Christmas After Dark: A Holiday Paranormal Romance Anthology

by Abigail Owen

  “I wonder if fucking you in threes will make you come harder.”

  The laughter faded and every nerve ending lit up like the Christmas lights he’d put up on her porch. She had never, ever thought about taking something about her OCD and making it work for her. “Let’s find out,” she whispered.

  His grin flashed in the moonlit darkness before he kissed the laughing anticipation from her lips. Hell, he devoured her, his mouth demanding. Taking and giving, and when he lightly tugged on her bottom lip with his teeth, she couldn’t stop her whimper.

  She took his face in her hands and did the same to him. Then released him. “More,” she demanded.

  This had been building for days. Years. All those dreams he’d visited her in. Little fantasies when she’d taken care of her own needs, his had been the lips, the hands touching her. Her teenage heart had bled a little the day she realized he was gone and not coming back.

  Because he’s my mate.

  With a groan, he gathered her closer, almost crushing her, but she didn’t mind. He buried his face in the crook of her neck. “If I let loose, I could scare you.”

  She shook her head, her hair fanning out more around her. “Despite the obsessive thing, I don’t scare easy.”

  He huffed a laugh against her neck then raised his head to pin her with a stare that sucked all the oxygen from the room. “Tell me you’re ready for this, little mate.”

  Mate.

  Maybe they were moving too fast. Except…she knew this man. Since childhood and now as a woman, she knew him. She’d always trusted him. Always loved him. Now the thought of him walking away wouldn’t just make her heart bleed a little. She’d hemorrhage.

  Sean had described it once. That when Cassie turned him, he realized he’d always been meant to be a wolf shifter. Granted, for Shyla, given the trigger for her current lifestyle, that fact was harder to swallow.

  But, also, right.

  Cade would turn her into a wolf. Into a creature stronger, more powerful than her weaker human form. Keep her at his side. Protect her, partner with her. Shyla waited for fear or panic or anything of the sort to filter through the shock that this was happening.

  But shock wasn’t what was tangling her breath up in her lungs or sending her blood roaring through her veins. Excitement, anticipation, and a kind of settled sort of knowing captivated her.

  She traced the contours of his face with her fingertip—thick eyebrows, prominent cheekbones, strong jaw, slashing lips—exhilarated at knowing that she could. That tonight wouldn’t be the only time.

  “I think I’ve always known,” she said.

  “You’ve known what?”

  She’d never seen Cade Campbell look unsure of himself, but he did right then. Unsure and vulnerable in a way she realized suddenly only she could make him.

  But she didn’t want her strong shifter that way. Not if she could help it. “That I’m your mate. When you left, it tore me apart. I don’t want to go through that ever again.”

  He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Then his eyes shot open, glittering at her with a level of possession that reached inside and set her on fire, like liquid heat pulsing through her, pressure gathering at the juncture of her thighs.

  He must’ve seen her thoughts in her eyes, because Cade grinned before laying claim to her lips again. With frantic hands she reached for his shirt, yanking it over his head. He laughed, and she hardly blinked before she was divested of her own shirt and bra.

  “Perfect,” he whispered, then leaned down and pulled her straining nipple into his mouth. He sucked three times, paused, and looked up at her with wicked intent. Then sucked three times again, and every drag pulsed deep within her.

  “I think you like that,” he murmured.

  “Uh-huh,” she managed to groan before he did it again.

  He released her and moved back up to her lips. “I want to love you softly, but this is a mating, and I’ve waited ten years. I can’t—”

  “Stop.” She ran her hands down over his ribs and paused at a smoother patch of skin. A scar. She traced it lightly. When she had a chance, she’d kiss every single one. But later. “I don’t want soft.”

  “You don’t, huh?”

  She shook her head, then gasped and thrashed her head back as his wandering hand cupped her mound and he brushed his thumb over her clothes in just the right spot three times.

  Hell, that pause between counts was already turning into the sweetest torture.

