The Snow Leopard's Christmas Surprise

by Emilia Hartley

  Hiding a smile, the charcoal haired woman pointed towards the group of men in the corner that had passed their prime nearly fifty years ago. He followed her gaze to a frail looking man with buggy eyes. The hair above his lip had been molded into two, fine curls. “That man’s moustache does something crazy to me.”

  Wes laughed. It came up from his belly and filled the room. Around them the patrons quieted to turn and look in their direction. As eyes roved over the charcoal haired woman’s body, Wes had to resist the urge to pull her into his lap. He’d claimed her for the night and she would end up in his bed. No other’s.

  She turned back to him, laughter on her lips dying when she saw the heat on his face. He quickly recovered, flashing her a wide smile. Why did this damned woman affect him so? Had it truly been too long since he’d last laid with a woman? That had to be it.

  Tonight, he would fuck her and then he would be done with the opposite sex for a long while. Wes had never dreamed of finding his mate after the Occurrence. One night on the town a month wasn’t long enough to develop the kind of relationship that his parents had. He would settle for nothing less than the love he saw between his parents if the bond was to last for the rest of his life.

  “I don’t think that man would be able to keep up with you,” Wes joked. “Or, he might have the best last night of his life, ever.”

  The woman laughed beside him. “I don’t particularly think I’m enough to kill a man.”

  Wes raised an eyebrow. “You don’t give yourself nearly enough credit.”

  He watched her face turn red and felt satisfaction stirring inside of him. Did she not truly see herself for what she was? Wes was fairly certain that just looking at what was hidden beneath that fiery dress would give the old man a heart attack.

  “Do you not see yourself for the beauty that you are? Should I help you find your glasses?”

  She balked. “I can tell you that I do not need glasses.”

  “Then you’re a mighty fine liar if you believe your own lies. You’re a very pretty lass. Much more attractive than your friend over there, if I might say. And, she’s leaving with two men on her arm. Imagine, you could have half the bar at your beck and call. Though I think your roommate would be a little disappointed to find half the bar’s patrons in your room tonight.

  “I think that you’re trying too hard, sir.” The woman grabbed her beer and turned to slide off her stool. “I’d rather prefer it if you didn’t try to blow smoke up my ass.”

  Wes felt his hand tighten around his own beer and he had to wrangle his fire under control or else it would break beneath his grasp. She thought that he was lying to her?

  Wes leaned forward so that his breath touched her ear. “If you don’t think that I’m dying to hide you away from the other male eyes in this room then you’re the one lying to yourself. You’re a stunning creature who hasn’t had any other suitors tonight because they’re afraid of me.”

  She slid off her seat, taking one last look at him before shaking her head and walking away. Fire rolled through his stomach. While the view was fine, he could barely contain himself. Why was she turning him away? Why couldn’t he win her over?

  Chapter Six

  Dakota felt her heart hammering in her chest. He was the finest looking man that she’d ever laid eyes on in her life. Just being near him, she wanted to reach out and touch the angles of his jaw. She wanted to hear his laughter rumble through her and feel the wonderful things it did to her body.

  She didn’t think that she was the most attractive woman, but that wasn’t the reason she’d scurried away from him. No, she’d looked deep into those blue-gray eyes and found that something was off. The realization that danger lurked beneath his skin sat uneasy in her stomach. He was not one that she should dally with. Not even for a night.

  It disappointed her to have to leave, but she knew that it was the smart decision. Maybe the promise of violence she saw wasn’t directed at her, but it was better safe than sorry. The fire that she’d seen when she looked back from the older man had been enough to cause a spike of fear to jolt through her. When he claimed that the other men in the room were afraid of him, she knew her assessment had been right.

  She slid into a booth seat across from Clary and the two men she’d set her eyes upon. Her roommate looked up with surprise in her eyes. Clary glanced toward the bar where Dakota had left the beautiful man. One of Clary’s friends slid out of his seat and came around to sit beside Dakota.

  “Men like that always think that the world owes them a favor,” the man beside her said as his arm fell behind her shoulders. “They don’t treat a woman right.”

  Dakota pursed her lips, but didn’t say anything. The man wasn’t right, but she didn’t want to set him right. She wanted to ignore the man at the bar for the rest of the night. She threw back her beer and reached for Clary’s nearly full drink. Her roommate protested, her words slurring together. Dakota ignored her and finished the too sweet drink.

  The man beside her moved closer to her so that he pressed against her side. She didn’t care for the time being. She knew that she wasn’t going home with him at the end of the night, anyway. She would be going home alone, like she had originally planned.

  The man beside her let his fingers play across her bare leg. She pushed his hand away from her skin when her stomach rolled. His brows lowered, but Dakota looked past him. She glanced back toward the bar.

  He was still there, his shoulders tight as he looked around the room. He looked anywhere but at her. She should have been grateful that he was moving on, but she couldn’t help feeling a little jealous. Was she so forgettable that he didn’t give a moment to mourn what had walked away?

