“I’ve never thought about it, honestly. I guess it’s some kind of magic? We don’t have much, but I guess flying and clothes are pretty good ones to have.”
“Damn, I can already fly, but clothes after a shift would be awesome magic to have for sure. Anyway, speaking of shifting, can you do that now so I can put this pack on you and we can get back to the cabin? The clouds are getting heavier, and I’m freezing my feathers off out here.”
I took the hint and shifted back, and then Alden put the pack on my back with a bungee cord I’d used for the tarp. Once everything was secure, including the tarp, he stepped up to me in all his naked glory and rubbed up against me, sinking his fingers into my fur and massaging my neck. I snorted to let him know he was playing with fire, but he didn’t take the hint. His hands dug in again, pulling a little to get my full attention.
“You lost on the way down, and you’re gonna lose going back up. You forgot I could fly, didn’t you?”
And with a slap to the top of my rather perky reindeer ass, Alden shifted and flew off into the direction we’d just traveled. My reindeer and I both stood stunned by his audacity. Then, with the decision made, we took a running start and leapt into the air, continuing to run through the wind until the camp and the trees were far below. I could see Alden’s owl in front of me but hung back a little, trailing him as we ascended toward the top of the mountain. Then, just as the cabin came into view, I used a little more magic and shot past him in less than a blink. He would have felt a slight breeze as I passed by but nothing more than a butterfly wing’s whisper.
When he finally landed in the clearing of the cabin, I was already shifted back, clothed once again, and had a cup of hot chocolate already heating up for him in the kitchen. Stunned was a new look on his face, but I liked it.
“How the hell did you get here so fast? I flew as fast as I could and never saw you.”
I stepped off the porch, bent down, and hauled him over my shoulder to take him into the house to warm up. Just before I stepped into the kitchen, I slapped his ass and answered, “Santa’s reindeer can fly, too, little owl, and there’s always a little magic involved.”
Rubbing his red ass cheek where my handprint was now showing up, he protested, “That’s not fair. You cheated. I don’t have any magic like you do.”
I didn’t stop in the kitchen. I just kept walking to the bedroom, where I leaned over and dropped him into the middle of the soft, king-sized bed. “You have magic over me that you don’t even know you have, mate. Let me show you.”
We stayed in bed for hours, and not until after dark did we remember the hot chocolate on the counter in the kitchen or the pack and all the equipment we’d left in the yard.
8
ALDEN
“So, you’re hung up on the plot for your next book?”
We were lounging on the sofa, watching more snow fall and revisiting a conversation we’d started over dinner. We’d been in the cabin, nesting, for a few days now, and it had gotten more and more comfortable the longer we were together. At first, I had been reluctant to talk about my work, but come to find out, Hale was a fan of one of my first books. He’d been so excited he had read one of my books that I let go of any reservations and brought up my issue.
“Yeah, see, my last few books have done okay, but I keep getting the same feedback. The readers are more interested in my bad guys than the good guys. It’s like they want me to focus more on the villains and not the heroes. It’s weird.”
Hale toyed with a piece of string on the edge of one of the sofa cushions and seemed to be in deep thought until he finally looked over at me. “Well, why don’t you?”
I was lost in his green eyes in the firelight and had already lost track of the conversation. We’d had so much mating sex that I was sore, but every time I saw those bright eyes looking at me, it all bubbled up again. I needed to focus for a second because this was an important conversation. “Why don’t I what?”
“Why don’t you write a book about the bad guy? Better yet, why don’t you write a paranormal bad guy? You had mentioned you wanted to branch out into paranormal after that last short story became so popular. Your readers want something new, and you can give them what they want. A thriller with a morally gray main character, who happened to be a paranormal creature, might be exactly what you need to get you out of your slump.”
My first thought was to deny the idea outright. I was a contemporary author. Contemporary thrillers and the hero always wins were my go-to plots. But the more I thought about it, the more the idea had merit. The short story I had written had come out easily and with little effort. It had practically plotted and written itself because it had been a paranormal fantasy. If I needed something to happen, I could just invent the magic to make it happen in that world. Like Hale could be dressed as soon as he shifted back to human—I was still bitter about that one—my characters in the short story could magic their way to a solution if I wanted them to. Of course, the plot would be more intricate, but the possibility of focusing on the dark, maybe violent character as the main character and not having to make sure he was a good guy, well, that idea had a ton of appeal.
“I think you’re right. I need a paranormal story idea where I can have a main character that the reader will want to come out on top, but that will also do some terribly questionable things to get to the truth. What kind of character would readers want to read like that? Vampires and werewolves are evergreen paranormal characters, but they're saturated in the market right now. What else would work?”
Hale turned his wicked half-smile on me, and my mouth went dry. I immediately wanted him like I wanted my next breath. He crawled across the sofa toward me, then captured my mouth with his, pulling me under him until he had me wrapped up and completely covered by his large, hard body. “I have an idea for you.”
“It better involve you being inside me in the next two point two seconds, or I’m going to be very disappointed.”
Laughing against my neck, Hale sat up slightly, making me groan in frustration. “Reindeer shifter assassins.”
Not quite sure I’d heard him correctly, I tried to focus on the conversation and not the feeling of my hard cock rubbing against his taut six-pack. “Say that again?”
“You should write Santa’s reindeer as shifter assassins. When they aren’t delivering toys to all the good girls and boys on the good list, Santa sends them out the rest of the year to take out the worst of the worst on the Very, Very Naughty List. You could do the first book and see how it does. Then, if it’s a hit, you have the rest of the reindeer for a series.”
Suddenly, the spark in my brain that fired my inspiration for my books suddenly lit, and then fireworks of characters, plots, settings, and storylines were going off in my mind. Book after book idea rolled out in my head in a split second of inspiration. I heard dialogue in my mind and saw scenes between characters. In one minute, I knew the main character, the plot arc, the way the book would conclude, and how it could feed into the next if there were demand for more. I was so excited about everything all at once that I had to get the ideas down immediately.
“You’re a genius! Hale, it’s perfect! Where’s my laptop? I need to make notes before I forget my ideas.”
I kissed him hard on the cheek, then wriggled out from under him to run to my desk for my laptop. Fingers crossed that it had been plugged in, I sighed in relief when I saw that Hale had seen to it at some point. “I’m sorry to run away, but if I don’t write my ideas now, then I’ll never remember them.”
Hale waved at me that it was fine. “I’m happy it helped. You don’t need to entertain me. I’ll just go outside and see if I have cell reception now that the storms have passed. I need to see if there are any messages.”
