But no—surely that couldn’t be right! The Sight was a twofold sign and so far he’d only had the first part of it. Probably he had just been daydreaming—fantasizing about the sexy little human. It was nothing, really, he told himself uneasily. Nothing at all.
And then he looked down into her face and saw the second part of the twofold sign.
“Ouch—that really hurt!” She had put her thumb in her mouth and was sucking the small wound to ease it. When she looked up at him, Asher saw that her eyes—formerly deep blue—had gone the same brilliant green as his own eyes.
The color only lasted a moment—he hadn’t injected enough of his essence to change them for long—but even as they returned to their normal blue, he knew what he had seen was no mistake—no accident or trick of the light.
A change of eye color after an injection of essence was the second part of the twofold sign—the Sight—by which a Tangala Kindred knew his fated mate. The first part, of course was the intense vision of the future. And the fact that the Sight had followed so quickly after the Strike, which was the first sign, seemed significant.
But this couldn’t be happening to him, Asher thought again, feeling bewildered. She had no Tangala DNA—she couldn’t. So there was no way she could be his fated mate—no way he could bond her to him. And anyway, he was there to do a mission, not bond with anyone. What in the Seven Hells was going on?
“So I guess those are real, then?” she asked, motioning at his fangs. “I though you’d gotten Halloween and Christmas mixed up and you were wearing a fake pair. I didn’t know you were a Blood Kindred—sorry.”
“I am…Tangala Kindred.” His voice was a hoarse croak and he cleared his throat and tried again. “We are related to the Blood Kindred—an offshoot of them,” he went on. “But we are too far removed to really be called Blood Kindred anymore.”
“Okay, well just try to keep your mouth closed,” she said, frowning. “You don’t want to go scaring the kids. Some of the little ones are already frightened of Santa enough as it is. If they thought you were going to bite them, they would need all of the therapy.” She shook her head. “Though I’m sure the beard and mustache will probably hide them as long as you’re careful.”
Asher frowned.
“Beard and mustache?”
“Come on,” she said, not answering his implied question. “Get your pants down—we need to get you dressed. At least your boots will work with the outfit.”
Asher was reluctant to continue disrobing—mostly because his shaft had yet to go down. He tried willing his erection away but it refused to go. Some of that probably had to do with the fact that the tiny structure they were in was rapidly filling with her sweet, warm feminine fragrance and part of it was the way her green uniform clung to her curvy hips and full breasts.
Gods—he wanted her! Only his years of rigid self control and discipline kept him from grabbing her and dragging her close for a kiss. His body was insisting they needed to be together and every moment in close proximity only made him want her more.
So much for having ice water in your veins, a jeering little voice in his head said. You’ve done hundreds of missions and assassinated Kindred enemies by the dozen without blinking an eye, yet it’s taking all your strength not to grab this curvy little Earth girl and take her right here against the wall!
Forcing himself to look away from her, Asher turned to face the wall and began unfastening his flight leathers. Thank the Goddess he was wearing undershorts—though to be honest the tight black fabric didn’t do a thing to hide his embarrassing problem. The huge bulge in them made it more than evident how aroused he still was.
“Okay, are you ready?” his contact asked. “It’s time to put on the suit.”
“What suit?” Turning his head, Asher saw that she was holding out a strange looking outfit—a suit made of red fuzzy material with large white fur cuffs at the wrists and ankles. “You want me to put this on?” he asked, bewildered. Why would wearing this be part of his mission?
But his contact was glaring at him as though he was being deliberately obtuse.
“Yes, I want you to put it on!” she exclaimed. “Some of those kids have been waiting for over an hour to see Santa. Now hurry up! Or do I have to help you again?”
“No, no—I can do it!” Asher said quickly. He didn’t want her to see his embarrassing erection, which was still painfully hard.