  His broad shoulders spoke of years of physical labor. She wanted to run her hands over them and feel the planes of his muscles. She wondered what lying in bed with him would have been like. The heat in his eyes told her that it would have been a mind-blowing night had she stayed. It might not have been the smartest thing, but she was starting to regret her decision to walk away.

  She shook her head. What was she thinking? Her tongue felt fuzzy in her mouth. She must have had too much to drink. She really should get back to her room soon, she thought. Turning her attention back to the table, she realized that the man beside her was talking. His lips moved, but she couldn’t focus on what he was saying. She looked to Clary’s now empty drink that she’d stolen and wondered what her roommate had ordered.

  Clary giggled on the other side of the table. She slipped out of the booth, clinging to the arm of a man with a buzzed head. Dakota lost sight of them as they slipped away from the table. Her eyes fell back on the gray eyed man at the bar. He had turned in his seat and their eyes met. Dakota felt a flare of fire jump through her body.

  She’d made a mistake in walking away.

  The man beside her smiled and she could see that he was missing a tooth towards the back of his mouth. One in the front was chipped. Her eyelids started to feel heavy and as her lids drooped, his smile grew wide.

  Chapter Seven

  Wesley told himself that he should move on, that there were other women in the bar that he knew were throwing glances in his direction. Yet, he spent much of the night glaring in the direction of the charcoal haired woman and her friend. She had quickly downed several drinks after turning away from him and he could tell that she was beginning to feel it from the way she was acting. Her movements were sluggish and her words were slurred.

  Her friend wasn’t nearly as incapacitated as she was, but her friend didn’t seem to care. She was wrapped up in the man that sat beside her. Wes watched as the blonde and her male friend slid from their seats and slipped out of the pub. The man sitting beside the charcoal haired woman slid an arm beneath her moments later and pulled her from the seat.

  She staggered and her eyes drifted closed for a long moment. Wesley felt his stomach hit the floor as he watched them leave through a separate door. Fire burned in his stomach. He left his seat at the bar
and moved to their now empty table before a server could clear it out. He raised the glass that he’d watched the dark-haired woman drink from to his nose and sniffed.

  His nose picked up the faint chemical smell that she hadn’t. One of the men had slipped something into the blonde’s drink, yet it had been the charcoal haired woman who stole it from her friend and chugged it in one go.

  The silver band around his forearm ached as heat roiled inside of him. Wesley stormed out of the pub. He caught the dark-haired woman’s scent in the air and ran. He hoped that he would make it in time to help her. If not, he was going to rip the man apart limb from limb, his honor be damned.

  His honor meant nothing when her safety was at risk.

  The sound of small whimpers reached his ears and he darted around the corner. The man had her shoved up against the brick wall and had lifted her short dress up over her hips. The man didn’t hear Wes as he closed the distance between them. His fist closed around the back of the man’s neck. His body soared down the alley and crashed into the dumpster.

  Beside him, the woman slumped toward the ground. He ducked beneath her and caught her before she could fall to the dirty pavement. Wes took a moment to pull down her dress as the fire in him burned. Her underwear was still in place. He’d been just in time.

  Yet, now he had an unconscious woman in his arms and no idea what to do. He could call the authorities, but he shouldn’t even be in the city. If he was caught, then his father would have his hide if he found out that Wes went against the dragons’ agreement. Getting caught would not only dishonor him, but his father, as well. It would drop his family in rank, removing them from their leadership roles.

  He looked down at the woman in his arms, completely slack and unable to help herself. He was glad that he’d come out, that he’d risked as much as he had. If not, then surely, she would have been hurt. Distantly, he hoped that her friend was okay, if only because he felt he should care. He tucked the woman in his arms close to his chest and turned back toward the road.

  Wes tucked her into the cab of his truck, not knowing what else to do with her. She could sleep it off someplace safe and the only place he was absolutely sure was safe was his tower. Part of him wanted to go back and finish what he’d started with the man in the alley. Luckily for him, it wasn’t too honorable to kill a man after he’d already passed out. It was in no way a fair fight. The honorable thing to do was look out for the comatose woman before him. So, he fisted his hands until his knuckles turned white and heat radiated around his form. He swallowed the roar that was building in his throat and went around his truck to get behind the wheel.

  Chapter Eight

  Dakota woke in an unfamiliar place with her head pounding. She rolled onto her side slowly. The room was huge, the walls curving around her. At the other end of the room was a hearth blazing with flames. Worn rugs covered the stone floor, displaying all kinds of mismatched colors and designs if only to keep the cold of the stone at bay. Someone had thrown a soft blanket over her form after laying her atop the bed.

  She pushed it aside and felt her hips protest. She was still wearing the red dress that Clary had stuffed her into, but the night was a blur. No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t remember what happened after she’d left the man at the bar.

  Her heart thumped and panic rose inside of her. Had her drink been spiked? It would explain the fuzzy memories, but she didn’t know why her hips hurt the way they did. The panic created a lump in her throat. Tears burned her eyes. She wrapped her arms around herself.

  Someone had put a drug into her drink and kidnapped her. She prayed that nothing else had happened while she’d been out, but she had no way of knowing. That terrified her.

