Free Seducing Santa by Dahlia Rose Page A

you wake me to tell me this for what reason?” The elf grumbled and waved him off. “Send me back to bed, and go out. I don’t care!”
     
    “You don’t understand, Horace. I am going on a small vacation before the Eve comes. I need you to hold down the fort.” Nicholas grinned and opened a closet. He pulled out a duffel bag and began using his magic to throw clothes inside it.
     
    “How long is a small vacation?” Horace asked with suspicion in his voice.
     
    “I’ll be back by Christmas Eve night.” Nicholas’s answer was casual to the point of indifference.
     
    ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?” Horace screeched. Nicholas grimaced at the noise. “Your father will have my head if he finds out I’m covering for you, and do you know how much we have to do?”
     
    Nicholas got down to his knees so he was eye level with his friend. “Listen, Horace. I’m going crazy here. It doesn’t feel the same this year. I need some pep in my step, so I am heading out for a few days. Come on, how can it hurt?” He stood up again and mused, “Someplace warm so I can tan and a beach. Horace, my man, I’m heading to the Caribbean!”
     
    Horace stood sputtering as Nicholas snapped his fingers to change his clothes. Instead of the velvet robe and satin pajama pants he wore before, he now wore jeans and a black T-shirt.
     
    “Don’t worry, my friend. I’ll be back in time ready for the worldwide trip of Christmas Eve.” Nicholas grinned as he pulled sunglasses down to cover his eyes.
     
    “Nicky, wait!”
     
    He heard as his friend called him by the nickname of long ago, and that made him leave all the faster. Nicholas knew he had to get away for his own sanity. He just had to. So he left Horace in the middle of his living room screeching his name and phased his way to warm sand and sunny skies. Trinidad , here I come!
     
    * * * *
     
    A few hours later, Nicholas sat on the beach and sighed in contentment. He had used his powers and sent himself reeling through time and space to Castara beach on the Trinidadian coast. The trade winds blowing across the ocean brought the smell of the sea to his nose. The sunrays chased the cold and frost from him, and he felt like a new man. Instead of a Jack and Coke, now he had a coconut in his hand, and he took a sip of the sweet frothy drink. He didn’t know what it was, but hell it had rum in it, and that was all that mattered.
     
    The music spilling across the beach from various beach bars and hotels was Christmas tunes blended with Soca music. It gave the same old songs a beat that everyone could dance to. And they did. Nicholas watched up and down the beach as revelers enjoyed Christmas holiday in the sun, dancing, playing, and swimming. It just went to show that regardless of if they were—in the middle of snow or making castles in the sand, everyone had the holiday spirit flowing through them. Some more than others , Nicholas thought with a grin as one tourist came cavorting down the beach singing at the top of his voice. He’s filled with two kinds of spirit, and one was a hundred proof. Nicholas leaned back and sighed in contentment. This was living, and he decided then and there to take a vacation every year.
     
    “Hey, will you help me here for one second?” A woman’s voice met his ears, and Nicholas paid it no mind thinking the person meant someone else. “Hey, guy with the expensive sunglasses, a little help here please!”
     
    “Okay, she meant me,” Nicholas murmured. He pulled his sunglasses up to his forehead and looked out in front of him.
     
    There stood a Nubian goddess straight out of the many books he had read over the expanse of time. Her hair was wet and hung in dark curls down her back. Dark eyes stared out at him with a mix of irritation and frustration from an oval face. Her lips were soft, and the bottom lip pouted all on its own, causing him to want to kiss them to see what she tasted like. But nothing could compare to her