All I Want For Christmas Is My Mating Stone

All I Want For Christmas Is My Mating Stone Page 9

by Brenda Trim

  “Al­most per­fect,” Kyran replied as he stared down at her.

  “Al­most?”

  “It’s hard to ap­pre­ci­ate the jew­elry with all those clothes in the way,” he sug­gested with a wicked smile. His gray orbs glowed brightly as de­sire filled his gaze.

  “Is that so?”

  He nod­ded.

  “Stay right here,” she in­structed, and bee-lined to the bed­room.

  Mack quickly lit some can­dles, un­dressed, then sprawled across their enor­mous bed. “Oh, Santa!” she called out.

  Mo­ments later, Kyran stood in the door­way. Mack crooked her fin­ger, mo­tion­ing him for­ward. Kyran walked to the night­stand and opened the drawer. A pair of hand­cuffs dan­gled from his fin­ger, the metal gleam­ing in the soft light.

  “Have you been a verra good girl this year?”

  “I’m afraid I made the naughty list. I guess you’re go­ing to have to pun­ish me,” Mack purred as her hands roamed her body in in­vi­ta­tion.

  Metal clicked around her wrists, and Kyran flashed a de­vi­ous grin. “Merry fuck­ing Christ­mas to me,” he mut­tered as he at­tached the other cuff to the bed­post.

  “And to all a sated night,” she mur­mured.

  * * *

  EX­CERPT FROM Sen­tinel of Khoth BOOK #21

  Tilt­ing her head back, Talysia en­joyed the breeze on her face. It hadn’t been long since she moved to Khoth from the Tehrex Realm and the planet was vastly dif­fer­ent from Earth. Not only were su­per­nat­u­rals a known en­tity, there was also, none of the harsh chem­i­cal odor con­stantly in the air on Earth. When she lived there, she had to keep her ‘oth­er­ness’ se­cret from hu­mans while liv­ing with the fact that ev­ery breath she took burned her sen­si­tive nose, leav­ing it stuffy and sore all the time.

  The pur­ple night sky and clean air was an easy ad­just­ment for her to make since re­lo­cat­ing. It was the peo­ple she was still ner­vous around. While leaps and bounds bet­ter than those on her home planet of Ca­lypso, the Cuele­bre drag­ons were mas­sive when they shifted which make her think of be­ing squished un­der one of their feet.

  Shak­ing her head at her way­ward thoughts, she could hear her sis­ter, Tia’s re­crim­i­na­tions about not trust­ing any­one. A loud screech had her jump­ing while her turquoise eyes scanned the beach in front of her while her mouth tilted up in a smile to match the laugh­ter all around her.

  Be­ing sur­rounded by friends and fam­i­lies out to have fun at the beach lifted her spir­its and made an eight-hour work day fun. Work­ing at Medure Eats has been her fa­vorite job de­spite the fact that she was still learn­ing all of the foods unique to this planet and how to pre­pare them. Their menu was sim­ple with most of their pop­u­lar items be­ing more of a snack that was easy for her to pre­pare and serve.

  In her eighty-nine years she’d worked in var­i­ous ca­pac­i­ties from wait­ing ta­bles to clean­ing bath­rooms to dis­in­fect­ing med­i­cal wings on her home planet. She had to say that she hated clean­ing the var­i­ous bod­ily flu­ids the most out of all of her pre­vi­ous jobs.

  A group of kids raced by the open win­dow of the Medure Eats shack. Lean­ing her el­bows on the glossy rock bar where she served food to the cus­tomers, Talysia chuck­led as a young fe­male with long, curly black hair and Sap­phire blue eyes punched a male in the shoul­der. The male had green hair that re­minded her of the mer­maids back home.

  It made her think of her brief friend­ship with Chantrelle, who’s hair was the same color, but her eyes were grey. She was a mer­maid and be­friended Talysia when she was search­ing for shells to dec­o­rate her room with.

  As Talysia turned around to get a drink a loud boom echoed be­hind her a split sec­ond be­fore she went fly­ing through the air. As her feet left the ground, she re­acted on in­stinct throw­ing her arms over the back of her head while she curled into a ball. Heat sur­rounded her as the sound of some­thing im­pact­ing the ground echoed around her.

  Pain det­o­nated in her side a sec­ond later when her body slammed into the side of the tiny hut. Screams filled her ears as soon as they stopped ring­ing. Peo­ple were out­side and hurt. She had no idea ex­actly what hap­pened, but she knew they were in dan­ger.

