“Well? What do you think?”
“It’s the most amazing tree I’ve ever seen.” With “Gimme, Santa, Gimme” blaring in the background, she slashed a brilliant smile his way. “Ya done good, pal. A tree is a great idea.”
“I knew you’d like it.” Clearly pleased, he lifted her off the ground to meet his kiss. “We’ve got hours to kill before midnight. Got any ideas on how we might do that?”
“A few.” Smiling against his mouth, Reina slipped the satchel off her shoulder as he let her back down. “We can start with opening presents.”
He peeled her Velcro collar open. “I’m on it.”
“Down, boy.” With a laugh she slapped his busy fingers away and stepped back just far enough to dig into the satchel. “I have something for you.”
“Wait, what? No way.” Edison stared at her as if she were suddenly speaking in tongues. “You got me a Christmas present?”
“You and a bunch of other people.” Unaccountably shy, she tried to shrug it off like it was no biggie. “I got Momo and Ren a couple of toys and their mom a gift card, from the two of us. Then I dropped by The Dugout to deliver some stuff to Beowulf, Jimmi and Sentry, and now I’m here. Just call me Santa.”
“Reina.” With a cherishing tenderness that made her throat clench, he framed her face in his big hands and gazed into her eyes as if she were the only thing he wanted to see. “You’re an idiot.”
So much for her sentimental melting. “What?”
“I dropped off presents for the Seldons from the both of us when I was out getting the tree earlier today. They’re making out like bandits this year.”
“No kidding.” Just when she thought he couldn’t move her any more, this rough-around-the-edges tough guy pulled off one random act of kindness after another, until she had no choice but to fall all the more for him. The jerk. “This first one isn’t much of a present. It’s more of a practical thing I know you need.”
“The first?” He shot her a dubious look as she handed him a silver shrink-wrapped bundle roughly the size of a semi-flat football. “You didn’t go crazy, did you?”
Her loss of sanity could be marked from the first moment they kissed. “Would I do that?”
“I never know what to expect from you.”
“Good. I must be doing something right, if I can keep a level five detective guessing.”
He paused in the act of unwrapping his present. “Does it bother you, my being a level five?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” On this, she was very firm. “I’m proud of you, Edison. You fought like hell to reach the top level and we both know you deserve it. But if the likes of Manu Obie ever attain level five...”
“I think pigs will sprout wings and go into low-earth orbit before that happens,” he snorted, then pulled the frictionsuit out of the silver wrapping. “What the hell...?”
“Forecast is calling for temps to dip below zero again tonight. I need to know you’re going to be okay while we’re out there tracking down this droid and its maker, so put this on under your clothes if you want, I don’t care. I want you safe, so find a way to cope. I’m not negotiating on this.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Setting the suit aside, he ran his hands over the swell of her hips before his fingers cupped the firm flesh of her butt. “Though I’ll never look as good as you in this getup.”
“That goes without saying.” Enjoying the caress so much, she nearly forgot she wasn’t done. “There’s one more, and this one you don’t have to wear if you don’t want to.”
“Can’t I save one present for Christmas morning?”
She thought of the sappy pajamas covered in garish, cartoony Christmas trees—pajamas that with any luck would give him as much happiness as the pajamas he’d received all those years ago—and nodded. “If you want to.”
“I want to.” He took her satchel, then pulled an envelope out of his pocket to flash at her before laying both items under the tree. “Your Christmas present, which waits until Christmas as well,” he added when she automatically began to reach out for it. “If you can guess what it is, you can get it early.”
“Ooh, a mystery. Give me a hint.”
“If I did, you’d nail it in a heartbeat, because we both know you deserve to be a level five detective, too.” And with that, he covered her mouth with his.
* * *
There were a lot of things vying for top-spot on Edison’s priority list. He had to be ready to launch an endgame the moment Atsuko pinged the droid’s location on his internal GPS. He had to make sure he could function effectively in the predicted subzero conditions. He had to put this case to bed quickly so he could have the rest of Christmas off and hopefully start building some new traditions.
But the number-one thing topping his list was doing everything he could to become as necessary to Reina as her next breath. As far as he was concerned, this was an attainable goal. All he had to do was practice, practice, practice.
He couldn’t believe what a wild ride it was to simply kiss her. She was a hairpin turn with no brakes on a demagnetized road at midnight. The exhilaration of it powered through him, made all the sweeter by the hint of danger that whispered quietly beneath the surface. Whispering that to want anything as much as he wanted her couldn’t possibly be good for him. Whispering that at some point he wouldn’t be able to pull himself away. Whispering that he was losing it. He didn’t care. Not when her mouth was an X-rated dream come to life, so soft and hungry as she twined her tongue around his. The pliant press of her body was an existence-affirming miracle, as if he’d been born for the express purpose of holding her. And now that he’d found his purpose, that was all he wanted to do.
The peeling away of her frictionsuit made him glance at the gift she’d given him, and a sensation he couldn’t define filled his chest until he halfway worried something in there might burst. The suit wasn’t exactly the most badass look in menswear, but it was the thought behind it that made him determined to wear it to hell and back if that was what it took to make her happy.
