by Viola Grace
Table of Contents
Prologue
Dear Santa, Get Bent!
Author’s Note
About the Author
Dasher gains life as a human, but she is missing a connection. She wants a mate and is willing to do whatever it takes to find one.
One of nine reindeer that pulls Santa’s sleigh, Dasher wants nothing more than to find a partner, a mate, someone to be with. With the restrictions in the workshop, she has only one choice—she goes to the human world and starts trying men on for size.
The down side to mating with a human is that they don’t remember her the following day. The depressing point is that none of them have the stamina to keep up with her and there are no second chances. Every time is the first time with a human.
When she is assigned to a shop that needs an emergency audit, she enjoys the thrill of digging through the messy paperwork, and she has plans for the proprietor. One time might be enough if it was with him.
Argus has been sent to bring back a reindeer, but the woman with smouldering dark eyes is more than he was banking on. She seems nice, but he wants her naughty.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2015 by Viola Grace
ISBN: 978-1-987969-03-0
©Cover art by Carmen Waters
All rights reserved. With the exception of review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the express permission of the publisher.
Published by Viola Grace
Look for me online at violagrace.com, amazon, kobo, B&N and other ebook sellers.
Dear Santa, Get Bent!
Operation Reindeer Retrieval Book 1
By
Viola Grace
Prologue
Ru calmly walked another stack of files to the cabinet and slowly sorted through it as she sought the alphabetical corollary. Her band and the bands of her siblings rattled on her arms under her sleeves. It made it hard to concentrate.
For the last two months, she had managed to keep management at bay while her sisters were out in the human world. It was her job to be the decoy, as she was the only one who was bound to Santa’s sleigh.
With the way the bands were buzzing, it was likely that someone wanted to do a briefing regarding this year’s path through the changing global weather patterns.
Ru promised herself that she would ignore them until it wasn’t possible. Unfortunately, she knew that that particular moment was here. She could hear footsteps in the archive. There were never footsteps that didn’t belong to a reindeer in the nice and naughty list archive.
There was only one reason for someone to make their way into the territory of the team—Santa wanted an audience.
“Hello? Where is everyone?”
Ru whistled sharply. The footfalls headed her way. She kept filing. It was what the reindeer did during the off-season. They were confined to the archive and did all the paperwork for the previous season. It was terminally boring and the reason for the visit today.
She could feel the presence of the elf behind her.
“Where are the others?”
Ru continued to file the verifications of the fulfillment of the nice or naughty requirements.
“Rudolph. Where are the others?” Administrator Rin wasn’t shrill, but he wasn’t completely calm.
She turned when she finished her batch and looked at him with her hands folded in front of her. “What others?”
He lifted his monitor—the flat display that told him where the reindeer were at any given time. Rudolph’s glow was red; the others were gold.
She shrugged.
“He is going to hear about this.”
She shrugged again.
“Come with me.”
That was surprising. “Leave the archive?”
“And the stables. Santa needs to know about this.”
Ru walked with him to the upper level and through the crystalline gateway that normally blocked her progress. With Rin’s hand on her shoulder, she slid through the gateway and into the main hall.
Santa was sitting with his mail and flipping through the letters that the elves had selected for special consideration.
Rin cleared his throat. “Boss, I have Rudolph for you.”
Santa looked up, his pretty elven features glowing brightly in the reflected light of his crystal palace.
“Rudolph. Come and have a seat. I have been trying to contact you and the others from the team. Where have you been keeping yourself?” Santa patted the chair next to him and smiled.
Ru moved toward him and took the seat. “I have been where I always am. I am in the archive or the stable. Isn’t that where I am supposed to be?”
She tried to hold in her frustration, but it lashed out.
Santa put the letter he was reading aside. He waved his hand and a pot of tea appeared between them. “Tell me what the problem is.”
She sighed. “The reindeer have decided that since we have gone through five hundred seasons, it is time we strike out on our own. A woman can only take so much frustration.”
Santa poured the tea. “Rin, where are the reindeer?”
Rin checked his tablet. “Boss, it says that they are all in here, with you.”
“Ru, can you push up your sleeves, please?”
Ru pushed her sleeves back to the shoulder. On each arm were four tracking bands. Each engraved with the name of the reindeer who should have worn it. Ru’s was still around her neck. She couldn’t remove the ruby if she tried, and she had really tried.
Santa set the cup of tea down in front of her. “Where did they go, Rudolph?”
“In a nutshell? They have gone to get laid. For five hundred years, we have gone into heat, and for five hundred years, we were not allowed out to seek a mate to ease our need. We are not allowed to live like normal women, even for a while. We are tired of it. So, we worked out a strategy and implemented it. I would wear their bands and they would get some life experiences.”
