A Hollywood Shifters' Christmas: BBW Tiger Shifter Paranormal Romance (4 page)

“Now,” she breathed.

“Now,” he said, and his cock touched her opening. She tipped her hips to draw him in hard and tight.  She moved with him so his thrusts rubbed over her still-throbbing, sensitive clit, shooting her right back up to the heights again.

He came first, sliding his hand down between them to thumb her into a second orgasm, and they clung tight as the pulses wrung through them, each sensing the other’s, which echoed the pleasure back and forth.

“I am so going to get my revenge,” she murmured, when she could finally speak. “I’m going to have you begging by ten.”

“I can hardly wait,” he murmured, and she could feel his silent laughter trembling through his body. “But we’ve Mick and company arriving in three hours.”

“Right,” Jan said. “And yeah, we shouldn’t meet them looking like we just got out of bed.”

She gave him a last kiss and rolled up, loving how relaxed she felt—all the little stresses of the day smoothed out like silken ribbon.

And then she remembered what had started them, and looked down at herself. Had their lovemaking sparked a new life? How long did it actually take, anyway?

Filled with wonder, she followed him to the shower, where they soaped one another with long, tender caresses and a lot more kissing.

As she dried off, the overwhelming sense of gratitude made her throat tighten and her eyes sting. Life with JP was such a miracle.

Her thoughts shifted from JP to wedding to Dennis, and the briefly-met Mindy. She remembered Shelley’s doubts, and thought, whoa, in three hours all six of us will be together.

Hope
this
isn’t the disaster I’ve been dreading.

Chapter Six

I hope this won’t be a total disaster, Mindy was thinking as they drove to the Santa Monica Airport, where Mick’s plane was waiting.

She was about to leave L.A., and wondered what Sanluce would look like. But first this meeting with Mick and Shelley. Six people spending a lot of time together—with a wedding in the middle—five of whom are really tight . . .
And then there’s me
.

“I love Christmas lights,” she said, to get her mind off
that
road.

“Yeah, me, too,” Dennis said as they glanced out the windows at the wild variety of Christmas decorations, punctuated here and there with beautiful strings of blue and silver or white lights, for those who celebrated Chanukah.

Mindy had been away from L.A. in December for so long that she hadn’t seen the new styles in Christmas lights. Many of these were shaped like icicles, some even with LED drips. “It’s strange,” she said. “How many of these decorations are winter themed. Icicle lights. Gigantic snowflakes with bows tied around them. Snowmen made out of plastic and Styrofoam. Flocking of trees, and window frames.”

Dennis cracked a laugh. “I know. I remember thinking one year, what does a snowman—even a real one, actually made out of snow—holding a present actually have to do with Christmas? Or a candy cane with a green bow tied around it?”

“Especially in Los Angeles, where it never snows, ever,” Mindy said. “But I actually kind of like the creative mixture of ancient pagan and actual Christian nativity scenes, and these present-holding reindeer and snowmen that don’t seem to fit anything.”

Dennis chuckled. “It’s crazy, just like L.A.”

“It’s more than crazy, it’s . . . inclusive. That is, if you want to celebrate Christmas, it’s big enough to include everybody. That’s what my great-grandmother said once. She was a Christian.”

Dennis sent a look her way. “Your family is religious?”

“Only her and my great-granddad. Oh, my grandmother was a big churchgoer, but I don’t think she ever got the memo about what it was supposed to be about. A bigger snob it would be impossible to find—except my mom. That was the only thing they agreed on, was you had to belong to the
right
church, and the
right
crowd within that church.” She forced a laugh before she could get too bitter, but inside she was thinking:
And their supreme commandment was, “What will other people think?”

“Well, I like the lights, whatever they mean,” Dennis said easily. “They counter some of the sheer marketing push and greed with the idea of making an effort to brighten things up for strangers to enjoy. I used to love putting up lights as a kid.”

“I wish we could see them from the sky—it’s got to be fantastic.”

“I’ll bet JP’s seen them,” Dennis remarked. “I know he sometimes flies to L.A. in the middle of the night.”

Mindy remembered that house, way up high in the Hollywood Hills. A dragon shifter could easily come and go from that rooftop. Wow. The world really was stranger, and more magical, than she had ever dared believe.

After they parked, he hauled out his go-bag, plus his new suit-carrier. Mindy took out the suitcase full of new clothes she’d just bought—she’d spent all her time since their arrival in a frenzy of shopping, as if all new clothes could guarantee this would go well.