Grabbing the suit from her hands, he pulled on the furry trousers—which thankfully hid his throbbing problem—and pulled them on. They went up easily but it was clear the outfit had been made for someone with a much bigger waist. Asher tried to fasten them tighter but the minute he took his hands away, the furry red trousers dropped down around his ankles.
His contact seemed to see his problem at once.
“Oh, no wonder the pants fell down—you need some stuffing!” she exclaimed. “Santa isn’t supposed to look like a fitness model, after all. Here, let me help.”
She grabbed two fluffy pillows which had been sitting in the corner and brought them over to him at once. In a businesslike manner, she knelt down and tugged the trousers back up to his thighs.
“All right now—turn around,” she told him, frowning. “I can’t stuff the pillow in if you’re facing the wall like that.”
Asher froze. This was going to be fucking awkward.
Reluctantly, steeling himself for her reaction, he turned to face her.
Her pretty face—which had been set in a businesslike frown—suddenly changed. Her eyes—which just happened to be right on the level of his engorged shaft, which was still straining against the black fabric of his under briefs, went wide and disbelieving.
“What the…” She scrambled backwards and got shakily to her feet. “What is that for?” she demanded, pointing at his erection. “Please tell me you’re not one of those sickos who gets off on the idea of kids sitting on your lap!”
“What?” Asher demanded. “Who did you say would sit on my lap?”
“The kids! You know—the children.” She motioned out the two small front windows of the house and when he looked, Asher did indeed see a long line of children and parents waiting. But were they really waiting for him? To sit on his lap? The idea made no sense.
“Why would they wish to sit on my lap?” he asked suspiciously.
“Because you’re playing Santa Claus!” The girl’s exasperation was back in full force. “Don’t you know anything about Santa Claus?”
Asher thought of the details Dru had given him.
“He is a portly male who wears red fur and is dragged through the sky by flying ruminants,” he recited rapidly. “He enters people’s domiciles without permission and leaves gifts for children who he deems have exhibited acceptable or ‘nice’ behavior. But ‘bad’ children who exhibit unacceptable behavior are given dirty lumps of carbon.”
For a long moment his contact just stared at him.
“Wow…just wow.” She shook her head. “Okay, you have the general gist of it though the way you said it sounded really weird. I don’t have time to correct everything because the crowd is getting really restless.” She pointed out the window again. “But the point of this is that you dress up like Santa, the kids sit on your lap and tell you what they want for Christmas. Then Gary, there—the photographer—takes a picture and we move on to the next kid. Got it?”
Asher felt completely bewildered.
“But…I am a member of the Elite Espionage Corps. How can my mission be to impersonate Satan Clause and allow children to sit on me and tell me what gifts they want for your Earth holiday?” he demanded. “This is most irregular.”
His contact’s big blue eyes flashed.
“Listen, Mr. Kindred Warrior,” she snapped, glaring up at him. “It’s your mission because they sent you here and I’ve been waiting for you to show up for over an hour. So you’re damn well going to finish putting on the suit and get out there! But first you have to do something about that…that problem of your
s.” She motioned at his shaft which was still stubbornly erect. “You can’t have kids sitting on your lap like that—it would be obscene!”
Asher’s temper finally broke.
“This is not my fault!” he growled, motioning down at himself. “It’s yours.”
Four
“Excuse me?” Lisa was getting more and more pissed off. First the big lunk-head was late and then he was slow getting dressed—so slow she had to help him, though that was way outside her job description. And now he was standing there sporting the biggest wienerschnitzel she’d ever seen and saying it was her fault he was hard. What in the hell was the matter with the big Kindred asshole?
“I said,” he ground out, his green eyes flashing, “That this problem is your fault. You’re fucking gorgeous and this entire small structure is now filled with your sweet scent. I cannot help the way my body reacts to such overwhelming stimulation. Of course I’m hard!”
