HeartsandWishes Read online

  It wasn’t safe in the mortal world for their kind anymore. She understood that and she’d never do anything that could threaten their lives here. However, Holly doubted most people realized she was capable of such logical, rational thought.

  Many of her kind eschewed the mortal world. They wouldn’t understand her desire to join the mortal world. Not one bit. They would see it as the action of a reckless, wild youth. Yet Holly did have that fear inside her, a gnawing, nagging worry that she shouldn’t follow through on her plans. The mortal world was harsh, unforgiving. She could be making a mistake.

  But was fear of discovery any worse than this slow, miserable death of depression? Depression might not cause a physical death on its own, but on an emotional level? She was dying inside. She’d slipped past boredom and loneliness into depression a long time ago and with each passing year, it got worse. Suffocating and fading away until it was a chore just to get out of bed in the morning.

  She could have even dealt with all the stifling overprotectiveness, if she was treated as a normal woman by the rest of the Reach. Her father intimidated the hell out of most of the men. Holly’s natural reticence had most of the women convinced she was stuck-up, which was so damn far from the truth, it was almost pathetic. She’d heard some of the women she worked with whispering once. She thinks she’s so damn special because of her father. Thinks that makes her better than anybody else.

  No. She didn’t think that at all. It was her father who seemed to feel that way. Putting her up on some damn pedestal. And because of her reserved nature, because of the way her father scrutinized anybody and everybody who made an attempt to befriend her, Holly found herself isolated. More and more isolated with every passing year.

  She’d tried standing up to him before over it. When she had put in for the job of field operative and he’d blocked it, Holly had stormed into his office at headquarters and demanded to know why. His patronizing response had only enraged her further and she’d demanded he stop treating her as if she were a child.

  His response?

  Then you must stop acting the child, Holly. An adult would understand that this is for the best.

  Controlling my life? How can that be for the best?

  She’d tried to make him see but he hadn’t. It was almost as if he couldn’t. Nearly an hour spent arguing with him, cajoling, even attempting to compromise and it had all been a waste of her breath. She would remain a controller and that was the end of it.

  So sayeth the Claus, she thought mockingly as she remembered that day. For nearly a month after, she hadn’t spoken to her father and she’d given in only because her mother had intervened. She remembered that night with crystal clarity, because that was the night she’d seen her way out of this silken prison.

  Her parents had arrived at her doorstep. Da had his normal brooding silence going on, though she could feel the intensity of his thoughts pounding at her. She’d felt his regret over the argument, his confusion over why she just didn’t understand and his dismay that she was still unhappy with him. She could have ignored all of that, though knowing he was unhappy did hurt.

  Holly adored her father but he couldn’t keep smothering her like this. She’d been on the verge of saying that when her mom had spoken up. Rhys tells me that you’re mastering farsight. I guess that means you’re about ready to start working on teleporting. Oh you must be so excited.

  Excited. That didn’t even cover it. Teleporting. At first, mastering the skills of farsight had seemed as if it were just another exercise in control, though technically she understood that farsight was the last step before attempting the magicks needed to teleport.

  Farsight wasn’t unusual among the elves but most had a limited range. They could teleport only as far as their farsight let them look ahead. Using it over great distances was a bit rarer. The strength to teleport over great distances even more rare.

  Holly had learned that not all elves required farsight to teleport but they needed some other focus to follow. Since they couldn’t “see” where they were going without farsight, another focus, such as a person, was needed. Now that was one of the rarer gifts—teleporting successfully, going only by some uncertain focus. Holly knew of nobody who could do it.

  As to teleporting, she hadn’t thought she’d be able to do it. Not all the elves could, though it wasn’t exactly rare. It was a little more unusual among elf-kin and for years Holly had figured she had gotten the short end of the stick yet again because most elves and elf-kin started showing the signs of the gift by age fifteen or so. By nineteen, she still hadn’t shown signs of any real magicks and she had resigned herself to living out a long, non-magickal existence.

