Matt tossed the groceries back into his Jeep and scooped Mina up in his big strong hands. He lifted her until she was in kissable range and pulled her close into his warm embrace. His hands kneaded her ass and sent electric shocks down to her toes as their mouths found each other.
They were officially mated now and married, but the fever that had gripped her on their wedding night had never faded, only abated slightly. All it took was a kiss, a touch, some nights even a look, and she’d feel the heat well up within her. It made her dizzy and hungry for him on a primal level. Would she always feel the need to have him inside her? The need to be taken and mated?
Matt’s cock hardened and pressed against her thigh. Reason and patience fled her, like shadows before the light. She needed him then, right there, before she did anything else.
This is why shifters don’t rule the world, Mina thought. They’re too busy mating. And eating. And mating again.
“Maybe we have time for a quickie in the car before we need to start cooking,” Mina said, her voice throaty with desire.
“It would help relieve some of your tension,” Matt growled. He spun her around and carried her effortlessly to the Jeep. Matt held her up with one hand under her ass and opened the door with the other. He sat her on the Jeep’s seat and kissed her deeply, like he was never going to see her again. “I can’t believe we’ve never done it here,” Matt laughed.
“In Marcus’s driveway?”
“In my Jeep.” Matt slid his hands up Mina’s thighs and a tremble of excitement pulsed through her body. “I mean, look at this. This is just the perfect height.”
Mina unzipped his ridiculous parka and ran her hands down his hard, flat chest to his hard, thick cock. It was hot under her cold fingers, even through his clothes.
“We can be a little late,” she said, biting her lip.
But just as Mina was unbuckling Matt’s pants, as flurries of snow fell fast and hard around them, a car pulled up and honked twice.
“Mina,” Matt said. “I think your mother’s here.”
Chapter 2
“I’ll be inside, getting started,” Mina’s mother said as she walked past. She definitely saw Matt’s hands under Mina’s skirt and Mina’s hands unbuckling his pants. But she didn’t comment other than a muttered, “Mmm hmm.”
Sheriff Pete walked past next.
“Thanks for picking my mom up, Pete. I really appreciate it.”
“It’s no bother, Mina. I was dropping off Jolene anyway. I tell ya, her plan of spending the holidays in Hawaii makes more sense every second.” Sheriff Pete had a bristly white mustache that stuck straight out from his upper lip and wore his uniform, even on Christmas Day. His wide brimmed hat was caked with snow just from walking from his car.
Pete saw what Mina and Matt were up to and he ripped the hat from his head and smacked Matt with it. “You damn fools. It’s Christmas Day. Save that stuff for later, after you run to the lake and back naked.”
“Like we’re going to lose,” Matt said. His hands were still sliding up Mina’s thighs. With his big wide back to Pete, he blocked the view quite nicely.
“Michael has been here since dawn, boy. And Allison started even earlier. By my count, they have a six-hour head start on you.” Pete smiled. He was the town’s lone law enforcement official, which was enough most days of the year. Matt was the town’s lone defense attorney, though, so they took pleasure in antagonizing each other.
“That’s cheating,” Matt said. But it wasn’t. The only rule was that you had to do your cooking at Marcus’s house. There was no rule about when you could get started.
“And I have a special treat for you this year, kid.” Pete held aloft a plastic shopping bag full of water guns.
“What are those for?” Mina asked, pushing herself off of Matt’s hands.
“What do you think they’re for? To squirt you with when you run tonight!” Pete let loose a loud belly laugh that was like nothing Mina had heard from the man before.
“He takes this pretty seriously,” she said, giving Matt the side-eye.
“Pete has a thing for pranks, but he rarely gets a chance to indulge it.”
“Matt, listen to me now. I am being absolutely serious. You know I love the snow and the whole white Christmas thing. It’s a miracle that the weather is doing this.”
“I know, it was like seventy last year. I had to beg Michael to wear pants as he cooked.”
“I love the snow. I love Christmas. But I hate the cold.”
