Christmas After Dark: A Holiday Paranormal Romance Anthology

by Abigail Owen

  She closed her eyes and sang, letting the joy and companionship in the room soothe her soul and infuse her with the spirit of the season. In the middle of a song that seemed to be about fish and grapefruit, as far as she could grasp the meaning, she felt something Meredith would have called a disturbance in the force. It was as if the air pressure in the room changed; as if a powerful gale force wind were headed straight toward her.

  Dare.

  She could feel him. It didn't make sense, had never made sense, but there it was. She could feel him coming for her, and her body started trembling in spite of herself.

  He stopped in front of her and pulled her into his arms. She could feel that he was trembling, too.

  "I'm here. I'm back. I'm so sorry I left you alone for so long, but I never will again, I swear it."

  She almost fell over. “You—what? Dare, are you—"

  She stopped, not knowing how to finish her sentence. There had been April, after all. The adventurous, exciting April. How could he make promises about his future with her, when his past had held such different desires?

  Even so, how could she refuse him? She’d tried guarding her heart. She’d tried for years.

  His voice had had a strange lilt to it, so she leaned forward and sniffed. Sure enough, his ‘important business’ seemed to have taken him past at least one Atlantean whiskey distillery. She leaned back, unsure whether to be amused or annoyed, but amusement won out.

  "Really? If you wanted to go drinking, I would've been happy to go with you."

  "I would've asked you, but you threw me out so you could work," he said humbly.

  She had to laugh. Dare and ‘humble’ didn’t belong in the same sentence. "I know. You're right. I have the manners of a wild boar when the Muse takes me like that. I'm sorry too, but you’re back now. Should we go for a walk? It's a beautiful night."

  He grasped her wrist and started walking, pulling her none too gently along with him.

  "Beautiful night, yes. No to walks. I have things to say to you, and I’d like to say them in private."

  She stepped up her pace to keep up with him and twisted her wrist a little until she was holding his hand. "That works out well then, because I have things to say to you too."

  The sound of the crowd had been fading steadily as they walked along, and suddenly Dare swung her around until her back was against one of the cool marble walls of the palace.

  "I've changed my mind. I can't wait until we get up to your room. I need to put my hands on you.” With that, he took her mouth in a deep, passionate kiss. His hands stroked down her back until he found her butt. He squeezed it and then lifted her up, startling her into wrapping her legs around his waist.

  "Dare. What if somebody walks down this hallway?"

  He tore his mouth away from hers, breathing hard. "I don't care," he growled. "Let them get their own damn hallway."

  He flexed his hips so the hardness of his body was exactly in the spot where she wanted it, and she moaned and went boneless, clutching at his shoulders for all she was worth.

  "Dare—"

  He bit her neck.

  She cried out. “Please. Please, let's go to my room. I would like to have this conversation with you, but I'd like to have it in private."

  “Why didn’t you say so?” He swung her up into his arms. "This will be faster."

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and decided to bite his earlobe this time.

  "You keep talking about my round butt, so I find it hard to believe you want to carry me up three double flights of stairs again."

  "Ha. You weigh nothing. Remember, superior Atlantean strength."

  By then, he was running up the stairs. Luckily they didn't pass anyone, or at least not that she heard, because it probably would've been entirely obvious what they were rushing off to do.

  At least, what she hoped they were rushing off to do.

  By the time they made it to her room, she was already ripping the buttons off his shirt.

  He lowered her to her feet and took her face in his hands. "I need to tell you something."

  "I need to tell you something too," she said.

  "In this, I won't be a gentlemen. I need to go first.” He took her hands and knelt on the floor. "I must tell you that I have finally realized why I’ve been living with a hole in my heart for so long—because you weren’t with me. Lyric, I love you more than life itself. Without you, I have nothing, want nothing, and feel nothing. My soul is yours, my heart is yours, my life is yours. I will give you anything and everything you could ever desire, if only you'll be mine."

