Page 22 of Yule Tied Up

“No, I brought them back in…” He trails off. “At least, I thought I did. Mackenzie mentioned building a snowman, so we ended up doing that.”

“It’s not my fault,” she protests.

He pats himself down, checking his pockets. “Have they fallen on the floor?”

I glance around. “Not that I can see.”

“Fuck.”

I shake my head at him. “If you dropped them in the snow, we are well and truly screwed.”

“No, we’re not.” Kirill steps in, surprisingly level-headed for him. “We have plenty of supplies, and, as soon as Nataniele realizes he can’t get hold of us, he’ll know something’s gone wrong. He’s got the address of this place and will send someone to check on us.”

He’s right, and it’s perfectly reasonable, but it doesn’t help us right now, and we’ve got some random guy dressed as Santa standing on our porch. It’s definitely going to put a damper on our sex-filled weekend if we have to put up with this dude encroaching on our privacy.

If there are no car keys, we’re not going anywhere. And neither is the guy in the Santa suit.

“You’re going to have to wait in your car,” I tell him.

“You can’t be serious. It’s freezing. Even inside a car can freeze. You can’t expect me to spend all night out there.”

“Sorry, dude. You don’t have much choice. We’ll give you some blankets to take with you and something warm to eat and drink, but that’s the best we can do. You’re not spending the night here. End of story.”

Fake Santa shakes his head, his white beard trembling, and turns his back on us, as though he’s disappointed in the outcome. I don’t give a fuck if he’s disappointed. He won’t die if he waits in his car until morning…at least, I don’t think he will.

But then he reaches inside his red padded Santa suit, and, from its depths, pulls something out. Metal glints, and mystomach drops. He whips back around, facing us, and holding the dark length of a shotgun.

He grins, and it holds a truly nasty edge. “I suggest we rethink the plan.”

CHAPTER 10

Kirill

Fuck!

“Oh, my God!” Mackenzie cries.

“None of you assholes move an inch,” Fake Santa declares. “And drop the knife.”

He aims the gun at Tino, who has no choice but to toss the knife he’s been holding this whole time to one side. Tino should have stabbed the fucker the moment he’d opened the door.

What the hell is going on here?

Why the fuck did we forget our weapons? That is so screwed up.

We should have left the minute Mackenzie thought she saw someone outside, but we were all thinking the same way. None of us wanted to believe it was real. We’ve all had too much fucking trauma, and we wanted to pretend it was just her imagination, so we didn’t have our perfect little sexscapade getaway ruined.

Shit.

This motherfucker might have a shotgun, but there are three of us men against only one of him, and we are hardly weaklings. Surely, between us, we can take him down. But it’s not going to be easy without any shots being fired. We can’t risk one of usgetting hurt, not all the way out here in this weather, and with no transportation.

It occurs to me that his story about the broken-down car is most likely bullshit. He got up to the cabin in the snow, which means he has a suitable vehicle parked somewhere nearby. If we can get to it, we can make the drive into town ourselves. It will be precarious on the mountain roads with the snow still falling, but I think it’s safe to say our supposedly romantic weekend at the cabin has come to an abrupt end.

“Now I’m the one calling the shots,” Fake Santa snaps. “Try anything stupid, and your pretty little whore here gets a bullet between her eyes. You ever seen what a mess a shotgun can make of a person’s head at close range? You wouldn’t want to see that, trust me.”

“What do you want?” I step forward, so I’m standing by Tino, and trying to cover Mackenzie as much as I can.

“To teach you all a lesson.”

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