  Her twenty-first birthday had changed all of that. She’d come late to her powers but they were there, as real and as solid as any other elf’s. They’d come on her so strong, she’d required a private tutor to help her and they’d enlisted Rhys. Because naturally, only the Claus’ closest friend could be expected to treat Holly with the care and consideration she deserved. Holly couldn’t be trained at the University where other elves were trained. That just wasn’t fitting.

  The Claus hadn’t been happy that Holly was learning that particular magick but for once, it was something he had next to no control over. Active magicks had to be trained. There was no way around it.

  Finally, God and fate had decided to cut Holly a break. The magick that her father hadn’t wanted her to learn was going to provide her with a way out. At least for a while.

  “I’m going to live,” she whispered, her voice shaking with passion.

  For once in her life, she was actually going to feel as if it were her life.

  Chapter Two

  “Good…good…”

  Rhys circled Holly’s hovering body, watched as she maintained her body weight in midair as she started to slowly rotate. It seemed a pointless exercise to some, Rhys knew, but with magick, self-control was everything.

  Holding one’s body weight in midair with the power of magick alone required a finely honed skill. Doing that, then moving, required even more. When they had placed Holly under his care for her magick craft, he’d warned her parents that he wouldn’t coddle her simply because she was the daughter of the Claus.

  Many of her teachers had done just that. Holly was bloody brilliant but even if she’d had a brain the size of a penguin’s, they still would have passed her on through school and praised her abilities. She would have none of that with Rhys. In truth, he’d wanted to bang his head against some hard, flat surface when he’d first been assigned to teach her. She was a spoiled, pampered little princess, or so he’d thought, until he had started working with her.

  Although she was the daughter of his closest friend, his job and his own life kept his contact with Holly at a minimum, a dinner on occasion at North Hall, or the infrequent times they’d bumped into each other in town. Hardly enough to actually get to know the quiet girl.

  A rather flighty quiet girl, Rhys had assumed. When she was twenty, he’d caught her sneaking into the transport hub. Her plans had been written all over her guilty face and he’d had no qualms about physically dragging her out of there and turning her over to Nik and Chelly.

  But he’d been wrong. Holly wasn’t flighty. She wasn’t spoiled or pampered. She wasn’t afraid of hard work. He’d learned that the very first night he’d worked with her. She often left the workroom soaked with sweat and shaking with exhaustion and she never complained. She rarely spoke and it had been that reserved nature that had fueled his belief that she was indeed spoiled and stuck-up.

  A few more weeks had convinced him otherwise, though.

  Holly might be a bit spoiled, but considering who her parents were, it was little surprise. One wouldn’t expect much else for the only daughter of Santa Claus. From her very first breath, the world had been hers for the taking. Holly had been the answer to their prayers and Rhys knew that Nik and Chelly adored their little golden-haired angel—knew they adored showering her with everyth
ing she could ever hope for. But Holly wasn’t afraid of working for what she wanted. She didn’t expect the magick to come easily and when the lessons got difficult, she simply dealt with it.

  He couldn’t describe her as shy, because she had no problems speaking her mind, quite vocally, when needed. But she was very reserved. Very contained.

  And lonely.

  Over the past four years, Rhys had gotten a good idea of just how lonely she was. Five nights a week, she worked with him. Even now, while the vast majority of the elves were out there enjoying a little bit of downtime, Holly was inside the workroom, working with that patient, intense resolve.

  Never once did she request a night off and never once did she arrive late. After the first six months of nonstop training, he’d told her that she should take a night off and go have fun with some friends. The Northern Reach was a self-contained little world, complete with shopping, schools, movie theaters, restaurants. No reason she couldn’t have a little bit of fun.

  There had been disappointment in her eyes but she’d forced a smile. The next day when he asked if she’d enjoyed herself, she’d only shrugged. A little more prying revealed that she’d spent the night at home. Alone. Reading.

  From then on, he’d spent a great deal of time watching her, probably too much. It wasn’t until later that Rhys realized he’d developed an obsession over Holly and it had nothing to do with the fact that she was his student, his friend’s daughter.