They walked into the airport lounge, and Mindy, anxiously scanning the crowd, instantly picked out Mick Volkov. At six-foot-six, he towered over everyone else, his pale blond hair instantly drawing the eye. Mindy looked to his left and right for the usual blond supermodel.

There wasn’t one. Standing next to him was a very tall woman—she had to be six feet—built on Amazonian lines, her brown hair worn in a plain style, just brushing her shoulders. She had straight brows and a plain face, without any hint of makeup. Not even lip gloss, which Mindy herself wore.

Dennis went straight to Mick, giving him a man-hug, then turned his tigerish grin toward Mindy, and she could feel his pride as he introduced her.

Mindy looked up into those tall faces as everybody said the usual thing, then Mick added, “The plane is this way. Engine running. Ready to go?”

Dennis said, “Mindy would love to see the lights from the sky. Can you make that happen?”

Mindy felt her face reddening. “It’s okay,” she said quickly. “If you’ve a flight plan to stick to, I totally understand.”

Mick flashed a smile her way. “I’ll talk to the pilot. As long as we stay well below the commercial aircraft lanes, we should be fine.”

As they walked out to the waiting plane, Shelley said, “Dennis mentioned you like to travel. You haven’t seen L.A. lights from the sky?”

Mindy glanced up at Shelley, who just looked and sounded curious. Mindy said, “Not Christmas lights. For the past few years I’ve left L.A. in early December and come back at least mid-January.”

As they took their places inside the little plane, which seated six, Shelley said, “Where do you usually go that doesn’t have Christmas lights?”

“Anywhere else,” Mindy said. “New Zealand last year, a tour through the remote parts. What a fabulous place.”

“I bet,” Shelley said. “Until recently, I’d never been outside of L.A. I thought the geology along Route 66 pretty amazing.”

“It is,” Mindy said as the plane began bumping and rolling down the runway. “Some of the most beautiful scenery in the world is right there in those national parks along the Rockies.”

“So you’ve traveled a lot?”

“Not like Dennis. Quick getaways now and then, but always back to L.A. where I ran an investigative business.”

“I heard a little about that,” Shelley said. “I’d like to hear more.”

But at that moment they took to the sky, and Mindy peered down as the plane swung around as it gained altitude. Very soon Los Angeles lay below, cupped between its rows of mountains, a vast fairy geometry of brilliant multi-colored lights.

She gazed in rapture as the plane traveled east, then veered northward and rose to clear the San Gabriel mountains.

When at last they were flying over the dark landscape, lit here and there by pockets of lights, Mindy turned to find Dennis and Mick deep in a discussion of what sounded like the guts of film-editing.

Shelley, meeting her gaze, said, “L.A.’s lightscape is exceptionally fantastic this time of year. Thanks for the idea of the detour.”

Mindy was experienced enough in social exchanges to recognize an attempt at being friendly. Sidestepping talking about herself, she said, “One thing I’ve never seen is a film project from the inside. Like your pilot. Location shots, sure—anyone who lives in L.A. has had to drive around at least one. What’s it like, doing stunt work?”

“It’s basically getting paid to have fun,” Shelley said with a grin.

“How did you get into it?”

“With my size and a bunch of older, sports-crazy brothers, it was hard not to get into what they were into, which was martial arts and motocross. I sort of fell into stunt work at UCLA,” she said. “Discovered I liked it way better than memorizing lines for theater—”

Shelley broke off at the sound of Dennis’s sharp voice, “Fucking asshole.”

Mindy was instantly alert, her poodle quivering inside her. “Dennis?”

He glanced back. “Sorry,” he said instantly. “It’s just this damn phone—I keep trying to deal with the never-ending stream, and there’s this asshole who I guess was buddies with that crook Ellerton I helped bust last year. Seems to think I’m here in L.A. to make trouble for him, when I could give a flying fuck for him and his douche-canoe pals.”

Dennis jammed his phone back into his pocket, and made an obvious effort to lighten up. “So, did L.A. in December lived up to the hype?”

“It’s beautiful,” Mindy said. “But if someone is threatening you, shouldn’t we alert the police?”

“It’s bullshit,” Dennis said. “I think he’s running scared. Assuming that someone is going to be scratching below the surface in his own business. Maybe that needs to happen, maybe he’s as clean as he says he is, but either way, it’s not going to be me. Forget I said anything—I’m not letting some asshole ruin the mood here.”

