stayed the hell away from any member of the opposite sex who could actually make them happy.

Specifically, each other.

Hence: "Operation White Christmas." It was the code name for the plan Ria and I cooked up to get Connor and Tracy back together.

Step 1 was to remind them what they'd been missing. Ria and I agreed that the simplest way to accomplish this was to take advantage of the utterly ridiculous sex appeal they both had. After all, regardless of how confused Connor and Tracy may have been about emotions, the raw animal magnetism they felt for each other was hard-wired into their body chemistry. That shit was never gonna go away.

To this end, Ria and I posted a few carefully selected photos on our Facebook accounts. The pictures that I put up on my page were all from an afternoon I had spent hiking with Connor—and as a result, his muscular physique was prominently featured in almost every shot. Meanwhile, the photos Ria posted were from a night she'd spent out on the town with Tracy—so most of the images showcased Tracy's tall, busty body squeezed into a tight, sexy dress.

The result, we hoped, was that Tracy and Connor would both be getting an eyeful of each other every single time they logged onto their computers.

Step 2 was a little more complicated: getting the two of them in a room together. After all the awkwardness that had built up over the past year, it was impossible just talking to them about each other. They'd invariably act disinterested and change the subject.

But luckily, thanks to my boss's cabin, we finally had a way to trap them in the same place at the same time, with no hope of escape.

Muahaha.

"Are you sure you want me there?" Tracy asked, leaning into my cubicle so as not to distract the other people working around us. "I mean, it sounds amazing, but are you sure that you and Ria wouldn't be happier spending your anniversary alone up there? As in, just the two of you? Fucking like rabbits?"

I laughed and shook my head. "Nice as that sounds, no. We actually want to spend our Christmas this year doing Christmas stuff. Decorate a tree, hang stockings, eggnog, all that stuff. And it wouldn't be the same without you there with us."

"Okay, okay, if you insist! Just promise me, whenever the two of you decide you want to get intimate with each other, you're just gonna go for it. No worrying about leaving me all alone when you run into the bedroom, no worrying about being all lovey-dovey in front of me just because I'm single—I don't want to get in the way of you two having some romantic time on your anniversary."

"Tracy, I promise that won't happen."

With a squeal of delight, she gave me a quick hug around the neck and turned back to her work station.

As always, I inwardly groaned at the view of Tracy's magnificent boobs in that fuzzy pink sweater. My wife was built specifically for swimsuit season—tight ass, perky tits, bronze skin—but Tracy was at her sexiest in the winter. Those more-than-ample curves and that sweet, wholesome smile made her exactly the sort of girl you wanted to cuddle up with in front of the fireplace on a cold night. Preferably, without any clothes.

I reluctantly banished the thought from my head. What had happened between Tracy and me on the night of my bachelor party was a one-time deal. We'd all agreed, hadn't we? At first, I'd secretly hoped that she and I would get plenty more opportunities to fool around in the future—after all, we'd already crossed so many sexual boundaries, it didn't seem that far out of the realm of possibility. But when Tracy and Connor broke up, the situation changed. It had been one thing for Ria and me to screw around with our friends when they'd been in a committed relationship of their own—the fact that we were all essentially "swapping" somehow made everything seem fair. Quid pro quo. Nobody was left out. Nobody got hurt.

But the idea of getting intimate again with Tracy, now that she was single, felt a lot more like cheating. Not that I wasn't sorely tempted sometimes.

"And you're sure Connor's not coming?" she asked, bringing me back to reality.

"Yeah," I lied. "He can't make it."

RIA

"You're positive Tracy won't be there?" Connor asked.

"Positive. It's just gonna be the three of us. Come on, please? It won't be the same without you."

I still hadn't gotten used to seeing Connor in his police uniform. He'd always been such a goof about everything, the thought of him as an actual cop felt like a prank or something. But the job seemed to be the one thing in his life he really did take seriously, and I was happy that he'd finally pulled himself out of the professional tailspin he'd been in throughout his twenties.

At the same time, I didn't like the fact that one of my best friends—a guy I considered part of my surrogate family—had decided on a career that required him to go to work every day equipped with body armor, handcuffs, a gun, a Taser, pepper spray, and a German Shepherd. Connor swore to me that movies made his job seem way more dangerous—and way less boring—than it actually was, but I still constantly worried about his safety, and that just further compounded how badly I wanted to have sex with him every time we hung out.

A year had passed, but the memory of my bachelorette party—his fingers inside of me—was still as vivid as ever.

"Alright," Connor said, at last. "I'll be there. But I'm bringing my noise-canceling headphones and the Xbox to keep myself busy while you and Shane get up to your icky married-people stuff."

Shane and I took off from work early on Friday, hoping to give ourselves enough time to get the cabin as cozy and romantic as possible for when our two friends arrived the following day.

Despite the fact that it took us the better part of an hour to get the supposedly "Five-Minute" snow chains around our tires, the drive up to the mountains was an amazing experience. Towering pine trees dusted with fresh snow, cozy towns filled with old wooden buildings, colorful strings of Christmas lights, EVERYWHERE.

