“Is that so?” He moved so she was settled against his length, slick and hot against his hard need. “Show me.”
She flung her head back with a sigh of mingled need and relief, one leg flung over his waist and the other braced against the mattress, holding his hips still as she ground herself against him. She was spectacular. Her breaths came faster, little whining gasps that made him thrust without thinking, and her eyes flew open as she came.
“Ahh-h!”
He swallowed her cry with a deep kiss, arranging himself at her entrance and thrusting in with one slick movement as her body still bucked and trembled with the force of her orgasm. He rode her through the aftershocks, lost in the sweet tight heat of her.
Need drove through him, and the tenor of Abigail’s moans changed as he sped up. She met him movement for movement, and when he finally spilled inside her she came again, too, and each gasp made his own pleasure burn brighter.
His mate. His wife. His partner through life. As they lay together afterwards, sweaty and satisfied; as they crept to the shower, washed and kissed and fooled around until they both tumbled into bed again, to sleep this time, one thought drifted contentedly through his mind.
Fate had found them for each other.
He looked at her, lying in his arms, already asleep. One hand curled across his chest, possessive even in sleep.
The mate bond pulsed quietly, a beat connecting their hearts and souls.
Thatwas magic. But the rest of their life together? Fate had nothing to do with it. Their life, their happiness, was theirs to build.
Together.
Which was the greatest magic of all.
Christmas Day was everything it should be. A crisp pale sky hung above fresh, fluffy snow. Ruby woke with a shriek of delight and flung herself downstairs. Jasper grinned into his pillow as he mentally tracked her footsteps through the house until she skidded to a halt in front of the Christmas tree.
He tensed.
The Christmas tree. Thepresents—
He shot upright, and Abigail flung an arm around him and dragged him back into bed. “I put the presents out.”
“What? When?”
“Not sure. Sometime after I wore you out so thoroughly you slept like a Yule log all night?”
Abigail had the perfect bedhead and the perfect sleepy, smug smile and the perfect dancing happy eyes. He kissed her until something hit him in the head.
“Stop KISSING! It’s CHRISTMAS!” Ruby roared. “I got your STOCKINGS!”
Abigail rolled out from underneath him and caught her own stocking before it smacked her in the face. She adjusted the strap of her cami and Jasper was struck by a sudden, vivid memory of her slipping into it the night before. And out of it. When had she put it on again?
“Happy Christmas, sweetheart,” she laughed at Ruby as their daughter clambered onto the bed, so excited that scales shimmered on her cheekbones and forehead. There was no risk she would shift, though—not when she had her own Christmas stocking clutched safely in one hand. “And happy Christmas to you, my love,” she told Jasper. Their eyes met, and he felt like he was falling in love all over again. “What’s the plan for today?”
“For today? What day is it?” he asked, his forehead crumpling in a way he knew both the ladies in his life found equal parts adorable and unbelievably irritating.
“It’s CHRISTMAS DAY!” Ruby and Abigail replied in unison, Ruby shrieking with disbelief, Abigail dissolving into laughter.
“What? Already?” He raised his hands to defend himself from a pillow attack. “All right! I surrender! Happy Christmas!”
With her father properly put in his place, Ruby got on with the important business of doling out gifts from each of their stockings. Jasper and Abigail oohed and ahhed over the knick-knacks and random snacks they’d each hinted to the other that they would like, and gasped in genuine delight at the few secret gifts they’d each managed to sneak into the stocking haul.
“As for plans,” Jasper said, pulling Abigail close. “Let’s just say I suspect our friends have something up their sleeves.”
When the stockings had been scoured of all their secrets, they all headed downstairs. Jasper made waffles and Abigail fussed over coffee and hot chocolate while Ruby kept a watchful eye on the gifts under the Christmas tree, carefully selecting which ones she would ask to open before they put the rest in the car to take up to her aunt and uncle’s house.
Jasper’s heart melted as he watched her, and the heart-shaped ornament at the top of the tree sparkled in the early morning light coming in through the window. The first gift Abigail had ever given him. The heart of his Christmas hoard, and a reminder of everything they were to each other.
Christmas at Opal and Hank’s was an all-hands-on-deck affair. There was lunch, and presents, and afternoon tea, and presents, and a half-hearted attempt at a digestion-settling walk, and presents, and dinner, and music and games and a constant tide of friends and neighbors dropping by. Local shifters, his and Abigail’s best friends among them, often found their way to the Heartwell lodge for the privacy and freedom to shift into their animal forms, and Christmas was no different—except the hellhounds and other mythical animals were at risk of being decorated as festively as the Christmas tree if they tried to nap where the kids were playing, or put to work as portable bonfires for toasting marshmallows on.