“Hate?”
“Hate,” Mina said, her voice sharp enough to crack a frozen lake. “I will not run down a frozen path naked, while our family squirts me with toy water guns. Do you understand?”
“Then we better not lose.”
Mina nodded and pulled him down for one last lingering kiss before battle. “Then we better not lose.”
Chapter 3
The smell of fresh pumpkin pie greeted Mina and Matt as they entered the house. Followed by the sudden shocking warmth that eased the cold from Mina’s bones.
Marcus built the house himself. Not just with his own two hands—he also designed it, from the ground up, to be comfortable for a shifter of his size. He was nearly seven feet tall and wider than most men. Some days he looked more like a walking bear than a man and his house reflected that. The ceilings stretched overhead. The doorways loomed large. The furniture was built to withstand the weight of the alpha.
The front door opened onto a foyer that was crowded with boots and mud and ice. A nearby closet was stuffed with whatever passed for winter coats in Northern California, mainly thicker hoodies from the werewolf boys. Beyond was a massive living room with a crackling fire and a flatscreen TV that would have shamed most movie theaters. And a long low couch that was piled with a rowdy pack of werewolves who were all busy playing Playstation with Marcus's son, Sebastian.
Adjacent to the living room was a dining room with a gorgeous table large enough for twenty. When Marcus built the house, Mina knew, he’d been planning on having as many children as physically possible with the love of his life. He wanted to single-handedly repopulate the bear shifter community of Northern California. But it hadn’t worked out that way. His one son had been born human, and soon after, the woman he’d loved had left. The big alpha tried to hide it, but to any woman who knew him, the scar of it was apparent, raw and fresh even after twenty years. It shouldn’t have happened. He was supposed to have found his fated mate, like Matt had found in Mina. But something went wrong.
The bear-blooded people in town had their theories, and they still gossiped about it to that very day. Some said it was a false mating, a rare occurrence brought on by a man’s bear being not right. Others said it was because Marcus and his love didn’t wait the full year and a day to conceive, so the magic was spoiled. Others thought it was a love spell gone wrong, a trick from ancient enemies.
What was sure was that the man hadn’t loved any woman since, and that his home was too big for just him and his son.
Past the dining room was Marcus's kitchen, built to feed an army and blessedly with counters constructed at normal human heights. If Marcus had chosen to build them at his height, Mina would’ve needed stilts to cook. There was a second floor of bedrooms and an office and a library. All in all, it wasn’t very different from the home Mina shared with Matt, just five times the size.
Mina stepped out of her boots and regarded the lake of melted snow between her and the living room. Before she could even contemplate jumping, Matt scooped her up in his arms and carried her across.
“No wife of mine is going to have wet socks on Christmas Day,” he said with a bright smile.
“How valiant.” Mina kissed him longingly. A fire had been awakened in her at his touch and she knew from past experience that it would only get stronger until she satisfied herself with her man. More often than not, their weekends were spent in bed. Sunday, especially, had become a day of sexual indulgence for them. Her bakeshop was closed on Sundays
and Matt never saw clients, so there were no distractions to keep the mating heat at bay. Her body knew today was a Sunday and it had been trained to expect certain things—certain climactic, toe-curling, full-throated shouting with joy things.
Matt put her down and went back out into the cold to get the supplies.
The werewolf boys—all eight of them—yelled their greetings at Mina, but none of them looked away from whatever game they were playing. Mina thought she saw Darth Vader on the TV for a second, but it was impossible to tell.
“Can you believe this weather?” Sebastian walked over to her and gave her a polite hug. “It was supposed to be in the nineties today.” He was a good kid, but a sadness clung to him. It couldn’t be easy being the human son of the Alpha.
“Christmas miracle?” Mina shrugged.
“Michael has already had to go out twice to tow tourists out of trouble. And my dad is out now, checking on a few of the elder Bearfielders, making sure they’re warm and safe.”
“That’s really kind of him,” Mina said, meaning it.
