2. We Wish You a Merry Christmas

TWO

WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS

DEREK

I ’m getting antsy.

The snow’s died down. The shops are open later this week with Christmas only a handful of days away, and that just means that while the snow’s barely flurrying, there are still plenty of pedestrians hustling down the street, carrying their bags and sense of entitlement with them as they go.

Across the way, a street performer is banging out ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ on the plastic tubs he’s using as drums. He has a small crowd surrounding him, and an upturned Santa hat for soliciting tips.

Burns ignores him, so I do, too. We’re closing in on the end of our shift, and though I can’t wait to grab a bite, change my clothes, and check in to see what Dove’s plans are for tonight—as if I don’t already know—Burns is strolling along leisurely, whistling the Christmas song under his breath in time to the beats.

An older woman, her hair done up in tight, white curls, waves as she passes us. “Merry Christmas, officers!”

Burns nods. I wave back.

Christmas. I can’t believe how quickly it came. I didn’t really have to do much. My folks are both gone—my mother dead, and my father as good as—and I was an only child. So were they. I don’t have a family, and any of my friends or acquaintances aren’t really the ‘sharing the holidays with’ types.

I decorated my apartment a little because my latest costume admittedly put me in the Christmas spirit, and because my cameras revealed just how into the season Dove is. She’s got one of those six-foot-tall douglas fir trees in her living room, lights strung up on the frames of her windows and her bedroom door, and at least a dozen of these plush cats with Santa hats tucked between their ears posted around her place.

She has a family. Mom, dad, plus two brothers, both younger than her by a few years. They live in Colorado, which is where Dove is from originally. Finding out she’s a transplant, someone who only moved to Springfield two years ago, made a lot of sense. Considering how every fiber of my being recognized that this woman was born to belong to me, I would’ve found her long before now if she’d been a Springfield local.

She’s not going home for the holidays, though. Between snooping through her phone and reading her emails back and forth to her mother, it was easy to figure out why. As the only photographer who takes the annual Santa pictures for the kids who visit Waverly’s to sit on the big guy’s lap, she was working straight through Christmas Eve. By then, she’d be too exhausted to fly out, and she promised she’d visit in the new year.

I’ll make sure of it, so long as I get to go and meet the parents.

I’m glad that she’s sticking around Springfield. When my Christmas plans consist of watching whatever Dove’s doing, it’s better that she’s somewhere that I can keep my eye on her.

I’m working right up to Christmas Eve. Surprisingly, I have that day off, all of Christmas, and a late shift on the twenty-sixth. As the rook, I expected to have all the shit shifts, but after I worked a double on Thanksgiving to cover for some of the other guys, I guess I got lucky.

And then I realize that we’ve made it five minutes over the end of our shift with Burns still going on foot, nowhere in the direction of where we parked our cruiser before doing our beat around the hustling, bustling downtown area.

I tap my watch. “Ready to call it, Burns?”

He gives me a crooked grin. “Right. Almost forgot. Your plans.”

Exactly. “That and I lost the feeling in my toes two damn hours ago.”

“You get used to it.”

I doubt it. Then, waiting until Burns picks up his pace, turning back so that we are heading toward the police car now, I ask, “What about you? Christmas is in less than a week. Got big plans for you and the wife tonight?”

“I wish. It’s just me and my hand for the next couple of days.”

I raise my eyebrows. After everything I’ve learned about my mentor, even spending a single night away from his bride is a no-go for Burns. “Really? Everything okay with you two?”

“Fucking perfect,” is his response. “It’s just Angela is visiting her folks for a couple of days. She’ll be home on Christmas, but since I’ll be around, I signed up to take the Christmas Eve shift in your place.” He bumps my shoulder. “Maybe Christmas will come early for you, rook. If I can’t get laid, maybe you can.”

Echoing Burns, I think: I wish . It’s nice that he’s covering for me—and since Burns doesn’t do nice, I’m sure I’ll pay for it later somehow—but that doesn’t explain why he seems surprisingly okay with working for part of the holiday instead of joining his wife and in-laws for Christmas Eve.

“Won’t you be going with her?” I ask.

“I wasn’t invited.” He shrugs. “I make her parents uncomfortable.”

Yeah… before I knew that Burns was as twisted as I am when it comes to fixating on the one woman we want, he made me uncomfortable, too. Probably because I recognized something in him that reminded me of myself, and I was still trying to convince myself I was a decent guy and could be a good cop.

Now I’m a guy with a healthier bank account, a solid position as a member of the SPD who moonlights as one of the Sinners Syndicate’s hired badges, and the dedication to take a complicated photographer and keep her…

“Besides,” he adds, “it’s nice to see how much my angel misses me while I’m gone.” Amusement flickers in his dark blue eyes. “Not that I’m ever far away.”

