The way I see it, Christmas Eve is the hinge. By tomorrow, she’ll be completely mine. That’s what I’ve spent the last year working toward, and I’m even more determined after I finally discovered what Noelle’s lips tasted like.
As if I wasn’t already addicted, I’m fiending for another hit like she’s my own personal brand of Eclipse. I have to have more, and Iwill.
I swing my legs out of bed and dress quickly into whatever clothes I find in my luggage. It doesn’t matter since I have every intention of changing again momentarily. Letting myself out of my room, I pause outside of Noelle’s. The soft snuffles that slip under the door tell me that, even if she spent part of the night wide-eyed and terrified, she’s sleeping now.
Good.
Once outside, I see that the latest storm has paused, though there’s a bite to the early morning silence that tells me it won’t last. Snow is coming again.
On this mountain, it always does.
Unlocking my car door, I retrieve the dry cleaning bag hanging up in the back seat before easing the door shut. I grab two bags from the trunk and return to the chalet. Inside again, I lay the bag out on the couch. I unzip it, pulling out one of my favorite suits, andwithout even going back to my room, I change without hurry.
When the jacket settles on my shoulders, something in me aligns. My back straightens. My shoulders are set. The fake Officer North I had to pretend to be is gone. The real Patrick… ‘Saint’ Patrick North… is here, and I can’t wait to introduce the real me to my Starling.
One version of Patrick is charming. He’s polite. He might let her believe this is still a conversation, that she has a chance of talking me out of pursuing what I want.
Saint, though? He knows how to get it.
So, content in the knowledge that she’s asleep and I’m not letting her out of my sight, I button the jacket, straighten the cuffs, and let that part of me settle closer to the surface.
Not fully. Not yet. But enough.
One of the bags gets tucked in the closet; I’ll need it later, after I add something that I noticed in the upstairs bathroom. I open the smaller one, pulling out four immaculately wrapped presents that I had Genevieve Libellula wrap for me at a holiday fundraiser for the dance school where she’s a principal ballerina. I’ve known Gen for years. Damien’s beloved younger sister, she’s about the same age as Noelle. Only while I look at my Starling and don’t notice the slight age gap between us, feisty Gen always seemed so much younger than her years.
Until, like Noelle, she went through something so traumatic that it aged her. And, like Noelle, she had a devoted partner to avenge her: Cross Da Silva, the Sinners’ tattooist, and Gen’s husband.
Da Silva wears the devil brand on his skin instead of a dragonfly, but he’s a good guy. Hell, he’s the one I went to when I got my Noelle-inspired tats, and though he doesn’t say much—except to his pretty blonde wife—when he had that needle near my junk, I could tell he was wishing me good luck in taming my broken beauty.
Fuck me, I’m going to need it.
Despite being the heir to the Libellula Family, Gen was right on the frontlines, wrapping up gifts to raise money that she refused to accept from her brother without putting in the effort herself. I dropped a thousand-dollar donation myself just to have her wrap four specific gifts up for me in a stunning silver foil.
It’s Christmas. What kind of a guy would I be if I didn’t bring my Starling gifts to put under the tree?
I do so now, sliding all four of them underneath the lowest branches of the fake tree. Only then do I head to the kitchen to start breakfast.
I brew coffee first: strong and black, with the milk waiting in the fridge and the sugar in a bowl on the counter. Eggs go in the pan, bread warming up in the toaster, fresh fruit sliced neatly because I know how much Noelle likes to have bananas in the morning. Icook like I do everything else: with intention. Routine isn’t kindness; it’s conditioning. It tells people what comes next. It tells them what’s expected.
It gives her a sense of something to hold onto when everything else I’ll do will have her world spinning off its axis.
I set one place at the table, eating quickly so that I’m not distracted later. I leave the other empty. After all, Noelle will come down when she’s ready. When curiosity wins, or maybe hunger does. Either way, she’ll come down here when she chooses to, and I sip my coffee and listen.
Footsteps will come soon. I’m abso-fucking-lutely sure of it. And when they do? I’ll be waiting.
Told you so.
I’m not even finished with my first cup of coffee before I hear delicate feet tip-toeing down the stairs. Good thing I set it down just before she appears in my sight, otherwise I would’ve spat that last mouthful out all over my fresh suit.
Noelle is stunning. Of course she is. Her looks were the first thing that caught my attention. Her flawless skin, her pretty eyes, her curves with enough for me to grab and fondle and caress… she looks like I wrote a letter to Santa as a horny teenage boy, asking for my dream woman, and she popped into existence twenty years later, fully formed, just for me.
I warned her. Last night… I made it clear what I expected from her. You’d think that she would retaliate by either refusing to come out, or trying to do whatever she could to turn me off when she did.
Not my Starling.
Her short, wild hair is almost tamed. The dark circles under her eyes are a clue that she might’ve had a bit of a rough night—understandably—but she did her best to cover it up with some makeup. Instead of coming down in sleep clothes or the same outfit she had on yesterday, she changed like I did—and she looks evenbetter.
She had on a Christmas-themed t-shirt with a cat on it that said ‘Meowy Christmas’ yesterday because, despite the world trying to shatter her completely, Noelle won’t ever lose her spark as long as I’m alive. This morning? She traded her light blue denim jeans for tight black leggings, her shirt for a silky red blouse that matches her hair and makes her tits lookmiraculous.
