Substitute Santa, page 9
She let her hands stray back into Wade’s hair.
“Anything else you need to tell me?” she said, whispering so that this last bit would be easier on her throat. “Any other big revelations?”
She meant it as a joke, but there was a strange flicker of light in Wade’s eyes. A combination of amusement and ... longing?
“There is, actually,” he said, kissing her forehead and then the bridge of her nose. “But I think it can wait until you’re in better shape to have a real conversation. It’s a good revelation. I think it is, anyway.”
Mira squinted at him, a sudden suspicion dawning. “You’re not .... Okay, don’t laugh at me, but you’re not the real Santa or anything, are you?”
Wade didn’t entirely manage to suppress his laughter, but she would give him credit for trying: only the tiniest, most strangled chuckle was audible through his pressed-together lips.
“I had to ask!” Mira said. “You know that’s exactly how this story could go. And you’ve already made me believe in magic.”
“I promise I’m not the real Santa. And that as far as I know, there’s not a real Santa.” He paused for a second, tilting his head like he was listening to some distant radio signal being piped in, and then added, “My polar bear wants to tell you that since it’s an Arctic animal, it feels like it would have noticed Santa by now if he were real. Please disregard the fact that since I’ve never been to the North Pole, it hasn’t either. It’s feeling pretty confident anyway.”
“I’m sure it would know,” Mira said loyally. But as fiendishly cute as Wade’s polar bear was, right now her mind was on something else. “All right, if it’s not Santa-related, I can wait to find out what your other big surprise is. But I don’t want to wait for everything.”
She rested her hand against his chest, feeling his heartbeat against her palm. The way it sped up told her he knew exactly what she was talking about—and that he agreed.
He leaned down and kissed her again. This time, they didn’t stop.
The only thing she didn’t know was how they would get up off the floor. She couldn’t imagine breaking away from his kiss again, not for something as obviously trivial as standing up, but on the other hand, they did need to get to the bedroom at some point ... right?
Never mind, she thought in a daze, as one of Wade’s hands landed on her bare thigh and pushed her sweater dress up higher. The floor is good. The floor is great.
Who needed beds?
Wade, apparently, but he had the solution in hand. Instead of stopping everything to ask her to stand up, he simply swept her off her feet—literally. He carried her over the threshold like a bride, and the desperate kissing never stopped for even a second.
Mira had never been picked up like that before. She’d always thought of herself as—to put it gently—sturdy. Curvy. Wade made her feel almost weightless.
Maybe because I’m so happy I could float up off the floor all on my own.
She was surprised she didn’t hover as he laid her down on the bed. But then she didn’t have the brain space to be surprised about anything at all, because Wade was peeling the sweater dress off of her.
For a moment, she felt a flush of embarrassment at her plain, functional underwear. When she’d gotten dressed today, she hadn’t expected this to happen. She had sexy lingerie! But you wouldn’t know it from the plain cotton boyshorts and sturdy beige bra she had on right now.
She was half-tempted to apologize for it, and it wasn’t her fading voice that stopped her. It was the look on Wade’s face.
That was not the look of a man who felt disappointed with the present he had just unwrapped. He looked enraptured, like every inch of her uncovered skin was the most fascinating, erotic thing he’d ever seen.
Well, in that case, Mira was happy to help him see more of it. She pushed herself up on her elbows and reached back to unhook her bra.
But she wanted to do some looking herself, and Wade had been so focused on her that he hadn’t taken any of his own clothes off yet. Mira gestured to him, and—with uncanny accuracy—he realized what she meant.
He got everything off quickly, but she still had time to savor his golden-brown tan and the lean, hard-working muscle of his frame. He really was an Adonis. It was a crime to hide all of this beneath a cheap Santa suit.
But then, that did mean she was the only one who got to see—and touch—everything, and that was pretty appealing ....
She tossed her underwear on the floor as he rejoined her in bed, and then it was just the warm, sweet need of their two bodies pressed against each other. Wade stroked up and down Mira’s body, a kind of slow-building, maddeningly intense foreplay that made her think sparks would start flying from her skin. She was going to go up in a blaze. She was so turned on that her whole body felt lush and overripe, achingly but wonderfully sensitive to the slightest touch. Some part of her felt like she could have laid there under his caresses forever, but another part—which had the edge—wanted to make sure she didn’t come until he was actually inside her. As incredible as this was, she wanted to make love with him, not just bask in his attentions. She wanted to have him as much he had her.
Her voice was well and truly shot now, so again, all she could do was gesture. And once more, he understood her right away.
He rolled on a condom and slid into her with a delicious slowness. Mira raised her legs and hooked them around his waist, silently urging him to keep going.
They fell into an easy rhythm, and Mira’s orgasm hit even sooner than she would have guessed. It took her breath away and slammed her head back into the pillow, making her whimper and grind her hips against his. She felt like her whole mind had been blotted out with pleasure.
It was unbelievably good, but she almost liked it even more when the last of the aftershocks faded and she could concentrate on just being with him: on tightening her body around his, on kissing his neck, on feeling his sweat on her skin, on seeing his eyes darkened as he got close to the edge. She cataloged it all, just to convince herself that this was real and she wasn’t dreaming it.
