The Hellhound’s UnChristmas Miracle

by Chant, Zoe

  She let her hands drift down from his chest, trailing a river of droplets over his stomach. The darkness was still in his eyes, but despite his bruises, he wasn’t badly hurt.

  *Is it okay if we take this slowly?*

  His eyes burned. *Of course.*

  There was no desperation now, just a deep hunger and longing and the promise of a future stretching out far ahead. Sheena pushed Fleance into the corner and pulled his head down to kiss him while her other hand explored the hard line of his collarbone. She trailed her fingertips along his shoulder muscles, amazed all over again that every inch of this gorgeous man was hers.

  Fleance moaned as her hand drifted lower. His thighs tensed at her touch, and when he grabbed her and lifted her with her back against the wall the only reason it wasn’t a surprise was because she’d felt the mate bond thrum with intention a split second before. Sheena laughed and kicked her legs half-heartedly.

  “Hey. Who’s claiming who, here?”

  Fleance kissed her, which wasn’t a reply. She dug her fingertips into the tight muscles at the base of his neck and he groaned and rested his head on her shoulder, still holding her up against the wall.

  *I’m yours,* he murmured, his voice a prayer in her head.

  She lay a row of kisses down the side of his neck, following the thick band of muscle that was still too tight, too tense. *Only if I’m yours, too,* she breathed back, nibbling gently. He moaned at the scrape of her teeth.

  *Yes.*

  Sheena’s whole body thrilled. The mate bond lit her from the inside, held her in orbit with Fleance, but this was a different, darker excitement. The mate bond was fate. This was something new. Something they were both choosing with all their hearts.

  She wrapped her legs more tightly around him. The line of his cock jutted against her inner thigh. Her skin was wet, slick from the water still pouring over Fleance’s back and shoulders, but she burned wherever Fleance touched her.

  He dragged her head up and kissed her again, deep and slow with a moan that rumbled through his lips directly to her core. She wriggled impatiently, realigning herself against the glorious hardness of his cock.

  He murmured wordlessly against her lips and bucked his hips. The head of his cock pressed into her, hot and thick and so good her whole body curled with exquisite thrill. If Fleance hadn’t been holding her up she would have slithered deliciously to the floor. With his arms around her, she let herself revel in every second of sensation as he pushed inch by inch into her. Her soul had been reshaped over the last day, twisted into a new form and then taking a new shape for itself, but her human body remembered this feeling; remembered the press of Fleance’s fingertips in her skin as he thrust hilt-deep into her, the soft gasp that arrived in her heart along the mate bond a millisecond before it reached her ears. The wonder in every stroke of his hands across her body. The doubled, tripled rush of feeling, skin to skin, heart to heart, the mate bond amplifying every touch and every touch making the light inside her burn brighter. Not inevitable. Hard-won, and precious, and hers.

  She let out an involuntary gasp as he drove into her. Every inch of her body, inside and out, hummed with a building, electric arousal. Fleance kissed her and she bit down on his lip. Not hard enough to draw blood; the roar of desire that spilled out of him was so intense she gasped and released him.

  Then she kissed him even harder than before, twisting his hair around her fingers and grinding into him. Her nipples grazed his chest and she cried out as he slid one hand up to cup her breast, a hungry moan on his breath.

  “Please,” he groaned, and inside her head: *Please.*

  He moved one hand to the back of her head and guided it down to his neck. *This is more Dracula than I was thinking,* she murmured, and his answering bittersweet chuckle whirled inside her like a spring breeze.

  Her hellsheep reared up inside her. When she bit down on the fine lines that were all that remained of his turning scars, fire filled her veins. The constellation in her head flared; a new satellite appeared in orbit around her sun.

  She dug her fingertips into Fleance’s scalp, her breaths coming fast and hot. *Now you.*

  His teeth grazed her shoulder. Heat pooled beneath her skin, a surge of magma simmering beneath the surface and spiked with lightning. She didn’t know whether she was kissing him with her lips or her teeth as the pleasure that had been building inside her since she first followed him into the shower exploded. She cried out; her body went tight as a bowstring then released, not once but over and over.

