A Hollywood Shifters' Christmas: BBW Tiger Shifter Paranormal Romance (3 page)

But . . . there was the M-word again. Marriage.

As they walked into her apartment in which she’d lived alone for six years, she watched him look around, admiring her space—the bright paintings on the walls, the furnishings chosen for comfort, the wall-sized windows looking out at Marina del Rey and Santa Monica, with the ocean beyond.

She loved Dennis, she loved how he fit right in her space, she loved everything about him. As she tiptoed mentally around the M-word, she began to realize that her joke about jinxing others’ marriages was half true, except the marriage she was sure she would jinx would be her own.

Chapter Four

Dennis would have preferred a few days to wrap his head around the whole prenup idea, but he didn’t have a few days. He wanted to ask Mindy to marry him, he wanted it to be romantic and memorable and he wanted his friends there, too. Tomorrow Mick’s plane would take them to Sanluce, so he had to get all his shit together today.

From what he knew of lawyers, they needed time to do their thing. It was too late right now for lawyer calls, obviously. They ordered in and both worked through email and call lists until it got late. Knowing they had some very busy days ahead, they went to bed early.

He waited until Mindy was in the shower the next morning, after a lingering breakfast. At ten on the dot he made what he fully expected would be the first call of a day of annoying phone tag games and waits. But to his surprise, the melodiously discreet voice of the secretary said, “Dennis O’Keefe? Referred by Mick Volkov? When would you like to meet?”

“Today, if possible,” he said, trying not to make it sound like a question.

She said smoothly, “Mr. Winters has openings at two and four-thirty.”

“I’ll take the first one,” Dennis said.

They exchanged information, and Dennis hung up just as Mindy came out of the shower, her curly hair hanging in clinging ringlets around her face. He had to drop the phone and kiss her.

And kiss her.

And . . . when they finally got dressed, she sat down at her desk and faced her list. “Duty calls,” she said.

“Where do you want to eat tonight?” he asked, and then sidled around to his real question with what he trusted was subtlety. “I know we don’t have time for a lingering dinner, but hey, I’m curious. What’s your favorite restaurant in L.A.? Melisse? Urasawa? Spago?”

To his surprise, she shook her head. “Those are great, but they’re for a certain type of mood, or moment, or clientele. My favorite place is the Huntington Gardens. I love the high tea at the Rose Garden Tea Room, but mostly it’s the beautiful garden.”

“That’s a great place,” he said, making a mental note. Would he be able to get a table there for Christmas Eve? Would it even be open? He was going to do his damndest. “I’ll leave you to your duty.” He leaned down for another kiss. “I’ve got some stuff to do. Including getting a suit for JP’s wedding, since I gave the one I bought for Mick’s to that poor bastard back in Barbados.”

“Oh yes, that poor guy whose boat sank on the way to his daughter’s wedding.” Her face lit up. “I would
love
to go watch you try on suits.”

He laughed, and hugged her. “I’d disappoint you—my idea of suit buying is to get in and out as fast as possible, taking the first thing that more or less fits.”

“All right,” she said. “And I know I’m trying to put off this list.” She reached for the phone. “I’ll call the valet service. They’ll have the rental ready by the time you get downstairs. Unless you want to drive mine?”

“Rental is great. Thanks!” He hadn’t thought of that, either. It was a different sort of life, living with someone rich, he thought as he rode the elegant elevator down.

Once he was safely out of earshot, he called Mick. “We’re here,” he said when his friend answered. “JP’s wedding means suit and tie, right?”

“I can send you to my usual place.”

Dennis got the info, drove into Beverly Hills, and by a quarter to two, he had a plastic-wrapped suit hanging on the hook in the back seat, with shirt, tie, and shoes in neat boxes.

The law office was so discreet that he almost walked past the golden letters etched into black marble off a fancy hall. A short time later he was led into an office with two glass walls that looked down at the busy Beverly Hills street traffic. The plush carpet made his steps noiseless.