  Lyric couldn't stand for him to be kneeling. She wanted them to be equals, always. She pulled him to his feet again until he was facing her and then she began to speak, heedless of the tears running down her face.

  "Is this even possible? How can this be happening to me? I've waited all my life for a Christmas miracle—I've always believed—even when my parents died. Even when the doctors told me I'd never see again. I always believed, and hoped, and waited. And now—oh, Dare—now you are my Christmas miracle. I love you, and I'll love you forever."

  He kissed her then, and the world stopped spinning on its axis for a long, long time.

  "I know your home is important to you," he said roughly when they finally pulled apart. "I would give up the sea for you, were you to ask me."

  "I would never ask you to do that."

  “No. You’re right. I shouldn't ask you to make the choice. You don't have to ask. I renounce the sea for you on my own initiative."

  She shook her head and backed away a step. "No. No, you can't –"

  “Lyric. Are you trying to tell me that you won’t have me?” His voice was rough, intense in a way she’d never heard before. “I won’t accept it after you told me you love me. I don’t want to need you more than air, or light, or life, but I do. You own me now, body and what’s left of my blackened soul, and I’ll never let you go.”

  “Then don’t. Don’t let me go,” she whispered, and held out her arms.

  When he stepped into her embrace, it felt like she was finally—finally—coming home.

  And when their clothes and inhibitions fell away and he took her into his arms, she knew that forever had finally begun.

  Dare’s control was disintegrating. Lyric stood before him, her skin shimmering ivory in the moonlight streaming in from the open doors to the balcony.

  “Don’t ever let me go,” she repeated, and the words were a blessing and a benediction, permission and invitation.

  He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his cold, lonely life, and yet now that she was in his arms, he was stunned speechless. Gulping in air, drowning again. Drowning in hunger, desire, and pure, primitive need so fierce and powerful that he was all but driven to his knees before it.

  Some remnant of his conscience forced him to speak. “I can never be good enough for you,” he rasped.

  A smile filled with seduction and sheer feminine power slowly curved her lips upward. “Then be bad enough for me.”

  Dare’s control buckled, trying to break free of the tight leash he held on it. “Now,” he growled. “I need you now.”

  She slid her arms around his neck, and the feel of her lush breasts pressing against his chest drove him to madness. He crushed his mouth to hers, desperate to taste her. Desperate to claim her. To possess her.

  She ran her fingers through his hair and cupped his face, kissing him back, pressing her body even closer to his.

  He released her mouth and kissed his way down the side of her neck, letting his teeth scrape against the sensitive curve where her neck met her shoulder, and he was rewarded with a gasp and then a delightful little moan that made him even harder.

  “More, more, more,” she demanded, and then she bit his earlobe and a spasm of electric desire clenched down low in his body.

  “More,” he agreed. “Now.” He swept her up into his arms, and then he dropped her onto the soft bed and pounced. “I n
eed you more than I need air to breathe. If you want me to stop, tell me now, because I don’t know how long my sanity will survive your touch.”

  Her lips parted, and those beautiful copper eyes smiled up at him. “Don’t stop. And you drive me crazy, too,” she told him.

  And then she touched him and he went mad. He licked the pulse in her neck, and she shivered in his arms. She was so delicate, so fragile. . . but no. Not delicate, not fragile. She was fearless and a warrior in her own right, conquering her life and her art and her naysayers.

  She was everything.

  She was his.

  “You’re trembling, too,” she whispered, tracing her fingers down the muscles of his chest.

  “I can’t help it. Your touch is turning my control to ash. I need to touch every single bit of your body.” He kissed a path down to her breasts, and finally, finally, put his hands on them. “So beautiful,” he murmured. “Mine.”

  She made that breathy moaning sound again—the one that shot sparks straight to his cock. “Dare, I want . . . I want--"

  “I want, too. So much.” He kissed her breasts, each in turn, and then licked a nipple into his mouth and gently sucked on it, his fingers gently pinching its twin.

