Page 34 of The Selkie Santa

“To hide my breaking heart, babe.”

She peeped up at him again. “So now will you finally admit you love me?”

“Oh, fuck yeah. I love you Harper, with all my heart and soul.”

She pulled his head close then, and they kissed for long, long moments.

When Harper’s hand slid down his body, his cock immediately jumped to attention. Already. Gods, it had been less than ten minutes since she’d blown his head clean off with the orgasm of a lifetime.

Harper groaned. “Oh I want to go again, but we haven’t done anything we were supposed to. Gran will have a fit when we turn up to rehearsal tomorrow and don’t know our lines.”

“We’ve got all night.”

“You mean you’re not leaving?”

“Nope, not going anywhere.”

“What if a resident sees you in the morning?”

“I’ll just say that Santa’s been looking after his elf.” Noah grinned and pulled her close, ready for round two.

CHAPTER 11

TWO WEEKS LATER—the night of the pantomime

Noah stood in the wings, feeling nervous as all hell, watching Mrs Melba doing her piano act, with her snakes joining in on the keys for the final crescendo.

He could hear the audience laughing as one of the snakes went rogue and hit all the wrong notes. On purpose, of course.

Beside him, Harper slid her small hand into his and squeezed.

He looked down at her, the light from the stage falling on her face. She was so pretty in her sparkling green and red outfit, with glitter all round her face and in her hair.

As for him, well, he looked down at his pants. Perfect fit. Harper was a great seamstress, and she’d also made the Santa jacket fit better with a couple of darts in the sides. If it wasn’t for this stupid cotton wool beard making his face itch, he’d think he looked pretty cool—as far as Santas went.

“You ready?” Harper whispered.

“Yeah, as ready as I’ll ever be.”

It had been easier learning his lines than he’d thought. Making love with Harper in between practices relaxed him, and he found reading the words so much easier when he was relaxed.Which meant, of course, they’d had to make love a lot, to ensure he was relaxed enough to learn his lines.

Oh yeah, it had been a busy two weeks.

It was fortuitous he’d made good money on that fishing trip because he’d barely had time to go out to sea. At least playing Santa paid something into his bank account.

But who needed money? They’d get by. They had each other.

And now there was a round of applause, and Mrs Melba was up out of her seat, bowing, her snakes winding around her.

“Our turn,” Harper whispered.

Toby, playing compere, and looking very suave in a black cloak and red bow tie, came to check on them. “All ready, my dears?” He looked wistfully at Noah. “You both look gorgeous.” He sighed, but he clearly only had eyes for Noah.

And then he flew onto the stage. “And now, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, it is time for our finale. Santa and his elf will be giving out the Christmas gifts. With the help of their wonderful gizmo gift-producing machine and… Biff the goblin.”

Biff joining in had been a last-minute decision.

No one quite knew why they had volunteered, but there it was. Gran had said it would be good to have a grinch in the cast.

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