by Angel Payne
Okay, maybe he’d be stretching with that last one. Celina had been dragged by her toenails to the Veteran’s Day party, so what made him think she’d look on this bash any differently?
Because this was a family night, that was why. Because she had a niece whom she adored, who’d likely haul the whole family to the party. What kid on the base missed this thing? A post-Christmas bash where Santa made “one last stop” on his way back to the Pole? C’mon. No-brainer.
He started climbing into the padded suit that would turn him into the most popular guy at the party. He ran through a few practice “Ho ho hos” and jelly-belly laughs, but the Kringle vibe wasn’t settling in yet.
“Get your shit together, Inferno.” He zipped up the suit and already started sweating, even though he wore nothing but boxers under the costume. “The chance you’re even going to see her is one in five hundred—literally. It’s not like she’s going to see you in return.”
“Oh, Mr. Tieri!” Lois Stanbridge’s singsongy voice bounced up the stairs. “Or should I say, Oh, Mr. Kris Kringle! Are we ready for our grand entrance?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” He uttered the response to his reflection, pulling on the red velvet hat and forcing at least a small twinkle to his eyes. It was Christmas Day, after all. A little wish-granting magic was in order, even if he wasn’t on Santa’s “Good” list this year.
* * * *
Two and a half hours later, his heart actually was lighter. The best and cheapest therapy on the planet was serving others, proven true to him every minute he spent with the excited base kids. A few even brought him gifts, including shared trinkets from their stockings and enough plates of cookies to keep “Santa” hefty for the next decade to come. He’d managed to relax a little too, when several scans of the room yielded no sign of a slender and graceful body, a waterfall of soft chestnut hair, and eyes that captivated like enchanted forests. Looked like the Kourises had skipped the bash. Thank God.
As the kids began to thin, a disc jockey plugged in and started some low-key tunes to warm up the teens and adults for their part of the evening’s fun. Dante got up from the ornate throne and made his way to the table where the cookie plates had been placed. He was hungry as a bear, and it all looked amazing.
He knew what he wanted as soon as he spied the powdered sugar mounds on the far side of the table. Kourambiedes. He’d gotten obsessed with the Greek Christmas cookies. The baked goods were a shitty substitute for the Greek “sweet” for which he was truly aching, to be sure, but he could think of worse comforts. Fortunately, exercise was also a compulsion when he was depressed.
He was about to pull the cellophane cover off the plate, when he lifted the flap of the note card taped to it. The message, scrawled in a kid’s careful cursive, replaced the hunger in his gut with a mix of heartache, excitement, and urgency.
Dear Santa,
I hope you enjoy these Kourambiedes cookies. They are a Greek tradition at Christmastime. Beware! They are very messy, especially if you make them the right way—and my dad REALLY makes them good. His name is Dylan Kouris, and he is a bad-ass, supersonic, bad-guy-whooping pilot. He also had to leave on a mission last night. I miss him and I am sad. ( :( ). But his cookies make me think of him, and I’m a little happier. I hope they make you happy too.
Love,
Samantha Karena Kouris
(Falcon’s Daughter)
His throat was tight as he swallowed. As if the note now gave him the magical power to do so, he spotted Sami right away. She sat at a corner table with a few friends, all crowded around an iPad with some fast-moving game loaded onto it. Sami was giving the peer camaraderie a decent try, but it wasn’t working. Her shoulders slumped, and her eyes kept wandering the room, as if some Christmas miracle would still happen and her father would appear.
Sitting at the other side of the round table was a younger officer in camos. Dante recognized him immediately from the pictures in Celina’s place. He shared Celina’s thick dark hair and easy smile. At the moment, he tossed his head back on a laugh from something the woman next to him had said.
That woman was Celina.
Hell. Just fucking hell.
“Stellina.”
Over four weeks of separation should have gotten him over this, right? How could she still affect him like this, instantly seizing his senses, funneling his focus, possessing his every breath? She wasn’t even dressed in formal uniform tonight, which only worsened the effect. The white cashmere sweater and the poured-onto-her-body jeans gave him instant ideas about jamming his hands under them, maybe in one of the deserted hallways around here. He’d kiss her raw and order her to come for him, as he pinched a nipple with one hand and her clit with the other…
“Damn,” he muttered, looking down at the cookies again. “Damn it!”
Lois appeared next to him. “Mr. Tieri? Is everything all right?”
“Fine, Mrs. Stanbridge. Just fine.” He flashed a perfunctory smile. “I’m going to take a few more minutes, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.”
He strode out of the room and back up to the little bathroom in which he’d changed his clothes. After whipping out his cell, he tapped in a quick message to Vincent.
Need the laptop from the trunk right away. The big one. Thanks. D~
After hitting the Send key on that, he clicked to his contacts list. From there, he typed in an eleven-digit code that got him to a second secret list. After finding the name he wanted, he pressed the Call button without a second thought. Then he hoped like hell that the vice admiral was picking up his cell right now.
Chapter Eighteen
“Hey, Sami. The DJ is starting to play some cool stuff. C’mon, girl.”
