Winter Wishes
A Twist on Tradition
A woman has the Christmas Eve from Hell. Two cat shifters play naughty games. And a witch brings out the beast inside the man. The magic of the season takes on a whole new meaning in these three fantastic—and festive—novellas from some of the best voices in paranormal romance.
Anthology includes:
Tangled Tinsel by Vivian Arend
No Angel by Vivi Andrews
Freeze Line by Moira Rogers
Stories also available for purchase separately.
Dear Reader,
There’s something magical about the holiday season, whether you celebrate Christmas or Kwanzaa, Hanukkah or Diwali. The energy and excitement surrounding these holidays charges the air and our emotions, providing a perfect platform for romance and love. So I knew we couldn’t let Carina Press’s first holiday season pass without celebrating it with a collection of special novella releases.
This holiday season, celebrate with our first collection of invitation-only novellas. We’ve pulled together eleven talented authors and author duos, all of whom have made their mark in their respective niches, and invited them to transport our readers with holiday delights. In Naughty and Nice, join Jaci Burton, Lauren Dane, Megan Hart and Shannon Stacey as they show you both the sensual and sweet sides of the holidays. Visit post-apocalyptic worlds and paranormal beings in an enchanted journey with authors Vivi Andrews, Moira Rogers and Vivian Arend in Winter Wishes. And celebrate the beauty of the season in His for the Holidays with m/m authors Josh Lanyon, Z.A. Maxfield, Harper Fox and LB Gregg.
Through the talent of their writing and their captivating storytelling, I believe you’ll find something in each of these special novellas to put you in the magic of the holiday moment.
Wishing you the happiest of holiday seasons.
~Angela
Executive Editor, Carina Press
www.carinapress.com
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Contents
Copyright
Tangled Tinsel: Vivian Arend
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
About the Author
No Angel: Vivi Andrews
Chapter One: Cloudy with a Chance of Angels
Chapter Two: Mistletoe & Mephistopheles
Chapter Three: How to Cope When Your Boyfriend is Abducted by the Prince of Darkness
Chapter Four: Waking the Dead
Chapter Five: The Blurry Lines Between Heaven, Hell & Hollywood
Chapter Six: No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service
Chapter Seven: So You’re Dating a Demon
Chapter Eight: When the Hordes of Hell Attack
Chapter Nine: Hell Hath No Fury Like Satan’s Mistress
Chapter Ten: Truths & Consequences
Chapter Eleven: Angels We Have Heard in Hollywood
Chapter Twelve: Dawn of the Damned
Chapter Thirteen: Mistletoe Merry-Go-Round
About the Author
Freeze Line: Moira Rogers
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
About the Author
Tangled Tinsel
By Vivian Arend
She’s the cat’s meow, and he’s ready to pounce!
Five miles of leather-clad leg is all it takes to lure Kyle Branegan out from his carefully hidden lifestyle as part of the Cougar Corp, a secret branch of the Shifter Enforcer League. He’s hoping for a night of fun and frolic, cat-style, no strings attached. With a sultry swing of her hips, Eloise Scott tangles him up in her ball of tricks, and just when he thinks he’s about to get lucky, she cuffs him—naked—to her bed.
An undercover cop in the human police force, El’s been given a top-secret mission to keep the big cat under her paw until he’s needed to testify in court in the New Year. Her decision to take him home for a quiet Christmas in her sleepy hometown turns out to be far more interesting than she expected. Her parents are suddenly rich, her old boyfriend is sniffing around and all six-feet-plus of sexy cougar male is sleeping in her bed.
And that’s before they announce their fake engagement…
Dedication
For my Mom, who was totally thrilled when I told her I was writing a book for a division of Harlequin. But sorry, Mom, you’re still not allowed to read it. I promise to write something less spicy…someday.
Chapter One
Five miles of leg strutted past him. Leather clad legs with incredibly high boots that wrapped lovingly around her thighs, leaving a scant three inches of bare skin visible below the bottom of her fuck-me leather miniskirt.
He’d died and gone to heaven.
And when she paused and bent over, exposing a tantalizing slice of two perfectly rounded ass cheeks, he lost control and purred in public.
The human females at the next table looked up from their frothy mugs of frou-frou coffee to gawk at him in concern. Kyle Branegan returned their stares with a smile, waggling his brows until one looked away and the other woman—well, she licked her lips and swallowed hard. Yeah toots, you were flirting with a cat before. Kyle wiped his mouth, threw the napkin down and unfolded his legs from under the teeny table.
Hunting time.
His target had disappeared around the corner, but Kyle didn’t feel any need to hurry. The full sun shone down, fresh morning air filling his lungs as he strode in pursuit. There weren’t many people out yet, the pre-Christmas rush nowhere near as frantic as it would be in a few weeks. Black Friday was over and he’d finally found a few clues he needed to progress in his investigation. He deserved a day off. He deserved a little fun, and the woman—or should he say, the pretty kitty—he now trailed? She deserved a bit of fun too.