  Heart ham­mer­ing in her chest, she crawled to the door. She con­sid­ered look­ing through the open­ing but re­mained low in case they were un­der at­tack. A hard pat­ter­ing hit the roof, mak­ing her think of gun fire and hur­ry­ing her move­ments. “Shit,” she cried out as her leg protested the move­ment.

  Cough­ing, she re­al­ized the small build­ing was fill­ing with smoke and the smell of wood burn­ing at the same time wa­ter splashed in the open win­dow. Re­lief at the sound be­ing wa­ter hit­ting the roof was short lived when she re­al­ized with a heart-stop­ping jolt that a bomb must have gone off out­side. Thank­fully, there was lit­tle to no harsh un­nat­u­ral smell ac­com­pa­ny­ing it, so she hoped it wasn’t as ma­jor as the sounds made it seem.

  Not that you would know what a bomb smelled like, the voice in her head screamed with a pan­icked edge that matched her rac­ing heart.

  When she reached the door, she re­al­ized her arm was cut and bleed­ing as she tried to twist the knob. It took her a cou­ple times to get the por­tal open when her slick hand slipped. The cross breeze im­me­di­ately pushed smoke from the room. On her knees, Talysia squinted and tried to catch her breath.

  “Hoy shit,” she mut­tered when she saw the group of kids were ly­ing a few feet away. Bile rose in her throat and she wanted to slam the door and curl up out of sight. The brief sight of sev­eral beach-go­ers ly­ing there bloody and bro­ken ter­ri­fied her. The bomb was way worse than it sounded.

  Sud­denly a young male ran to­ward the kids from the in­tact tree line to the left. With­out al­low­ing her­self to think too much, she waved her hands and called out as qui­etly as pos­si­ble, “Watch out. Hurry up and get in here.”

  The fe­male with the deep blue eyes turned her way and blinked sev­eral times while Talysia kept mo­tion­ing them to hurry to the shack. “Stay down Troy,” the male with green hair told his friends. “C’mon you guys.”

  Troy stopped and nod­ded in re­sponse then turned and headed to­ward her while the green-haired one grabbed one of the fe­male’s arms at the same time a brown-haired, blue eyed male grabbed her other side. The male with blue eyes must re­ally care about the fe­male as he was bleed­ing and limp­ing along next to the other two. The gash in his side was enough to turn Talysia’s stom­ach.

  She saw the fe­male wince and had no doubt that she was in­jured in the blast too. To­gether they helped the fe­male up and scram­bled to the door. Talysia moved aside and slammed the door as soon as they were all in­side. They all went to their knees pant­ing as wa­ter dripped from the ends of their hair, pat­ter­ing softly on the floor.

  “What just hap­pened?” she asked them.

  The green-haired male seemed to be the leader of their group wrapped an arm around the fe­male and held her close. The ob­vi­ously stunned fe­male ran her hand over her face, smear­ing the soot from the smoke across her heart-shaped face. “A bomb went off out on the beach. I have no idea who set it off, but the maa­hes will be here soon. We just have to wait for them,” the green-haired male told her.

  “Are we safe in here?” the auburn-haired male asked at the same time the other one said, “Shouldn’t we go out there and help?”

  The fe­male was shak­ing her head as her eyes re­mained fixed on the open­ing above the bar. “It’s not safe for us out there. Our par­ents will be pissed if we go out there with­out more pro­tec­tion. For all we know there is an en­tire army out­side wait­ing for us.”

  “Why would they be wait­ing for you guys? You’re just kids.” Kids were not likely to be the fo­cus of an at­tack like this. There was some­thing Talysia was miss­ing. These were no or­di­nary kids. They all had an
alert­ness about them that she couldn’t imag­ine chil­dren their age pos­sess­ing. And, then there was the way they crouched ready to spring into ac­tion.

  “I’m Izzy, by the way. And this is Blaze, Dono­van and Troy. Any­way, let’s just say that I’ve been hunted my en­tire life,” Izzy ex­plained to her as she pointed to each of the males in turn.

  Talysia had no words. How was a child hunted her en­tire life? It made no sense. And, how were these kids not freak­ing out? She was on the verge of tears and hys­te­ria. This was un­real. Crap like this didn’t hap­pen. At least not around her.

  “Why would any­one want to harm you?” Talysia asked to keep from hav­ing a melt­down.

  “You don’t know the ex­plo­sion was meant for you,” Blaze told Izzy.

