Secret Santa Surprise: Book 29 in the Kindred Tales Series Read online

  “What makes you think we can attract one here?” Strong demanded. “Neither of us has more than five years of experience in our prospective fields. Is she young and inexperienced and likely to accept mates who are the same?”

  “Well…no,” Clear had to admit. “The opposite, in fact. She is an expert in her field and, though I am not a good judge of human age, I heard her telling our coworker, Sonja, that she is ‘closer to forty than to thirty.’”

  “So she’s more than ten cycles our senior?” Strong looked at him in disbelief. “Brother, I’m sorry to kill your dreams, but what in the universe makes you think a beautiful older woman—an Elite, no less—would be interested in two younger males without much status like us?”

  “I know it sounds preposterous, but it’s a feeling I get when I’m around her,” Clear said stubbornly. “Her cheeks grow pink and her breathing becomes faster. Her pupils dilate. I think she finds me attractive. And I’m sure she would find you attractive as well, if you’d ever come to meet her. We do have essentially the same facial features, even though our hair and eye coloring is very different.” While Clear had sandy brown hair and green eyes, his twin had black hair and dark blue eyes.

  “I don’t know…” Strong shook his head. “I’m afraid you’re just fooling yourself, Brother. Or maybe you’re not—maybe she does find you attractive,” he went on. “But I’m sure the moment she met me, she’d run the other direction from both of us.”

  “I’m sure you’d be proven wrong if you’d just come meet her,” Clear said, frowning. “If you’d ever drop by my work, the way I drop by yours. Or, I know…” He brightened. “You can come to our office Christmas party! Families are welcome and best of all, I drew Melanie’s name in the Secret Satan gift-giving ritual.” He frowned. “Or is it Secret Santa? I have such a difficult time remembering…”

  “Satan is the evil one in human Christianity,” Strong said. “He is the opposite of their God. Like the Cruel Father is the opposite of the Goddess. Santa, on the other hand—”

  “I know what and who each of them are meant to be,” Clear interrupted with a bit of irritation. “I just keep mixing up the names.” He waved a hand, brushing the issue away. “Anyway, it’s not important. What’s important is that I drew Melanie’s name, which is the perfect opportunity both for me to give her a thoughtful gift, and for her to meet my equally thoughtful twin—you.”

  “I don’t know…” Strong shook his head doubtfully. “I just think you’re aiming too high, Brother. You might as well ask the Goddess herself to mate with us as to hope a mature, successful Elite would be interested.”

  “Strong, please…” Clear knew that his brother wanted to find a mate even more urgently than he did himself. It had been the Dark Twin’s suggestion that they move to the Mother Ship in the first place, where compatible single females were in much higher supply than on Twin Moons or, indeed, any of the Kindred home worlds. But in their six months aboard the ship, he had been disappointed time and again.

  Clear was afraid his twin was beginning to despair and think that they would never find a mate. But the Light Twin hadn’t given up hope yet and he had the feeling if Strong would only come and meet Melanie, it would revive his hope as well.

  She finds me attractive, I know she does, he thought, remembering her pink cheeks and wide eyes when he’d spoken about two Twin Kindred pleasuring a female. And if she found Clear attractive, she was certain to think the same about Strong. But how could he know for certain unless he could get the two of them together?

  “I don’t know,” Strong said again and sighed. “I guess I’ll think about it.” He glanced at the chronometer on his wrist and grimaced. “Time for my next shift. I’ll see you in the morning.” He finished his coffee in a single long gulp and handed the mug to Clear.

  “Be well, Brother,” Clear said, nodding.

  “Thanks, you too. And…” Strong hesitated. “I hope your meeting with the little Elite goes well,” he said at last, grudgingly. “I’ll stay away from her, at least until your office Christmas party, so you can enjoy your hope for as long as possible.”

  Clear shook his head in exasperation.

  “Strong—”

  “No time to argue now,” his twin interrupted. “I have to get going. See you later.”

  And he left, pulling his white lab coat on over his long arms and broad shoulders as he exited their suite.

