“It’s also your third strike,” she said. “I have too many reasons to bring you in and no excuse for not doing it. So if you want to help your friend, do it fast.”
She hung up.
Dylan stood there for a second and then loped the rest of the way up the stairs. He hooked the door open with his foot and ducked through back onto the roof. The reindeer lay snoozing there, a halo of melted snow around it, with its legs folded under it. It snorted softly with every breath, mist eddying around its nostrils.
There was a space near the door, under some pipes, and Dylan stashed the box there. Then he headed back over to the reindeer and slapped it on the broad, solid rump, startling it awake as it scrambled gracelessly to its feet. The broad rack of its antlers nearly clipped Dylan as it swung its head around.
“Time to go,” Dylan told it as he zipped his jacket up. The bulk of the letters nudged against his stomach under the fabric. “Back to the North Pole.”
The reindeer swung its head around to look at him. Then it walked away and turned its ass toward him.
“Don’t be a dick,” Dylan warned it. He glanced at the sky. It was still dark, but he could see the faint stain of dawn on the horizon. “You serve Yule, remember? Otherwise you’d be walking home.”
The reindeer broke into a frisky trot as it circled the roof. Its hooves clunked off the surface as it flicked up chunks of snow, and the bells strung on its reins rattled.
Dylan rubbed his hand over his eyes.
“Fine,” he said. “Extra…whatever you fancy. I’ll ask someone what that is.”
The reindeer snorted, made a tight turn around a metal strut, and pranced back over. Dylan fastidiously brushed off the last chunks of puke from its shoulder, grabbed the saddle pad, and dragged himself up clumsily.
“Let’s go home,” he said. “And if you can fly smoother, I’ll try not to puke.’
Somerset was waiting for Dylan outside the North Pole.He stood on the curb with his arms crossed, his leathers now scuffed and stained, and watched with a studiously impassive face as the reindeer walked down the road. It stopped in front of the club, and Dylan finally breathed out. He untangled his fingers from the reins—the imprint of leather and bells grooved into his palm—and swung his leg up and over so he could slide off.
“What part of ‘stay out of trouble’ is so hard to go along with?” Somerset asked as he hitched one eyebrow toward his hairline.
“Once I screw up the stay, the trouble sort of follows on its own,” Dylan said. “I found something weird.”
“It can wait.”
Somerset took two long strides forward, grabbed a handful of Dylan’s jacket, and pulled him into a hungry kiss. It caught Dylan off-guard, and he just dangled there for a moment, until his libido shoved his brain out of his way and dragged him into the kiss. He put his hands on Somerset’s lean hips and stretched up onto his tiptoes as he savored the coolness of Somerset’s tongue in his mouth.
Pleasure tweaked along his nerve endings and tightened his muscles, mixed through with a year-long itch of paranoia. After a breathless stretch, Dylan pulled back from Somerset and glanced past him at the North Pole.
“What if someone sees?” he said.
Somerset took Dylan’s chin between his finger and thumb and moved his head back. He bent down to bite the next kiss lightly across Dylan’s mouth.
“Turns out, that ship has sailed,” he said as he lifted his head. “They know.”
That was…good news. Or bad news. Dylan wasn’t sure which. It was definitely news, and he wasn’t sure how he should feel about it.
“So that means…”
“No more sneaking around,” Somerset said. He ran the pad of his thumb along Dylan’s lower lip, tracking the bruises of his teeth, in a gentle caress. “If that’s what you want.”
It was Dylan’s turn to grab Somerset’s jacket by the lapels. He dragged the bigger man down into a kiss, or tried to. It turned out Somerset was about as hard to shift as he looked.
“Come down here,” Dylan told him impatiently.
“Is that an order?” Somerset asked.
“Yeah.”
A soft smile flickered over Somerset’s mouth and then was gone, replaced with the usual stern set of his lips. He did as he was told, though, and leaned down into Dylan’s kiss. His mouth tasted of fresh whiskey and fresh-enough blood. Dylan didn’t care, and even if he had, he supposed his mouth didn’t taste great either.
He really hated flying.
