Hot for the Holidays

by Lora Leigh

  Naomi studied him, worried. “Is there a place in the world for you?”

  “I think so.” Jamison started to pace the tiny space, restless. “The Changers hid themselves away down there. They’d fled from many parts of the world to survive together. But they spoke of others out there who manage to live among normal human beings. I plan to be one of those.”

  “But what if you have no choice?” She rubbed her arms. “You already seem different.”

  “Different?” He’d tried so hard to remain solidly himself. “Different how?”

  “The Jamison I knew would never pace. And he wouldn’t not talk for an hour when he saw someone he knew. You rushed us out of the depot in twenty minutes. And the sex today was . . . ”

  He stopped. “Was what?”

  “Phenomenal. You’ve always been the best lover, but . . . wow.”

  Jamison couldn’t help grinning, remembering the amazing joy when he’d shot his seed inside her. “It was powerful. Maybe two years of abstinence fed it?”

  “Were you abstinent?”

  She looked straight at him, but he saw the pain in her eyes. She wanted to believe he’d been true to her, but feared his answer.

  “The Changers had weird rules about sex.” Jamison made himself stop pacing and lean against a table, pretending to relax. “Every sexual encounter you had, and who you had it with, meant something. The leader could screw whoever he wanted, in whatever form he wanted to. The next cat down could screw anyone she wanted, but had to submit to the Alpha. And so on. They tried to put me at the bottom, at the mercy of everyone, but no way was I letting myself be used like a sex slave. They said I could participate in the group orgies if I stayed chained up, but I declined.”

  Naomi smiled suddenly, like the sun lighting up the sky. “I know you, Jamison. You didn’t just decline.”

  “No, I pretty much told them what I thought about their sexual perversions, in vivid terms. Navajos are a modest people.”

  “Modest, my ass. This afternoon you stripped in my bedroom, ripped off my clothes, and jumped my bones.”

  Jamison warmed, thinking of the glorious feel of her clenched around him. “I pulled down the shades first.” He came to her. “Besides, it was you. I’ve never been able to resist you.”

  Her gaze moved to his lips, and his pulse started to throb. “You haven’t finished your story,” she said.

  “It’s almost done. Another way I fought their sexual advances was to tell them I already had a mate. This puzzled them, because according to the Alpha, Changers should only take Changer mates. Even Changers who mainstream don’t marry.”

  “A mate.” Naomi’s voice went quiet.

  “That’s what they call it.” Jamison cupped her cheek. “It sounds more intimate than girlfriend, but less intimate than lover.”

  “Did you mean me?”

  He laughed softly. “Of course I meant you. My lover with the turquoise eyes.” He pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth.

  “Why were they so cruel to you?”

  Jamison brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead. “They did teach me things, like how to control the Change, and how to calm the beast inside me so I didn’t savage everything in sight. I learned how to be contained, controlled. It took a long time. They were right to keep me caged at first. I tried to rip out the throats of everyone I saw.”

  She slid her arms around his waist. “I can’t believe that.”

  “I’d never felt like that in my life. I was a killer, and I wanted to kill. Me, the storyteller who reads to children.” Jamison remembered his fear and self-loathing, his certainty he couldn’t trust himself with anyone he loved. “But the Changers taught me how to focus the killing instinct to what was necessary—hunting game or moving up in the pack. Not that they were about to let me move up. They taught me, but the Alpha didn’t trust me.”

  “You got away from them, though.”

  Jamison nodded. “Once I got used to the Change and made it clear I wasn’t going to challenge the Alpha, they let me have more freedom. Not much, but more. The Alpha had some idea of using me as a guard for the pack, but he couldn’t trust me enough. So he decided that, to enforce my loyalty to him, I should mate with one of his females.”

  The worry returned to Naomi’s eyes. She was trying to listen and be understanding, but he preferred her flash of jealousy to total indifference.

  “Was she pretty?” Naomi asked, trying to sound casual.

  Jamison wanted to laugh. “She’d lived in the remote desert most of her life, and I don’t think she’d combed her hair in five years. She was a beautiful mountain lion, but as a woman . . . let’s just say she let herself go.”

  Naomi didn’t look amused. “Are you telling me this because you think it’s what I want to hear?”

  “Because it’s the truth, love. I didn’t want to take her as mate, either as a cat or as a human. I wanted to get out of there, get home, and find you.” He lost his smile. “But they didn’t want me to go.”

  “Then how did you get here?”

  “I escaped.” Jamison closed his eyes, remembering the pain of the spelled chains. He’d drawn on his own limited shaman magic to counteract the spells, but it had been brute strength that finally broke them.

  “It took me a long time, but I finally escaped their compound. And they chased me. They’re still hunting me.”

  Naomi touched his face. “Is that why you said your enemies were looking for you?”