And there was no misinterpreting her mindset. She wanted him to be safe. Not because he was a fellow cop, or her partner. She wanted to keep him safe because she cared about whether he lived or died. It wasn’t much, but when it came to Reina, lone wolf and self-professed solitary creature, it was practically a hearts-and-flowers declaration.
That was good enough for him.
The ache in his loins was heavy, insistent, a sweet need that dug a hole deep into his gut until it was all he knew. Her simple scent of soap and baby powder spun his wetware out until he wasn’t sure how he was still standing, and the need to sheathe himself inside her became a burgeoning imperative. That kind of internal pressure could snap a strong man in two, and with a single touch this woman brought him to that point, sapping not just his strength but his will, his mind, his soul. A moan broke from him, an audible submission to the urgency pooling in the steel rod pulsing behind his zipper. Helpless to do anything else, he rocked his hips against the softness of her belly while his mouth invaded hers in blatant mimicry of what his body needed to do.
She responded by tugging the long-sleeved shirt he wore over his head before making quick work of the fastenings of his pants. Clothes were an impediment they didn’t want or need, and it was a relief she seemed just as anxious as he was to be rid of them. Gloriously naked, she bent to help him kick off the rest of his clothes, only to put herself level with the thick, rigid thrust of his desire.
“Well, well.” Reina’s voice changed when she was turned on, and he couldn’t get enough of the sound of it. Sultry and dark with the texture of velvet, it was as though she was holding back sounds of ecstasy already teasing along the edges of the mind. “This seems familiar.”
“I should hope so.” He would have laughed, but at that moment she took him in hand and squeezed. The pleasur
e bordered on excruciating. “Ah...damn you, Reina.”
“This reaction holds an endless fascination for me,” she murmured, while the warm grip of her fingers traced the length of him as if she were determined to memorize the ridges and silken feel of his rock-hard flesh through touch alone. “It makes me wonder if you feel the same way I do when I’m aroused.”
Edison would have liked to join in the conversation, but the bold slide-and-retreat rhythm of her nimble hand increased to a hellishly delightful torment, so his command of speech was slipping away. Everything was. The only thing that mattered was the thrum of lush sensation emanating from her ministrations. The muscles in his abdomen contracted in time with her movements while piercing pleasure blazed through him like fire, and in a gesture that was both plea and demand he tangled his fingers in her hair to entice her closer.
“Then I have to wonder if you feel like you’re sinking into a kind of punch-drunk madness, the way I do,” she murmured, resisting him, and the caress of her breath on his darkened tip made it pulsate like a damn jackhammer. “That delicious mindlessness where time comes to a standstill and all you’re capable of is feeling, a victim of sensation so sweet it’s almost too much to bear. Your body seizes as if in agony, and in a strange way that’s exactly what it is. An agony of ecstasy that would kill you if it lasted the way you yearn for it to.” Slowly, so damn slowly he thought he’d scream, she licked her lips until they glistened as she inched closer to the throbbing head of his ready staff. “Is that how it is when you feel pleasure, Edison?”
He moaned. “Reina.”
It was all he could manage.
“I hope so. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.” And with that, her tongue caressed all the way around his ridge before she took him into her mouth.
A hoarse cry shattered from him. His head snapped back with a sucker-punch of pleasure that was so violent he almost came then and there. In that razor’s edge moment he was at her mercy, her object of amusement, her plaything.
Lucky, lucky him.
Rolling waves of sensation engulfed him, a continuous tide of muscle-melting bliss, and his eyes drifted closed to savor it completely. The wet chamber of her mouth was the greatest miracle he’d ever encountered, surrounding him with warm suction until he was shuddering with rapture. Relentlessly she tortured him, her fingers stroking his base while her mouth worked erotic magic, and as he pumped into her with increasing madness it shocked him how close he was to losing it. With a broken sound caught somewhere between plea and pain, he found the will to pull himself away only to half-fall on her with a total lack of finesse, roughly opening her legs and bringing her knees up even as he impaled himself into her gloving depths.
Shivers skittered over him as her internal heat scorched him. Desperate for more of that fire he plunged again, endlessly, deaf to the breath-starved gasps that belonged to them both. Her sweet baby powder scent and the darker, earthier scent of sex filled his world, intoxicating him with giddy mindlessness. The delirious tension within coiled tighter, tighter, and it would be perfect if she was with him in that insanity that she had described. Blind, lost in that driving need, he reached between them and stroked her most sensitive point with the same merciless delight she had shown him.
A half-scream ripped from her as her body bucked and surged, and with the knowledge that he’d lured her into the abandoned euphoria, he gave himself over to it.
Chapter Nine
“Five minutes to midnight.” With the mid-20th century cartoony classic, You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch murmuring from the radio in the background, Edison checked the car’s readout as they glided along the South Wabash Avenue Maglev track. “We’ll pounce the instant I get a ping from the rogue droid. I just hope we’re not too far from wherever it is now.”
