“Very good—sending coordinates now. May the Goddess be with you, Brother,” Dru said seriously.
“And with you,” Asher replied in the same tone. “Give your new bride my regards.”
“I certainly will.” A warm smile spread over Dru’s face so naturally that Asher was certain he didn’t even know it was there. Clearly having a female in his life had made all the difference for him.
He suppressed another pang of jealousy as his old friend signed off and a long list of coordinates began to scroll across the screen. It was foolish to wish for something he could never have.
As the viewscreen finally went dark, Asher looked at his reflected image and considered if he looked sufficiently human to land on Earth with no problems.
He had fangs like a Blood Kindred—though they would only sharpen enough to be noticeable if he met a female he wished to bond with—which was to say never. But instead of blond hair and pale blue eyes like the Blood Kindred, he had black hair and deep green eyes that showed his Tangala heritage. And though he was, like all Kindred males, around 30% larger and more muscular than an Earth male, he should still be able to pass for one of them.
Yes, he decided, he was ready to go down and find out the details of his mission. Perhaps it would help him to stop feeling the strange longing that had begun when he heard Dru talking about his new bride.
Two
Lisa James was having a shitty life. Not just a rotten day or a bad week or even a terrible month. No, her whole entire life was awful and shitty, she decided as she looked out at the long, long line of restless kids and impatient adults waiting in line in front of Santa’s workshop. It was only a week before Christmas—peak season—which meant more and more parents had decided it was a good time to get a picture with Santa at the mall.
Only there was no Santa to take a picture with. Not at the moment, anyway.
“Where is he?” Lisa muttered to herself for the thousandth time, as she peered out the back of Santa’s Workshop—which was really just a prop building where the Santa suit was kept. The mall was coordinating with a local charity that had ties to the Kindred Mother Ship and they had promised that one of the big, alien warriors would come and play Santa that afternoon. But so far the big idiot—whoever he was—was a no-show and the kids were getting restless.
I’m going to have to go out and make another announcement soon, Lisa thought, dreading the idea. Something about how Santa’s reindeer were hungry and he had to stop and feed them or some Christmassy crap like that.
The crowd was not going to be happy. The line snaked away from the front of the cute little picket fence that surrounded Santa’s Village all the way down past Bath and Body Works, which was near the other end of the mall. The kids at the front had been waiting for over an hour already and they kept wanting to play in the fake snow, which got all over their cute little Christmas outfits and into their hair and made the tired, irritated parents even more pissed off than they already were. Toddlers squirmed and babies cried and the moms’ and dads’ voices could be heard cajoling, pleading, and even sometimes threatening. Everyone was tired of waiting.
Oh yeah, if that stupid Kindred didn’t get here soon, there was going to be a riot, Lisa thought grimly.
She straightened her cute green elf costume—which consisted of a short green dress cut in a leaf-like pattern, stripy red and white candy cane tights, and black curly shoes that had bells jingling on their ends of their pointy toes—and got ready to go out and make the announcement.
“Oh no, Mrs. Claus forgot to wash Santa’s suit and it made him late but he’s coming soon, I promise!”
Ugh—what a load of crap!
Once again, Lisa asked herself how she’d gotten into this situation. How had she gotten to the place where the best job she could land was as a Christmas elf—a rather plump Christmas elf, her employer had pointed out critically when she had first put on the outfit—waiting for a stupid Santa who didn’t show? Just how had she gotten here?
Oh, that’s right—I married Cameron, Lisa reminded herself sourly.
It was the worst mistake she’d ever made in her life—even worse than majoring in Creative Writing instead of something practical like Nursing in college.
Marriage had seemed like a good idea at the time. Cameron had been charming and sensitive and he came from money—a lot of money. Which was a novelty to Lisa, who was only one step up from poor white trash, as her mom liked to point out when she got “drunk and disorderly.”
Lisa had wanted to lift herself out of poverty—she was the first person in her family ever to go to college—a big deal in her hometown of Palatka, a little town in the Florida Panhandle. But all she’d managed to do was land herself in debt—heaps of student loans there was no way to pay off.
Until Cameron came along, that was. He had promised to help her pay it all off and even to send her to grad school. Then, before having kids, they would travel the world and Lisa could be a travel writer while she picked up ideas for the novel she wanted to write someday.
It had all seemed like a beautiful dream from the fairytale wedding to the honeymoon in Hawaii—until the first time he hit her, that was.
That first slap—on their honeymoon night after Cameron had had too much to drink—was so completely unexpected Lisa had been too surprised to cry. Her new husband had seemed so kind and generous and altogether perfect—finding out he had a darker side was shocking.
Unfortunately shocking gave way to routine over the next few months. It turned out that Cameron—like her mom and her stepfather, for that matter—had a penchant for getting “drunk and disorderly” on a regular basis. Only instead of passing out like her stepfather, Gil, or having the giggle fits like her mom, Cameron was a mean drunk. A mean, abusive drunk.