  “You’re right. You might be the tar­get. So far demons can’t ac­cess this realm, so it makes more sense that you are the one they were af­ter,” Izzy replied to Blaze be­fore turn­ing to Talysia. “He’s the son of An­gus. The King of the Cuele­bre. And, I am the daugh­ter of the Vam­pire King back in the Tehrex Realm. Be­ing royal chil­dren isn’t all balls and ball gowns.”

  “Un­less it’s a Kevlar gown,” Talysia joked as she pon­dered what the hell was go­ing on. At least two of the kids hid­ing with her were roy­alty. As in their freak­ing par­ents were Queens and Kings. It bog­gled the mind and chal­lenged ev­ery as­sump­tion she had about what a Princess’s life was ac­tu­ally like.

  On Ca­lypso the royal fam­ily of the Mer­maids and Sirens lived in safety and com­fort. Their lives filled with fancy dresses, din­ners and danc­ing. Sure, ev­ery­where she lived, in­clud­ing her home planet, there had been fight­ing and wars, but it was so far re­moved from her daily life that she had no idea what to do next.

  For the mo­ment she de­cided she would fo­cus on keep­ing them safe. The pain made her grunt as she crawled over and reached for the big­gest knife in the small kitchen. Clutch­ing it close, she doubted she’d ever breathe easy again. Shout­ing and com­mo­tion star­tled a yelp from Talysia. Her hands flew to cover her mouth hop­ing she didn’t give their hid­ing spot away.

  “Is that the knights?” Dono­van asked as they all fo­cused on the open win­dow.

  Blaze got to his feet and was nod­ding as soon as his head cleared the counter. Talysia’s chest tight­ened and the urge to pull him back down nearly over­whelmed her. These kids were prob­a­bly bet­ter able to pro­tect her than she was them, but that didn’t mean shit to her in­stincts. “Lorne, Finn and Blaine are here,” Blaze in­formed them.

  They all climbed to their feet and headed out of the door. The kids rushed up to one of the males roam­ing through the area as­sist­ing the in­jured. The male had short bn­lack hair, and was tall and ro­bust, like most of the males on the planet. The mere sight of him made her heart race for an­other rea­son. He had on leather pants along with a strap across his torso and noth­ing else. All those mus­cles made her mouth wa­ter with the de­sire to kiss his flesh and find out what made him moan.

  Glanc­ing away be­fore she em­bar­rassed her­self, she felt the blood drain from her face at the sight of a sev­ered arm in the sand not far away. All thoughts of the sexy male fled her mind as she mourned the lost lives all around her. It was nearly im­pos­si­ble to look away from the in­ert bod­ies. She’d never seen any­thing like that in her life.

  The day started with such prom­ise. The sun was shin­ing, the weather was per­fect, and laugh­ter filled the air only min­utes ago. Now the sun was blocked by smoke, and cries re­placed the joy. The beach was nearly de­stroyed. A mas­sive hole in the sand close to the wa­ter along with bro­ken trees, de­stroyed shrubs and body parts strewn across the rest of the area. Work would never be the same af­ter this, she thought.

  Some­thing sparkled in the late af­ter­noon sun­shine, blind­ing her for a mo­ment. Lift­ing her hand, she squinted and saw a piece of metal stick­ing out of the soft sand. Her stom­ach was a churn­ing mess as she walked over and picked it up from the ground. The odd metal was out of place.

  It had jagged, scarred edges, telling her it was in­volved in a fire. If she had to guess she’d say it was close to or part of the bomb that went off. Pris­tine, gleam­ing metal was re­vealed as she rubbed part of the grime away.

  “What did you find there?” Finn asked the curvy beauty.

  The fe­male yelped, threw her hands up in the air and the metal ob­ject she was hold­ing fly from her hands. Finn reached up and snatched it be­fore it fell to the ground.

  The fe­male gazed at him with wide eyes. Her pale skin and rapid breath­ing told him the stress of the events had af­fected her as much as the oth­ers at the scene. The grime on her cheek and the rac­ing of her heart told him she was not drawn to the beach by the ex­plo­sion like sev­eral oth­ers. That meant she was one of the lucky ones that sur­vived this dis­as­ter.

  For a split sec­ond he won­dered if she was in­volved with the at­tack but dis­missed it as he re­al­ized she was wear­ing a t-shirt for Medure Eats. And, she smelled like an ice-cold ocean. Look­ing her over he was cer­tain she worked for the es­tab­lish­ment and not in­volved.