Lisa stared at him, trying to take in what he was saying. This guy—like all Kindred warriors—was “fucking gorgeous” himself, to use his own words. He looked close to seven feet tall and every inch of him was hard, mouthwatering muscle—she ought to know since he was standing there with his shirt off, his broad chest exposed and the Santa pants halfway down around his thighs. He had a face that could sell action adventure movies—or maybe really expensive watches—and a body that a muscle magazine would want to feature on their front cover. And he was saying she was too tempting to resist?
“I’m just…just an ordinary girl,” she said, finding her voice at last. Actually, on the plump side of ordinary, she reminded herself. She would have been considered much prettier if she was thinner but since dieting since the age of twelve hadn’t achieved that effect, she didn’t think it was ever going to happen now.
“You may be considered ‘ordinary’ on your planet,” the warrior said stiffly, “but you are anything but ordinary by my standards.”
“I mean, you’re not bad yourself but this is hardly the time or the place,” Lisa said, still feeling bewildered.
“You’re right—I’m being very unprofessional.” He took a deep breath, as though trying to calm down and said, “Forgive me. It’s just that I didn’t expect someone like you as my contact. You are quite extraordinarily lovely and your scent…” He shook his head. “Let’s just say that my, er, problem should go away once we get out into the open and your sweet scent dissipates.”
He smelled pretty amazing himself, Lisa thought. A wild scent—spicy and dark and somehow dangerous but very addictive. She found herself wanting to get closer…wanting to smell him some more…
Then one of the kids outside started screaming and she snapped out of the daze she had somehow fallen into. Looking out the window, she saw two little boys—around seven or eight—rolling around in the fake snow pounding each other while everyone else in line watched.
“Oh my God, I have to go out there and make an announcement that Santa will be out soon or there’s going to be a full-blown riot!” she exclaimed, turning back to the tall Kindred. “Put on the rest of the suit and I’ll come back to help you with the beard in a minute. Just hurry, okay?”
He nodded mutely and she dashed out to try and break up the fight that was getting more heated by the minute.
One of the boys’ parents—a mom—was trying in a rather ineffectual way to get the kids apart.
“Now, Ethan,” she was saying in a distressed voice, “you know Mommy doesn’t like it when you act like this—it’s so hard on Mommy’s poor nerves. Please behave!”
The other parent—a dad staring avidly at his cell phone—wasn’t paying much attention at all.
“C’mon, Anthony,” he muttered, his eyes flicking away from the glowing screen for a split second before going back again. “Quit horsing around.”
Since neither of the parents was having much luck breaking up the fight—not like they were trying very hard, Lisa thought with acute irritation—it was up to her.
Reaching down, she got a hand on either one of their shoulders and wrenched them apart.
“Stop it! Stop it right now!” she exclaimed, raising her voice to be heard. “What’s wrong with you boys, fighting right in front of Santa’s Workshop? Do you both want to be put on the naughty list?”
“He hit me first,” the smaller boy, who had blond hair, sniffled, glaring at the other one.
“Did not!” the larger boy proclaimed. He had brown hair and freckles. “And anyway, if I did, it was only ‘cause you deserve it! He said Santa wouldn’t give me a machine gun for Christmas,” he explained to Lisa.
“Well, not a real one!” the other boy objected. “Cause you could kill people with a real one.”
“I know that,” the bigger boy said. “I’m gonna kill my teacher. She gives too much homework and I hate her!”
“Hey Anthony, that’s not nice, buddy,” the dad on the cell phone said vaguely. “We don’t talk like that.”
“’We don’t talk like that’? Is that all you’re going to say?” the mother of the other little boy demanded. “I hope you realize you’re raising a serial killer right there, Sir! Not to mention a bully! Why, he attacked my little boy just because Ethan tried to tell him that shooting people is wrong. Which is something you ought to be teaching him!”
Finally the dad put down his cell phone. He glared at the other boy’s mom.
“Is that right, lady?” he said flatly. “And I guess you want the government to take away all our guns and leave us all defenseless. Ya know…” He pointed a finger at her. “Guns don’t kill people—people kill people.”