  “If only you would meet her,” Clear muttered in frustration, watching his brother go. “If only you’d meet her, you would see!”

  But see what? What if Strong was right and he was reading too much into things? Maybe Melanie genuinely did just want to learn to use her wave and she had no interest in Clear other than that. What if she was only being nice to him?

  What if she didn’t find him attractive in the least?

  “No,” Clear said aloud, pushing the doubts out of his mind. “No, I won’t lose hope! Not yet. There’s at least a chance that a mature and beautiful Elite might fall for Strong and me, if I put myself forward. But there’s no chance at all if I don’t try.”

  Taking his brother’s coffee mug to the sink, he ran some water in it and glanced at his own chronometer. Damn! If he didn’t hurry he was going to be late!

  Leaving the coffee mug in the sink, he rushed out the door.

  3

  “Okay, I think this should work all right.”

  Melanie frowned at the frozen pizza she’d chosen for tonight’s cooking lesson. She had a few other things in the fridge too, but Sonja swore that frozen pizza tasted amazing when it was cooked by the wave.

  “Seriously, it’s a game-changer,” she’d gushed to Melanie. “The wave makes the crust crispy and the cheese all ooey-and gooey and melty…it tastes just like homemade!”

  Melanie didn’t know about that—she only knew that everything she’d tried to cook in the Kindred version of an oven had been burned to a crisp in a matter of seconds.

  The wave appliance was a little taller than waist high—having been made for the much taller Kindred—and it consisted of a flat metal base about the surface area of a regular stove, and a thin sheet of highly tempered metal alloy which pulled out of the wall above it. The thin sheet aligned exactly with the base, matching it perfectly.

  Melanie reached for the handle now and pulled the wave top—no thicker than a sheet of paper—out of the wall so that it was directly above the base. It was supposed to shoot thousands of pinkish-red microfine heat rays out when you told it to cook and get everything done in an instant. This sounded great in theory, but Melanie thought that maybe something was wrong with her model.

  Every time she had asked it to cook anything, the tiny thin rays seemed to clump up and join together, so that instead of thousands of teeny rays, no bigger than a hair, she wound up with thicker rays—some as big as a good-sized piece of rope.

  The thicker rays didn’t just burn the food—they blasted a hole right through it. It was scary to watch and even scarier considering that her hand had almost gotten in the way the last time she’d tried it. Melanie was certain the wave’s thicker rays would be entirely capable of burning one of her fingers to ashes—a phenomenon she was not at all eager to experience.

  She left the wave all ready to go and went to check her appearance in the 3-D viewer one more time. A woman with long, wavy, chocolate brown hair and clear amber eyes looked back at her.

  She was wearing a nice pair of dark jeans that minimized her hips and thighs and a red top with a v-neck which showed just the tiniest hint of cleavage. Her makeup was perfect—she’d just touched it up—and she’d put just a tiny bit of scent behind each ear. She’d been careful not to use too much because Sonja had told her that the Kindred had an incredibly strong sense of smell and they didn’t like overpowering perfumes.

  Now, Melanie wondered anxiously if the scent she’d used was too much. She couldn’t smell it herself, of course, but what if it put Clear off entirely? What if he—?

  Don’t
be stupid, whispered a voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like her ex-husband. Why are you even worrying about what you look like or what kind of perfume you’re wearing? He’s way too young for you and you’re way too old for him. Face it, Melanie—you’re over the hill. Your best years are behind you and the most you can hope for now is to find some old codger who doesn’t mind those wrinkles around your eyes and the fact that your tits aren’t as firm as they were, to live out the rest of your life with. Hell, you might not even find that. You’ll probably end up like your Aunt Marge in a big old house full of cats with nobody to love you until you die. You—

  “Stop it!” Melanie said out loud, firmly.

  After her divorce, she’d paid for several therapy sessions to try and put the broken pieces of her self-esteem back together. Finding out, from the Private Eye she’d hired, that Steve had been cheating on her for years, had wounded her deeply. And her ex-husband’s constant verbal abuse hadn’t helped either. Now she used some of the techniques her therapist had taught her to deal with the traumatic effects that lingered from her failed marriage.

