He growled, and the rumble of it made goose bumps rise on my arms, while inside the primal part of my inner wolf awoke with a lazy stretch. Only when I was with Desmond could I feel the wolf as her own entity. Usually it made me uneasy, but tonight it fed the fire.

I snaked my arms behind his back, and with my face pressed against his shirt, I bit one of his nipples through the soft material. He was distracted enough he didn’t seem to notice his hands were bound behind his back with his tie. Only when I pulled away did he realize it.

There was a defiant flash in his eyes, but he must have been willing because he was strong enough to easily get his hands free if he wanted to.

He let them stay tied.

I smirked at him. “Are you sure you want to give me all this power? Could be dangerous.”

He gritted his teeth and spoke slowly. “If you just leave me standing here fully clothed…” I undid his top button and then a second as he spoke, “…it could be dangerous for you.”

With his shirt unbuttoned and pushed off his shoulders, I trailed kisses down his exposed abdomen.

“Promise?” I asked, casting a coy glance upwards. I bit the leather of his belt and pulled the end tab loose with only my teeth.

“You devilish—”

I undid the rest of the belt with my fingers, and he lost track of his insult when I unzipped his slacks and placed a delicate, teasing kiss on the strained cotton covering his rock-hard erection.

I tugged his pants and underwear down. With him exposed, it was all I could do to not unbind him and make him take me then and there. But that would defeat the purpose of the experiment.

“Hold that thought,” I said, and licked the full length of his shaft. “Or should I say, wait here and don’t hold anything.”

I leaped off the bed before he could argue, and when I came back I was dangling something from my finger that made Desmond bark with laughter.

Dropping onto my knees in front of him, I held the cluster of mistletoe over my head.

“Now where should I kiss you first?”

Chapter Nine

My resolve to keep Desmond bound waned with each moment we progressed. Admittedly, when I took him in my mouth and heard the sharp intake of his breath, I longed for the feel of his hands buried in my hair.

When you’ve spent as many nights together as Desmond and I had, some things were routine while others were essential parts of contributing to the pleasure.

I wanted him to touch me.

I needed to feel his hands all over my body.

Raking my nails over the firm curvature of his ass, I caught the dangling end of his tie between my fingertips. The instant I pulled his hands free, his fists were balled in my hair, keeping my mouth in place.

A growl rumbled through me, and the vibration of it along my tongue made a similar sound slip free of his lips.

“God, Secret,” he mumbled.

I pulled my mouth back until only the tip of his cock remained inside, teasingly favored by the curling and rolling of my tongue.

“Enough.” His fist tightened in my curls, holding my head steady, trying to keep me still.

Out of defiance, I flicked the sensitive spot at the base of the head with the pad of my tongue.

He cursed and pulled me to my feet. The hot length of his erection was pressed against my stomach, and through my tank top I could feel the dampness where my mouth had just been.

Desmond yanked my top off and tossed it across the room, then captured my mouth in a jarring kiss which I couldn’t have escaped if I tried.

I didn’t want to try.

Now that he was unbound, I pushed his shirt the rest of the way off, and he kicked his legs free of his pants.

“Are you going to stop tormenting me?” His lips were at my throat, the words vibrating against my skin as he spoke.

I grasped a handful of his hair, pulling his head back so I could show him my defiant smirk.

“Make me.”

He released me long enough to rip my panties off and lift me from the ground before he chucked me back onto the bed. The welcome weight of his body on top of me pressed me into the mattress, and I met his searching mouth with a desperate, anxious kiss that stole my breath and left me gasping.

Desmond rose, balancing on his forearms so only the faintest contact remained between us.

“Over,” he commanded, and I no longer cared which one of us was being the dominant one. I rolled over beneath him, and when he lowered himself I let out a sigh at the feel of his hardness nestled between my legs.

I arched my hips up, and he held them off the bed as he used his knee to spread my thighs farther apart. He placed one wide palm on each side of my waist, and before I had a chance to utter a single command, his grip tightened and he drove into me so fiercely I cried out.

He slipped one hand under me, fingers deft and full of memory. He found the sensitive, aching place between my legs, and with each new thrust discovered a matching stroke, until I had no sensible sounds left to make and merely panted and repeated his name over and over till it had no meaning.

When we were both spent and lying next to each other, slick with sweat and our skin rubbed raw, I let out a short, breathless laugh.

