by Zoe Chant
A Hollywood Shifters’ Christmas
By Zoe Chant
© Zoe Chant 2015
All Rights Reserved
Chapter One
Mindy Maurek and Dennis O’Keefe lay side by side in their cabin aboard the sloop Robin. After trying all three cabins aboard the yacht, they’d decided on this one because they could cuddle together in bed and watch their wake stretching out to infinity.
The first time they slept there with the stern windows wide open, Dennis, who Mindy knew had a serious travel itch, said, “Watching that endless sea fading away makes me horny.”
Mindy’s reply—one hundred percent enthusiastic—was, “Everything makes you horny.”
Now they lay together, his leg thrown over hers, one of his hands tracing gently from her soft belly up between her breasts to her collarbones and down again. Her shoulder was tucked under his, her arm pressed into the mattress behind him, her fingers curled up over his hip. She was going to have to move or her arm would start to tingle from circulation cut off, but it felt so good just to lie there snuggled up next to him . . .
Then he said, “Have you thought about it?”
Thunk.
There went her good mood.
She was tempted to say, “Thought about what?” but she knew very well what ‘it’ was.
She sighed. “Dennis, I know you really want to go to your buddy’s movie premier, and be at your other buddy’s wedding, and then spend Christmas together. I think it’s great, and loyal, and awesome. I also don’t want you to think I’m the sort of woman who expects us to be tied together all the time.”
He turned his head, his tigerish golden eyes gleaming in the reflected light from outside. “That means you don’t want to go.”
She let out her breath again—a trickle so it wouldn’t sound like one of those put-upon sighs that her least favorite stepsister was the World’s Olympic Champion at. “It’s just that I don’t know these people. You grew up with JP and Mick. They are as much your family as, well, your respective families. Even their wives, or soon to be wife, in JP’s case, have known each other forever. I’d be the third wheel that everyone has to be polite around.”
He rose up on his elbow, and looked down into her eyes. “But I want them to become your family, too.”
She grinned as she pulled her arm free, and flexed her hand. Yep, totally fallen asleep. Worth it, though. “You know I don’t do family holidays. Family, I’ve got way, way too many of my own.”
Dennis nodded slowly, and she knew he was considering her huge mess of legal and genetic entanglements resulting from not only her parents having had multiple divorces, but her grandparents, too, not to mention half and stepbrothers and sisters, and half and step-cousins, aunts and uncles. The only stable marriage in her life had been her great-grandmother’s, but she had passed away when Mindy was a teen.
Christmases had been miserable when she was growing up—way too much money spent on fabulous decorations and food and zillions of presents, as if designer glitz and glitter could smooth over the bickering and feuds and jealousy and betrayals.
“Ever since I turned twenty, I’ve chosen a different city to spend December in, somewhere so remote that nobody celebrates Christmas and nobody can find me because there aren’t any cell towers. And the only thing worse than Christmas has been all those horrible weddings. There’s only one stepbrother I’d turn up for, and he’s deep somewhere in the Middle East on deployment.”
“I guess I can understand that,” Dennis said slowly as he gazed out the window, and not at her. “Hell, it’s not like I’ve been Mr. Reliable—half the holiday seasons of the past few years have found me somewhere or other chasing down a story, and when I happen to look at a calendar, oops, it’s February.”
He sent a quick glance at her. “But this should be real easy. The wedding invite says no presents, and that goes for Christmas as well. JP was always rich, Mick and I didn’t have diddly, so we were never going to be able to be equal on that score. If we did give each other something it was always small, and usually something funny. Just getting together was the deal. And like I say, the past few years, I’ve been unreliable about even that much. It’s just that this year we all seem to have found our mates, a coincidence we never thought would happen—Mick would tear up any screenplay one of his writers would turn in that had the same idea . . .”
He was talking lightly, carelessly, but she was a poodle shifter, sensitive to sound. Even though her human senses were blunted compared to her dog’s, she could still hear the subtleties of voice, and breathing, and sensed the disappointment he tried to hide.
“How about this,” she said, thinking a movie premier couldn’t be too hard to deal with. It wasn’t a wedding, and it wasn’t a holiday. “I’ll go to the first thing with you. And we’ll play it by ear afterward. Okay?”
And she knew she had been right, because his face lightened. “You’re a champ, Mork,” he said, and kissed her.
No matter what her mood, or how short the time had been since their last, he never failed to ignite her. He slid his knee between hers, and nudged her thighs apart as he ran his hands up to cup her breasts, thumbing her nipples into tightness. Pleasure zinged down into her core, as lips and tongues and hands worked together: she slid her fingers over his rock hard buns and held on tight as he sank into her, then slid out again, and in, inch by inch so tantalizingly that she arched her back aching for him to fill her.
Then their bodies impacted and she hooked her ankles around his knees as wordlessly they questioned and answered, demanded and gave, rocking in rhythm. When her breathing became ragged he bent and grazed her neck with his teeth.
She hissed, coming hard, which triggered him into delicious shudders that pulsed with hers. And then they lay back, breathing hard, pressed skin to skin—the language of completion. Of understanding. In a lifetime of being lied to by people who told her what they thought she wanted to hear, this was what she trusted most.