It wasn’t a dream, and she didn’t wake up from it. Instead, as Wade finished and they got settled, curling up in the warm and rumpled sheets, she fell asleep in his arms.
Chapter Thirteen
December 22
The morning went by in a whirlwind. Wade had needed to run back to his own place to change clothes—and pet Fiona, who was haughtily miffed about how his absence had robbed her of the chance to jump on his head at three in the morning—and so he was late to the Christmas Village staff meeting. Much, he was sure, to Marsh’s delight.
But since he had woken up with Mira, and they had gotten to eat breakfast in bed together—leftover cinnamon rolls from the bakery stall, made warm and gooey again by a short spin in the microwave—and he had gotten to kiss a dollop of sweet icing off the bow of her mouth before he’d left ... Wade couldn’t bring himself to care about what kind of hustle and bustle the day would bring. Mira wasn’t stuck leading nonstop carol-oke, and that was good enough for him. She was back on regular elf duties, mostly alternating between crowd control and gift-wrapping. It was easy for him to steal glances at her from Santa’s chair, and she always looked gorgeous.
She always looked happy, too. The daily grind of her job and worries was still there, but it didn’t seem to wearing her down anymore.
If Wade had given her a break from that pressure, he was unbelievably glad of it.
He knew for sure that she had lifted him up. If he had spent too long in a rut, feeling like his life was a block of wood with no secret shape worth hewing out of it, then Mira had changed that completely. He could see how the two of them fit together now, and he knew how he would carve their interlocking pieces.
When he wrapped up his last meet-and-greet—this one with a little girl who dutifully reported her older, non-Santa-believing sister’s requests as well as her own—Mira was there waiting for him with a paper cup of peppermint hot chocolate.
“You’re an angel,” Wade said.
“I’ve heard that a couple times today. It’s the dress.”
She did look a little like a treetop angel, and with a garland in her hair and silver or gold wings on her shoulders, she’d look like it even more. But that wasn’t what Wade had meant.
“Those people are just guessing,” Wade said. “I know.”
She smiled, her cheeks rounding and dimpling in a way that made his heart skip a beat.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you that I come bearing bad news, not just hot chocolate. Marsh offered everyone the chance to drop off tons of presents for overnight gift-wrapping, and we still have a couple dozen left. He wants me to stay late and finish.”
That did make the hot chocolate turn more bitter than sweet.
But only for a moment. Sure, he had wanted another real date with Mira, but any time with her was time well-spent.
“Need a hand?”
“You can’t possibly want to stay here for hours and wrap presents with me,” Mira said, biting her lip. “Marsh probably wouldn’t even pay you.”
Wade was sure he wouldn’t, but that was fine. He wasn’t doing it for Marsh, or even for the Christmas Village and its guests. He was doing it for Mira.
She was so reluctant to let him inconvenience himself that it took a little time to persuade her, but eventually—and with some obvious relief—she accepted his offer, and they took their hot chocolates over to the gift-wrapping stall.
This was the first time Wade had been in the Christmas Village after it had shut down and all the other employees had filtered out, and there was something magical about it in a low-key way. The Elf Mafia had turned off most of the lights on their way out, so only the gift-wrapping stand and the Christmas tree were still bright and shining in the early winter dark. It was cozy, and the twinkling tree looked especially breathtaking without any hubbub to distract from it. The air was scented with peppermint and Mira’s gingerbread hand lotion.
No matter how many presents they had to wrap, Wade was pretty sure his bone-deep contentment was here to stay.
“Any rules for this?”
“Not many,” Mira said. “Keep a family’s presents together in their labeled section on the shelves. We’ll lock the cabinet when we leave. Each set of gifts comes with an inventory sheet, and we put down what wrapping paper and bow combo we use on what, so they’ll know what to write on the tags. Look and see if they’ve checked off any of the extra boxes, like if they’d like Hannukah-themed paper or don’t want us to use any of the goofy, cartoony stuff, even on the kids’ presents. But it’s pretty simple. And again, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, or you don’t have to stay if you get bored.”
“As long as I’m with you, I’m not going to get bored.”
Was this when he should tell her about their mate bond?
He still wished he could have done it last night, before they’d made love for the first time, but he had the feeling that a human hearing about fated mates for the first time might have a couple of questions. Last night, Mira hadn’t been up for any more talking.
But her voice was back in fine form now. He would have to see if the moment felt right.
“You’re ridiculously good at this,” Mira said, watching Wade zip a pair of scissors through some red-and-green plaid wrapping paper. “I can never make the line that straight without a ruler.”
Wade grinned. “Practice. I do a lot with my hands, remember.”
Mira arched her eyebrows. “Oh, trust me, I remember.”
That hadn’t been what he’d meant, but he wasn’t going to pretend that her reaction didn’t delight him.
“So I was wondering,” Mira went on, so studiously casual all of a sudden that he knew this was a big deal, “if you wanted to have Christmas dinner with me and my parents. Well, December 23 dinner, actually—it’s a weird family tradition. My mom likes to have it early so the actual holidays are more for relaxing and leftovers. Anyway, I figured since Petey’s out of town and you said your parents are out of the country ....”