Our cabin was about 15 miles away from the nearest town—truly isolated. It was easy to find, but I still couldn't help but imagine the perennially absent-minded Tracy getting lost on her way there, stranded and alone in the woods, utterly helpless without cell phone reception.

Sometimes, my brain is kind of pessimistic.

When we arrived, the view was even better than Shane's boss had promised. On either side, the Sierra Nevada mountain range stretched out as far as the eye could see. The colors of the sunset painted the white landscape like a canvas.

"Whoo!!!" Shane hollered, jumping and screaming like a little kid. He didn't wait more than five seconds before belting me with a handful of white powder and instigating his very first snowball fight. "After this, we gotta build a snowman!" he shouted.

"Whatever you say, sweetie." I knew that this was all new to him, but I still hadn't expected my husband to behave quite so adorably.

SHANE

The place was enormous, especially from the perspective of two people who'd spent our entire lives living in apartments. I'm not even sure the word "cabin" really did it justice—the space was cozy and rustic without feeling tacky, and there wasn't a single piece of taxidermy in sight. No creepy moose heads staring at us from the wall while we ate our dinner.

Instead, we found a beautiful antique pool table, and—much to our delight—a cedar sauna.

"That looks very interesting," Ria observed with a wink.

Each new, luxurious amenity we came across inspired another erotic fantasy for my overactive imagination. The bathroom boasted a huge, walk-in shower and a spacious whirlpool bathtub. I envisioned all sorts of combinations of Ria and Tracy rubbing their soapy bodies against me while we went at it in that bathroom. A guy can dream, can't he?

After we settled in, Ria surprised me with an early Christmas present: a box filled to the brim with mistletoe.

"Part of 'Operation White Christmas, '" she explained with a wink. "When you're standing under the mistletoe, you've got to kiss whoever you're with, right? So what better way than to help get Connor and Tracy back together than by booby-trapping the cabin before they get here? We'll hang this stuff up everywhere—over every doorway, in the sauna, by the pool table—it'll be like a kissing version of Home Alone."

"And if I'm caught under the mistletoe with Tracy, or if you're caught under it with Connor..."

"Well then, I guess we'll just have to take one for the team and give them a kiss."

I shook my head, amused. "This is gonna be an exciting week, isn't it?"

"I sure hope so," she giggled, taking a sprig of mistletoe out of the box and holding it above my head. I quickly kissed her on the lips. "Well, what do you know? It really works."

"Seems that way, but I think we need one more test, just to make sure."

Teasing, I took the mistletoe from her and lowered it until it was right in front of my crotch. I gave Ria an expectant smile, and she burst out laughing.

"Hey, rules are rules," I taunted.

"You're gonna make me eat my words, huh?" she asked.

I didn't need to answer. My beautiful wife dropped to her knees and obediently unzipped my fly.

...

The next morning, Ria and I ran around like crazy preparing the place ready for Operation White Christmas. We swept and dusted the whole cabin from top to bottom, lit some scented candles (Ria's idea), and strung up romantic twinkle lights in the living room and both bedrooms. We also put Ria's mistletoe everywhere we could manage.

Tracy showed up first, wearing a too-tight turtleneck that immediately got my pulse racing with the way it clung to her humongous breasts. She embraced both of us with a tandem hug: "Oh my god, you guys, this place is HUGE!"

"Ahem," Ria coughed, pointing up at the mistletoe overhead.

Tracy smiled naughtily at me and planted a nice, wet smooch on my lips, leaving behind a lingering taste of peppermint lipgloss. Then she turned to my wife and, much to my voyeuristic delight, made a show of kissing her, as well.

"Ooh, I like your lipgloss," Ria giggled.

While Tracy busied herself settling in upstairs, Ria took me aside and gave me an excited kiss of her own.

"Connor should be here anytime now," she whispered. "I just hope this whole plan doesn't blow up in our faces."

"It won't, I promise."

"This is gonna be so awkward! Are you sure we're doing the right thing?"

I kissed her one more time and answered, "Ria, you've seen how miserable they've been this past year. We need to get their stupid asses back together. Now let's make sure Tracy moves her car into the garage so it doesn't spoil the surprise when our next guest shows up."

Not fifteen minutes later, we heard Connor's truck pull into the driveway. He knocked playfully on the front door, and all three of us hurried downstairs.

"Who the heck is that?" Tracy asked.

I shrugged, "Probably just some serial killer who likes to visit these remote cabins and murder everyone inside."

Ria ran ahead of us, yanked open the door, and jumped excitedly into Connor's arms.

"Merry almost-Christmas!" she chirped, planting a quick kiss on his mouth.

Connor greeted me with a friendly clap on the back, stepped inside—

And then, with one foot inside the cabin, he froze like a deer in headlights. Tracy stood on the staircase, her mouth hanging open. I can't imagine what was running through their heads at that moment, but whatever it was, it sure took its sweet time. They just stood like that, staring at one another in stunned surprise for an agonizingly awkward minute and a half.

It was the moment of truth. Either or both of them could have decided at that moment to hop in their cars and leave—but I crossed my fingers and hoped that the promise of our awesome cabin and the reality of the five hours it would take for them to drive home would be suitable deterrents.