  Fleance clutched her to him; he buried his face in her hair, holding her as her body rocked with pleasure. “Oh, God, Sheena,” he gasped. The heavens whirled inside her head. The light from her heart flooded the skies.

  Then he was carrying her out of the bathroom, throwing her down onto the bed and bearing down on her. His need spiked through the mate bond, a wordless question that burned in her veins. He’d come so close to losing her and it had left a coldness in the center of his heart that only taking her completely would warm again. Hard, and fast, and his.

  She nodded and he thrust into her in one smooth movement, fucking her into the mattress so hard that she forgot how to breathe. Their breaths mingled, short and sharp, gasps no longer than heartbeats and her heart beating so hard it filled her head. She’d never felt so alive. So completely present within her own body.

  Fleance kissed her again. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and kissed him back. Then his lips were on her neck, teeth scraping against her skin and the universe spinning inside her head. She dragged his head back up, her fingers tangling in his hair, and nipped the tender skin beneath his ear.

  He groaned low in his throat and grabbed her hips, angling them so that his next thrust went so deep Sheena saw stars. She bit him harder than she’d meant to, and then his teeth were in her shoulder, his fingers digging into her hips and arse, and she was driving herself up against him as hard as he was thrusting her into the bed. Something cracked a few feet above her head. The whole bed jolted down. Fleance didn’t react. He gathered her to him, his body hot and hard against hers. With one final thrust he bottomed out inside her, filling her completely. He buried his face in her hair with a groan that reverberated to her very core. Sheena’s body responded, caught like a fish on a line as his cock flexed inside her. Pleasure twisted white-hot and sharp inside her and came apart with a crash as his orgasm pushed her past the brink again.

  Mine, she thought as he collapsed on top of her, his chest heaving. She curled against him, feeling totally, decadently pleased with herself. He raised his head to stare at her and his eyes were hazy with pleasure.

  There was something more than the mate bond between them, now. Something that hummed unsaid on the edge of every breath, and in the pale flames that flickered in his eyes.

  She pushed herself up and bit down on his lower lip, just to be sure.

  There.

  When she’d bitten Parker, the change to her mental landscape had been immediate and clear. He was a greasy black mark at the corner of her mind, but firmly under her control. But this, with Fleance…

  She looked down at herself, at the red marks where he’d dragged his teeth along her skin, then glanced back up at him with one eyebrow raised.

  Fleance reddened.

  “I guess that worked, then,” Sheena whispered. She could feel her own face glowing, as though putting words to the impossible wonder growing inside her was crossing some sort of boundary. She stretched one hand up to where Fleance was bracing himself above her and twined her fingers between his. “Now no one’s going to take you from me.”

  “And no one will take you from me.” He kissed her and Sheena closed her eyes, letting her mind fall into the new constellation that had formed in her soul: two stars, dancing around each other, the center of each other’s universes.

  13

  Fleance

  Someone was knocking on the door.

  Fleance’s hellhound was alert at once. Fleance’s h
uman side followed—groggily—and, curled against his chest, Sheena gave a groan that sounded like it came from the depths of her soul.

  He cocked his head on one side and listened. Knocking and shouting, he decided; and it wasn’t him they were after.

  “Sheena,” he murmured. *We’ve got company.*

  She stuck her hand in his mouth and prodded his jaw so that he bit down on it. “You’re the alpha now. You deal with it.”

  “I don’t think it works that way,” he whispered as his hellhound quirked its head, considering her suggestion. He wasn’t surprised when it tucked its nose under its paws. It was as happy as he was to let Sheena take charge, so long as while she did the roaring in headfirst, he was at her side to protect her.

  He nudged her again. “Or maybe because you’re the alpha, you could send me to do your bidding…”

  She sat bolt upright and swore. He opened his mouth to say he’d been joking, but she was already off the bed and scouring the floor for something to wear.