  “Made for me.” His smile only added to the need trying to spontaneously combust inside her. Then she gasped as, faster than she could fathom, he took off the rest of her clothes and his. Naked, he settled back between her thighs, though he held himself away on his arms.

  In threes, he played with her nipples again, sucking until her entire body pulsed with each draw. Then he made his way down her body, nipping at her hips, hands molding her as though he was a sculptor. He paused over her curls, his breath hot against her, drawing out the wait and drawing her need into something almost painful.

  Then quick three flicks of his tongue on her clit and she bowed off the bed. With one hand on her chest, he held her down. With the other, he slipped a finger inside her, pulsing it in time to his tongue.

  One, two, three. Pause.

  One, two, three. Pause.

  One, two, three. Pause.

  Each pause only served to the build the tension inside her as she waited to see what he’d do next. He continued on like that until she writhed beneath him.

  “Please, Cade. I need—”

  “I know what you need, sweetheart.” He crawled back up her body, pausing to kiss and suck and lick and drive her even more crazy, until he took her mouth in a deep kiss, his tongue dueling with hers. At the same time, he lined his cock up at her entrance.

  But he paused, lifting his head to stare down at her with eyes gone fully wolf, glittering with power and possessiveness. “No condom,” he said, almost apologetically. “Not for a mating. Are you sure—”

  She nodded. “I trust you. I always have.”

  “Fuck, Shyla.” His big body shuddered above her, but still he held off. “When I enter you, I’ll bite you.” He opened his mouth and, with a slide of bone on bone, his canine teeth elongated to deadly looking points, his face turning harsher, wilder above her. “Tell me now if you want to wait.”

  She reached up and traced one tooth. “I want this. I don’t want to wait.” She wanted to be his, to be a stronger version of herself both because of him and what he’d make her.

  His body shook, eyes glowing. “Thank the gods,” he whispered.

  Cade entered her in one long, hard stroke. When he was balls deep inside her, he dropped his head and sank his teeth into the curve of her neck. A burst of pain, and then sweeping waves of pleasure washed it away as he sucked, drawing her blood into himself.

  Shyla’s body clenched, her mind going to some hazy space where she was both more alive than she’d ever been, and, at the same time, not of herself. Waves of sensation moved through her, but only to build the intensity.

  The act seemed to drive them both into a frenzy. Teeth still buried in her skin, Cade pumped his hips, pistoning into her, drawing moans from her even as Shyla clasped him closer. Each thrust timed with the sensations pulsing inside her until a tingling started at the base of her spine.

  Instinct drove her as the sensation exploded into an array of stars. Through her shout, instinct drove her to bite Cade in return, also at that spot where neck and shoulder came together. As soon as she did, he swelled inside her, releasing his own bite to shout his release as he pounded into her body.

  Gradually he slowed until he collapsed over her. Shyla wrapped her legs and arms around him, tucking her face into his neck and breathing in his fresh snow scent.

  “I’m your mate,” she whispered through the languorous beauty settling through her.

  “Yes, and now you always will be.” Based on the growl in his voice, his wolf was
still close to the surface.

  Cade rose up on one elbow to inspect the bite mark on her neck, then leaned down to lick the spot tenderly.

  Despite the spark of sensation that ignited in her, Shyla wrinkled her nose at him. “Gross.”

  He grinned, then laughed, a happier sound than she’d heard from Cade since he’d showed back up in her life. Had it only been days and not a lifetime? Then he groaned and wrapped her in his arms, burying his face in her hair, breathing her in.

  “My mate,” he whispered. “Finally.”

  The fact that he’d waited ten years to protect her, knowing who his mate was and that he couldn’t approach her yet, suddenly hit her hard. He must’ve heard the catch in her breathing, because he leaned back again, searching her expression. “What?”

  “You love me.” She smiled softly, wonder filling her.

  His eyes crinkled with his smile, and he cupped her face with one hand. “I’ve loved you since I was fifteen and you were thirteen, and you threw a frying pan at my head when I teased you about your cooking.”

