Wild and Free(101)

His arm tightened, keeping her where she was.

“Honey, where are you going?”

Her head tipped back to look at him.

“Well…” she started then for some reason looked beyond his ear to the arm of the couch his head was resting on. “After White Christmas, I clean up the mess and go to bed.”

Callum turned his head, his eyes hit the clock on the DVD player and he saw it was quarter to midnight.

Nearly Christmas.

And he decided on another new tradition.

His other arm circled her and he pulled her up his chest so they were eye-to-eye.

“Why do you watch White Christmas last every year?”

She took a fluttering breath, something she did often, something he liked because always it denoted she was feeling something deep and he liked the fact that his queen felt deeply.

Then she answered, “Because I watched it with my parents every year. They loved it.” She swallowed, seeming both nervous and uncertain and she gazed into his eyes as if trying to read him which was odd. She was a female human who, according to Ryon, communicated in code. He was wolf and therefore, with his mate at least, an open book. She must have found what she was seeking for she went on, “If I watch it, it means, before I go to bed on Christmas Eve, I’m remembering them. They’re fresh in my mind which is the only way I can ever really have them.”

Having lost Mac and Calvin, understanding her sense of bereavement and hoping to soothe her grief as she had done his, his hand went to her neck, his fingers slid in her hair and he pulled her face down to touch her lips to his.

She relaxed in his arms and he decided, with no small sense of triumph that he’d succeeded in his endeavor.

He slid her back down his body with his arm about her and tucked her cheek to his chest with his other hand.

Then he asked, “Would you like to know how my people spend Christmas?”

She didn’t answer at first, just pulled in a soft, surprised breath and he cursed himself again for his insensitivity because Ryon was right. She needed information about the culture she’d be living amongst for the rest of her days and she didn’t need to get it by being suddenly confronted with it in all of its, to her, peculiarity.

When she didn’t answer, he prompted, “Baby doll?”

She nodded her head against his chest.

His fingers tensed in her hair then relaxed and slid through it, and again, and again, petting her while he spoke.

“We start on first December with the parties. Everyone throws one. It’s like a war to have the best party so people will want to come to yours. There’s one to attend every day, sometimes you’ll attend two or even three. They aren’t like yours. They’re a little louder, a little wilder and my people don’t only have them at night, they like celebrating anytime. They have them during the day as well. Enormous luncheons with so much food, you need a nap afterward. Full-on breakfasts, which always lead eventually to trips to the pub and then, even later, stumbling home highly inebriated while singing Christmas songs.”

He heard a surprised giggle escape her throat, sounding strangled and he realized he’d never, not once in over three weeks, made her laugh.

Not once.

Fucking hell, but he’d been buried so deep with everything else, with his mate, he’d been a thoughtless bastard.

She tipped her head back and her eyes were alight when she asked, “You stumble home drunk singing Christmas songs?”

He grinned down at her, enchanted more than usual at his queen when her eyes were lit like that, and admitted, “It’s been known to happen.”

She pressed her lips together but he felt her body shake with laughter.

“My people like to sing,” he informed her easily. “They like it best when they’re shitfaced.”

She burst out laughing and dropped her forehead to his chest.

There were many things he’d experienced with Sonia in the last three weeks that Callum fucking loved.

But nothing was better than feeling Sonia’s body rocking with laughter, the sound of it rumbling into his chest, while she was in his arms.

She eventually gulped back her giggles, lifted her head and encouraged, “Go on.”

His hand dropped to her neck and his thumb caressed the underside of her jaw as he continued, “Christmas Eve is spent, with strict adherence to tradition, at one member of the extended family’s house. You arrive for breakfast and stay through to long past darkness falling.”

“Do you have a lot of extended family?” she asked.

He didn’t wish to scare her with the real numbers so he answered, “A fair few, more than attended your party last night.”

Her eyes grew huge and she breathed, “That’s a long time to have a bunch of people around, especially if you have to feed them.”