Secret Santa

His skin smelled like cookie dough, but his kiss tasted like lime.



Thanks to my new winter boots with their four-inch heels, I was able to kiss him without either of us having to contort too much. I was a mere five-foot-four to his six-foot-two. Let it never be said shoes can’t bring lovers together.



I looked into his violet-gray eyes and brushed his dark brown hair off his forehead. Even in the middle of winter, Desmond looked like he had a tan. I, on the other hand, looked as pale as Snow White. One of the many joys of being half-vampire was I never got to set foot in the sunlight. One of the joys of being half-werewolf was getting to smooch a handsome wolf lieutenant in my kitchen. I planted a kiss on his nose before returning to the front door to take off my boots.



“When did you have time to do all this? I haven’t been gone that long.”



“Dom came over for a bit, but he had a date tonight and couldn’t stay.”



“Your brother met someone? Who’s the lucky girl?”



Desmond smiled, but it didn’t linger too long. “You’ll have to ask him.”



I hung my coat in the hall closet and put the knee-high boots on the floor next to a sagging rack of high heels. When I straightened, Desmond was behind me, looping his strong, muscular arms around my waist. He nestled close, finding the exposed band of my neck below my messy blonde ponytail and breathing hotly against it. A pleasant shudder ricocheted through my body, sending up goose bumps all over my skin.



Even after six months living together, we still couldn’t keep our hands off each other, and I for one hoped that never changed. Whenever Desmond touched me I thought I might burst, and with him now licking the column of my neck and capturing my earlobe between his teeth, it would be an explosion of epic proportions.



His hands moved upwards from my waist and under my sweater until my breasts were cupped in his wide palms. I let out a breathy sigh, grinding my hips backwards against him before my gaze fell on the presents littered over the ground. His knee was between my legs when I smacked the hands beneath my shirt and pushed him away.



“You naughty werewolf,” I scolded.



“I could be very naughty,” he promised, scooting closer and attempting to reclaim my breasts. I smacked him playfully again.



“Not now. I need to hide this stuff before you ruin everything.”



Desmond stooped, his lips grazing the curve of my jaw, his warm breath exhaling in my ear. I stopped protesting when he captured my mouth and tilted my head back for a deep, probing kiss. He tasted the inside of my mouth and sighed, his tongue dragging over the sensitive roof. When he withdrew, he sucked my bottom lip, nipping on the delicate skin before kissing my lips gently and laughing at my star-struck face.



In the kitchen the timer buzzed.



“Back to my cookies,” he announced with far too much cheer in his voice.



When he left, I looked up and saw a bundle of mistletoe dangling from the ceiling. Who was I to argue with Christmas tradition?



With my packages stashed in the bottom of our bedroom closet, I returned to the kitchen to watch my man be domestic. The kitchen was too small for me to share the space with him and still be out of the way, so I stayed in the doorway. Desmond moved around the tiny space like he’d been born there. He removed one tray of cookies from the oven and replaced it with another in one fell swoop.



“Where did you learn to bake?” I asked.



He shut the oven door and put the finished cookies on the stove. The smell was incredible, all cinnamon and sugar and the moist perfection of melted butter and flour. Leaning against the edge of the sink, he faced me with a smile.



“My mom taught me and Dominick. Penny is a bit resistant to learn, which Mom doesn’t quite know what to do with. I don’t think any mother in Sunnyside ever had a daughter fight so hard against baking.”



Penelope Alvarez was Desmond’s twelve-year-old sister, and I had only learned about her existence after he moved in. Since she wasn’t a werewolf yet, he liked to keep her distanced from the dangers of his and Dominick’s life. When Penny turned thirteen she’d be able to decide for herself if she wanted to become a wolf, and if she agreed, she would go through the coming-of-age bite ritual called the Awakening.



I suspected Desmond wanted her to refuse the change. As the oldest male werewolf in his family, it would fall to him to bite Penny and change her over. Every time the topic came up, his features got heavy with sorrow and he was moody and quiet for hours.



“Speaking of Penny…” he began, and I stiffened. The evening was going so well. I didn’t want it ruined by discussing his sister’s future.



“Yes?” I tested the waters cautiously.



“Mom is insisting you come over for Christmas Eve dinner.” He returned to baking the instant the words were out of his mouth, removing the cookies from the tray and putting them onto a rack for cooling, as if he hadn’t said anything.



