Nick (The Kringle Boys Book 1) (13 page)

“What about you? Is that what you think?”

Phoebe let out a very un-elflike curse and the next thing Nick knew, he was backed against the olive oil crates, being kissed senseless by a gorgeous, pissed-off elf goddess. She was warm and soft and clearly furious with him. His knees buckled. Finally, she pulled back slightly, blue eyes glowing, curls tousled, lips swollen.

“We have to discuss us, but now is not the time. First, we have to find that candy,” said Phoebe, out of breath.

Nick nodded as he sucked in much needed air, realizing she must have talked to Spokes and gotten up to speed.

“Are you wearing anything under my clothes?” he asked, running a hand down over the curve of one plump cheek.

“
Not
the time or place, Nick.”

“Right.”

He squeezed for good measure and then let her go.

Together they started searching the stacks.

“What was your plan?” asked Phoebe.

“Find the candy, use Spokes’ portal-maker to open the door back to the factory, and get it out of here before it can do any more damage.”

“That sounds pretty close to my plan, except for one thing.”

Nick started laughing as Phoebe told him what she had in mind. He had to stop and kiss her, though she glared at him.

“Sorry, I can’t help it. I’ve corrupted you entirely.”

“I can’t help it if you’re a bad influence,” said Phoebe primly.

THEY FOUND THE CANDY at the back of the third row, in plain sight, as Phoebe and Nick had suspected, in unmarked cardboard boxes. It was a simple matter to open a portal to North Pole Village, and then a silent parade of grateful elves swiftly moved the badly-needed stock out across the wintry landscape to the twinkling village below.

“Ready?” asked Nick, closing the portal, and Phoebe nodded.

He opened a second portal to the factory floor, and almost immediately, Spokes stuck his head through the glowing door.

“All set here, Miss Phoebe.”

“How did they turn out?”

Spokes just grinned.

“Great, let’s do it.”

Moving quickly, Nick, Phoebe, and the factory elves moved the prepared boxes to where the stolen candy had lived. They weren’t precisely identical in size, but someone would have to look
very
closely to tell the difference.

Finished, the elves hurried back through the portal, and Phoebe reached for Nick’s hand.

“Come on. We’ve been here too long already.”

But Nick was staring at something on a shelf across the aisle.

“What’s the matter?” asked Phoebe, tugging on his hand.

“I know how Arthur got into the factory,” said Nick in a hollow voice.

NICK PICKED UP THE snow globe. To anyone else, it would look like a wintry scene surrounding a dark, spiky castle dotted with tiny icicles. To Nick, it looked like home. The globe fairly vibrated with a chilly power that Nick knew all too well.

“Nick?”

“Father,” he cleared his throat, “Jack Frost has been helping Arthur sabotage the factory.”

Phoebe gasped, hands to her mouth in utter horror.

“Are you sure?”

Nick held up the globe.

“Spokes isn’t the only one who can open portals. I knew Father was furious, but this – maybe he thought if I failed at the factory, I’d come home and admit he was right about me. All he had to do was find someone despicable enough to go along with his plans.”

“What did he want you to do?”

“Take over.”

Phoebe stared at him in the dim light, and the shock and disgust in her eyes make Nick feel like something that had crawled up out of the sludge.

“That’s why I was banished.”

She crept closer, eyeing the globe.

“Is that where you grew up?”

Nick nodded.

“Frost Castle.”

“Oh, Nick.”

Nick braced himself. He didn’t need her pity.

“I’m not going back,” he said gruffly.

“I know that. But what about this? If we take it back to the factory, the elves will freak.”

“And I’m not comfortable with my Father having access to the Candyworks anytime he wants. These snow globes are networked – he can jump to it from any other dark magic globe in the world. Maybe we should give it to Santa? He’d know what to do.”

Phoebe tapped a finger against her mouth for a long moment, and then held her hand out.

“Give it to me. I know what we can do with it, and we don’t have to bother Santa.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Drop it somewhere highly unpleasant. The next time your father tries to jump to this particular snow globe, he’s going to find himself somewhere highly unpleasant.”

Her mouth set with determination and her eyes flashed. Nick’s mouth went dry.

“If I’m extra-naughty later tonight, will you punish me too, Miss Kringle?”

“If you’re lucky,” said Phoebe, and stepped through the portal.