I give him a questioning look. I think I get it, but… with Burns, it’s better to clarify. He’s taking my shift. If he drives all night to stand outside his wife’s parents’ house and misses it, that might get my ass in the sling with Sarge.

Burns grins. “Last time she brought me home with her, I installed a couple of cameras in her childhood bedroom for situations just like this,” he explains, and I get it. “The same model I told you about. Angela knows they’re in there somewhere, but even she can’t find them. And since she can’t, that means she doesn’t know just what I can see—or when. It’s the only way I can stay sane while she’s in Connecticut and I’m stuck in fucking Springfield. By the time she’s back, having her under me will be all the present I need this Christmas.”

I get that, too. As for the cameras… hearing that even his practiced wife can’t spot them is a relief. Unlike Angela, Dove doesn’t know that I put them up in her apartment, and as far as I can figure, she hasn’t figured it out yet, either.

If she did, I highly doubt she’d walk around naked as much as she does, but thank you Jesus that she does.

Then again, after this past week, she’s probably a bit more suspicious that someone might be watching her…

I couldn’t help myself. It’s Christmas. I bought a couple of nice bottles of wine for my superior officers for the holidays—and as a thank you to Burns for all of his lessons—when my latest deposit from the Devil of Springfield hit my account. Other than that, I didn’t need to buy any other gifts—but for Dove, I did.

As if he knows exactly what I’m thinking about, Burns asks, “What about you? You get a nice gift for your girl?”

I smile to myself. “Got a couple.”

It started with one of those stuffed cats with the Santa hats. I found one that I didn’t think she had and sent it to her apartment. When she opened it up, then brought it to snuggle in bed with her that night, I didn’t know if I was a genius—or jealous of a stuffed kitty cat.

I went through Burns’s wife’s flower shop to send Dove a poinsettia last week, and a Christmas wreath after that. A box of candy canes left on her car the other night after I brushed off the snow from the top and the windshield before drawing a heart with my finger in the fluffy stuff on the hood.

I’ve signed everything I’ve gotten for her from her secret Santa. All sweet and innocent early holiday gifts at first, but today’s present was designed to shift the mood.

After going through her underwear drawer and stealing a pair or two for my own personal use, I matched the size and bought her a lacy red thong that’s probably too uncomfortable for such a glorious ass to wear for too long, but if I have it my way? My Dove won’t have a cause to keep her panties on long enough for it to chafe.

They’re not daily panties. They’re a way for me to stake my claim, and for her to realize that her secret Santa has more in mind for her than just seeing her have a merry Christmas.

It’s a naughty gift for a naughty girl, and I can’t wait to see her reaction through the camera when he unwraps the gift I secretly dropped off inside of her apartment building before I headed down to the station to meet Burns earlier today.

From the outside, you would believe that Dove Yarrow is nothing but nice. A good girl who works hard to save up her money while still donating to children’s hospitals and animal shelters. She rarely raises her voice, doesn’t smoke or drink, and her bills are paid two days before they’re due no matter what.

But there’s a secret side to my precious Dove. And like how Burns kept his distance from the woman who would become his wife before he realized she was twisted enough to enjoy belonging to him, knowing that Dove isn’t as sweet and innocent as she appears is like fucking catnip to me.

How can I resist?

Give it barely two more weeks and I won’t have to anymore…

Because this year? Dove is on Santa’s naughty list, her name right next to mine. Only instead of getting coal in her stocking, she’ll be getting a Coleman in her bed for the new year—no matter what I have to do to make that a reality.

Burns thinks I’m overprepared. I don’t buy it. Until my cock is buried deep inside of her, her pretty voice panting my name in lust, in love, in absolute need , I will do whatever it takes to ease this woman into being mine.

I have two more presents wrapped and ready to go that will make that perfectly clear. Until then, I’ll keep up with my reconnaissance, and if anything changes—if an opportunity presents itself—I’ll be ready.

In the last six months, Burns has taught me more useful shit than I learned in all of high school and the academy. The most important lesson I’ve taken to heart? Is how most civilians don’t see our faces when we’re on duty. It’s like they don’t want to make eye contact with a cop as if we’ll see the guilt hidden deep within them so they look away, and we’re basically unrecognizable.

They see the gun, the badge, the uniform, and that’s what they remember.

It doesn’t just happen with a patrolman’s uniform, either. Because when I trade my blues for a velvet suit of red later that night, no one sees Officer Derek Coleman anymore. They haven’t all season.

And considering I’m following my mentor’s teachings to the letter and breaking every fucking law there is while playing this part, that’s probably a good thing.