  “Yes.” Jamison kissed the line of her hair. Her scent was intoxicating. “I had to come back here to protect you. The Alpha knew I was only partially bonded to you—he could smell it. I heard him tell his seconds that he had to get rid of you before he could fully bond me to the female.”

  “Get rid of me.” Naomi’s beautiful eyes filled with alarm. “I bet he didn’t mean persuade me to break up with you.”

  “The Alpha has lived apart from civilization so long he knows only one method of dealing with something in his way.” Jamison felt grim. “Kill it.”

  FOUR

  Naomi went still. She gazed into Jamison’s dark eyes, windows to the man she’d thought she knew.

  “Kill it,” she repeated.

  Jamison touched his lips to her hair again. “The Alpha is a vicious bastard,” he said softly. “As soon as I understood what he planned, I doubled my efforts to escape, to get back to you. I won’t let anything happen to you, Naomi, I promise.”

  Naomi thought about the way Jamison had not let her do anything alone since he’d arrived. Every step of the way he’d been right beside her and Julie.

  “Julie,” Naomi said, watery fear washing through her. Julie was sleeping alone in the house.

  “They’re not here yet,” Jamison said as though reading her thoughts. “I can smell them, and they haven’t found me or Magellan. They’ll figure it out sooner or later, but it gives me a little time to complete the bond with you.”

  She frowned up at him. “What do you mean, complete the bond? Won’t that make them more determined to kill me?”

  “Once I am completely bonded to my mate, they can’t touch you. There’s powerful magic in the bond. It’s not just a civil agreement, like marriage. No Changer will dare touch another’s mate on pain of death. Changers bond only once, and after that, never again. There is no divorce, no remarriage. If you bond with me it will be forever. For both of us.”

  “If I bond with you?” she repeated. “You’re giving me a choice?”

  He was standing toe-to-toe with her, his arms like strong wings on her back. “If you don’t want to complete the bond with me, I’ll go, draw them away from you.”

  “But if you leave, is that any guarantee they won’t find me and try to eliminate me anyway?”

  His mouth turned down. “No, it’s no guarantee. I’m sorry, Naomi. If I’d known all this three years ago, I never would have moved in with you. I’d never even have asked you to have coffee with me.”

  “That would have been a
shame,” Naomi said softly.

  “But you’d be safe now. You wouldn’t have to know any of this.”

  “I wouldn’t have known happiness, either. Or what it was like to truly fall in love.”

  Jamison said nothing, but his eyes filled with anguish. “I think when I met you, the Changer in me started to bond to you at once.”

  Naomi had felt it too, she realized now. When Jamison had come home with her the night she’d met him, and they’d made love in the white moonlight, she’d known that she’d waited all her life for this man. A man with midnight-dark eyes and a warm, liquid voice.

  Having him quietly move in and start helping her at the garden center had seemed so natural. They’d started driving up to Chinle every other weekend to visit his mom and sister and his vast extended family. They were warm, calm people, like Jamison, and they’d instantly absorbed her into their ranks. She’d feared that they would be angry at Jamison for pairing himself with a white woman, but their attitude seemed to be that if Jamison liked her, she must be all right.

  Only Jamison’s grandfather hadn’t been enchanted with Naomi. He spoke little to her, sometimes pretending she wasn’t in the same room with him. Jamison had told her not to worry about it, but Naomi hated that the most respected member of Jamison’s family didn’t like her. She felt like she’d failed Jamison in some way, though Jamison hadn’t understood that when she’d told him. “Grandfather has always been difficult,” Jamison had said.

  Naomi smiled a little. “So great sex is not enough to complete the bond?”

  Jamison grinned back. “There’s a ritual Changers have to follow to bond to their mates. I’ve heard of a shaman up in the White Mountains, an Apache, who can do it. If you’re willing, we’ll go see him tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. I have to take Julie to the Ghost Train.”

  “We’ll be back long before the celebration starts.”

  “Why not a Navajo shaman? Aren’t there several in your family, not to mention your grandfather?”

  “This Apache is a Changer, one of the ones who managed to sync with the rest of the world.”

  Naomi frowned. “If he’s a Changer, why didn’t Coyote send you to him instead of driving you to Mexico to be locked in a cage for two years?”

  Jamison blew out his breath. “You know, I don’t know.” He smiled, his warm, to-die-for smile. “Come with me tomorrow, and we’ll find out. That is, if you’re willing.”

  Naomi clenched her jaw. “Don’t worry. I don’t think I want to let you out of my sight again.”

  Jamison leaned down and kissed her. “I’ll make sure you don’t regret it, love. I promise you.”