  The first thing to do, was to stop the negative self-talk and push the ugly things her ex, Steve, had said to her out of her mind.

  Closing her eyes, Melanie imagined shoving the awful, depressing ideas out the front door of her “mind house” as her therapist had called it. Then she shut the door firmly and locked it. Bad thoughts outside—you can’t bother me anymore.

  Opening her eyes, she looked at herself in the 3-D viewer again.

  “I look good,” she said aloud, very decisively. “I might be closer to forty than twenty, but I’m in good health and happy with my new job. I’m satisfied with my life choices.”

  Personal affirmation done, she was about to go back to the kitchen or “food-prep area” as the Kindred called it, when a soft chime sounded from her front door.

  That must be Clear!

  Quickly, she fluffed up her hair and smoothed down her shirt—wiping her suddenly damp palms on her jeans—and ran for the door.

  At the touch of a button, the door to her suite whooshed open and there was Clear, towering over her like…well, like a tall, sexy, muscular tower, Melanie thought, her breath suddenly getting caught in her throat as she looked up into his smoky green eyes. He was dressed in casual human clothes—jeans and a green shirt that made his eyes even more intense.

  “Hello, Melanie,” he rumbled in that soft, deep voice of his. “I hope I am not late?”

  “Oh, no—no of course not. Come in!” She stepped aside quickly and made a motion with one hand, ushering him into the room.

  “Is there someone else here?” Clear asked, frowning curiously as he stepped into her living area.

  “Someone else here?” Melanie repeated. “Uh, no—why would you think that?”

  “I thought I heard talking right before I rang,” he explained. “It sounded like a conversation.”

  Melanie felt her cheeks get hot. Oh God, he must have heard her self-affirmation! How horribly embarrassing!

  “That…that was just me talking to my Aunt Marge,” she said quickly, hoping he hadn’t been able to hear exactly what she’d been saying. “She was asking about when I’m coming for Christmas this year.”

  “Oh? Where does she live on Earth?” Clear asked.

  “Down in Lutz—it’s a little town on the outskirts of Tampa, Florida,” she explained.

  “Oh—one of the American states in the North American continent,” Clear said, snapping his fingers. “Of course! I have heard of that place—don’t you have huge carnivorous reptiles called dinosaurs that roam around in your area?”

  “Close…” Melanie smothered a smile. “The dinosaurs have actually been extinct for something like eighty million years. But we do still have alligators in Florida and they can get pretty big and scary.”

  “That’s too bad,” Clear said, looking disappointed. “I wanted to see some dinosaurs. Especially the Tyrannosaurus Rex.”

  “Well, we could take a trip to Gator Land,” Melanie offered. “There are no T-rexes, but they do have gator wrestling.”

  Clear frowned.

  “I never said I wanted to wrestle with a dinosaur—just see one. There are humans who actually do that?”

  “Sure.” Melanie shrugged. “People do all kinds of weird things. That’s humans for you.”

  “I suppose. I’m still learning about human culture but it’s so complex…” Clear shook his head. “So are you going to spend the holiday with your mother’s sister?”

  “Aunt Marge? Yeah, I am. She’s the only family I’ve got left now that—” She stopped abruptly.

  “Now that what?” Clear asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “Oh, since my divorce.” Melanie made a shooing gesture, as though to push the unhappy memory aside. “It’s nothing,” she added. “I don’t even think about it anymore.”

  “But it is something…” Clear stepped forward and lifted her chin so that their gazes met. “I can see it in your eyes,” he murmured. “This…di-vorce hurt you, didn’t it?”

  He pronounced “divorce” like it was a strange and foreign word he didn’t completely understand and his eyes searched hers curiously.

  Melanie could feel her heart thudding against her ribs. The big Kindred’s touch was so soft and gentle on her chin and his eyes were so kind and concerned. She couldn’t remember the last time Steve had looked at her like that—if he ever had to begin with.