  Lyric’s body arched up off the bed and she reached out and clutched his shoulders. “Oh, my, oh, my, oh, my, touch me. Please, please touch me and kiss me, more and more,” she whispered. “Let me touch you.”

  He gave her other breast the same attention, licking her erect nipple and then gently biting, just a little, to share the electric sensation that was sparkling and snapping through his body. He rubbed his thumb over the tip of her other breast, still wet from his mouth, and felt her writhe beneath him.

  She stroked his body with her hands, first tentatively and then more boldly, and then one hand reached lower to explore, but he caught her wrist, groaning. “Oh, gods, I want your touch so much. But I can’t. If you touch me now, I’ll go off like an untried youngling, and I want tonight to be about you.”

  “About both of us,” she whispered.

  He’d never been so hard in his life, and he didn’t know if he’d survive it. His cock was already hard as steel against her softness, and every moan, every gasp only made him harder. When her body jerked under his and she rubbed her hips against him, he wanted nothing more than to plunge into her right then. Thrust into her until she surrendered—take her body until she gave him her heart.

  Until she screamed his name.

  And then screamed it again.

  Instead, he ran his hand over the softness of her belly and then down further, cupping her and testing her with his fingers, Exulting in the wetness he discovered there. He raised his head and kissed her again while dipping his index finger into her wet heat and then sliding it up and around and over the delicate bud of her desire. She cried out and dug her nails into his back, clenching her thighs together and squirming on the bed.

  “Yes, Lyric. More. Give me more.” He bent down to take her nipple and sucked, hard, while his fingers continued a pattern of stroking and circling that was causing Lyric to toss her head back and forth on the pillow. She was moaning and her breathing fractured into gasps and pants, and he loved every single sound.

  He was making her moan for him.

  He was going to make her come for him.

  He drove two fingers inside her and plunged his tongue into her mouth with a rhythm older than time. “Come for me, Lyric. Come for me, now.”

  Her body stiffened and arched off the bed, and then she cried out, shuddering against him, clenching his fingers in her hot, wet heat and jerking her hips again and again. “Dare! Oh, I don’t—I can’t--"

  “Yes, you can,” he told her ruthlessly, and he moved down her body while she was still shuddering with her orgasm. He pressed her thighs open with his hands and licked right across her core, and she screamed.

  “I can’t, it’s too much, I want--" Her voice was shaky, but she was caressing his hair and his face and then she tightened her hands on his head and lifted to his mouth.

  “You can,” he told her, triumphant again, and he licked the center of her pleasure, smiling against her when she cried out and dug her fingertips into his shoulders.

  When he sucked on her, just there, drew her tiny bud into his mouth and sucked on it, her sweet, sweet honey bathed him and she went rigid and screamed his name, coming so hard her body shuddered and convulsed on the bed.

  Slowly, slowly, he pulled his fingers back, wiped his face on the sheet, and crawled up her body until he was settled between her legs and could capture her mouth again while she panted and shook beneath him.

  “I want you. So much,” he confessed, barely able to get the words past the pleasure and arousal and emotion choking him. If he couldn’t have her, he truly thought he might die, but to die in her arms would make his entire lonely existence worthwhile.

  “Dare. I need you now,” she said, her voice husky, and his world made sense again. “Now. Inside me, now. I can’t think, I can’t breathe, I can’t exist one more second without you inside me.”

  The universe froze in time--stopped moving forward for a moment that lasted an eternity and yet was over in less than a heartbeat, and Dare’s control finally and completely shattered.

  “Yes. Now.” He plunged into her warm, wet, welcoming heat and threw his head back in triumph, in ecstasy, in pure, primal pleasure. Sensation exploded within him, taking him over the edge from arousal to a raging maelstrom of hunger, desire, and jagged, sharp-edged need.

  This feeling—being inside her—to call this arousal was to call a hurricane a summer breeze. He roared out his pleasure in a wordless cry of triumph and claiming.

  Nothing had ever felt so good in his entire life as being inside her body. She was his.

  He was . . . home.