  Tears prickled, stinging her eyes. “Me, too,” she whispered.

  He kissed her softly, lingering over it. Then pulled back and grinned. “Your cooking has improved.”

  Shyla rolled her eyes, too happy to bop him on the head like he deserved. “What—?”

  “Cade Campbell!”

  A male voice that sent shivers of apprehension running painfully down her spine boomed outside in the night.

  10

  CADE

  “Stay here.” Cade was off the bed and out the bedroom door in a second.

  He’d just mated Shyla, and no doubt the wolves out there knew that, had heard all of it. This fucker decided that now was the best time to challenge him? With every protective instinct roaring inside him and his wolf snarling, Cade was prepared to kill anyone who set foot near the house.

  “Wait,” Shyla called.

  At the door, already done with the myriad locks, Cade paused and turned to find her running down the stairs wearing his shirt, which swamped her.

  “This is for alpha?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  Frantic eyes searched his, and she opened her mouth only to shut it again, but he could see the question there anyway and yanked her into his arms, cradling the back of her head with his hand. “Nothing bad is going to happen to me.”

  “You can’t promise me that.”

  No, he couldn’t.

  “We just found each other again,” she whispered.

  Before he could respond to the punch to the gut those words landed, she took a deep breath and pulled back, and the fear was gone, as though she’d forcibly replaced it with something else. Anger if he wasn’t mistaken. “I recognized that man’s voice.”

  Ice settled in his belly at the tone of her voice. She could only mean one thing. “You sure?”

  She nodded. “He’s the one. He was a kid at the time, trying to talk deeper, but that’s him.”

  “Fuck,” the word punched from him as he convulsively pulled her against him.

  His cousin was the one who’d attacked her. He had no doubt in his mind. Cade nuzzled her hair. “Stay here. Lock the door behind me.” He kissed her. Hard. “Don’t watch.”

  With that, he let her go, opened the door and shifted before padding out onto the porch. Behind him, the sound of the door and the click, click, click of all the locks seemed to reverberate across the silent field that made up her front yard. Five wolves stood in a semicircle facing him, legs sinking into the deep snow covering the clearing between her house and the line of woods that hid the road.

  His cousin stood in the middle of the group, dark grey with patches of lighter grey that picked up the moonlight. Shorter than Cade but stockier, a solid wall of muscle. If he stayed true to form from childhood, he’d be a brawler, throwing his weight around with little regard for strategy and no patience.

  “You attacked my mate.” The telepathic link connecting all shifters allowed him to communicate the thought. Not to Keith alone, but to all the wolves whose eyes glittered just inside the tree line, here to witness a fight for leadership of the pack.

  Cade snarled as he moved cautiously down the steps, away from the house.

  “The woman you just mated?” Keith sneered. “I haven’t had time.”

  “When she was fourteen, days after your father’s men tried their best to beat me to death and I had to run for my life, you broke into her house.”

  “Lies,” the grey wolf snarled and the wolves around him did the same, raising the volume. “You’re crazy and so is your mate.”

  “You smelled of pine, and she recognized your voice tonight. Want to try again?”

  Cade lowered his head, his gaze trained on the wolf before him, ignoring the others who bristled and growled around them.

  A buzzing sound, easily recognizable, suddenly erupted from inside the house, and he just kept from closing his eyes.

  “Is that a…” Keith shook his head, listening for another second. “Is that a vacuum? She’s cleaning right now?”

  No doubt because this asshole had triggered her need to control the only thing she could. Plus, Cade had shifted in the house. Damn.

  He said nothing.

  An older wolf, based on the white around his otherwise russet-colored muzzle, stepped out of the woods. “An attack on you is bad enough. One on a human is a strong accusation to make, son. Are you sure?”

  Cade pulled his lips back, baring his teeth. “He left behind a tuft of gray fur. It fell on the floor when he jumped out of her bedroom window after her dad came home sooner than expected.”

  “He’s lying,” Keith spat, but the words held an edge of panic.