* * *
Mindy relaxed into slumber in Dennis’s arms. He watched as the equatorial night fell swiftly, but his mind hamster-wheeled until, moving with infinite care, he disentangled himself from her. She relaxed bonelessly into sleep.
He gently stroked her soft, fuzzy cloud of hair, pausing to look down at the arc of her cheek above the sweet roundness of her shoulder. Mindy was all delectable, generous curves, and he loved her so much it almost hurt.
He tenderly pulled the sheet up over her, then tiptoed to the cabin’s bathroom to shower.
A few minutes later he stepped up on deck under a canopy of brilliant stars. He’d traveled the world while chasing stories, for he was a photojournalist, but he’d never gotten accustomed to how short sunset and sunrise were at the equator.
Both mainsails were taut in the light airs, keeping the yacht moving enough so that the captain did not need to run the sloop’s engine.
As Dennis stepped onto the foredeck, a couple crew members sitting side by side on the bow turned then smiled. The Robin had a crew of six, these two being off-duty. Dennis had had trouble with the idea of six people all working so that two could enjoy the yachting life until Mindy had pointed out that six people got paid doing what they loved doing. And running the yacht for two was a whole lot less stressful than working aboard a cruise ship for two hundred, or two thousand.
Dennis was okay with the whole idea after that, especially when Mindy had made it clear that whatever relationships the six had were none of their business—everybody was casual, first names, the off-duty crew hanging out with him and Mindy wh
en they felt like it.
He went up to the captain, a twenty-year Navy vet named Todd Niles, and said, “Okay if I use the sat phone?”
“Sure,” Todd said—as Dennis had known he would. Whatever Mindy and Dennis wanted, within reason, it was the crew’s job to provide it. But asking was polite, and it also assured Dennis privacy, as the captain could con the yacht from the deck, especially when under sail.
Dennis stepped down into the bridge. He’d calculated the time in Los Angeles, hoping to catch his friend Mick Volkov between his day at his film studio and his home.
Mick answered on the second ring. “Volkov here.”
“It’s Dennis.”
“I wondered who’d be calling me from Panama. ‘sup?”
“Looks like Mindy and me will make it in time for JP’s wedding.”
“Great. So she’s coming? You weren’t sure.”
“Talked her into it.”
Mick said, “This is a first for you—bringing a woman. Are you two serious?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I need your help with the proposal.”
Mick sounded dubious. “You want my help? Because I fucked up three marriages before I finally got it right?”
“No, dammit, I can handle the proposal part. I think. See, what I want is for it to be real nice, something special. She deserves the best. But here’s the thing I need you for. I know you’re always hip-deep in lawyers. Have to be these days in the film industry.”
“You’ve got a film contract you want looked at?”
“No, I want a prenup.”
Silence, then Dennis said, “Are you still there?”
“You want a prenup?” Mick repeated, sounding even more dubious.
“Yes, asshole,” Dennis said genially, with the ease of a lifetime of give and take. “It’s not what you think. In fact, it’s pretty much the opposite. You guys might not know it, but this yacht I’m on, Mindy bought it for me.”
“What?”
“Yeah. See, she’s rich. Real rich.”
“What? Like how rich?”
“Whatever you can imagine, double it. I mean, she chartered this two-master, and when I said I liked it, and sometime between Belize and the Bermudas, it was mine. That rich.”
Mick whistled.
“So back to my proposal. I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I want to marry her. But you know me and serious relationships, until this one. The inner me knew the second I laid eyes on her. It just took my thick skull a bit longer to see it.” Dennis knew Mick would understand ‘inner me’ for his tiger, for Mick was a bear shifter. His Shelley was his mate.
“Yeah,” Mick said—yep, he got it.
“Okay, so I don’t know anything about, well, any of the legal shit. My dad’s on deployment, my mom is somewhere in Utah, and I doubt they know thing one about this sort of thing anyway, as they don’t own squat past the house in Sanluce.”
“What about her family?” Mick asked.
“According to Mindy, they’re a shit-storm waiting to happen—snooty morons and greedy ass hats, and I’m sure once they hear about us they’ll give Mindy all kinds of grief because I don’t have bean one. So I want a prenup that makes it clear that no matter what, I won’t touch any of her damn money. If we have kids, it goes to them, or to a charity, or even to one of the ass hats, whatever she wants to do with it.”
“Dennis, I’m going to be straight with you—if you are serious about her, I think a prenup is a terrible idea.”
“Don’t you get it?” Dennis whispered fiercely into the phone, an eye to the windows. The yacht was large as yachts go, but there wasn’t actually that much distance between him and six sets of ears. “This is to protect her.”
“Chill, O’Keefe. Whatever you say.” Mick whistled again. “My guys are all entertainment lawyers—a different pool of sharks, you might say. But let me talk to my manager. If anyone knows, it’s her. By the time you get here, she’ll have someone on tap for you.”
“Thanks,” Dennis said, and rang off.
When he slipped naked into the bed next to Mindy, he was smiling, feeling a whole lot better.
Now to plan the proposal that Mindy deserved.