  Jamison told Naomi that Julie should be taken somewhere safe for the day, because it would be too dangerous for her to accompany them. Naomi, her heart squeezing, agreed. Julie didn’t want to be left behind, but on the other hand, she viewed staying with Naomi’s old high school friend, Nicole, in Flagstaff and playing with her kids as a fun vacation. Nicole would bring Julie back to Magellan tonight for the Ghost Train, and hopefully by then this bonding thing would protect Julie too.

  It was midmorning by the time Naomi drove with Jamison out of Flag and along the 87 up into the mountains. An hour later, Naomi turned onto the winding highway that rolled across the top of the Mogollon Rim and into the White Mountains.

  It had been cold in Magellan and snowy in Flagstaff, but up here, winter had settled in hard. Glittering drifts piled on either side of the plowed highways, and the tall ponderosa pines were mantled in snow.

  Naomi loved the beauty of it, though part of her looked forward to spending a balmy Christmas day under the palm trees with her folks in Tucson. She wondered briefly what her parents would say when she brought Jamison with her and told them he was back in her life. She glanced at Jamison, who lounged comfortably beside her, sunglasses shielding his eyes from the glare of sun on snow. Her parents would be delighted. Jamison charmed everyone.

  They stopped in the Apache community of Hon Dah for hot coffee, and Jamison asked a convenience store clerk if he knew a shaman called Alex Clay.

  Naomi wasn’t really surprised when the Apache man grinned and said, “Hey, Jamison. How’ve you been?”

  He and Jamison talked about mutual acquaintances and family members for a moment, then the man continued.

  “Yeah, I know old Alex. He lives down by Whiteriver. I’m not sure exactly where. He’s a crazy old man, though.” The clerk mimed lifting a bottle and drinking.

  “Thanks.” Jamison paid for the coffees and held a steaming cup to Naomi. “If anyone else asks about him, you never saw me.”

  The man flashed a sunny smile. “Sure. I don’t gossip.”

  “Like hell he doesn’t,” Jamison said under his breath as they climbed back into Naomi’s truck. “But he doesn’t like strangers and won’t tell them anything.”

  “Where to now?” Naomi asked as she put the truck in gear.

  “We go to Whiteriver and ask around.”

  She gave him a dark look. “So this Alex Clay doesn’t have an address?”

  “You’ve lived in a town too long, love. Someone will know where he lives and give us directions.”

  It had already taken hours to drive along snaking highways through snow and traffic, and there was the Ghost Train celebration to get back for. “He doesn’t have a cell phone or anything?” Naomi asked, exasperated. “Some way we can call him and ask where he lives?”

  “Probably not. If he’s anything like my grandfather, he’ll think cell phones were invented by evil spirits to enslave humanity.”

  “Yeah?” She subsided. “He might be right about that.”

  Jamison studied her a moment, his sunglasses still. “Grandfather likes you, Naomi. He’s just not comfortable with non-Indians.”

  “It’s all right.”

  Jamison slid his hand to her thigh, his touch warm. “He’ll come around.”

  “Really, it’s all right.” As long as Jamison was beside her, she thought, making her feel loved and wanted, she could put up with the silent disapproval of his grandfather.

  Whiteriver was a small community, but it was busy today with last-minute Christmas shoppers as well as hunters and skiers up from the desert cities. Jamison talked to several people, who, for an interesting change, had never met him. At last Jamison jumped back into the truck with a smile on his face and kissed her.

  “Go that way,” he said, pointing down a side street.

  Naomi followed Jamison’s directions. Soon they were out of town, following a tiny ribbon of road through snowy paradise. Naomi drove carefully, keeping an eye out for stray elk, other cars, or citified hunters who might mistake a red Ford pickup for a deer.

  After half an hour, the pavement ended and they followed a washboard road through the woods. The road had been plowed, which meant people lived back here, but Naomi winced as her tires ground through frozen potholes.

  Finally Jamison pointed to a tiny house in the shadow of the trees. Smoke rolled from its chimney. “Here, I think.”

  Naomi parked in front of the house, but Jamison put his hand on her arm when she started to open the truck’s door. “Wait a few minutes. Let him get used to the idea that we’re here.”

  Naomi was impatient to get on with it, but she recognized that she had to do this Jamison’s way.

  “One thing I don’t understand,” Naomi said as they waited. “If the Alpha of these Changers thought you were such a threat, why didn’t he try to kill you right away when you came along? Why keep you alive and try to make you part of the pack?”

  Jamison smiled a chill smile. “Because the Alpha is a snob. Apparently, I’m a purebred Changer. One of the Alpha’s missions in life is to keep the Changers’ blood from being diluted. That’s why he wanted to mate me to one of his—to breed more purebloods.”

  “Ick. Like you’re a racehorse.”

  “That’s how I saw it. It drove him crazy when I told him that the woman I claimed as
mate wasn’t a Changer at all.”

  Naomi shuddered. “That’s why he wants to keep you from being with me? How bizarre.”