“What?” He sounded worried my laughter might be at his expense.

“Remind me next year…” I began, and got lost in the giggles, “…that mistletoe has more than one valid use.”

We must have drifted off, because when I opened my eyes again the clock on my nightstand told me over an hour had passed. Desmond was on his stomach, snoring softly, and for a few moments I lay next to him and listened to the sound of his breathing. It was almost enough to soothe me back to sleep.

Then I heard the knocking.

It wasn’t as loud as it had been earlier, but it was definitely the same sound, and the closeness of the noise made me go rigid. Before, it had come from my front door. Now the tapping was mere feet away, in the hallway outside my bedroom.

Tap, tap, tap, it demanded.

Had it been steadier I might have written it off as another foible of my aging apartment, like my banging pipes. But there was enough pausing and alteration in the sound to make it much more mysterious than bad plumbing.

“Holden?” I didn’t think it was him. He was far less subtle about his entrances. But for the time being I would rather it be a vampire in my boudoir than anything else. Or a burglar. A burglar would be awesome. At least that would be something tangible that I would know how to handle.

There was no response from the hallway.

I climbed out of bed and did my best not to interrupt Desmond’s slumber. He didn’t move. Taking a cotton chemise out of the dresser, I covered myself up. No sense in running naked into an attempted robbery.

There was a soft glow from the hall, and I assumed it was from the Christmas tree until I reached the living room. The tree wasn’t lit up. I reached for the nearest light switch, but the lights didn’t respond. From under the couch Rio was yowling in a low, drawn-out wail.

My katana was still lying beside the tree, so I picked it up but kept the blade pointed at the floor. I didn’t yet know what I was up against, and I didn’t need to accidentally skewer a burglar when a good ass-kicking would suffice.

I could picture Tyler’s face if I ended up back at the police station, this time having killed a human. He’d never let me leave. The shift from his being spurned to now having it in for me was shocking and more than a little meddlesome. And now that the Tribunal was watching my every move, I didn’t think a nosy detective would last long if he kept getting involved in my business.

Tyler needed to butt out for his own good.

The knocking began again, but before I could turn to find it, my figure was silhouetted against the living room wall, an unfamiliar blue-white light emanating from behind me the source of the illumination.

Now would be a good time to raise the sword.

I complied with my inner critic and lifted the katana as I spun around to see what was casting the eerie light. It took me a moment to adjust to the localized glow and look down to see where it was coming from.

“What the…?”

A girl in a pretty tea-length party dress stood a few feet in front of me. Girl probably wasn’t the right word. She had a rounded face and her hair was a mess of curls, which was probably how mine looked right now, but she also had boobs and hips, which marked her as a teenager and not a child. I couldn’t make out any of her coloring because she was, by and large, almost transparent. The blue-hued light was radiating off her, and she cast a glassy, opaque-eyed glance up to me.

“I’m dreaming, right?”

The ghost girl stared at me. I guess it’s pretty hard to speak if you have no lungs. She shimmered, fading from view before reforming back into something I could actually see. When she brushed against my front door I heard the knocking sound, a soft tapping, though she never raised her hands. Weird.

It had to be a dream. Only my dreams were fucked up enough to make the ghost of a dead teenage girl show up in my living room. The tiara was the kicker. This was the girl who’d died down the block and had been stowed away in the ceiling of the police station. I had to be dreaming.

Thanks a heap, overactive imagination.

If I was dreaming, the sword was sort of a moot point. Not to mention the ineffectuality of using one against a ghost. It’s not like you can cut a ghost in half, so I put the katana on the loveseat.

“All right, spirit guide,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “Dazzle me with your subconscious enlightenment.”

She drifted towards the door and I followed. Must be nice to be dead—none of the pesky walking nonsense. The ghost passed through the door, and even in a dream I knew that wasn’t an option for me, so I opened it and trailed behind her as she moved up to street level.

In front of my building she hovered in the air, waiting for me with a dull, patient expression.

I walked into the middle of the street, my bare feet chilled by the cold December cement.

Wait. Cold?

I’d never experienced cold in a dream before. At least not so lucidly. In the past, the closest I’d come was knowing I should be cold, and reacting in kind. But the temperature of the night shot through my body as surely as if I’d been dropped into an ice-cold lake.