Bennett Winters looked like you’d expect a Bennett Winters to look. Dennis couldn’t help wonder if the guy had been born Waldo Garfinkle, and had jazzed up his name the way he’d jazzed up his looks. The silver streaks on either side of his intellectual temples, his chiseled nose and jaw, the flash of expensive dentistry all seemed too perfect to be real.

As they shook hands, Dennis glimpsed a watch that easily clocked in a hundred grand, and he wondered if that shirt he glimpsed the cuff of below the fine fabric of his suit was hand made.

“So, Mr. O’Keefe, I understand you would like to consult about a prenuptial contract.”

“That’s right. I want it so watertight it’ll float a battleship.”

“Very well. To begin, I need to explain . . .” He went on smoothly to unreel a sting of incomprehensible legalese, well peppered with Latinate clauses. Dennis waited, hearing an uptick in the per-hour at every point. But he’d saved that ten grand from the prize money for just such a need.

The lawyer paused, seemed to see that he was not following, and transitioned to English, “ . . . We can start with the assets you wish to protect.”

“I don’t have any assets,” Dennis said.

Winters’ beautifully groomed brows lifted. “No?”

Dennis said, to be clear, “I don’t own squat. Besides my laptop and shit in my travel bag, and the clothes I’m standing up in. I’ve lived on the move my entire life. It’s
her
stuff I want to protect. From me. I want her things sewed up tighter than Fort Knox.”

“To protect her from . . .?” Winters asked, an expensive pen poised over a legal pad.

“Her fucking family thinking I’m after her dough,” Dennis said roughly. “I want that contract to make it crystal clear I’m marrying her because I want to marry
her.
Not her damn money.”

Bennett Winters’ brow cleared. “Ah,” he said, and smiled a little. “Perhaps you ought to bring the lady in . . .”

“I want it as a surprise,” Dennis said, feeling a little desperate. Running from pythons in the jungle was easier than this. “I’m going to pop the question, and I want that right there, in writing, to make it really clear how I feel.”

“I believe we can accommodate you,” Winters said, smooth as an oil slick.

“And I’m paying for this myself, so if you can give me a ballpark figure, because it’s likely to wipe me out,” Dennis added frankly.

Bennett Winters did not do something as indiscreet as utter a laugh, but Dennis got the feeling that a guffaw was lurking around somewhere behind the neat buttons of that bespoke suit.

When he got out of there, he breathed an enormous sigh of relief. Dennis had gathered that Winters had boilerplates (or whatever lawyers called them) that he could put together fast, and it would be ready by the day of Mick’s premier. And he’d have enough left over to cover the suit he’d charged, and whatever else he needed for his proposal. But, he thought as he edged into the traffic, it was time to rustle up a couple of jobs, fast.

After
Christmas.

When he let himself into Mindy’s apartment, he found her in the bedroom, clothing strewn every which way. “What happened?” he asked. “A localized hurricane?”

Mindy whirled around, a dress in each hand, suspended from a hanger. “Which do you think is better, this?” She held a deep burgundy dress up against herself. “But I’m not sure about wearing any shade of red to the wedding of someone I met once. Red kind of stands out. Or this?” Doing a quick presto change-o with her hands, she whipped the burgundy one away and held a pearl gray slinky thing with a lot of glittery bits against herself. “It’s formal, maybe too formal for an outdoor wedding in the afternoon.”

“I can speak a few words of Pashtu, I know what to tip a Sherpa, and I can tell you how to survive in the Amazonian jungle, but I’m damned if I know the first thing about women’s fashions. All I know is, you’d look great in either of them,” he said. “But if you want to know what I like best . . .”

She uttered a slightly strained chuckle. “Me wearing nothing, of course. And we’re coming right back to that soon, I promise.” She flung both dresses over the back of a chair, and sighed. “I really need some raunchy, head-rocking hoo-raw, but right now I’ve got to sort through this closet. So many of my dresses are either really formal, picked for family affairs I couldn’t get out of, or my halter-tops, picked for quick stripping during my investigations—”

He said with utter sincerity, “I cannot
tell
you how hot that sounds. And is. And was.”