One corner after another Kyle followed the delicate scent of the other cougar shifter. He hadn’t seen another of his kind in the area for months, and a female? Rawr. He could hardly wait. They might be territorial—a carryover from their animal natures—but the human twist in their bodies meant they had mastered the art of sharing space. Sort of. At least temporarily.
He spotted her in the distance, weaving through the growing crowds as she entered the shopping district of the city. Her head stuck out above the others, the red highlights in her thick auburn hair glinting in the sunlight. A quick mental assessment put her just shy of six feet with that lovely hair that hung past her shoulders. The flickering glimpses of the rest of the package were enough to make his mouth water, and he hurried his pace. Yeah, it had been a long time since he’d had another cougar in his bed, and while the human women he’d been with lately were fun, there was something so much better about sex with a fellow shifter. He wouldn’t have to temper his strength. Behind his jeans, his cock lined up a little too intimately with the teeth of his zipper. Yup, he was hard. Rock solid in fact.
She ducked into a shop and he grinned as he glanced at the signage. Naughty Lingerie. Hmm…hunting and entertainment. The day was looking better and better all the time.
A small bell tinkled his arrival as he opened the door, careful to leave the etched glass intact. Fruity scents overwhelmed him, filling his head with a sickly perfume. He sneezed involuntarily.
“Good morning, sir.” A clerk slithered up to him, blinking her eyes rapidly, her breasts bulging from the top o
f her squeezed hourglass torso. “May I help you with anything? Anything at all?”
She laid a hand on his forearm, the light touch tickling him. His thick hair stood upright as she smoothed her fingertips down his arm. Hmm, she was obviously a shifter fan—the type that liked to get it on with guys that could turn furry. Usually that would be a fabulous thing to discover. While people were, on the whole, cool about shifters since the revealing had happened a decade ago, there were a few issues that still arose. At times the pro-shifters were almost as bad as the anti-animal camp.
Yeah, he liked to be petted, but not by her, at least not now. “A woman came in a moment ago. Where is she?”
Disappointment washed over her features for a second before she schooled herself and gestured into the shop. “A friend of yours?”
The sweet smell of cougar filtered through the air. “Yes.”
It wasn’t a lie. She would be. Cats being cats and all, he figured they were only a small step away from being very intimate friends. Kyle strode forward toward the change room area.
The store clerk hovered at his back as he surveyed the wall. Tall individual compartments greeted him. One cracked open a slit and an arm shot out, wisps of fabric hanging from her manicured fingertips. “Can you find me one of these in a size up, please?”
Kyle grinned as he wordlessly took the garment and passed it back to the clerk. Through the open slit he caught a brief glimpse of honey-brown skin, lots of honey-brown skin, and a happy rumble started in his belly.
Lots of naked honey-brown skin that he planned on getting to know very thoroughly, very soon. He turned and followed the clerk to the main shop.
“We don’t have that style in a larger size in the same color.” The clerk slid her admiring gaze over him, ignoring the rack in front of her as she sighed, eyeing him up and down. “Does your friend have another preference?”
Red. The image of red silk on his mystery woman’s skin increased the pressure in his groin. He pointed and when the clerk pulled the garment from the rack he accepted it with a smile. “I’ll take it from here.”
The sighs rising behind him as he made his way back into the change area made him grin. Oh yeah, there was something in the shifter psyche that loved the admiration of the chicks, but right now he wanted to be getting hot and sweaty. It was time to howl. He knocked lightly on the dressing room door and it swung open, the hand shooting out again.
He ignored it and stepped in, closing the door behind him.
She raised one perfectly arched brow, her fists moving to rest on her hips. Then he wasn’t too sure what kind of expression she wore, because to be honest, he wasn’t looking at her face. He’d already ventured farther down the body. Honey-brown skin, oh yeah, tapered waist, nicely flared hips. The tiny scrap of fabric covering her mound didn’t hide the scent of her sex, light and yet mesmerizing in the confining quarters.
Strong limbs. Oh damn, he loved a woman with thigh muscles. It made it so much more pleasurable when she wrapped her legs around him and held on tight as he plunged into her again and again—
A light cough forced him to reluctantly drag his gaze up to her face.
She wore a smirk. This had oh-so-much potential.
“You lost, sweetheart?” Pure vocal sex. Her voice curled around his senses, licking into his ears as if she’d lapped with her tongue. Wet heat thrilled down his spine and his pants grew another size too small. Damn, if he kept her talking he would come without a single touch.
Kyle held out the soft red silk and she laughed. “You give all your customers this kind of personalized attention?”