  “Gods. You scared me.” She wrapped her arms around her mid­dle, but Finn was too busy en­joy­ing the way her voice sang like mu­sic. Never be­fore had a song or voice or an­i­mal that calmed yet ex­cited him at the same time the way Talysia’s voice did. He could lis­ten to it all day.

  Finn smiled at the sexy fe­male. “Sorry. You’re safe now. Maa­hes have sur­rounded the beach, noth­ing will get through that wall of drag­ons,” he as­sured her, point­ing to the knights that re­mained in their dragon forms around the area. Her shoul­ders dropped and her shoul­ders shook slightly. He imag­ined she was hav­ing a pretty fuck­ing bad day. “I’m Finn, by the way. I see that you found some ev­i­dence.”

  She fol­lowed his hand as he waved the piece of shrap­nel in front of his face. “I’m Talysia, and I as­sumed you were the good guys when Blaze and his friends rushed out to greet you. What can I do to help?” That voice again. It made him want to pull her into his arms and kiss her sense­less. Or, per­haps it was her beauty that made him want to kiss her.

  Finn wanted to take her away from the grue­some scene as her eyes trav­eled to a dis­mem­bered arm nearby. “You work at Medure, right?” He asked hop­ing to gain her at­ten­tion.

  Glanc­ing back at him, she shook her head and swal­lowed vis­i­bly. “Yeah. I started a few weeks ago.”

  “Did you hap­pen to see any­thing, Talysia?”

  Shak­ing her head, she hunched her shoul­ders. Even drawn in on her­self her curves were sexy. He al­ways liked a fe­male with a lit­tle meat on her bones. “The last thing I saw was Izzy punch­ing Blaze on the arm play­fully. When I turned around to get a drink the beach ex­ploded be­hind me.”

  “Were Dono­van and Troy with them?”

  “I saw Dono­van, but not Troy. Other than them, I didn’t re­ally pay at­ten­tion to the fam­i­lies be­hind them play­ing in the waves and on the sand.”

  “Why don’t you go back into the shack and close it down now? Then you can go home. And,” he con­tin­ued when she opened her mouth to re­spond “I will make sure the owner knows why the place was closed early. Don’t worry he will pay you for the full day.” Why the hell had he said that last part? He could en­sure she kept her job, but he couldn’t force the owner to pay her wages.

  “Okay. Thank you,” she mum­bled and turned to go back to the small es­tab­lish­ment.

  “Wait,” he called out, mak­ing her pause and turn back to him. She had stun­ning turquoise eyes and full, tempt­ing lips. “If you think of any­thing else please let me know.”

  “Where would I find you if I do?”

  Smil­ing wide, he fought the urge to give her his home ad­dress. Her voice was still as mu­si­cal, but he was no longer fight­ing to hold him­self back from her side. He’d bet the voice of a
siren af­fected other be­ings in some way. “At Tate­nen. If I am not there you can speak to any of the other maa­hes on duty.”

  “Okay, thank you,” she replied and hur­ried to Medure and started clos­ing down.

  Finn turned back to the beach and con­tin­ued gath­er­ing ev­i­dence for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. As he reached into a bag for a bag to drop the shrap­nel into, he in­spected the ob­ject closely.

  The tech­nol­ogy on Khoth ri­valed that of what he’d seen on Earth, but there were some things they had on Earth but not Khoth. Guns and bombs were some of those items they didn’t have in his realm.

  The metal looked like what they had on Khoth and seemed just as strong. Earth met­als were easy for drag­ons to bend, while met­als from their realm had more re­sis­tance. That was odd. How would they have got­ten their pre­cious met­als on Earth?

  He had no knowl­edge of weapons from the Tehrex Realm and hoped the King would have more an­swers about them. In the mean­time, he turned to the Prince to find out where Troy was and why he wasn’t with them.

  “Hey, Blaze.” Finn called out.

  “Yeah,” The Cuele­bre Prince replied as he crossed the un­even sand to his side.

  “Talysia told me Troy wasn’t with you when the bomb went off. Where was he?”

  Blaze’s head jerked and his eye­brows fur­rowed. “Who is Talysia?”

  “She’s the em­ployee of Medure Eats. She said she saw Izzy hit you but Troy wasn’t with you guys.”

  “Oh,” Blaze said as he looked at the food shack then back at him. “Yeah. Troy went to the bath­room. That fe­male helped us right af­ter the ex­plo­sion. She thought Troy was an en­emy and called out a warn­ing.”

  “Thanks. Now, why don’t you and the oth­ers head back to the cas­tle? Your par­ents are wor­ried sick and need to see you,” Finn in­formed the Prince.

 

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