It was a simple matter to close the portal and erase all traces of the night’s adventure. The poor, dosed humans were still under the influence, but for some of them, at least, it seemed to be wearing off – the giddy mirth and drugged fascination with twinkly lights wasn’t quite as mirthful as before. Spokes seemed pretty confident that with a second dose of the noxious brew he’d concocted and plenty of fluids and rest, they’d all be back to normal by morning.

Mr. Berry seemed overwhelmed by the whole situation and didn’t object when Nick stepped up to thank the elves for their quick thinking and sent them all home for the night. They would probably all remember that he was fired in the morning, but for tonight they all nodded, relieved, and paired up to get the humans back to their homes before seeking out their own.

Phoebe and Nick waited until the place was empty except for Spokes and themselves.

“Ready?” asked Phoebe, and Nick nodded, “All right, Spokes. Let’s go.”

Spokes took the doorknob and set it against the wall to create a portal, but as the glimmering blue door began to form, he did something, and the knob glowed red, then green, then red again, infusing the portal opening with a bizarre array of flickering lights.

“Better make it quick,” said Spokes, and stepped back, “It won’t hold for long.”

Holding hands, Nick and Phoebe stepped through the portal.

And into another world.

A truly disgusting world.

Garbage hung from the spindly trees around an oozing marsh of brown and green goop that slithered and hissed with gasses and unseemly bulges of muck. The weak sun was brown in the yellowish sky, and there was nothing but carrion and filth as far as the eye could see.

Nick retched.

“I heard rumors about this place when I was younger, trying to figure out which realm old Jack banished my mother to, but I never thought I’d actually see it.”

Phoebe clung to him, desperately trying not to step on…anything.

“Let’s just do this and get out of here.”

Nick pulled the snow globe from his pocket and hurled it as far into the marsh as he could. It sank with a squelching, sucking sound into the slime.

“Oh, your father’s not going to be too happy the next time he pops into this snow globe.”

They hurried back through the portal, and Spokes closed it with a POP! and pocketed the doorknob.

“Remind me never to get on your bad side, Spokes. Any elf who can conjure up portals between realms – ”

Spokes shrugged, but shook hands.

Phoebe kissed him on the cheek and the elf headed off into the bowels of the factory, whistling Christmas carols to himself.

Nick turned to Phoebe.

“Bath. We need to scrub that place off of ourselves and burn these clothes.”

“But – ”

“I know, we need to talk. Later.”

PHOEBE KNEW THEY NEEDED to talk, but she had to admit that she’d never felt anything better in her life than the hot bath Nick had infused with so many salts, oils, and fragrant suds that she was nearly drunk on the scent.

“I’m going to smell like a perfume shop exploded,” said Phoebe, as Nick scrubbed her back with a soapy loofah, “Where did you get all of this stuff?”

“Found it in the cabinet. One of the factory managers from long ago must have had a serious thing for bubble baths. Up.”

He helped her to her feet and turned on the shower, letting the clean water rinse them both. She shivered as he buried his nose in the nape of her neck and took a deep breath.

“That’s better. But I should taste to make sure.”

“Nick – ” Her protest disappeared on a sigh as his mouth opened over the sensitive tendon between neck and shoulder.

He urged one of her feet up to the high ledge of the soaking tub, spreading her wide, and positioned her hands on the tile in front of her.

“Tell me,” he murmured.

Phoebe shook her head, overwhelmed as his hands skidded over wet skin, cupping and stroking with diabolical precision. Nick tugged both nipples lightly, then toyed with her navel as his thick cock slid between her thighs to tease the length of her pussy, the fat head catching against her clit.

“Tell me,” said Nick again, more urgently.

“Fuck me,”
begged Phoebe, all protests gone.

Nick hummed in approval and strummed her nipples until she was writhing against him, mindless from the pleasure coursing through her system.
Finally
, he pressed the head against her throbbing opening.

“My, my. What a hot, ready little pussy, Miss Kringle,” he teased, but slowly, so slowly, started pushing the hot, pulsing length into her, too much and not enough at the same time.

“So fucking good,” murmured Nick when he was buried to the hilt.

Phoebe pressed back against him, desperate for friction.

“Can I help you?” asked Nick, toying with her slick, hard little clit.

“If you don’t move in the next
three
seconds – ”

“I love it when you’re bossy,” breathed Nick, pulled back, and surged in a deep, luscious thrust.

Perfect.

Then it was just a brutal, slippery fuck as he pressed her against the shower wall for leverage and proceeded to take her over again and again, until she was hoarse from crying out and her body was trembling with pleasure and exhaustion. With a final growl, Nick gripped the cheeks of her ass and spread them wide so that she felt the stretch, then pressed in to the hilt and
came
, flooding her with hot come that had fresh pleasure surging through her well-used frame.