Celina watched as Cameron rose and extended a hand to his niece. The grin he tagged on the end of his invitation made two out of Sami’s three friends bust into enamored giggles. Sami gave a discomfited shrug. “No, thanks, Uncle Cam. Maybe a little later.”
Nik got back to the table with another round of sodas and popcorn. “Hey, Cel. This bag has extra cheese salt on it. I know you like it that way.”
She gave her brother a gentle smile. “You’re the best. Thanks, Nik. I’m really stuffed from dinner, though.”
“The dinner you ate three bites of?”
“You counted?”
“Last time I checked, I could count to three, yes.”
Cameron shoved back in his chair. “Okay, what gives? Nik and I are trying to get at what’s making you two girls morose as hull sludge, to the tune of being idiots about it. I only have forty-eight hours of leave, Cel. Do you and Miss Sami Sunshine want to give me a break?”
Celina punched her brother in the arm. “Cut Sami some slack, damn it. Her heart is aching.”
Cam tilted his head and arched a brow. “And what’s your excuse, Miss Three-Bites-All-Night?”
She dipped her gaze to her lap. And prayed for a convenient Christmas interruption.
The DJ was not helping in that department. With timing that almost seemed to mock her, the guy threw a song into his mix that she hadn’t heard since the Veteran’s Day party. She knew this for a fact, because it was the song playing when the path of her life collided with Dante’s. When everything had changed in one inexplicable moment. When he’d seen into her, through her, determined to unveil her mysteries, no matter how scary the journey got for him.
“A spirit born of earth and water, fire flying from your hands…”
Elton John’s lyrics filled the room, and shone understanding into her soul.
“All I ever needed was the one, like freedom fields where wild horses run…”
“Oh God,” she whispered. He’d gotten it from the beginning, hadn’t he? He’d recognized their connection, their wild and beautiful field, from the start. He’d also realized how their Domination/submission dynamic made it all the better. Even that first night, in her bed…it wasn’t just sex for him. It wasn’t ever “just sex.” It wasn’t about labels
, and yet that’s what she’d plastered all over their relationship.
He’d looked at her and seen a star.
She’d looked at him and seen the guy with the checkbook.
She’d been so wrong. So narrow and terrible and wrong.
With a choke, she lurched to her feet. “I need to make a phone call. Right now.”
Cameron gave her the Mister Spock brow again. “Is everything okay?”
“I don’t know.” Hell. Had she’d come to her senses too late? She remembered him when they’d kissed outside his building, standing barefoot in the snow with her hand pressed over his heart, but that had been a month ago. He’d been the city’s most visible, unattached Christmas ambassador since then. And damn it, he even had a new puppy.
“Excuse me.”
A smiling ensign suddenly stood at their table bearing a broad grin and a matching laptop. “I’m looking for Miss Samantha Kouris,” he announced.
Sami pushed the iPad at one of her friends, her brown eyes huge and curious. “I—I’m Sami—uh, I mean Samantha. I’m her.”
“Perfect,” said the ensign. He set the laptop in front of her, then plugged it in and fired up the screen. He deftly clicked through a few windows, until he got to a screen with the words Secure Video Line emblazoned across the top.
“What’s going on?” Sami questioned.
“Merry Christmas,” the ensign murmured. “Courtesy of Santa Claus.”
Celina didn’t know what unnerved her more: wondering what was going to happen on the screen, or conjecturing why the party’s resident Santa now scooted a little closer, watching them all with eyes she couldn’t read. His mouth was carefully closed and nearly invisible under his bushy fake beard. She had no idea what to think about him—or the relentless scrutiny that really should’ve been creeping her out, but didn’t.
“Daddy!”
It took a full heartbeat for the word to register in her brain. “Daddy?” Celina echoed. She joined Nik and Cam in riveting their stares back on the laptop’s screen.
Sure enough, there was Dylan’s grinning and handsome face. “Sami?” he exclaimed. “Oh my God. Paidaki mou…you’re the best thing I’ve seen all day!”
“Ditto, Papa mine!”
He was a little dusty, meaning he was indeed on some crazy secret mission that he shouldn’t be on, but at the moment, the pure joy on Sami’s face made Celina forget her irritation with him. She was numb with shock and speechless with joy, which made her glad for Nik and Cam’s presence. They discreetly asked Sami’s friends to give her a few minutes alone with her dad.
Slowly, Celina turned her own attention back to Santa Claus.
As she took each step, Elton John keep singing about stars colliding and finding the one.
“I don’t know how you made that happen,” she said, “but thank you.”
He didn’t say a word. But she watched his throat constrict on a long swallow. The skin of his neck was the color of burnished copper…
Her stomach flipped over.
She narrowed her gaze, concentrating harder on his own. His eyes were impenetrable as the deepest midnight…with tiny stars of dark purple.
Her heart halted.
She reached and pushed the white nylon beard back from his lips. And the very real, very black beard surrounding them.
He kissed her fingertip and whispered, “You’re welcome, stellina.”
“Holy sh—”
He interrupted her with the mash of his lips over hers. And she let him. Oh God, how she let him. As her tongue submitted to him and her body ignited for him, thoughts were hard to pin down. Somewhere beyond the din of her senses, she heard Sami let out a squee, then proclaim to Dylan that Auntie Cel was making out with Santa Claus. Nik and Cam’s questioning grunts followed.