Lisa had read the statistics about abused women during a Sociology of Women class she’d taken in college. She knew that many of the women wound up dead and that most of them went back to their abusers time and again before they finally made the break, because it was so hard to get away. Restraining orders were flimsy and often didn’t work and you couldn’t live at a shelter forever. At the same time, it was hard to hold down a steady job when you were constantly looking over your shoulder, afraid that the abusive asshole you’d left might find you at any minute.
She had taken it for as long as she could—over a year—before Lisa determined her husband wasn’t going to change. When he broke her wrist, she’d had enough. She decided she wasn’t going to be a statistic.
That night in the hospital where Cameron had made her say she had “fallen down the stairs” she started planning her escape.
Saving money out of the household expenses wasn’t easy but she’d finally managed to get enough for a bus ticket out of town. It would be better, she’d decided, to try and lose herself in a big city with a large and shifting population. So she had taken a Greyhound to Tampa and that was where she had been for the past six months.
Living in a rundown apartment with roaches almost as big as her new neighbors, Lisa was barely scraping by. But her bruises had faded and at least she didn’t have to be afraid anymore every time Cameron decided he just wanted a “little nip after dinner.” Which invariably turned into his downing most of a bottle of expensive single malt Scotch and then beating her for imagined offenses.
Crappy as it was, her life was her own again, and she had gradually stopped looking over her shoulder. Cameron must have given her up as a bad deal and decided to let her go, she thought. Hadn’t he already told her she was too fat when he got drunk? Even though he called it “pleasingly plump” and swore that her long brown hair and big blue eyes more than made up for her overly-generous curves when he was sober. He had probably found a skinny woman who was more to his taste and was wooing her even now—giving her the same charming act he’d used on Lisa to put her off her guard.
She barely made enough to keep body and soul together, as her granny used to say, and her current job wasn’t great. But
on most days, she had hopes that things would get better.
However, today wasn’t most days.
Where is he? Lisa thought again. Outside of Santa’s Workshop two of the kids at the front of the line had started a snowball fight with the fake snow. They were covered in the artificial white stuff which looked like sparkly instant mashed potato flakes and stuck tenaciously to both clothes and hair, refusing to come off without multiple washings.
Gary, the photographer, stood idly by, not saying a thing even though the kids were not supposed to be messing with the “snow.” He had a bored expression on his face and was scrolling through his cell phone, probably watching porn again. Several of the parents had already complained in the past, when he played it too loudly and the kids overheard some very Not-Safe-For-Work moans and groans.
My life wasn’t supposed to be like this, Lisa thought to herself resentfully as she ducked out the back of the fake wooden building, which looked like a candy cane palace on the outside. Taking a deep breath, she prepared to walk around the front and make her announcement about the reindeers being sick after getting into the eggnog or whatever else came to mind.
But right now what came to mind was disillusionment and resentment.
I was supposed to be traveling the world, seeing new and exotic locations and getting ideas for a novel. Not dressing like an elf and waiting for a stupid Kindred Santa who doesn’t show while the parents rant at me and the kids cry and drool and get all messed up in that stupid fake snow!
But that was just life. Time to suck it up and do her job.
She turned to go around the side of the building and ran face-first into a broad chest.
“Oh!” Lisa gasped, bouncing off the muscular stranger and falling ass-first into one of the fake holly plants that decorated the outside of Santa’s Village. Unfortunately, the fake holly leaves had really sharp points on them and her gasp of surprise quickly turned into a shout of pain as they scratched the backs of her thighs, right through the stupid stripy tights she wore.
The man she’d run into reached down and quickly grabbed her shoulder. He pulled her out of the bush and sat her on her feet again in no time flat.
No, not a man, Lisa realized as she looked up…and up and up to see his stern but handsome face. He had a hawk nose, vivid green eyes and very black hair. As tall and muscular as he was, this had to be a Kindred. Probably the Kindred she had been waiting for!
“There you are!” she exclaimed, glaring up at him. “I’ve been waiting for you for the last hour! What took you so long?”
The Kindred looked taken aback.
“I didn’t know this mission was time sensitive,” he rumbled in a deeper-than-human voice. “Are you my contact?”
Three
“Your contact? Okay, sure, I guess so,” the Earth girl with the long brown hair said, frowning up at him.
She had big blue eyes and creamy skin—not to mention full, luscious curves which were evident under the festive green uniform she wore, Asher couldn’t help noticing. Though the white and red striped stockings didn’t exactly match the green outfit, but he supposed that was just another part of her holiday garb. It certainly was effective—the minute he’d seen her he had known she must be the one he was looking for. And apparently she had been looking for him too.
“Come on—get in here!” she exclaimed, motioning to the small building which had been erected in the middle of the teaming indoor shopping area. Asher had been somewhat surprised that his contact location was in the middle of such a busy area, but he supposed it was easier to hide any covert activity in a crowd.
And crowded it certainly was. There were human shoppers everywhere, pushing and shoving, apparently caught up in a buying frenzy. Asher remembered what Dru had said about the Christmas holiday being a cross between a devout religion and rampant greed and agreed with his friend’s statement wholeheartedly. Though he had, as yet, to see any sign of the religious aspect of the holiday.