Her laugh was a little happier; with a blur she shifted, and a darling little pompom-tailed poodle gazed up at him with bright eyes, standing in a moat of her clothes.

Then Mindy switched back, totally naked, her cloud of hair fluffing around her head, laughing at him, her beautiful body with its round, generous curves right there and waiting.

Dennis crossed the room in two steps, picked her up, and threw her on the bed, then pounced. “Raunchy, said the lady?” he asked, stretching her hands over her head.

Dress-choosing was forgotten.

Chapter Five

Jan stood outside the window of JP’s private martial arts studio, murmuring “Jan LaFleur,” to herself over and over.

It had been no contest, deciding to change her name. She was an only child, her dad having dumped her and her mother when Jan was small. But habit is hard to get over, and she wanted to feel natural in her new name—and new role—by the time she was married.

Tomorrow.

A weird feeling thrilled through her, excitement and worry and apprehension. There was so much to do, so much that could still go wrong.

Stop that
, she told herself, and turned her attention to the sight of JP about to demonstrate a sword kata.

Oh, yeah. That was a perfect distraction. JP was tall, elegant, his smooth brown skin glowing with his exertions, a soft lock of his blue-black hair falling on his forehead as he spun, snapped, kicked, and leaped with breathtaking precision. God, he was so sexy when he did martial arts.

He was sexy all the time, she amended, as he bowed, and the five teenagers lined in a neat row along the mat clapped enthusiastically.

“Okay, let’s see how far you get,” JP said.

The five, more or less adopted by JP and Jan, had all been runaways recruited into a criminal army by an evil dragon-shifter. After his defeat, his army had scattered to the winds, the younger members totally abandoned. There had been no loyalty, just force.

But force was all these kids had known, so JP had brought them into his studio, saying he was recruiting them as town guardians, but they had to demonstrate self-discipline in training and out of it.

At first Jan had worried, but to her amazement it seemed to be working. Between those first few awkward weeks and now, several months later, the five kids had come up with the name Sentinels. No one else was to hear it. They worked hard with tae kwan do and Shotokan karate when in their human forms, and in their animals forms, they roamed the expanse of the LaFleur land, and beyond into the small town of Sanluce. The rest of the time they were to go to school, and think about future careers.

As JP began to lead the five slowly through the steps of the sword kata, stopping to demonstrate details of form, she turned away and retreated through the old rose garden some past LaFleur had established generations ago.

The house was a low, rambling hacienda-style mansion, with numerous tiled rooms. Archways that made the most of breezes, and deep-set windows on the south and west sides kept it relatively cool in summer, and kept that captured warmth as winter began chilling the nights.

It had felt intimidating first, to go straight from her old apartment in a mingy part of L.A. (with two roommates) to living in a mansion that she actually got lost in the first couple weeks she was there. All her belongings had only fit into a small part of her walk-in closet—and her room was one of the smaller guest rooms.

Had been. Part of the enormous number of chores facing them this week had been moving things around in the house. She and JP had lived in separate rooms, as his mother was somewhat formal and a stickler for what was proper, though Mrs. LaFleur officially didn’t notice that Jan and JP seldom slept apart. At least appearances were kept up.

The wedding itself hadn’t actually taken that much organizing on Jan’s part. Mrs. LaFleur had done most of it, except for the things relating to the bride.

The thing is, Jan thought as she paused in the room they called the office, and glanced up at the big white board next to JP’s desk: sometimes she felt like she wasn’t marrying a man so much as marrying a town.

Jan ran her eyes over her list again, though she’d done it an hour ago, and first thing after breakfast. Everything seemed ready: shoes (her one guilty pleasure) perfect, the dress now fit, hair and makeup arranged, and on the far table two stacks of expensive, engraved thank you notes waiting. Though their invitation had said no gifts, gifts were arriving anyway, and Jan had bought two etiquette books about writing thank you notes to people you don’t know, for gifts you would probably never use. She still hadn’t read the books yet . . . she kept putting that off.