“I’d love to. It’d be great to still have a get-together to look forward to.”
Even more than that, it would be great to meet Mira’s family. She obviously adored her mom and stepdad, so Wade already liked them by proxy. And he wanted to get to know his mate’s family.
Mira beamed. “I was hoping you’d say yes. I want to show you off.”
Wade didn’t know how much there was to show off, technically. He was just an average guy. Well, an average guy who happened to also be a polar bear, but still.
“Don’t get their hopes up too high,” he said, stealing a brief kiss. “Make sure they expect a woodworker, not a movie star.”
He felt her laugh against his lips before he pulled away.
“What?” Wade said.
The laugh turned to genuine puzzlement.
“Wait,” Mira said. “Do you not know what a catch you are? Even the Elf Mafia agrees that you are, and I quote, ‘farmer’s market hot.’”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It’s my favorite kind of hot! Sure, technically I just learned about it when they called you that, but it’s become my favorite kind of hot. It like you’re both hot and ... comfortable. Touchable. It’s easy to imagine having a life with you.”
That was how he felt about her too. Of course, unsurprisingly, he’d been thinking about it as more “mate-bond hot,” to the extent that he could put it into words at all, but he guessed this worked.
Mira said, “The really worrying thing is that Becky thought it was an expression I’d know, which means she thought it was ancient slang for old people, and I still hadn’t heard of it. But it’s comforting that you hadn’t either. We can be old together.” Her cheeks pinked. “Not that I’m—I mean, I know this is all pretty new—”
He needed to find the right way to tell her that there was no way she could scare him away. There was no way anything between them could happen too fast or too soon, not as far as he was concerned.
But did he want to do that in a gift-wrapping booth, even an after-hours one? He wasn’t sure. Maybe it was wrong to hold out for the perfect moment, but then, this was the kind of conversation you could only ever have once.
“I think according to these kids, we already are old together,” he said softly. “I don’t mind it either.”
The self-assured sparkle came back into her eyes, and he thought the blush was now more pleasure than embarrassment.
“Well, good,” she said. “Anyway, all I was saying was that you’re ... incredible. I feel like you don’t know that.”
“I think I’m okay,” Wade protested. “Just not necessarily that interesting.”
Mira framed his face with her hands. “Listen to me. You’re unbelievably interesting.”
“You just mean because I’m the only—”
“I do not,” she said fiercely. “I don’t mean just because you’re the only ... person like you I’ve ever met.” She had already absorbed the importance of being cautious about talking openly about shifters. “I don’t mean that at all. I think that somewhere along the line, you convinced yourself that just because you’re ‘the responsible one,’ you’re less interesting than Petey, and that’s just not true. Yes, you’re responsible—and I like responsible.”
That was probably true. Mira’s steady, consistent podcast release schedule went back years at this point, and she couldn’t juggle all that work if she wasn’t on top of things herself.
“—but being responsible doesn’t mean you’re not fun. You can’t have fun without some kind of responsibility, not forever. You need a beat or a rhythm if you want to dance, right? You’re the beat.”
He was the beat. He liked that.
“And you’re the dance, too. Most importantly, you’re Wade, not just somebody’s older brother. You’re funny and sweet and artistic, and you dance with sugar-high little kids, troll Marsh, befriend cats, and blow my mind in bed. My family is going to love you. The last thing I would ever need to do is lower their expectations before they meet you. You’ll be lucky if they don’t try to adopt you on the spot. Okay?”
It would probably be best not to argue with our mate, his polar bear suggested. Especially not when she’s speaking in our favor.
You know what? Wade thought back. I agree. Besides, if Mira’s our mate, we can’t be all that boring. She’s right. Besides, she’s responsible too, and she’s the furthest thing from stodgy.
Maybe together, they had a rhythm they could dance to for the rest of their lives.
“Okay,” he said, feeling a slow smile spread across his face.
“Okay,” Mira repeated. She let go of him. “Sorry for all the intensity. I get kind of heated when I’m on a subject I really care about. I’ve gotten bad reviews for it before.”
“Not from me.”
His polar bear seconded that with a growl. We would never give our mate bad reviews! She is a five-star mate!
Wade was about to lean in for a kiss, and only his keen shifter senses stopped him. This wasn’t the first time he’d heard distant footsteps during their conversation, but before now, they had always been ambling past.
These steps were slower but far more purposeful, and they were getting closer by the second.
“Something’s up,” Wade murmured.
He breathed in through his nose and caught a whiff of something that didn’t seem to belong with all the fake snow, Christmas trees, peppermint, and gingerbread. It was ... animal. That wouldn’t have been all that weird at an outdoor mall like Honey Brook, where people often brought their dogs along on their shopping trips, but this didn’t smell like a dog. It was wilder than that. Besides, most of the stores had closed by now.
Mira was listening now too. Her brow furrowed. “What’s that noise?”
Footsteps, Wade started to say, but then his mouth snapped closed.