Phoebe had no idea how they made it back to bed, but her last thought before she tumbled into sleep was that they’d never gotten around to talking after all.

The pounding that woke her was unfamiliar, but unable to ignore. Nick was already pulling on clothes, yelling, “Just a minute!” as Phoebe remembered their adventure from the night before. Luckily, her crumpled suit was still on the floor where she’d left it, so she tugged on the skirt with one of Nick’s shirts and followed him to the door.

It was Mr. Berry, looking more frazzled than she’d ever seen him before. Poor elf – he’d had a hard couple of days.

“You have to come quickly,” said Mr. Berry, “It’s Mr. Canning.”

They rushed down the stairs toward the factory floor, which should have been busy with elves getting the day’s orders ready to go. It wasn’t. They stopped short.

A disheveled and enraged Arthur Canning stood in the middle of the room, uncharacteristically disheveled, holding what looked like a wickedly sharp icicle in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Around him, a handful of elves were frozen solid, their little bodies glimmering with frost. Among them, Spokes, Mirabelle, Trixie. The rest of the elves cowered back, terrified.

“Kringle!” roared Arthur, catching sight of them, “This is all your fault!”

He tossed the newspaper to the ground so that they could read the headline – CANNING’S POISONED CANDY.

“All over the city, people are eating my candy and
vomiting.
In the parks, on the subways, at the library. The candy was supposed to make them giddy and happy, not sick! What did you do? You must have done something!”

“That magical candy was not meant for humans. You could have seriously hurt someone, Arthur,” said Phoebe.

“So we switched it. The humans will be fine,” said Nick, “Though I doubt any of them will be buying products from your store anytime soon.”

Arthur shouted with rage.

“I’m ruined! You freaks have destroyed everything I worked so hard to build.”

He turned on Phoebe, who was storming toward him, fury coursing through her body.

“You deserved it! How could you try to try to ruin Christmas like that? You should be ashamed of yourself!”

“You ruined me. Let me return the favor,” he snarled, taking a handful of
something
from his pocket and blowing it in her face.

Magical sugar.

Phoebe stumbled as the sugar settled in her hair, her skin, her lungs, pleasure searing across ever nerve ending.

“I know your weakness, Ms. Winters. Sugar gets you all hot and bothered. That’s probably why you’re letting this coldhearted bastard between your thighs, isn’t it?”

Phoebe tried to move forward, but the pleasure was crippling. She moaned, and a handful of elves hurried forward to help her up, their touch unbearable against her sensitive skin.

“You monster,” said Nick, rage in his voice, and lunged forward.

The icy blast that emerged from the tip of Arthur’s icicle had the elves wailing in fear as it knocked Nick back on his ass, frozen in an inelegant pose on the floor.

“Recognize this? I borrowed it from your father’s study when he was so accommodating in giving me that snow globe. So handy for getting into the factory to cause a few accidents. I don’t know if the cold can kill you since you’re not quite human, but why don’t we find out?”

NICK COULDN’T FEEL ANYTHING from the knees down, and it was spreading, a numbness he recognized as his father’s icy power. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t move. None of this would have happened if he’d just disappeared, as he’d wanted to. The problem with having friends was that it
hurt
when he let them down.

I’m sorry, Phoebe.

Helplessly, he watched Arthur walk toward Phoebe, who was barely keeping to her feet.

“You wouldn’t take my job offer before. Maybe I should have skipped the pleasantries. What a lovely little allergy you have, Ms. Winters. It’ll make you the perfect little sex slave.”

Nick raged, motionless, the numbness reaching his waist, as Arthur stroked a finger down Phoebe’s cheek.

“No,” she whispered.

“You’re in no position to argue.”

Phoebe pulled herself up, trembling.

“I said
NO,”
she said, and a blast of power had Arthur stumbling back a couple of feet.

The effort clearly exhausted her, and she stumbled, but more elves stepped up to flank her.

The numbness was up to Nick’s chest now.

“That’s right. She said
NO.
” said a chunky little elf with wiry curls.

Another blast from a half-dozen of Santa’s best pissed-off little helpers, and Arthur was pinned against the wall. He tried to aim an icy jolt at them, but they scattered, regrouping on the other side of the room. More elves, and more, as they found their courage.

Nick felt the numbness creeping up over his head. It was getting harder to breathe.