Finally, Connor muttered a faint, "Hey."

"H-How you doin'?" Tracy asked.

"I'm good. I've been, you know, good."

It wasn't much, but it was the first conversation they'd had in months.

"Let me help you with your stuff," I said to Connor, grabbing his suitcase and heading upstairs.

As I passed Tracy, she grabbed me by the arm and urgently whispered, "What's going on?! You specifically told me he wasn't—"

"Change of plans."

"But there's only two bedrooms! Where is he gonna sleep?"

For the first few hours after Connor and Tracy arrived, that cabin felt very, very cold. We had the thermostat up and a nice big fire going in the fireplace, but it was no match for the frigidity between our two friends. Ria and I did our best to keep things lively, passing around some yummy appetizers and a batch of ridiculously powerful eggnog.

"Mmm! Now that's my kind of holiday beverage," Connor joked, downing it like it a shot of whiskey.

"Jesus Christ!" Tracy said, practically spitting out her first sip. "What's in this stuff, motor oil?"

Ria rolled her eyes, "Just drink it, honey. It's medicinal. Cures awkwardness."

Tracy gave her a nasty look, but dutifully finished her glass and held it out for a refill.

Things finally loosened up a bit once the booze started to take its toll. Despite the forest of mistletoe hanging about, there wasn't any talk of kissing or flirting—not even between Ria and me. The situation was still fragile between our friends, and we didn't want to risk scaring them off by bringing sex and romance into the mix just yet.

After dinner, I dragged everyone over to the pool table and we split into teams, boys vs. girls—a pretty even match-up, considering the fact that Ria and I were both pretty terrible and Connor and Tracy were both more-or-less pros.

"Seriously Shane," Tracy giggled, "have you never played pool before?"

Connor immediately came to my defense, pointing out, "Hey, your partner's not exactly a shark, either!"

It was good to see them finally enjoying each other's company again. At least they were able to share a good laugh at our expense.

When the time came to turn in for the night, Connor decided to be a gentleman and offered to give Tracy the spare bedroom while he slept downstairs, on the couch. He bid Ria and me goodnight, then turned to his ex-girlfriend and nervously whispered, "Hey, Trace?"

She looked expectantly into his eyes, and for a second we all thought Connor was going to say something meaningful—something that would repair all the hurt and the confusion of the past year—but he choked on his words before they left his throat, and instead he just mumbled, "Sleep tight."

Tracy was too tongue-tied to do anything but nod.

RIA

I decided to surprise Shane by wearing my sexy new nightie to bed that evening. It was a slinky slip of black satin, with a plunging v-neck and a scandalous hemline that only came about halfway down my butt. Though I'd initially planned on waiting until Christmas morning to bring it out, I so happy to see Connor and Tracy finally starting to get along again that I figured a little celebrating was in order.

"Damn, woman!" Shane gawked as I snuggled up to him beneath the covers. "You could drive a fellow to distraction, looking like that."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

He pulled me close and gave my neck a sexy nibble. "So, how well do you think Operation White Christmas is going? Scale of one to ten."

No sooner had the question escaped his lips, then we both heard our answer: a series of soft, feminine moans coming from Tracy's bedroom.

Shane's eyes went wide. "Is she—?"

I nodded, grinning. "Sounds like Tracy was more excited to see Connor than she let on."

"Mmm! Mmm!" Tracy whimpered on the other side of the wall. She wasn't getting loud, exactly, just less cautious than before. I idly wondered if Connor could hear her from downstairs.

"These old walls are paper-thin," Shane laughed quietly. He grew rock hard against my hip and his hands snuck up beneath my slinky nightie to play with my breasts.

"Is she turning you on?" I whispered, kissing along the line of my husband's collarbone. He gave my nipples a gentle tug—all the prompting I needed to stick my hand down his boxers and fondle his cock. On the other side of the wall, Tracy's moans and groans grew hot and frantic.

"God, she sounds so sexy," Shane panted. He slid his free hand up beneath the hemline of my nightie, groping my boobs and my butt at the same time while I pumped his shaft between my fingers.

"Oh yeah..." Tracy cooed. "Oh yeah, oh—mmm!"

Then, with a sudden shriek, she came—much more quickly than either of us expected.

Shane kissed me hard, wildly aroused by the sound of our friend's orgasm. He rolled me onto my back, messily yanked down his shorts, and mounted me, pushing aside the gusset of my little satin panties and pressing his hot, erect penis against the folds of my cunt—

But he didn't go any further. We could still hear Tracy in the other room, but she wasn't fingering herself anymore. She was crying.

Shane grudgingly scooted off of me and we both let out a long, frustrated sigh.

"Poor Tracy," I whispered. "She must be so confused."

Shane nodded, "Maybe you should go talk to her."

"But I don't want to leave you all alone."

He groaned, rolling onto his back and idly stroking his still erect cock. "She needs you more than I do right now."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. Go on, get outta here."

I briefly flashed back to that first night we all met, when Tracy was whining to me about what a "sweet guy" Shane was—like it somehow made him less masculine. Maybe over the past three years she'd finally learned to appreciate what a great quality that actually is in a man.