She picked up the cup and sipped at the minty tea.
Santa closed his eyes. “Christmas is in a week. What are we supposed to do about the missing reindeer?”
“Ask them to come back?” Ru smiled over her teacup.
Santa opened his eyes and narrowed them at her. “How?”
“Give us freedom to roam here and to seek sexual partners amongst the elves. You are all high elves; there isn’t a size problem. We want to be able to find companionship. It is important. Do you know what five centuries without touching someone does? It isn’t fun.”
Santa nodded. “Fine. I will consider it, but how do we get them back now?”
Rudolph smiled. “You are going to need to send out some bait.”
Santa turned to Rin. “Get the eight best-looking and most amenable guys from the naughty-or-nice department. If they are able to convince the reindeer they are after to come back, they can keep her. Or she can keep them. Whatever.”
Ru smiled. It was working.
Rin scrambled away, and Ru sat sipping at her tea.
Santa sighed. “After all these years, they just snuck away?”
“They broke out, but no. They each wrote you a letter.”
She patted the pockets of her gown and found them. With a flourish, she brought out a stack with Dasher’s signature on top.
“Here you go.”
Santa took the letters with bemusement. He opened Dasher’s envelope and stared at the contents, reading the first sentence aloud. “Dear Santa, get bent!”
He glanced over
at Ru through his crystal-blue eyes. “That seems a little harsh.”
Ru nodded. “It is years of frustration; keep reading.”
He did, and his skin paled even further as the torture of a thwarted mating season was outlined to him. He shivered, and by the time he had recovered himself, Rin and a gathering of eight very strapping and attractive elves came through the portal.
“Rudolph, please remove the reindeer bands. They will be needed to find the ladies.” Santa’s voice was kind.
Ru removed the bands, one by one, and they were given to the elves as their mission was explained.
“You are on Operation Reindeer Retrieval. We need those ladies back, and we need them here in the next few days. Charm them, seduce them, but get them to agree to return. They have to be willing.”
The elves looked down at the bands, at each other and a few exchanged the items they were holding. Ru smiled. It seemed that the reindeers’ auras came through in their collars.
One of the men looked to Santa. “Boss, how are we supposed to find them?”
Santa scowled. “Can’t you sense them?”
The men of the naughty-and-nice list shook their heads.
Ru snickered.
Santa turned to her. “You know where they are.”
She shrugged. “I have no idea. We deliberately didn’t share this kind of information, and I believe that this is why.”
Santa sighed. “Rin, take her to my office.”
Ru got to her feet, shook out her gown and left Santa with his representatives.
They had a lot to discuss.
* * * *
Santa watched the elegant woman with the small rack of horns as she mounted the stairs to his office. The letter had been concise and something he couldn’t ignore. It was a letter to Santa from Dasher, and she was mad.
“Gentlemen, it seems that my flight team has gotten a little frustrated with going through years of seasons without being able to find a mate. If you think of someone more suitable to take your place, by all means, hand off the band. I hadn’t realized my team was so desperately unhappy, and if giving them a mate will keep them happy, I am willing to offer you up.”
The men shifted, shrugged and nodded. Santa kept his smirk to himself. While the elves were allowed to leave during the off-season for personal recreation, they could not bring humans back to the workshop. Having a lover at home would be a great temptation, and as always, Rin had chosen the right men for the job.
“The reindeer are travelling using Christmas magic, so as you are all aware of what that entails, you can come up with the likeliest means of finding them yourselves.”
He got to his feet and waved them off. “All of our resources are at your disposal. Good luck.”
Santa gathered the letters from the reindeer and headed up the steps to his office. He had matters to attend to, and Rudolph could shed a light on certain aspects of it.
Dear Santa, Get Bent!
Dani Sherwood went through the sheaf of paperwork and occasionally looked up to examine the holiday decorations.
Metal tinsel, plastic arrangements of manically cheerful snowmen mixed with the sweetest angels she could imagine crafted of sugary treats.
“Do you have everything you need, Ms. Sherwood?” The office manager smiled loosely as the holiday party continued in the boardroom.
“I do. Thank you.”
“Is there anything I can do for you?” His smile was hopeful.
Dani twisted her lips. She couldn’t tell him that they had already had a date, dinner, sex and she had left their encounter with a lack of enthusiasm. None of her lovers remembered her after they parted. It was part of the Christmas magic she had brought with her.
“No, thank you. I have a date later, and I don’t want to be late. I will just lock up the books and see you in the morning.” She finished her data collection and closed her laptop.
“Oh, we won’t be here in the morning. We are closing for the holidays. We won’t be open again until the new year.”
Dani blinked, “Of course. How foolish of me. Well, happy holidays.”