“You look tense, darling.”

She whirled around to find JP standing in the doorway, looking delectably tousled, with his gi hanging open, affording a tantalizing view of his lean, muscular chest and abs.

Jan realized she’d been standing there with her arms crossed, and tried to relax as JP came inside, arms extended. She walked straight into them, slid her hands inside the gi, and clasped them around his waist.

“I’m all sweaty,” he said apologetically.

“I find that very, very hot,” she replied, her voice muffled as she kissed his bare chest.

JP chuckled, his breath stirring her hair on the top of her head. He was normally so very put together—and she loved that about him, too, as she was inclined that way herself. Somehow that made him sexier when he was mussed.

“Something go wrong?” he asked. “Or is there too much left to do? You can always delegate. Including me.”

“Just mental review, nothing more,” she said. “Everything else is done.”

He bent his head, his thick-lashed black eyes studying her face intently. She stood on her tiptoes, and pulled his face down for a kiss. “I was also thinking about . . . you-know-what.”

Though no one was around, it just felt wrong to talk about certain things in the office.

His brows lifted in question, and wordlessly he stepped back so they could walk out together. They crossed the Spanish tiled hallway and headed toward his suite, where her stuff would be moved by other hands the next day.

The truth was, sometimes she felt a bit like Cinderella. The LaFleurs were all but a royal family, having been mayors of the town since the mid-nineteenth century. JP’s mom was Indian, from a high status family, and was cosmopolitan in a way that Jan had only seen in movies and on TV.

Only instead of becoming a princess, Jan was being groomed to become co-mayor with JP. Because one day, when Mrs. LaFleur retired, most of the mayoral duties would fall to her, as JP wanted to continue being an A&R scout for talented musicians the world over.  He was good at it, he loved music—as did Jan—so she was stepping up.

Yet another new role. But oh, that was not all.

As they walked into his bedroom, he said, “Mick called me this morning, sometime between the park planning thing and the school board session. It looks like we might not be coming back here the night of Mick’s premier.”

“What? Why not?”

“Dennis wants to propose to Mindy, and he wants to do it in L.A. at her favorite place, the Huntington Gardens tea room, on Christmas Eve. We can return that night, if you’re all right with it, and we’ll all be back here for Christmas morning with our families and the Sentinel kids, as planned.”

Jan grinned. Maybe it was weird to wait a week before going on their honeymoon, but Mick’s grandparents were old and frail, and it seemed better to give them and the Sentinels a real Christmas before they took off. “I’m fine with that,” she said. “Of course.” Then she stopped him. “Tell me the truth. Do you think it crazy, the bride and groom performing at their own wedding?”

JP lifted his hands. “All I know is, I love hearing you sing. And this is
our
wedding, so we can damn well do what we want.”

He had asked her to sing “Il doce suono” from
Lucia de Lammermoor,
which had been her senior project when she graduated from UCLA.

“Singing at our wedding couldn’t be your you-know-what,” he commented as he shut the door.

“No,” she said, turned, and faced him. “I’ve been thinking. And I’ve changed my mind. About trying to get pregnant. I want to do it now.”

JP stilled. “Are you sure, Jan?”

“Yes.”

“Unlike normal people, it’s pretty much a given that we’ll have success on the first try, if we want that,” he said in a low voice. “That’s the nature of being a phoenix shifter. As a phoenix, I fly and the land is fruitful. As a man I don’t have that power, but I do have this particular one.”

“Good,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Yes, I know I said I wanted to wait, because everything is changing so fast. But Shelley is definitely pregnant—she saw a doctor this morning, and got the green light. And I want our kids to grow up together, and, well, suddenly it just seems
right.
”

His smile illuminated his face, then turned mischievous. “So . . . are you in the mood for some more Torture of the Hundred Kisses?”

“Mmmm, as I recall I won the last time.” She smiled up at him.

“No, you lost count.
And
moved. I’m ahead by two.”

