Page 37
“Mine,” I growl into her neck in my true voice, all three layers of it. “Both of you. Fucking mine.”
She laughs and cries at the same time and wraps her arms around my neck.
I lay her back on the rug, right there in the wrapping paper, and push my shirt up over her belly. It’s still soft and flat. I put my mouth on it anyway. I kiss her right below her navel, and I keep my lips there, and I rumble so loud the floor hums under us.
She threads her fingers into my hair. “Merry Christmas, Daddy,” she whispers.
I lift my head and look at her. Then I drag my shirt up over her head and toss it into the wrapping paper.
“Nik, the window…”
“Nobody’s out there.” My shadows pull the curtains shut anyway. “And if they were, they’d be dead.”
“That’s not romantic.”
“I’m not romantic.” I push her thighs apart and settle between them. “I’m Krampus. You knew that when you let me knock you up.”
“I’m gonna smack you.”
She doesn’t. She grabs my shoulders instead, because I push into her right there on the rug, slow, all the way, and her mouth falls open. I keep both hands spread over her belly. I keep them there while I fuck her slow and deep in a pile of torn paper and ribbon, while she sobs my name, while the lights on the tree flicker every time she clenches around me.
When she comes, she holds my hands to her belly so tight her nails dig in. When I come, I knot her right there under the tree and growl into her neck that she’s never getting rid of me now.
Her parents live in a little blue house in Monterey, three blocks from the water.
Her mama opens the door before we even get to the porch. She’s short, round, and wearing a Christmas sweater with a light-up reindeer on it. She takes one look at Kisha and throws her arms around her. Then she looks up at me. And up. And up some more.
“Well,” she says. “Aren’t you a tall drink of water.”
“Mama!”
“What? He is.” She reaches up and pats my cheek. “Come in, baby, come in. You hungry? I made enough to feed the whole block.”
I’m carrying four bags of presents and a sweet potato pie from the best bakery in San Francisco, and I’ve spent three hundred years scaring grown men into pissing themselves. This woman has me sitting at her kitchen table with a plate of food in front of me in under four minutes.
Her daddy is a different story. He’s sitting at the head of the table with his arms crossed, watching me like he’s trying to decide where to bury the body. He’s not a big man, but he’s solid, a retired firefighter with gray in his beard, and he’s not even a little bit impressed by my suit.
Tall, he thinks. Too tall. Too rich. Too smooth. Too old for her, too, I can tell. Look at the way he’s looking at my baby.
“So,” he says out loud. “Nik.”
“Sir.”
“What is it you do, exactly?”
“I own a few businesses. Real estate, mostly. And a club in the city.”
A club. Great. My baby’s dating a club owner.
“And how’d you meet my daughter?”
Kisha chokes on her mac and cheese.
“At my club,” I say, without blinking. “She was there with her friends. I saw her across the room, and I knew.”
“Knew what?”
I look at Kisha. She’s staring at her plate, trying not to laugh, her cheeks burning.