She put the books back in the safe and gathered her laptop and notebooks. With her bag over her shoulder, she eased past the party and headed for the parkade. Working for a living amongst the humans had become her favourite part of this excursion.
Being the first reindeer to leave Santa’s workshop out of season in five hundred years, she had immediately gone to a bar and sought out a suitable partner for sex. The end result had been less than satisfactory. Humans just didn’t possess the stamina she needed to reach orgasm.
Dani wasn’t a quitter, she tried over and over again with different males, but the result was always the same. A rush to their pleasure and she was left waiting until she could bring herself to orgasm. She didn’t see what the elves saw in the humans. Maybe it was different with the women, but Dani wasn’t that curious.
She got into her small car and drove the twenty minutes to the office of Accelerated Audits. The offices were manned twenty-four hours a day to serve a variety of clients. Dani worked the evening shift.
“Dani! Did you finish at Morgan Corp?” Ula Andrews smiled as she came in.
“I did. I just popped in to tidy up some details. I should be out of here in an hour.”
“I don’t know what we would have done without you this year.” Ula grinned and returned to answering the phones.
Dani smiled and took up her position at her desk, thinking of co-workers past.
Ru had been stealing Christmas snowflakes for the last decade. When she had gathered enough, the team put their plan into action and escaped for the human world. Wearing holiday magic, Dani was accepted as a normal human because of the snowflake she had pressed into her skin.
Holiday magic was a funny thing, but Ru had been looking into it for decades before she started to snitch the magical snowflakes on the Christmas runs. Most of the falling stars turned into snowflakes on the way down, but Ru’s position at the head of the team put her in the perfect location to grab them as they approached the workshop. It was only a few minutes during the homeward run that made the magic available, and Ru had grabbed every flake she could find, one at a time.
Now, with the exception of their mastermind, the team was out in the human world and enjoying what it felt like to be desired and to do a job that folks respected. It was truly a delightful vacation where each reindeer could pursue what she wanted to do in her off time.
Dani liked accounting. She enjoyed nothing more than working with the files and numbers, balancing, finding discrepancies and working through them to bring everything into the light.
She finished the Morgan Corp files and prepared the package that her company would forward when the business was open after the holidays.
Dani sighed and packed up her bag. Ula was between calls. “Well, I am on my way out. Anything on the books for tomorrow?”
“Not yet. I will keep you posted. Are you on call tonight?”
“You bet.” Dani winked. “Talk to you later.”
“You had better.” Ula winked and took the incoming call.
Nocturnal accounting was a new thing to Dani, and it was a new thing to this city. Having folk who were willing to head out in the dark of night and work on the books of any business that wanted to pay was definitely a niche market.
In the last six weeks, she had balanced the books of three corporations and two mobsters. The audits had been harrowing, but Dani had had a ton of fun. The different aspects of human life were fascinating to watch.
Whistling holiday music, she got in her car and headed for home. If she was on call, she wouldn’t be able to drink, but she could still head out and enjoy watching the humans flirt, tangle and dance.
Dani sat in full party gear and watched as the bar patrons laughed, drank and clung to each other. It was more fun to watch than it was to participate in, and Dani wondered when that had happened.
She had been at The Frozen Cork for thre
e hours when her phone buzzed. A slight leakage of magic let her answer it in a dome of quiet. “Hello?”
“Is this Ms. Sherwood of Accelerated Audits?” The deep voice was as intriguing as the opening line.
“It is. How may I help you?”
“I have just taken possession of a pop-up store at the mall, and I need an express audit before I begin business. Are you available to go over things this evening? I don’t want to miss much shopping time.”
“Understandable. What is your address?”
He rattled off a location near one of the malls.
“I can be there in twenty minutes.”
“I will put some coffee on.”
Heading to a business in the middle of the night for a mysterious audit put some of the excitement back in her time away from the workshop.
She hung up, stood up and worked her way out of the bar. She had her computer to collect and an assignment to get to.
While she was at her home, she made a quick call to Ula to confirm the job.
“Seriously, Dani. He called in and asked for you specifically.”
“Really?”
“Well, he asked for a female auditor with dark hair who had started within the last three months. I figured it was a recommendation from one of those private gentlemen’s clubs or something.” Ula chuckled. “You seem to be popular with them.”
Dani rolled her eyes and locked her door as she headed back to her car with her bag over her shoulder. “I am popular with all kinds of men. It doesn’t mean I can work with them.”
“Well, this is a straight-forward assessment of current business practices and stock levels. It shouldn’t take you more than two days.”
“Right. I have heard that one before.”
Ula was notorious for downplaying the amount of work involved.
“Talk to you tomorrow, Ula.”