Sebastian shrugged. “He’s the Alpha.” Then, having said his piece and performed the most basic of host duties, Sebastian’s eyes slid to the giant TV and to the game the wolfboys were playing.
“Go play, Sebastian. I’ll be fine.”
“If you need anything,” he began, but his voice trailed off and he slowly walked to the Alpha-sized couch like the gravity of the wolf pack was too much for him.
Mina didn’t know the wolves very well. Months ago they’d been kidnapped and brought to Bearfield by an insane shifter. Michael and Allison had rescued the pack and outsmarted the evil shifter guy. Some of the wolves went back to their homes, some fled, but eight had no place to go and sort of fell into all of their lives. It was embarrassing, but Mina couldn’t really tell them apart. They were all just these beautiful, cut, brown-haired boys. If she hadn’t been with Matt, would she have found them attractive? They seemed so young to her, even though she had maybe five years on the oldest.
A huge Christmas tree stood at the edge of the room. It was trimmed with lights and garlands and strings of popcorn. Boxes of ornaments clustered around the base. Her mother knelt on the floor next to the boxes, looking through them all with a keen eye.
“Mother,” Mina said.
“It’s good to be with family on Christmas,” she said. “This is a beautiful home. But I do miss my ornaments from my own tree.”
“Did you buy a tree this year?”
“A small one. Every morning I put one—only one—of my favorite ornaments on it.” There was a wistful tone to her voice. “It’s funny to look at another family’s tree. You can see all of their past on display in their ornaments, can’t you?” She lifted a gold-plated bear ornament from the box. Sebastian’s name was etched in the side. “This is a house full of love, Mina. You’ve done well finding it.”
Her mother took the bear thing well. Or at least never mentioned it, which was okay with Mina.
“Next year though, you come to Chicago. Christmas at home. We can show Matt off to all the neighbors. They won’t believe the size of him.”
The thought of Mina dragging Matt from house to house, bringing her charming, handsome, white husband to her mom’s Southside community made Mina grin. They’d love him. The women would fall over themselves to feed him their ham and sweet potato pie and potato salad.
“Are you going to help us cook?” Mina asked.
Her mother shook her head. “I tried to get started, but they chased me out. Said no outside help was allowed. And that if I insisted on helping, they’d bring in that boy band from the couch to help cook, too.”
“They’re werewolves, Mom. And they work at Allison’s restaurant.”
“Werewolves?”
“Werewolves.”
“And they can cook?”
“They’re pretty good at it. Allison has been teaching them all she knows.”
Her mother eyed the pretty boys. “Maybe I should take one of them home with me. I could use a pretty little thing like that in my old age.”
“Mother!” Mina gasped.
But Mrs. Brooks couldn’t stop laughing, so Mina turned to the kitchen. As soon as she entered, the day would begin for real. She wouldn’t leave or stop moving until the meal was done and plated. She had a long day ahead of her.
Matt returned with the groceries, and Marcus in tow behind him.
“Love, can you get started without me? There’s something weird going on,” Matt said.
“Of course, is there anything I can do?”
Marcus shook his head. He was trying to grow a beard and it made him look wilder and more savage than Mina expected. “I checked on some of the elders, and a few are missing. Front doors wide open. TVs blaring. Food still warm.” The Alpha growled, sending a dagger of fear into Mina’s belly. “Someone is taking my people.”
“It’s probably nothing to worry about,” Matt added. “But we’re going to take Michael and Pete and do a quick check on some folks. We’re going to split up and make sure nothing’s wrong.”
“What should I do?” Mina asked.
Matt winked at her. “Don’t lose.”
Chapter 4
The Winter Witch
The Winter Witch had heeded the summons. It was so rare to be invited in, so rare to be wanted.
The last time she had been invited was fifty years ago and she’d been so excited she’d frozen the town in one blast. The thrill had passed in seconds. Ice was known to her. Cold was known to her. It was the warmth inside all the little people that was new and unusual.