Reluctantly, she drew herself back from Dante. Still meeting his eyes, she said, “I’ll be right back.”
“No,” he snapped and grabbed her hand. “I’m not letting you go again.”
She smiled and squeezed his fingers. “Okay.”
She walked back over to the open video chat, where Dylan peered out. She pointed to a couple of spots on the other side of Sami, indicating to Cam and Nik where she needed them to be. It was an ass-crazy place for a mini family meeting, but she was going to make it work.
“Well, Brother—” She nodded down at Dylan. “Since you’ve clearly found it okay to take an unconventional route, so have I. Everyone please say hello to Dante Tieri. He’s the one who arranged your little visit here with us today, Dyl. He also happens to be worth a bazillion dollars.”
“Cara,” Dante muttered. “Maybe not a bazillion.”
“Shush,” she told him, then pivoted back to her brothers and Sami. “I also happen to be eyeballs-deep in love with him. You’re going to need to deal with that. I know this won’t be easy for you, or for that matter, for me in coping with you three. Dylan, in light of your special history with this kind of shit, I’m giving you a little more patience than the other two. Cam, Nik, I’m more than happy to answer the ten thousand questions you’ll have, after I give Mr. Tieri his Christmas present.”
“Gaaahhhh,” Cam exclaimed. “Too much fucking information, Cel!”
“Hey!” Dylan yelled from the laptop. “Watch your damn mouth, SEAL boy.”
She left them to hash it out as she pulled Dante out into the hallway. Once they were there, she laughed and jumped into his arms, kissing him again for everything she was worth. She stopped only to claw away his fake beard, then pressed her hands to both sides of his face. “I’m not letting you go again either, Sir.”
“Good,” Dante answered softly. He picked her up even past the bulk of the Santa suit and carried her up a flight of stairs into a small unoccupied bathroom. “Yeah, that’s really good…” The lock banged into place beneath his twisting fingers, echoing against the tiles and drowning his moan as he took her lips again. Celina let him back her into the wall, loving how adorable he was in his frenzy to get himself out of his bulky costume.
“I’ll try to get back over from Atsugi when I can, okay?” When she got a long chuckle from him at that, she frowned. “What? You’re happy with just video chatting for the next six months?”
“No, stellina.” The last of the suit fell off his leg. He stood before her now in muscled, near-naked glory, his boxers doing nothing to hide what his body clearly desired for a Christmas treat. “I’m just damn glad I went ahead and ordered a deep cleaning on my Tokyo condo.”
“What?” Joy rocketed through her as he put his hands to work on her clothes now. In less than a minute, her sweater and bra were gone. It took a couple more for him to slide the blue jeans completely off her legs. “So—what you’re saying is—”
“You’re not getting away from me this time.”
He hiked her thighs around his as he positioned his face just inches from hers. He still didn’t do anything with his boxers, sliding up and down to tease her clit and pussy with his silk-covered shaft.
“None of this is going to be easy, stellina. We’re going to have issues. We’re going to have bumps. We’re going to have fights.” A touch of mirth hit his face. “And God knows we’re going to have your brothers and my mother. But I’m not giving up on us.” He gave her an especially hard thrust as emphasis of that. “And I’m not letting you give up. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.” She gasped and clutched his shoulders. Her head slammed against the wall as her vagina dripped and her clit quivered. “Oh God, Dante, you need to fuck me now!”
His beard scraped her skin with delicious roughness as he smiled against her neck. “Reach into my pants, on the counter. There’s a condom in my wallet.”
She got the foil packet out with frantic speed and then jammed a hand beneath his waistband, pulling out his long, pulsing length. “I love you,” she said against his lips, rolling the sheath on for him.
His gaze glimmered with that gorgeous indigo sheen. He scanned every inch of her face with it before
his lips curved in a passion-filled smile. “As I love you, my stellina.”
As he filled her mouth with his tongue and her body with his cock, Celina opened one more part of herself to him. Her heart. Never again, she silently vowed to him, would she let labels, misconceptions, and the boundaries of others guide her soul. With his patience, his Dominance and his love, Dante Tieri had set her free from it all.
She was really a star now.
And what a wonderful feeling it was.
Loose Id Titles by Angel Payne
THE KINKY TRUTH series
Three-Part Harmony
Permanent Marker
Star of Wonder
Angel Payne
Angel Payne has been writing since childhood, with a “past life” that includes entertainment reporting, hospitality industry publications, and historical romance. She’s also dabbled in radio and nightclub DJ gigs, ramp modeling, and special events planning. But the world of erotica romance is the best rabbit hole she’s ever been down…with no plans to resurface any time soon! If she can encourage a few people to let their darker wings take flight, then she’s happier for it. Angel spreads her own wings in Southern California, where she lives with her husband and child, and enjoys healthy obsessions for the outdoors, gardening, kick-toosh rock music, “Revenge”, and “Vampire Diaries.”
Check out Angel’s Web site at http://www.angelpayne.com to see what’s new.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Loose Id Titles by Angel Payne
Angel Payne