  The sound of footsteps approaching made fear rush through her. The door ahead of her cracked open and she instinctually scrambled to the head of the mattress. The man from the bar appeared in the doorway, his hair mussed with a mug in one hand and a white bottle in the other. She stared at the bottle, fearing that he was going to try to drug her again. Fear wasn’t going to get her out of here alive, she told herself.

  “You’re awake,” he said with clear surprise. “You must feel like absolute shit.”

  “Where am I?” Her voice trembled despite her attempt to control her fear.

  “You’re at my home,” he said, softly. “Would you like a cup of coffee? I also brought some pain killers. Nothing strong, just the stuff you can get at any drug store.”

  She shook her head. She pulled the blanket over herself as though it was some kind of shield. He ran a hand through his mussed hair. She realized at this point that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

  “Oh, right. You have to be really confused right now.” The man sat down on the floor across from her. “My name is Wesley, if that helps you at all. Wesley Taniff. We met last night.”

  “I remember that,” Dakota snapped.

  He nodded, surprisingly patient with her. “After you accused me of lying you went to your friend’s table and took her drink from her. I think one of the men she was flirting with had spiked her drink. Instead of giving up, one of the men took advantage of the situation and carried you out of the bar. I found him…” She watched his jaw clench as he looked past her. He was angry, she thought. “I found him… trying to hurt you. I put an end to it, but I didn’t know where to take you that you would be safe other than here.”

  “And where is here?” Dakota asked nervously. She glanced around again, taking in the cozy setting that the room really was. It would have been a lovely place had she come in on her own terms. Now, she marked where the door was, where the windows were and readied her body to run. Still, a little voice in the back of her mind told her that there was no threat. It whispered to her that she was as safe as she would ever be.

  “This is my home,” he said before standing. His jaw was still clenched tight and he fisted a hand in his hair. She noticed that he fought to look anywhere but at her.

  “What is wrong with you?” Dakota asked, inching forward, off the bed.

  He closed his eyes before turning to her. When they opened again, they were no longer the soft blue that had entranced her the night before. Instead, she looked into golden eyes, the pupils narrowed into slits. He dragged in a breath through his nose.

  Dakota’s blood ran cold. She couldn’t be here. This was absolutely the last thing that she needed. Her future was ruined. Once she set foot out of here, the school would have her on a plane back home and her grant to study abroad would be lost.

  Her life was over.

  His eyes changed again. The gold swirled away and the blue flooded back in. The tension that had been gripping his jaw dissipated and a look of concern flashed over his face. He stepped forward before stopping himself.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said, his voice unusually small.

  “You don’t understand,” Dakota snapped. “Do you have any regard for the lives of others? What you’ve done has ruined my life.”

  “I saved you from being hurt, from being used and left in an alley,” he roared.

  Dakota didn’t flinch. She didn’t back down. She stared the man that was really a dragon in the eye. Anger burned inside of her. It consumed her, a better feeling than the lost desperation that had flooded her a second ago. She wanted to be angry at this beautiful man, Wesley, as he called himself.

  Instead of arguing, he took the wind out of her sails by spinning around. He left, slamming the door behind him. She was suddenly alone in the room. She let herself fall down onto the mattress. She hadn’t believed that dragons liked to kidnap women. She thought of the dragon that she’d run across the day before; how playful it had seemed. She hadn’t been afraid of that dragon, hadn’t thought that it would run off with her. It had made her stupid. That dragon had come back for her.

  Her eyes fell on her small purse, leaning carefully against the side of the bed. She reached down and found that her cell phone was still inside of it. If she really had been kidnapped
, wouldn’t he have taken her cell phone? It seemed logical. Why would he have left it with her?

  There were several messages and missed calls waiting for her when she punched the home button. Nearly all of them were from her new roommate, Clary. They told a story of how Clary realized the man she intended to bring back from the dorm had been a sleaze ball. The man had tried to push her into a cab with him and she very luckily managed to score a well-placed kick before running to safety. Her roommate asked where she was, expressing concern because she realized that her drink had been drugged.

  She opened a message to reply to her roommate. Once her fingers hovered over the screen, she realized that she may have over reacted. Wesley hadn’t lied to her about how he’d found her, how he’d rescued her. The night may have been a blur to her, but now she knew there was a reason why. She remembered grabbing Clary’s nearly full drink and throwing it back.

  Instead of asking for help, she told her roommate that she was safe and okay. She moved on to the messages from her mother. What would Bea think if she knew where her daughter currently was? Her mother would lose her mind. She sent her mother a vague update, leaving out many of the large events of the day before.

  After the messages were sent, she sat on the edge of the mattress and stared at the screen. If she called for help now, the school would know where she’d been. They would know who she had been with. Dakota found that not only did she not want to lose her chance to study abroad, but she didn’t want Wesley to get into trouble.

  So, she tucked the phone back into her purse and stood up.

  Chapter Nine

  Wes had hardly been able to control himself in that room. Just the sight of her on his bed had drove him mad. Without the band of silver to drive his dragon back, the beast inside of him roared to claim the young woman as his own. He demanded that Wes take her at once, to make her scream their name, to mark her as theirs.