In the doorway, I chewed my lower lip. I guess I’d hoped to avoid the whole awkward meet-the-family ordeal altogether. Desmond had met my mother once, and I figured it might set the precedence for why familial get-togethers should be passed over. When Desmond and Lucas met my mother, Mercy, she was in the process of ripping my face off with her partially changed werewolf claws because I’d murdered her mate.



Ain’t family grand?



“Des…”



Sensing my uncertainty, he left the baking to meet me in the doorway and drew me in for a tight, warm hug. He smelled so damn good I wanted to lick the sugary sweetness off his skin. Instead I tucked my head against his chest, rubbing my cheek on the softness of his sweatshirt. Like Lucas, Desmond’s tastes leaned towards the finer things, and the simple shirt was cashmere.



For the first few months of my acquaintance with the wolves, I’d believed Desmond’s income was provided solely by Lucas. It wasn’t until the week after he’d moved in that I learned he was an architect at a prestigious New York firm. That the firm was owned by Rain Industries and its primary service was to design new concepts for Rain properties meant Lucas did pay Desmond, but not the way I’d figured. Desmond had laughed at my misguided assumptions and pointed out it would be hard to file taxes with the job description of kept man.



He brushed my hair behind my ear and tilted my chin up with his thumb. “I know you don’t want to.”



“I…I’m just not good with families.”



“What are you talking about?” He snuggled me closer. “What do you call this?”



My heart did a flip-flop. “Is it important to you?”



“It would mean a lot to me, and to them, if you came. Plus, Dominick will be there, so it’s not like you won’t have protection if Mom gets nasty.”



I paled, which is an impressive feat given how white my skin is, and Desmond seemed to recognize the foolishness of his word choice. He started to apologize, but I put a finger against his lips.



“I’ll go.”



If I could kill a vampire Tribunal leader, I could handle Momma Alvarez, right? I wonder if he’d let me bring my sword.



Chapter Four



It was just after five o’clock in the evening on December eighteenth and there was still no snow.



In the office I shared with Keaty on the 100 block of West 80th, I sat behind his wide desk, kicked my shoes off and stared at the desk calendar. Someone had a case file open and paperwork spread all over. It hadn’t been me, and it definitely wasn’t Keaty. Only one other person had access to our office and this desk.



I flipped idly through the open file on the desk, trying to glean what Nolan might be working on in Keaty’s absence. Depending on what type of case it was I’d be able to figure out how much faith Mr. Francis Keats had in our young apprentice.



The front page was a generic form we had all clients fill out, with name and address and payment information. The next was an immaculately handwritten collection of notes, outlining an apparent missing-persons case. Teenager, a moody type who the police were convinced was a runaway but the parents believed had been snatched.



Run of the mill, except we didn’t do standard missing persons. Sure, Keaty was a licensed private investigator—he had to be in case anything came back to bite us in the ass if an investigation went wrong, plus it meant he was legal to carry a weapon. I never let the logistics stop me, but I found you got in less trouble when the law was on your side with stuff like that. But even with the license, we didn’t really take on human cases. If someone came knocking on our door, it was for a reason.



I kept flipping through the file until I found that reason.



Were-panthers. The missing boy’s family were shifters, and so they’d come to Keaty—or in this case Nolan—looking for help that the police wouldn’t be able to offer. They needed people who understood the supernatural.



I checked the dates and saw that the boy had gone missing about three weeks earlier, just after the last full moon. It might be coincidental, but it also might mean something. Bad shift? Did someone die accidentally? The file didn’t answer my questions, so I decided to go right to the source.



“Nolan?”



No response.



I moved into the hallway and stood at the base of the stairs, which led to the second-floor bedrooms. Again, I yelled, “Nolan.”



This time there was a response, but it didn’t come from upstairs.



“Secret?” The reply was muffled and came from the direction of the kitchen. Something about the note of panic in his tone made me bolt for the kitchen. I skidded through the swinging door, my socks propelling me across the smooth floor until my hip connected with the low marble counter.



Nolan was standing beside the stove, fanning at a plume of smoke that was billowing out of the oven. He gave me a worried look before returning to the task at hand.



“Turn off the oven,” I instructed.



For a moment he was too surprised to move, until I nudged him aside and turned the oven off, then flicked the switch to turn on the exhaust hood. Smoke was sucked upwards, but enough remained in the kitchen to sting my eyes.



I opened the oven, and inside was a charred tray of black sticks.

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