  Lyric felt everything. She felt the world kaleidoscope around her into shards of song and light and color; the heat of his strong, big body, all hard angles and curved lines of muscle and bone. He’d kissed her and she’d fallen; he’d touched her and she’d exploded; he’d put his mouth on her and she’d shattered.

  Then he’d entered her and now she was flying apart into a prism of emotion and desire and pure, crystalline sensation.

  She’d touched him, too, touched all the places she’d longed to touch and taste for so very long. She wanted to paint him like this; she wanted time to imagine his body proud and nude and so aroused.

  She would paint him. But not now.

  Not now. Now thoughts of art and paint and canvas were meaningless. Now she was flame and desire; meeting him, stroke for stroke. Thrust for thrust. Frantic with need and hunger, desperate for more and more and more of the pirate in her bed and in her heart.

  He kissed her with fire and possession and she felt wanted. Felt beautiful. Felt loved. Wanted him never, ever to stop. Never, ever to let her go.

  “So wet for me, Lyric,” he rasped, moving on top of her and inside of her, surrounding her with his heat and strength. “You’re so wet, just like I knew you would be. I want to taste you again. I want to spend days and weeks tasting and caressing and learning every inch of your body.”

  “Yes,” she moaned. “Yes to all of it, all of it, more and more and more.”

  Then he moved his hips against her, driving so deep into her she didn’t know where she ended and he began, they were Lyric and Dare, a tornado of incandescent sensation, of pleasure and desire and need, and she lost the ability to speak, or think, or do anything but feel and feel and feel. . . her body tightened and tightened and rose higher and higher to a peak she’d just conquered moments before with his lips on her body.

  “Oh my, oh my, how can I even, oh Dare. Dare,” she whispered or shouted and she was exploding, her body was shaking apart into individual atoms of warmth and beauty and radiance even as she could feel his thrusts speeding up, harder and harder, his body desperate against hers.

  “Come for me, Dare, my pirate,” she whispered, and as if given perm
ission he drove so deep inside her that he surely touched her soul and then he shuddered, his body clenching and his hips pulsing as he exploded inside her.

  “Lyric,” he cried out, and she could feel him all around her, could feel him in her heart in a blaze of heat and flame and knowing, and then suddenly, with no warning at all, she could feel him in her soul.

  The room swirled around them, faster and faster, and she clung to Dare. Her mind collapsed and reformed and expanded again, and she realized that this was a vision, not reality.

  A vision of Dare as a child.

  Dare crouching in shadows, in a barn? Stables? Shrinking back from a blow…

  Flash.

  Dare climbing the rigging on a ship, maybe a teenager? Falling, hitting the deck so hard she cried out even though she knew it wasn’t happening now…

  Flash.

  Dare on a bigger ship, a graceful ship with clean lines and a winged figurehead. Standing at the bow with an ethereal figure who must be Seranth…

  Flash.

  Dare, on the ship, in taverns, in fights, in danger, alone, alone, alone, always alone…

  Flash.

  Dare walking into her gallery that first time. She gasped to see what it looked like and felt a fierce pride in the sight of her paintings hanging on the walls. She had created those. She’d made that art. She shared his appreciation for her work and it warmed her, body and soul.

  "Is that a cat, or a footstool with feet?"

  Flash.

  She felt him now, watched him walk away from her gallery, from St. Augustine, from her, and felt his regret. Watched years spin by as regret turned to longing, longing turned to sorrow. Yearning turned to . . . love?

  Love? He loved her?

  Flash.

  His despair when he went overboard, his contentment when he woke up in her bed, his joy at bringing her to Atlantis, his . . .

  Love.

  She closed her eyes and waited, holding Dare like her life depended on it, while the magic pulled her inside his soul and then returned the favor and deposited him inside her. Flashes of memory, the music of constellations, lights and rainbows and darkness and radiance swirled around and through her, through him, through both of them, drawing them together even closer, binding golden thread through the tapestry woven between them over the past six years. She smelled a sharp, clear scent, so familiar. Sea and salt and Dare.