“We’re making our descent,” Mick pointed out, as they seemed to skim the up-thrusting mountains below which lay the flat Imperial Valley, divided up the middle by the tiny lights of Highway 5.

Dennis said in that determinedly congenial voice, “You know what they’ve got planned for us tonight? I hope it includes dinner. I could eat a horse right about now.”

“Dinner it is,” Mick said. “Promised we’d have a table at the steakhouse.”

“Now, that’s what I want to hear,” Dennis said.

Mindy could see that whatever had irritated Dennis was now regarded as old news. Dennis turned to smile at Shelley. “Sorry—we got caught up in tech talk. Mick probably told you that in high school we were the world’s worst would-be filmmakers, and as camera work was mostly my specialty, I can fall into technical discussions in a heartbeat. Tell me about your new pilot.”

Shelley smiled, lifting a shoulder. “Truth is, it’d be easier to screen the pilot than to yak about it.”

Mick broke in, “Especially as we’re just about to start our landing run. Tell you what. If you really want to see it, we’ll make time to screen it. Day of the premier. My place.”

Dennis turned Mindy’s way. “Would you like that?”

What could she say but yes?

* * *

Dennis hadn’t realized how anxious he was that Mindy like his friends—that she have a good time—until he saw her talking to Shelley, and something relaxed a little inside him.

That was before the bullshit email waiting from some douche-nozzle named Atkins. If it was even a real name. This was the third one on a similar theme. Either these were all one guy, or Ellerton had had a lot of friends who found Dennis’s presence in L.A. a threat.

He felt like firing back an email saying that he’d spent weeks in L.A. not long ago, but under a fake name while investigating something far more interesting than a bunch of petty hoods. But he made himself delete the email, just as he the previous two.

One or many, let ‘em stew, Dennis thought as they climbed down the boarding ladder from the plane. Or if Atkins had made some kind of bullshit promise to Ellerton (who was behind bars in Germany, from which he wouldn’t be getting out in this lifetime) about getting revenge, then he could stuff it.

As they headed toward a waiting limo, Dennis’s brain caught up with him at last, and he took Mindy’s hand and slowed their pace so the other two couldn’t hear. “Sorry,” he said. “I should have thought of this before, but where do you want to stay? JP and Jan will offer a guest room. They have a million of them. But I’m so used to staying at my place, which is dinky, old, and has no servants.”

“What will be the least trouble?”

“For whom?” he asked, grinning. “If we stay at our place, we strip the bed and wash the dishes, so my dad won’t come home to the mess when his current deployment is over. If we stay with the LaFleurs, then their army of servants will take care of it all when we’re not around.”

Mindy turned her serious brown eyes to him. “This is unknown territory for me. What would you do if I weren’t here?”

“Stay at my place. Police my own mess before taking off,” he said promptly.

“Then let’s do that,” she said. “I do have a washer and dryer at my apartment, and I’m not afraid to use them,” she added dryly.

“Good,” he, said, and lowered his voice, “I’ll feel less weird about making love to you all night long when we’re not in someone else’s house.”

She smothered a laugh, then caught up with the others. A short time later, they reached the steakhouse that Dennis and the guys had been eating at since they were kids, one of the best places in the small town.

JP and Jan were waiting there. Dennis stood back as the others went through the greeting routine, watching carefully. He wanted so badly for Mindy to like the guys, to fit in. To want to make his chosen family her chosen family.

As they ordered and settled into questions, mostly about tomorrow’s wedding, Dennis observed the others observing Mindy. He reveled in everything his Mork did, from her quiet enthusiasm over the menu to her sympathetic responses as Jan—after a glass of wine—got into some of the logistical nightmares that it seemed were inescapable when running a mayoral wedding.

The food was excellent, but as everybody finished, it became apparent that Shelley (who had avoided the wine) was not feeling great.

Dennis noticed that Jan and JP both looked done in, so when Mick offered to take them anywhere in town if they wanted what little nightlife Sanluce offered, Dennis turned to Mindy. “Shall we just go back and turn in early?”

She smiled. “I was just thinking that that would be perfect. But thanks,” she added to Mick.

‘Perfect’ was the word to describe Mindy, Dennis thought as he slid his fingers into hers. It wasn’t just her nice manners, she was really kind inside. The idea of not spending the rest of his life with her made his neck chill. Oh yes, it was time for the most romantic proposal the world had ever seen.