  “It…was painful, yes,” she admitted breathlessly. “The worst part of it was that I found out my ex-husband had been cheating on me for years. He—” She stopped abruptly.

  Way to overshare and scare the poor guy away, Melanie! whispered a little voice in her brain.

  “He what?” Clear asked, still concerned.

  “He was a jerk.” Melanie shrugged. “But what can you do? It’s over and I’m getting over it.”

  This was another phrase her therapist had taught her and it really helped to say it out loud once in a while.

  “I just don’t understand it,” Clear murmured, releasing her chin but still looking into her eyes. “I don’t understand how humans can leave their mates and go looking for someone else. Even less understandable is the idea that a male would ‘cheat’ as you put it, on a lovely female like you.”

  Melanie looked away, breaking eye-contact at last.

  “Men cheat all the time. Are you telling me that the Kindred are really that different?”

  “Yes, of course.” Clear sounded shocked that she would even ask. “We are bonded to our mates in the most permanent way and on the most basic level. The idea of seeking sexual or emotional satisfaction from another female would be…” He shook his head, as though looking for an analogy that fit. “It would be like me cutting off my hand and trying to find another I liked better to sew in its place. Do you see?”

  “I suppose…” Melanie tried to smile. “I guess we humans must seem pretty strange to you, huh? Between our weird Christmas traditions and the alligator wrestling and the cheating…”

  “I have a much easier time understanding Christmas and wrestling with deadly reptiles than I do the concept of divorce and cheating,” Clear admitted.

  “But, well…” Melanie started, then shook her head. “No, never mind.”

  “What is it?” Clear said, frowning.

  “Well, it’s just…on the subject of cheating…” Melanie took a deep breath, hoping she wasn’t opening a can of worms. “Since Twin Kindred share a mate, doesn’t it feel like…like she’s cheating on you when you, uh, see her with your brother? Your twin?”

  “Well first, a Twin Kindred cannot touch a female sexually unless his twin is also touching her—not without pain,” Clear said. “And second, no, it doesn’t feel like cheating because she is bound to both twins and the bond they share is between all three of them.”

  “So…if you were, uh, bonded to a woman and you saw your brother kissing her or…or touching her, it wouldn’t bot
her you at all?” Melanie raised an eyebrow at him. “I mean, that’s hard to believe. Maybe because human men are usually so unwilling to, er, share the way you guys do.”

  Clear shrugged, his big shoulders rolling under the plain green t-shirt he was wearing.

  “My brother’s pleasure is mine. And my pleasure is his. We feel it all through our link and share it as we do all things in life.”

  “That’s fascinating.” Melanie nodded. “I’m going to put that into the docu-vid I’m making, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’d love for you to,” Clear told her. “Actually, I was discussing your vid with my brother and he had some suggestions you might want to consider adding in as well.”

  “Come tell me about it while you show me how to work the wave,” Melanie suggested. She gave a little laugh. “We’ve just been standing here talking since you got here.”

  “Do you mind?” Clear asked, following her into the kitchen.

  “Oh, no!” Melanie shook her head. “It’s nice to meet a guy who’s willing to have a conversation. My ex was so taciturn, there at the end that half the time I felt like I was just talking to myself when we—” She stopped herself. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bring him up again.”

  “You can if you want to,” Clear offered. “I don’t mind hearing about your former mate. I consider it a cautionary tale—a list of things that human women dislike. Or at least, things that you dislike.”

  “Oh, no…” Melanie said, frowning. “You’re never supposed to talk about past relationships during a date. Er…” She stopped abruptly. “I mean, not that this is a date, or anything. You’re just helping me learn to use my crazy Kindred appliances…” She tried to laugh and it came out sounding false and embarrassed. God, why had she said that? She felt like a fool.

  “Do you want this to be a date? Part of a courtship ritual?”

  The sound of Clear’s deep voice was so hopeful that she couldn’t help looking up to see the expression on his face. His green eyes seemed filled with yearning…unless, Melanie thought, she was just deceiving herself.