  “After you attacked her, her anxiety shot through the roof, which is why my mate is vacuuming right now. Trying to protect herself triggered her OCD. Because of you.”

  A low rumbling rose from within the woods, though he couldn’t tell if the rumbles were in his favor or not.

  “Without proof, and after such a long time, there’s not much we can do,” the older wolf announced. Vague memory kicked in and he was pretty sure his dad’s old beta, Zander, was the one speaking.

  Keith’s expression turned to one of gloating, and Cade’s rage, which he’d kept on a simmer, turned heavier inside him, hotter.

  “Fine. Challenge fucking accepted.”

  “You have no second.”

  Keith’s mistake. His cousin no doubt thought he’d surprise Cade here, guaranteeing the men who’d come with him as backup wouldn’t arrive in time.

  “Wrong.”

  He gave his own form of a gloating smile as nine wolves prowled on silent feet around from the back of the house to form a semicircle behind him. They’d stayed downwind, and his mentor’s team had been trained to move like no other wolves Cade had seen. “I’d like to introduce you to Michael Shelby, the alpha of the Denver pack who took me in and apprenticed me.”

  No need to say more. Michael’s reputation would precede him.

  Sure enough, the five wolves across the way laid their ears back, tails going straight. At the same time, a soft click-click sounded from the porch—the unmistakable noise of a shotgun being cocked and loaded.

  “If they don’t kill you, I just might,” Shyla declared in that sweet voice of hers. “And I’m a damn good shot.”

  Holy shit, he’d mated a woman with gumption. When she had she stopped cleaning and decided to ignore his instructions to stay inside? Instead, she’d braved a large pack of wolf shifters and had come out here to support him in her own way. At that small sound, he fell more in love with her.

  “Don’t shoot anyone unless they attack you directly,” he warned her, not letting the others hear the conversation. “The pack will take it as a threat to all of them if you do.”

  She said nothing, so he damn well hoped she got the message.

  Cade moved to the center of the circle formed by his and Keith’s wolves. “Whenever you’re ready,
” he taunted the gray wolf.

  Keith glanced at the large brown wolf behind him, then up at the porch at Cade’s armed and ready mate.

  That’s right fucker. Think twice about this. I’ve been getting ready for ten years. Have you?

  In a blur of fur and fangs, Keith jumped in the ring, going straight for Cade’s throat, but he was ready for the move. Hopping backwards, he avoided snapping jaws, then struck before Keith could regroup. He struck hard and fast, not at his throat but his side, drawing blood and a yelp. Just a flesh wound.

  His and Keith’s own snarls joined a cacophony of howls and barks from the watching wolves as they went at it hard and fast.

  Keith kept going for Cade’s back legs in an obvious maneuver to try to flip him on his back. Or tried to drive him with a shoulder and pumping legs. However, Cade was faster, more patient. He stayed out of danger and studied Keith’s fighting style, waiting for the right moment to strike.

  There.

  His cousin tended to pause a beat after he hopped back when avoiding the same leg-grabbing maneuver.

  Cade went at him that way twice, getting his timing right.

  But then Keith managed to snag his hind leg, teeth rending through the skin and fur to the muscle and bone beneath. Cade yelped as he yanked out hard enough to break the grip. Better to be wounded than pinned. Warm blood dripped out of the wound, pain radiating up his leg.

  With a snarl, Keith lunged again, driving into him with his shoulder and forcing him to that back leg, which buckled. Cade flipped over, landing on the ground hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs and send the powdery snow flying. In a flash, Keith was on him. Using every fighting trick Michael had ever taught him, Cade avoided the deadly jaws intent on ripping out his jugular.

  Until he saw Shyla’s face.

  The shotgun was still raised, but she watched, lips parted and skin as pale as the snow in the moonlight. That one pause, one mistake, one lapse in concentration, and he twisted the wrong way, putting the side of his neck in Keith’s reach. Pain fractured through his neck, traveling over every nerve ending in his spine to the rest of him.

  Fuck.