  “I know you were joking,” she said, holding one hand palm-up to interrupt him before he’d even managed to get a word out. “It’s not you, it’s—oh God. I’m so sorry for what’s about to happen. This is all my fault…”

  The part of the mattress she’d been lying on already felt cold without her, but Fleance had more to worry about than the empty space at his side. He sat up. Whoever was pounding on the door was pounding on his brain, too. Shifters, sending out an open telepathic broadcast to anyone in range.

  Two voices, he thought, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. They were overlapping too much.

  “Do you know who that is?” he asked Sheena.

  “Yes!” she cried. “Where’s my bloody—anything? Dressing gown?”

  “In the bathroom.”

  Sheena swore. She made it halfway across the room before the door burst open.

  Two women fought to each get through at the same time. One had the same round face and sturdy figure as Sheena; the other had darker skin and was whip-thin, with tattoos snaking up her arms. Both wore expressions of relief as they caught sight of Sheena. Her own expression was far less good natured as she grabbed a cushion from the sofa to cover herself.

  Fleance sniffed the air, and: Sheep, his hellhound thought, focusing on the first one. And… some sort of bird.

  “Oh, sweetie, you’re safe—” the sheep shifter began, as the other woman burst out: “We’ve been worried sick! Your mum’s been blowing up Fi’s phone—”

  “GO AWAY!” Sheena shrieked at them both.

  “Oh, come off your high horse, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before,” the first woman tutted, gesturing at Sheena as she tried to cover herself.

  “Ah…” The bird shifter plucked at her arm and she turned to the bed.

  Fleance waved weakly.

  The sheep shifter’s eyebrows shot up. “Now there’s something I haven’t seen before.”

  “OUT!” Sheena jumped on the bed, straddling Fleance, and threw a pillow at the women with point-blank accuracy. Fleance struggled out of the blankets and started to wrap one around his mate as she screamed at the women he was beginning to suspect were her aunts.

  “I’LL TELL YOU!” she yelled, in response—he guessed—to a telepathic question he hadn’t been privy to. “JUST LET ME SHOWER FIRST! CLOTHES!”

  She kept shouting until the door closed behind them both, then collapsed onto the bed. Fleance made sure she fell into his arms before they both hit the mattress.

  Sheena pressed against him, grumbling wordlessly. He kissed the top of her head.

  “Those were your aunts?”

  Sheena sighed. “In their defense, I did completely forget to check in with them. In my defense…” She banged her forehead against his chest. “Oh, God. Can I just stay here forever? I mean, they at least know I’m alive now. So really there’s no need for me to ever see them again.”

  “I wouldn’t argue. But what are the chances of your aunts busting that door down if you don’t make an appearance?”

  She raised her head and groaned. “Too high.” Sheena stretched, but didn’t make any move to leave the bed—or Fleance’s arms. Her body was warm and soft against his.

  “Shame.” He closed his eyes, luxuriating in his pack sense. Letting himself sink into it like this, no hesitation, no fear, was an entirely new sensation. Even with Caine, he’d been wary, but now, Sheena was his sun. He basked in her light.

  *The shorter one is my Aunt Fiona,* Sheena explained. *She’s a Valais Blacknose shifter, a sheep like me. Rena is her mate, she’s a tūī shifter. That’s a sort of native bird. God, this is just so bloody typical of my family.*

  *Does your family always come running to the rescue when you get into trouble?*

  *No chance! I’m barely allowed to sniff at trouble back home.* She sighed and then winced. “Oh, God. I never called. The last thing my aunts heard from me was me screaming and dropping my bloody cellphone when Parker came at me.”

  “No wonder they came out in force. Your family must—”

  He stopped. Sheena was making a noise that was half-terror, half-frustration.

  “My family. My—” She stopped and squeezed her eyes shut, mouthing numbers.

  Fleance raised one eyebrow. “Counting sheep?” he guessed.

  She groaned again. “My whole family. We’d better start moving before they all get up here.”

  * * *

  Her whole family. Fleance had expected a handful of people. Parents, the two aunts, maybe a grandparent or two.