Chapter Two
Mick pocketed his phone and returned to the meeting where his front office people and the PR team were busy hammering out the last-minute details of his film’s premier.
Usually he didn’t duck out for calls, but Dennis spent most of his time out of reach of cell towers, so when he did call, it was usually for a damn good reason.
Dennis O’Keefe, the wildest of the three guys, getting married? Mick really had to meet this Mindy. He couldn’t imagine some rich New York or Boston type mincing around in Sanluce, the guys’ hometown, which had zero claim to glamour or fame. But then he couldn’t imagine Dennis being drawn to that type of woman—or her to him.
But a prenup? He totally didn’t get Dennis’s reasoning, but maybe his rich girlfriend expected one. Mick was rich now, but he hadn’t grown up rich; from his experience, the super-rich went to their lawyers about everything before they moved an inch.
Anyway, he’d promised.
“ . . . and her agent insists that she be first to arrive, and her media team has these demands,” one of the PR people was saying.
Star demands. Mick sighed, and shook off his worries worries about Dennis as he got back to business.
It was very late when at last he drove up and parked at his place at the top of the Hollywood Hills.
“Shelley?”
No answer. He stepped down into the den, its broad bank of window overlooking the million lights of Los Angeles below, then padded to the bedroom. At that moment the bathroom door opened and Shelley emerged, wrapped in a bathrobe, with her hair in a towel turban. He grinned; she’d been in the bathroom when he left that morning. “Been stewing in the Jacuzzi all day?”
“I wish,” she retorted.
His smile vanished when he saw her face, which was pale and even a little greener than it had been the evening before. “Still feeling fluish?”
“About that,” she said, then shrugged as she walked into his arms.
He kissed her thoroughly, relishing the taste of mint in her kiss, the clean scent of his favorite sage soap on her skin. His cock stirred in his pants, as it always did when he first saw her after a few hours; she could have just come from riding her motorcycle, smelling of sweat and leather, breathing the pastrami and cabbage sandwiches she loved for lunch, and she would turn him on just as much.
“It can wait,” she murmured into his shoulder, her voice muffled. Then she raised her head to kiss him back, a kiss so thorough the towel turban unraveled and flopped to the floor, her wet brown hair hanging limp on her shoulders she said, “How’d the meetings go?”
“We’re all good.” He gently smoothed her hair back off her forehead. “A million last minute things, most of it demands from the talent. Of course.”
“Of course,” she agreed.
Shelley had been a stunt actor before she hooked up with Mick. She had spent plenty of time around big stars, many of whom were egomaniacs, but they both knew many who were not. Shelley understood as well as he did that actors’ business was their faces, which they had to make sure were always before the fickle public. “Your PR guys will deal,” she said confidently.
“I know.” He sighed, sensing what she wasn’t asking. “Nothing from the networks yet about our pilot. It’s still early days.”
“Right.” She bent to pick up the towel. “Are you hungry?”
“Nah. We ordered in somewhere around eight. You didn’t wait, did you?”
She shook her head. “I’m not in the mood for food.” She grinned, her eyes raking down his body.
He’d been up since five a.m., which was when he’d last showered and shaved. Her kisses had made it real clear that she was fine with him the way he was. His bear stirred inside him, happy when his mate wanted him, then subsided contentedly as Mick
steered Shelley back toward the bedroom.
He knew that she’d been fighting flu for over a week, but for some reason sex made her feel better, at least for a time. What guy would argue with that? She had always been instantly ready, but now it was like she was hungry for it.
Well, so was he.
He eased her back on the bed, pausing only long enough to kick off his shoes. The way she collapsed with a sigh made it clear she was not up for their usual rock’n’roll style sex.
That was okay with him. He stretched out beside her on the bed and leaned in for some intense, tongue-tangling kissing as he ran his fingers down and over her throat to the V in the bathrobe, and parted it in order to caress her long, strong, generous body.
When he paused for breath, he ran a hand over his chin. Stubble. He grinned. She liked stubble in certain places. That would be dessert. First the appetizer: he molded her breasts, stroking them slowly in the way she loved before he bent to tease her nipples with his tongue. When her breathing quickened, his kissed his way down her belly, parting the bathrobe wide, and then repositioned himself between her legs. Which widened when he brushed the silky skin inside her thighs with his chin.
Already her fingers crushed the bedspread, a good sign. He kissed her folds, sniffing deeply of her scent. She was so wet for him—he thrust his tongue in deep, and she moaned, her hips grinding. He flicked her clit with his tongue and she cried out, coming so sweetly. He sucked her in rhythm, intensifying the comedown, which he knew would leave her ready for more.
And now it was his turn. He unzipped and buried himself in her, still fully clothed. He’d discovered that she liked that sometimes, him wearing his clothes and she completely naked. She felt more wanton, and got adventurous—that is, when she was feeling good.
That was okay. Adventure could wait. He was too tired for that right now anyway. It felt insanely good to bury himself deep within her, fitting perfectly. They moved slowly together to make it last, until his own body overtook his mind with rising urgency. She clenched hard on him at just the right moment, sending him off like a rocket.