He started to follow the girl in the holiday outfit into the small building but apparently he wasn’t moving fast enough because she reached out and grabbed the front of his black uniform shirt and tugged to speed him up.
“Hurry up! The kids can’t see you out of uniform!” she hissed.
Asher wanted to protest that he was in uniform and ask what in the world she was talking about but she spoke with authority and clearly knew this world better than he did. So he moved more quickly, only ducking just in time to keep from knocking his forehead on the low lintel of the door.
Inside he could barely straighten up—the top of his head brushed the low wooden ceiling and the area was small and cramped and much plainer than the elaborately decorated outside.
The girl shut the door hurriedly behind him and then turned to look at him critically, her hands on her ample hips. She was what Asher had heard other humans call “plus sized” which was exactly how he liked his women. Not that he ought to be looking at a contact in that way, he thought—he needed to keep his mind on the mission. But damn, was it really necessary to send such a tempting, curvy female to meet him?
“You’re a big one, all right, ” the girl remarked. “Good thing they got the extra, extra large suit. Well, what are you waiting for?” she added when he just stood there looking at her. “Get undressed!”
“What?” Asher looked at her blankly. “Why would I need to disrobe for this mission?”
“Because this ‘mission’ includes wearing a heavy fur suit and if you put it on over leather pants and a long-sleeved shirt, you’re going to roast inside an hour!” the girl exclaimed impatiently, motioning to his flight leathers and the heavy, satiny uniform shirt he wore. “Honestly, didn’t they tell you anything about what you’re supposed to do?”
“I was told you would give me all the details,” Asher said, frowning at her. She didn’t need to be so brusque with him. Dru hadn’t told him anything about a time limit on this assignment and anyway, he had come as soon as he got the coordinates!
Though he had no idea why he would have to change clothes, he began undressing anyway. She was so insistent he hardly dared to do anything else, though he wasn’t used to taking orders from anyone but a commanding officer.
The girl was peering out the small front windows of the house they were huddled in together, a look of anxiety on her lovely face.
“Oh, there they go again throwing the fake snow and of course Gary won’t do a damn thing to stop them!” she muttered. Turning, she saw that Asher only had his uniform shirt half off, exposing part of his chest. “Hurry up, won’t you?” she exclaimed in apparent exasperation. “Here—I’ll help you.”
She reached for him, grabbing one side of his shirt in one hand to pull it off and placing her other small hand on his bare chest.
And that was when it happened.
At the feel of her bare hand touching his exposed chest, an instant stab of desire, so intense he felt like he had been punched, suddenly ripped through Asher. His shaft rose to immediate attention, throbbing painfully hard against the fabric of his flight leathers. At the same time his double set of fangs, dormant all his life, suddenly came to life. They grew long and sharp and ached painfully, insisting that he had to grab the luscious little female and bite her at once—marking her as his and his alone.
For a moment he stood there, completely immobilized by the sudden rush of painful desire. The punch of lust had left him breathless—not to mention aching for her touch.
No, whispered a voice in his head. Not a punch—a strike. This is the first of the Three Signs—the Strike!
He remembered his grandfather describing it to him, explaining how the sudden intense desire almost felt like a physical blow it was so strong. But it couldn’t be, could it? He was certain this little Earth female had no Tangala DNA, so how was it that his body was reacting to her this way?
It must be my imagination, he thought uneasily. It’s been a long time since I visited a willing female to relieve my lusts. This little human i
s exactly the type I like and she’s touching me, so my body reacted—that must be all it is.
In the meantime, it was apparent that his contact had no idea what was happening to him. She was efficiently stripping his uniform shirt away while Asher just stood there, letting her undress him. Looking up at his face, she appeared to notice his fangs for the first time—no doubt because they were suddenly much longer and sharper than they had ever been before.
“What in the world?” she demanded, glaring at him. “Who do you think you are, Vampire Santa? You’ll scare the kids to death in those things! Come on—spit them out. This is Christmas, not Halloween, you know!”
When Asher made no move to do as she said—indeed, he was afraid to move at all because he was still struggling to control the lust raging through him—she reached up as though to take the fangs out of his mouth herself. She must have thought they were fake because she reached confidently into his mouth…and promptly cut her thumb on the point of his right fang.
The contact was only for an instant—she cried out and drew her thumb back almost at once. Yet it was long enough.
Asher felt his fangs throb as some of his essence was automatically injected into her. And for a moment—just a moment—he had a vision of her riding astride him. Her full curves were exposed and her heavy breasts swayed, her nipples tight and pink as though someone had been sucking them.
Me, Asher thought deliriously, I was sucking them—making her moan with pleasure as I teased her tender peaks until she could stand it no more and had to mount me and take my shaft deep in her hot little pussy!
The vision faded but it had been so intense—so real—he had to blink his eyes several times to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
The Sight, whispered a voice in his head. The second of the Three Signs—you had a vision of her in the future—of the two of you together!
Falling for Kindred Claus Page 2