  He stared at the congregation crowded into the hotel foyer with something approaching horror.

  Sheena’s voice pressed against his mind as she grabbed his arm. *That’s Fiona and Rena, you know them already. Fiona’s parents are the ones who look like they came straight off the farm. And my aunt and uncle Tara and Mack and their kids my cousins Matiu and Wiremu and… um, a lot of other cousins whose names I really should know… Uh… Mum! Dad!*

  She hurried forwards, and Fleance lengthened his stride so he wasn’t left being dragged behind. She stopped in front of a couple who immediately pulled her into a spine-crushing embrace.

  “Love, we were so worried!”

  “Fiona and Rena told us everything, we came as fast as we could.”

  “Are you hurt? I knew we shouldn’t have let you take the bus by yourself—”

  Sheena reared back as her mother tried to wipe her face with a handkerchief. “Mum!”

  There was a brief buzz of private telepathic speech, and both of Sheena’s parents turned their attention to Fleance. Not just her parents. He felt like he was being backed into a corner by a very large, very short mob.

  Sheena drew herself up. Her cheeks burned with pride. “Mum, Dad, this is Fleance. Fleance, these are my parents, Heather and Mike.”

  “Pleasure,” Fleance said, shaking their hands.

  *Fleance is my mate,* Sheena blurted out, her telepathic voice ringing with mingled embarrassment and pride.

  *You don’t need to tell us that, chook,* her father told her. He clasped Fleance’s shoulder. *I’m guessing you’re the one we have to thank for getting our Sheena out of whatever was happening here alive?*

  Fleance looked down at his mate. Her love for her family was clear—as was her strangled huff of frustration as her dad suggested she hadn’t had anything to do with defeating Parker. She caught his eye and the mate bond twanged with—hope? A warning?

  “Actually,” Fleance said, wrapping one arm around her, “Sheena’s the one who saved me.”

  It was definitely a warning, he decided as his mind was swamped by a dozen shifters wanting to know the whole story.

  Sheena gave him a wry look. *You would have been better off taking all the credit,* she said, slipping her arm through his.

  * * *

  He wasn’t sure who made the decision to drive en masse back to Silver Springs. He suspected it was Sheena’s mother, in some sheepish, non-alpha form of complete and utte
r control. The hotel staff were relieved to see them go, although they kept their relief professionally hidden. One midnight fire alarm—which Fleance had no doubt would appear on his room bill—was bad enough without adding an entire sheep shifter clan to the situation.

  It was a clear afternoon—no, Fleance realized, it was morning again. How long had he and Sheena been asleep?

  The flock drove in a single mob down the motorway to the Silver Springs turnoff, and jostled down the winding, decorative drive through the houses.

  Or what was left of them.

  Sheena’s dad hissed a breath in through his teeth. “What’s the story here, then?”

  Heather clicked her tongue. “Weren’t you listening before? Poor Fiona, all the work she’s put in.”

  “Was that what you were trying to dig out of her? I thought you were bothering her about Christmas again.”

  “Well she’s hardly going to be able to host it now, is she? With the whole place gone up in flames.”

  Squashed into the back seat, Fleance caught Sheena’s eye. Somehow in the crush to get everyone into various cars, Sheena had ended up wrapped in a blanket and clutching a thermos. She grimaced, tucked the thermos down the side of the seat, and took his hand.

  *Just say the word, and we can phase out of here and go bush.* Her psychic voice had a hint of smoke in it. Not sulfur—woodsmoke.

  He smiled. *I don’t mind.*

  Sheena rolled her eyes and wriggled against him. *Did you consider that I might mind?*

  *Shame.* He grinned and dropped a kiss on top of her head. *I’m glad to meet your family. You’ve seen where I came from—* He tried not to wince. *—now I get to meet the people who helped you turn out so wonderful.*

  *I feel like I should resent the suggestion that I’m not responsible for my own wonderful-ness.* Sheena wrinkled her nose. *Except I’m pretty sure that’s my hellsheep talking.*