“Even if we’re right on top of it, there’s still no guarantee its maker is going to be in the same place as the droid.” Out of long habit Reina ran through her equipment checklist—visor synched with Edison’s neurolinks, pulse gun, zip cuffs, EMF scrambler. With everything in its place, she was ready to rock. “That’s what has me so skittish about this setup. This is our one and only chance to zero in on our target. Once this droid downloads its updates, we won’t have much time to locate it before it goes dark.”
“As much as I like fattening up the win column, there’s a part of me that’d be okay with that.” With a frown pulling his brows together, he turned onto East 25th. The few blackened sticks that were probably straggly trees in non-winter months didn’t do a damn thing to soften the urban blight of cargo-container parks and storage lots that passed by their windows. “It’s hard to think of our modern-day Geppetto as a hardened criminal. Not when he left two happy kids in his wake.”
“I’m trying not to think about that.” But she couldn’t hold back a sigh as she looked out at the bleak cityscape. “I do want to find this person, whoever it is, if only to give them a big fat thank-you.”
“What for?”
“Christmas died for me a long time ago, Edison. It was so dead, in fact, that it wasn’t even a thought in my head. Then I saw how much joy there was in the faces of the Seldon kids, and it made me remember my own childhood. I don’t know.” She shrugged, groping for the right words. “The feelings behind Christmas can be so much more than the in-your-face commercialism, you know? It can be about the joy of sharing your life. It can be about finding where you belong in the world, and being with the people who mean the most to you.” When Reina realized how close she was to revealing how important he’d become to her, she clammed up. It was too soon to dive into those dangerous waters. She was still adjusting to the intimate turn in their relationship herself, so there was no way she was going to lay a hearts-and-flowers dance on him now.
No matter how much she wanted to.
Edison came to a stop at a deserted intersection and reached for her gloved hand. “So far it’s been the best Christmas I’ve ever had. I’ve never understood what people meant when they talked about the Christmas spirit, but I think I get it now.”
“I just hope spreading the Christmas spirit in the larcenous way our perp did was worth it. Not only were laws broken, but it’s going to be an expensive loss of property when that droid becomes junk. I keep thinking there could have been an easier way to do this. Why ruin an expensive piece of machinery over a couple of cheap toys? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Hopefully we’ll have an answer in about a minute.” Scowling at the dash clock as Christmas Eve trembled on the bright new edge of Christmas, he shot her a quick glance. “Want a hint about your present?”
“I thought you said I had to wait until Christmas.”
“We’re like five seconds away from it. Close enough. Open the glove compartment.”
Her jaw unhinged a moment before she followed the instruction, ignoring his smug grin that he’d managed to surprise her. At a touch, the automatic door in the dash slid up, an interior light flaring on to spotlight the one item hidden there. Stunned, she reached in to pluck up a tiny, brilliantly colored paper umbrella, showing off a splash of palm trees and hibiscus flowers when she opened it.
At last she found her voice. “Where’s the drink that’s supposed to go with it?”
“At a nice Costa Rican seaside resort. Starting the day after Christmas you’ll have seven days to find it. A sharp detective like you should be able to handle that.”
Stunned amazement that he’d remembered her off-the-cuff remark bloomed in her chest, and hard on its heels was a joy so piercing she thought she might die of it. “This gift seriously outshines the pajamas I got you for Christmas,” she managed, uncaring that he could see the moved tears stinging her eyes. “I think I owe you something extra after this.”
“Wait. You got me pajamas?” The delighted wonder that lit his face was another Christmas present she’d treasure forever, and he caught her gloved
hand to press it against his lips. He held it there for a long moment, head bowed and eyes closed almost as if he were in pain. “My God, Reina. You got me pajamas.”
“It’s not a trip to Costa Rica.”
“No. It’s so much more than that.” With a touching reverence that tightened her throat, Edison molded the hand he held to his cheek and nuzzled it. “Thank you.”
“Let’s see if you’ll thank me after you unwrap those suckers. They’ve got these crazy Christmas trees all over them.”
“Sounds perfect to me.” Then, without warning and before she could throw her arms around him, he suddenly floored it. “Got a location,” he said unnecessarily even as the frozen urban landscape rocketed by. “We’re in luck. ETA, one minute.”
“Where?”
“Mercy Hospital. Specific location...south tower, third floor.”
All at once her breath couldn’t seem to vacate her body. “I know that place by heart, or at least I did before the second pandemic hit. That entire floor used to be the pediatrics ward.”
“Then this is going to be a bit of a homecoming.” The engine growled as he slowed, preparing to detach from the Maglev track to trek into the vast white emptiness of the condemned hospital’s parking lot on four wheels. “By the way...Merry Christmas, Reina.”
“Same to you. Too bad it’s starting off in such a suck-ass place.”
His laugh was hard and bright as wheels hit snow and ice with a jarring thud, and they fishtailed toward the lumbering mass of concrete darkening the skyline. Reina had a suspicion Edison was enjoying the slip-slide run-up to their location. As much as she felt they were about to die, she still would have liked for it to last a little longer as well—long enough, anyway, for her to get over the knee-jerk anxiety of entering a place that held so many bad memories. But all too soon they were standing outside what used to be the building’s main entrance, now covered with high-impact poly-resin drywall liberally covered in graffiti.
A Galactic Holiday Page 10