Her bare white-blue feet made no sound as she walked on top of the snow. Her clouds hid the sun’s terrible wrath, locked it away from the sleepy little town.
Nothing would melt in Bearfield that day.
For one day, it was hers, as was everyone in it.
She’d taken a few already. None could resist her call. The old, especially, were eager for her embrace. One touch of her ice-frosted lips and the Winter Witch would freeze a man solid. For the briefest of moments their warmth would be hers and she would remember what it was like to feel again.
She left no footprints as she walked down the path.
There was warmth in this town. Enough to sate her? No, never. But she would feast on it nonetheless.
Her white dress hung from her in tatters. Icicles would never pierce her skin, but they ripped hemlines like razors.
Her winds toppled trees and felled power lines. Snow fell in blinding sheets of white. The temperature plummeted like a rock into cold dark water.
And the colder it got, the stronger she became.
And hungrier.
She walked her silent path on frozen feet until it came to a road. As a car passed, she sang her song, the only song she knew, and the driver pulled over. She sang and he opened the door and fell out onto the road. The man walked hesitantly, slipping in the drifts as he approached her. He was an older man, with a great round belly and a ridiculous white mustache. A gun hung from his hip, though it would do nothing to the Winter Witch, even if he had the presence of mind to draw it and fire.
“What are you doing?” Sheriff Pete asked, walking off the road and onto her path. Plumes of steam escaped his body with every breath, an advertisement for the delicious warmth that lurked inside him.
“Do you have a present for me?” the Winter Witch asked, her voice seductive, notes of her song lingering on her lips.
“Lady, I don’t even know you.”
“Everyone knows me,” the Witch said. She smiled and her teeth were blinding white behind her frosted lips. Snowflakes clung to her lashes and her hair. “I am the darkness you chase away with your fires and your furnaces. I am the part of you that grows sleepy when death is near. I am oblivion.”
“But,” Sheriff Pete said, “it’s Christmas.”
The Winter Witch seized him with one cold hand and pulled him in for a kiss before the spreading ice from her touch fully encased hi
m. His mustache poked her like a hedgehog as she drank the heat from him in one long breath. Memories followed, flashes of a home full of life, of a dozen people around a warm fire, of big handsome men full of delicious heat.
The Winter Witch dropped Sheriff Pete to the ground. He stared at her uncomprehendingly, fully sheathed in ice. He wasn’t dead. Not yet. But by morning he would be.
By morning they all would be.
The Witch turned toward the direction Sheriff Pete had come from. His memories hung before her like smoke in the air, leading her straight to the promise of warmth.
Chapter 5
As the only married person in the house, and as the oldest, it fell on Mina to take over host duties, as well as cook. Technically her mother was older, but she was also an outsider. Mina wasn’t anymore. She belonged to Bearfield now.
In the kitchen, Allison was cooking up a storm. Marcus had a double-wide stove and Allison made sure to save half of it for Mina, but even still she gave the impression of taking up all the available space with her preparations.
Pies baked in one oven while a roast—Marcus’s traditional contribution to the meal—gave off a mouthwatering aroma from the second oven. Allison had four burners going at once, a pot simmering and steaming on each. Next to the stove she chopped celery and carrots on one cutting board while a dozen others held perfectly sized chunks of other fruits and veggies.
“Hey,” Allison said, as Mina entered. “If I’m in the way, let me know.”
“No, no. You’re fine,” Mina said. By the looks of it, Allison was an hour away from being done with everything. How could Mina compete? Some days she wondered if when Matt made her his mate, if some part of his sleepy, decadent bear spirit hadn’t rubbed off on her.
“I just wanted to say that I love your cooking. Firstly. Your pumpkin scones are easily the best baked good I’ve ever eaten.” Allison was taller than Mina, somewhat. And more athletic. Though much like Mina, she still had more curves than a mountain road and plenty of junk in her trunk—the Morrissey brothers definitely had a type.
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