Their fingers brushed as she gathered the material to her, and electric passion sizzled along his arm, over his shoulder, wrapped around his throat and yanked him forward. He crowded her toward the far wall of the change room. She never took her gaze from his, not as she paced backward. Not when the heat between them increased as the space between them decreased.
Not when he eliminated the air between them completely and sealed her to the wall with his body.
Hot flesh burned through the fabric of his clothes and he regretted not taking the time to strip before joining her in the room. It would have made it so easy to reach down, drag his elbow under her knee, open her up and drive his aching cock into the welcoming of her sex—
She purred, and something along his spine melted, pooling what little remained of his brains in the heavy weight of his balls.
“I’ve never had room service like this. What’s your name, stranger?”
Kyle leaned forward and buried his fingers in her hair. Damn, he loved being a cat. No long set up time, no sweet talk needed. She had to feel the same driving need he did and there was nothing wrong with them taking this to its natural conclusion without having to do the flowers and poetry shit.
“Kyle.” He breathed in deep, his nose buried in the crook of her neck. She arched her body against his, rubbing in all the right spots. He ground his cock against her belly and at the noise she made in response, his brain turned to mush. “What’s your name, beautiful? Before we get down to serious business.”
She had his top four buttons undone already, her fingers baring his chest to her touch. She leaned forward and licked his collarbone, and he saw stars.
“Call me El. But what serious business could you possibly be talking about?” Her hand slid down his torso, fingertips teasing his abdomen muscles, tracing the edge of his belt before she pressed her hand between them and cupped his erection. “Very nice, by the way.”
“I aim to please.”
She leaned forward and nibbled on his earlobe. The momentarily brush of her lips past his cheek drove him mad. He swung his head to the side to capture her mouth, but she managed to elude him. The hand between them continued to rub his length and his eyes rolled back in his skull.
“Red’s my favorite color.”
There was some kind of code message in that, he was sure of it, but right now, he didn’t give a flying fuck about figuring it out. He dropped to his knees, the loss of full body contact with her painful until he consoled himself by staring straight at the vee of her legs. “Let me help you out of these…”
“Such a gentleman—” She gasped as his tongue slid into her belly button. He nearly came as the taste of her flooded his mouth. Salty, sweet and buttery smooth. He traced designs across to her hipbone before snagging the thin elastic riding the bone. He tugged and the edge snapped, the fabric curling back to reveal a bare smooth treasure between her legs.
It was better than any Christmas present he’d ever found under the tree.
“Kyle?”
He couldn’t look away. The edges of her labia snuck out, glistening with her cream. He dragged in a deep breath and let the scent of her arousal fill his head.
“Kyle?”
This time she accompanied her words with a tug on his hair, her fingers laced close to his skull. The tiny pinch of pain made him growl as he turned his gaze upward. From this vantage point, her breasts filled his vision, the firm mounds rising between them like an erotic divider. Oh man, he couldn’t wait to taste them either. Twirl his tongue around her pretty brown nipples, tease them between his lips until she moaned out his name.
“I think we should take this somewhere a little more private.” Her whisper tugged on his balls.
“Why?”
She gestured toward the door with her head. He glanced over, and sure enough under the bottom edge he saw two sets of feet, nervously fidgeting, but plenty close to be able to hear everything they did.
He grinned at her. “So what?”
He didn’t care if the legendary shifter sex prowess got another shot of positive reinforcement. In fact, he’d be damn proud to make a few new rumors fly. Except…she was right. A new incident with him at the center of it wouldn’t do much for his plans of staying under the radar. It was tough enough being a cougar shifter living around humans. Being a highly sexual one would definitely put them in the spotlight, and right now that
would be disastrous.
“Can you find me another set, same size, matching bra and panties, please?” She called out sweetly and after a soft response, the clerks shuffled back into the shop. El smiled down at him. “I have no objections to enjoying your company, big fellow, but I think we should be nice to the girls. Don’t want to make them jealous they don’t have a nice pussy of their own to play with.”
He was going to object, both to stopping and to her calling him a pussy. He was a cougar, dammit, a mountain lion and a part of the ruling clan of the Western Territory. Not that he planned on sharing that particular intel with anyone. But all his protests died when she widened her thighs and dropped her hands between her legs.
One slid over the soft, smooth skin of her mound. She spread her fingers, opening herself to his sight. The other slowly inched down her belly until her index finger hovered over the revealed nub of her clitoris. He watched in silent fascination as she stroked herself. A brief, gentle flick that made her whole body shudder. Then she plunged her finger in, the entire digit disappearing, and he leaned forward involuntarily. He rasped his tongue between her legs, lapping up the cream clinging to the soft surfaces, catching her wrist to keep her buried deep. He licked in circles, sneaking alongside her finger before flicking her clit hard.
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