“Women. They do it for you every time. Be warned, mate. Next year it could be you in this get up.”
Rhod shuddered and shook his head. “Not a chance. I do not do Christmas. Ever.”
“Yeah, I always wondered at that.”
Stone grunted as he struggled into the costume jacket, and then looked at Rhod. His expression was that of a man in serious pain. Mind you, Rhod would be as well if he’d had to wear that costume. In human form the werewolf wasn’t anything close to Mister Universe. Even so, the muscles across his shoulders looked in danger of threatening the seams in the thin fabric, while the waist could have wrapped around him twice.
“Who the fuck measured this thing up? They’ve got the thing the wrong way around. What guy’s waist is this big?”
Mine. For one night every year, if he answered the call and put the belt on.
Rhod pushed off from the desk, opened the bag Candy had left and rooted around inside. Anything to ignore the high-pitched squeals and excited laughter that filtered through the closed door.
But the Christmases he remembered were organised affairs that came with an itinerary and a butler…where the table was set with the best silverware and the presents were all wrapped in this year’s coordinating paper…where gifts were expensive and thoughtless. Not this type of Christmas where a roomful of kids hung handmade paper chains and stuck cut-out snowflakes to the window…where excited children looked at the pile of gaudily wrapped presents under the tree trying to guess which one was theirs.
One. Singular. Not the hordes of pricey presents the kids he’d used to deliver to saw as their right.
“Here.” He pulled out the false belly from the bottom of the bag and threw it at his partner. The stuffing hit Stone upside the head and slithered down his shoulder. “You might need to take a bit out of it though, to accommodate that gut you’re getting from Eloise’s cooking.”
“Fuck off!” Stone threw the stuffing back, but the vibe hit home. Rhod laughed as the werewolf pulled his shirt taut to check his midsection out. It was as flat as a pancake, but that wasn’t the point. “See, nothing doing. I am the man!”
“Yeah, sunshine. You keep telling yourself that.”
And he’d keep telling himself that Christmas wasn’t getting to him.
If someone had told him two weeks ago that he’d be loved up and in some chick’s flat on Christmas eve getting ready to head out to a Christmas party, Rhod would had told them to get their heads checked. For one thing, he liked his own space too much to do the whole ‘couples’ thing, and Christmas? Yeah…the last time he’d gone to a real Christmas party, rather than a work one where everyone was trying to figure out how to get plastered as quickly as possible and avoid making conversation with Peggy from accounts, was the wrap party back at the Pole before he’d hung up his suit.
Somehow though, within a week Candy had wrapped herself around his heart and soul. So much so, that even though she was out of danger after the concussion from the alley attack, he’d still stuck around ‘just in case’. At least, that was what he was telling himself. In reality, they’d settled into a routine that he would have described as ‘comfortable’ if not for the nights spent hot and sweaty between the sheets.
He’d never had sex like it. Hot, passionate…toe-curlingly erotic. Heat surged through his body in an unstoppable wave as memories of last night etched themselves on the back of his eyelids. Perfect 360 degree, high definition playback with added sensory detail of everything that he’d done to Candy and she’d done to him. The image of her crawling over the bed wearing nothing more than a saucy smile and pulling down his boxers to reveal his rigid cock filled his head. He could still feel her warm lips wrapped around…
A soft groan escaped his lungs as his cock surged to life, hard and ready beneath the towel wrapped around his hips. Fuck, he was ready to go again. Here. Now. Ready to go and find her and drag her into the bedroom…drown them both so far down in passion that he couldn’t feel the increasing pull of The Call.
As the thought entered his head, he looked up and to the right. Just as he expected, a small leather box perched on the neatly folded towels next to the sink. Jauntily. If a box could look jaunty. Damn thing was enchanted, or he’d have pitched it into the nearest ocean, or dropped it into the nearest construction site as they poured concrete. But whatever he did to it, the damn thing had boomerang properties. It contained the belt, and the belt was calling him. Whispering in a low voice that it was almost time to put it back on and reclaim his birthright. To join his brothers and head out to deliv—