  “He’s fanatical about genetics and inheritance for some reason. What I’ve learned is that Changers in the Americas were originally shamans from a tribe that has long since vanished—divided into and absorbed by other tribes. The shamans became so attuned to the animals they watched and prayed to that they learned their essences, their spirits, and could eventually take their shapes.”

  “You mean like skinwalkers?”

  Jamison sketched a symbol in the air that he’d told her was a sign against evil. “Not like skinwalkers. A skinwalker wraps himself in the hide of a freshly killed animal and then morphs into its shape. Skinwalkers are evil and dangerous. These shamans understood the spirits of the animals, they could become an animal. It was the animal gods’ gift to them. In my case, the mountain lion.”

  “Can Changers be other animals? Not just mountain lions?”

  “Depending on the original shaman they descended from, yes, though it’s usually a predator. Wolves, coyotes, hawks.”

  “If you are a pureblood,” Naomi said, “that would mean your father was a Changer. Or your mother. Right?”

  “Both my families have the genetic strain, the researchers in the pack told me. But apparently the ability to change doesn’t manifest in every generation. If anyone else in my family can change, they’ve never admitted it.”

  “The researchers?” Naomi picked up on the word.

  Jamison went silent a moment. “They had a lab. They had money. Everything was state-of-the-art.”

  Naomi reached over and plucked off his sunglasses. Behind them his eyes were filled with memories of pain. “They hurt you,” she whispered.

  “They had to make sure I was worthy to be allowed to live. They took a lot of samples.”

  She didn’t like the way he said samples. “You only need a strand of hair to check DNA.”

  “They checked so many things. My stamina, my strength, my endurance.”

  “They tortured you, you mean.” Anger surged through her, wild and furious. “Those Changers had better not come up here after you, because they’ll have to deal with me.”

  Jamison smiled a little, but he said, “Don’t even think about fighting them, Naomi. They’re dangerous and well trained.”

  His tone made her subside, but Naomi wanted to scream in frustration. They’d hurt him and caged him while she’d been living obliviously in Magellan, angry at Jamison for deserting her.

  If she’d known what was going on, she could have found some way to rescue him—how, she had no idea. But she was related to half of Hopi County and must know someone who could have helped her. Putting her connections together with Jamison’s huge family, she could have raised a formidable army.

  Jamison put his arm around her shoulders. “I got away, and I’m back. Thinking of you, needing to get back here to you, kept me alive, kept me from giving up hope.”

  Naomi’s throat ached. “And here I was pissed at you for not calling me.”

  Jamison pulled her close and buried his face in her neck. “But I’m glad you were here not knowing. It kept you safe.”

  His warmth was much better than the heater running full blast. She turned her head and met his mouth with hers. She loved having him here, with his satin-smooth lips on hers.

  “Let’s do this bond thing,” she whispered. “I don’t want to lose you again.”

  Jamison caressed her face, his hand sliding into her coat to cup her breast. “The bond means I protect you, and no one else touches you.”

  “Good.”

  Jamison started to kiss her again, then glanced out the front window. The door of the house stood open. “Ah, it looks like Mr. Clay is ready for us.”

  “Good,” Naomi repeated and snapped off the engine.

  FIVE

  Jamison realized before they’d spent ten minutes inside Alex Clay’s tiny and rather smelly house why Coyote hadn’t sent him here to learn about being a Changer. The man was insane.

  The thin, elderly Apache shuffled around his one-room house, gathering up bits of trash and piling them on a worn blanket in the center of the room. He muttered to himself, paused to extensively scratch an armpit, then plopped cross-legged onto the blanket and closed his eyes.

  Jamison gestured for Naomi to sit facing the old man, and Jamison sat next to her, letting his thigh touch hers.

  Alex kept his eyes closed as he rummaged through a leather pouch. He brought out stones—turquoise, onyx, and a white stone Jamison couldn’t identify.

  He began muttering to himself again, but Jamison couldn’t understand what he said. Alex wasn’t speaking any Native American language Jamison recognized, and he knew many.

  Naomi looked sideways at him, and Jamison shrugged, though his heart constricted with uncertainty. He wanted—needed—this bond with Naomi, and he grew impatient.

  Impatience was something new to Jamison. He’d been raised to be calm and accepting, not acting until nature or the gods showed him the right path. Since his first Change, he’d been more volatile, less willing to wait for someone else to tell him what to do.

  Had he ever been patient? he wondered. Or just stubborn? Had he only wanted to show off to others that he could sit in meditation longer than they could? To show that he didn’t need to rush around looking for happiness? That he could sit like a lump and wait for grass to grow on him better than anyone else? Idiot.

  Naomi had never waited for life to show her what to do. She faced her problems full-on and did what she had to do. She’d left her husband in Phoenix when he