“Ha, ha, ha. I don’t believe it,” she said, as they undressed each other. “But I’ll defeat you anyway—I dare you to do your worst.”

She stretched out on the bed, closing her eyes as she breathed deeply. Her nipples tightened with anticipation in the cool air as the bed wiggled. JP was somewhere nearby. Her senses heightened in a delicious way as she tried to listen, and feel, where he might begin.

A soft kiss, light as a butterfly, landed on the knuckle just above her right toe.

She concentrated on lying perfectly still. Slow breathing. She was not going to move, no no no, not so much because she wanted to win—in spite of their teasing talk, whatever they did was a win—but because she wanted it to last.

Another kiss, this one warm and lingering, on her left hip. The bed shifted, and his lips nipped her left ear. A mild surge of warmth kindled in her belly—she loved it when he nibbled her ears. But it was getting her too hot too soon.

She gulped a breath of air.

Another butterfly kiss in the hollow of her right elbow. Then soft lips closed around her forefinger, and his tongue touched the tip.

“No fair,” she gasped, stiff with the effort not to move. “You used tongue!”

“You . . . don’t . . . want . . . tongue?” JP asked in a slow, provocative voice.

She groaned. “
Yes
I want tongue!”

He closed his lips around her finger, ran his tongue around it, and as her breath stuttered in her throat—he sucked. Heat zinged through her, scorching hot. She pressed her lips against a gasp. She was not even going to make it to twenty unless she got a serious grip here.

Another kiss, on her inner knee. More heat—argh, had she lost count already? No! Breath slow, that’s sex, no,
six. Six! Come on Jan, not even ten yet, you can do better than this!

A slow, contemplative kiss just below her navel made her belly quiver. His lips opened, and his tongue darted into her navel. She froze, not letting herself gasp, though a flame shot straight down to her core.

A whispering kiss over her right rib. She smelled the salty, masculine scent of his hair as the mattress gave beside her shoulder, and he kissed the hollow between her collarbones, and once again the tongue—with a lick.

Her toes curled. But she stayed still . . . oh God the count? Nine, that’s nine.

Ten was a kiss with a graze of teeth on the curve of her neck.

“Not teeth,” she hissed through locked jaw.

He gloated, “Really? No teeth?”

“Okay, yes teeth, but I am going to so re—uh!”

He nipped, sending another jet of heat straight to her core. Only ten and she was never going to make it. Lava was already boiling deep inside, her she was desperately wet, and they’d only reached ten!

Then number eleven landed on the tip of her breast, the softest brush of lips. Her nipple tightened excruciatingly, yearning for more, and she dug her fingers into the duvet as she fought to lie still.

Two more kisses, on her opposite hip and on her chin, making her inadvertently smile. She could hear a smile in his soft breathing, and knew he was going to get serious, and oh yeah, his lips brushed the other breast, then opened, and his tongue slowly circled before his teeth closed gently on the nipple. The heat in her core pulsed insistently.  Her toes scrunched as she tried not to yelp, to grab him . . .

And the next kiss was on the inside of her thigh. Then the other thigh, even longer and more lingering. Her breathing came faster, her fingers twisting in the duvet. Was he going to cheat and go
right there?
No—the bed moved—the next kiss was on the inside of her ankle, but by now her entire body had become a gigantic erogenous zone.

A whimper escaped her, and her knee bent, widening outward.

“What? Not even twenty,” he breathed.

She moaned. “I can’t stand it . . .”

His response was a last kiss directly on her mound. By now she so wet she was wild for more and he laughed in triumph, obviously very ready to oblige.

He settled between her knees, which parted as his tongue explored her soft folds. Game over—she’d lost—and yet she won as he lapped everywhere, then stroked deep and long and leisurely, the pulses building to a brain-frying insistence. When at last he came to her clit, one touch of his tongue—a graze of his teeth and her brain exploded into a shower of stars. He sucked with the pulses, intensifying them into mind-blitzing length, until she landed, gasping, and yet still hot.