“I know,” the woman snapped back. “People like you who raise their children to idolize violence and weapons of war!”
Lisa was disgusted, both by the little boy’s bloodthirsty remarks and by his dad’s lackadaisical response but she didn’t think the other boy’s mom was helping the matter either by lecturing about parenting skills.
“Excuse me,” she said, trying to get their attention. “Excuse me, Santa will be here in just a minute. So if everyone could just calm down…”
But the two angry parents went right on yelling at each other. And instead of helping to break it up, the other people in the crowded line were whipping out their cell phones and recording the whole thing.
Oh, I’m going to get into so much trouble over this! Lisa thought despairingly. As the main Santa helper she was supposed to be the coordinator for this particular time slot. Which meant that she was in charge if anything went wrong. She had accepted the deal gladly because it came with fifty cents more an hour. But now she was beginning to think that fifty dollars more an hour wouldn’t be worth this crap!
“Excuse me!” she tried again, raising her voice almost to a shout. “Please, if you could just—”
“Bleeding heart Lib-tard!” the dad was shouting now, his red and black plaid hunting cap pushed back on his forehead to show an angry face almost the same color as Santa’s suit. “People like you disgust me!”
“People like me? What about people like you?” the woman demanded. “Can’t you understand this country is headed down the toilet because you can’t see what’s right in front of your face?”
“What’s going to be in front of your face is my fist!” the man shouted back, holding up a clenched fist to illustrate his point. “If you don’t like our country the way it is, you can fucking well leave it!”
“Hey!” Lisa shouted, stepping between them. “Hey, you can’t do that! You can’t threaten people here!”
“I can do whatever I want to,” the man growled. “This is a free country, girly.” He leaned forward, shoving his face right into hers pugnaciously. His breath smelled like stale beer. “Did you hear me? A free…fucking…country!”
With each word he poked her sharply in the sternum with one finger.
Lisa flinched at each poke but tried not to back down, though it was hard. The angry dad was a head and a half taller than her and probably outweighed her by sev
enty pounds at least. But she couldn’t just let him hurt the other boy’s mom—could she? Oh, where was mall security when you needed them?
“Excuse me, are you threatening this female?”
The inhumanly deep voice behind Lisa made her gasp and everybody froze on the spot.
Turning her head, she saw the huge Kindred standing there. He had put on the whole Santa outfit—beard included—but not the pillows. Instead he had wrapped the furry red fabric tightly around himself and cinched everything in place with the broad black belt with its thick brass buckle. His biceps were starkly visible, bulging the red fur of the sleeves, and his green eyes were snapping with anger as he glared at the man who was poking Lisa.
“Uh…” The man looked up at him uncertainly. It was clear that the Kindred’s size and height started working on his nasty attitude at once. “Hi, Santa,” he said at last, rather lamely. “How’s the North Pole?”
“I said, are you threatening her?” the Kindred demanded, ignoring the other guy’s attempt at a joke. “Because I will not tolerate that. She is under my protection. Stand down and apologize now.”
The man looked angry—like he wanted to tell the big Kindred to fuck off—but it was clear he didn’t quite dare.
“Yeah, right,” he snarled. “Whatever, man.”
This answer plainly wasn’t good enough for the Kindred. His eyes flashed and for a moment Lisa could have sworn the emerald green turned to fiery red.
“I said, apologize,” he growled. “NOW.”
The man looked up at him uneasily. It was clear who would win in a fight—though Lisa fervently hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She could see the click-bait headlines all over social media now—Beefcake Santa pounds pissed-off Dad! Or maybe Bloody Christmas! Or something like that.
At last the man shrugged.
“Sorry,” he muttered sullenly to Lisa, not meeting her eyes. He raised his voice. “But none of this woulda happened if we hadn’t been kept waiting so long!”
There were murmurs of agreement in the line, and Lisa saw that things could easily turn ugly again if she didn’t take control of the situation.
Falling for Kindred Claus Page 3