  Rhys found himself thinking about her all too often, going out of his way to learn as much as he could about her, what she liked to eat, what she liked to read, what she had enjoyed about school, the movies she watched. Anything. Obsessed to the point that he was almost uncomfortable with it. Then that obsession had started to bleed over into his subconscious thoughts and he’d found himself dreaming about her. Thinking of her during the day, or on the weekend when he didn’t see her.

  Laughable—having sweaty dreams over a twenty-five-year-old blonde with sad eyes. Rhys had walked the world for centuries and he’d wined and dined some of the world’s most renowned beauties. Yet it was a young woman, the daughter of his best friend, who kept him awake at night. But of late, it was worry as much as lust that kept him from sleeping.

  It had been a gradual change but she was becoming more and more despondent. Six months ago, it had gotten worse. Time had started to crawl when she wasn’t with him and he’d found himself searching her out even when they had no lessons planned, dropping by North Hall just to see if she was well.

  Then she had up and quit her job right after Christmas. Her parents had no clue why and Rhys had wasted a good hour trying to explain to Nik that Holly was being smothered.

  He was a good man, Nikolai was. One of the best people Rhys had ever known and he’d been on this earth long enough to have met many, many people. As befitting for the beloved Santa Claus, Nik was good with kids and he understood them. Contrary to human misconception, the Claus wasn’t a jolly round elf, indeed, he wasn’t even just one man. Each Claus reigned for a period of three hundred years and Nik, the sixth Claus, wasn’t even halfway into the first century of his term.

  This particular Claus was nearly six feet tall with a pair of blue eyes that had been inherited by his daughter, black hair, a wicked temper and a mean right hook. Nik was one of Rhys’ best friends and he was also a damn fool. An overprotective damn fool, at that.

  Most of the elves Holly’s age were too intimidated by her father to even approach her. It had been like that much of her life, Rhys figured, each year passing with her growing more and more isolated. By the time she had reached full maturity—several years later than the typical full-blooded elf—most of the people her age had already made up their minds about her. Decided she was too uptight, too much a snob, too much trouble once they threw her father into the mix.

  The older elves, who might not have been so impressed with Nikolai, expressed little interest in the quiet, sedate woman she appeared to be. She was a beautiful woman but it was a cool beauty and apparently none of them were pressed to see if there was heat lurking under the exterior.

  Granted, her age was something of a concern.

  By mortal standards, she was a woman grown. Even by elf standards, she was an adult. But a mere twenty-five years old, considering many of the people in the reach had seen centuries pass, was daunting.

  “Upside down,” Rhys ordered. Slowly, the rotation stopped and Holly’s body inverted in the air until her head was pointed at the floor. Her hair fell, the ends brushing the floor. A muscle in his jaw jerked as her shirt fell away, revealing a toned belly. She had on a sport bra under the looser tank top and although Rhys couldn’t see much more than the restrained swell of her breasts, his mouth went dry.

  Sweat glistened on her skin and Rhys had to take a moment and practice his own self-control. Otherwise, he might have gone to Holly, pulled her out of the air and started licking the sweat away. The image of him doing just that hit him with a force that was almost painful. “Upright,” he said, his voice harsh.

  She flinched, startled by his abrupt change of tone and only Rhys’ speed kept her from dropping down on the floor, headfirst. His arms full of a hot, damp Holly, Rhys swore silently. Her back was pressed to his front, upside down, so that the back of her head was dangerously close to his aching dick and her sweetly rounded butt was pressed against his shoulders. Self-preservation had him dumping her body onto the couch and then he strode away, staring out the window.

  “Your control is off today,” Rhys said, wincing as he heard how short and irritated his voice sounded.

  “Sorry, Rhys,” she said quietly. Her soft little sigh drove a dagger into his belly. Guilt reared its ugly head and he looked back at her. He’d been the one to break her concentration. Her control was decent, considering she’d only spent four years working on it. Rhys had centuries of practice behind him. An angry voice wasn’t going to shake his control but it had been unexpected and unusual enough that he could understand why Holly had faltered.

  But she didn’t place any blame on his shoulders. She just politely said, Sorry, Rhys. And that just made him feel even more of an ass.

  Abruptly, he grabbed the bag that held her clothes. “Here. Go wash up. We’re calling it quits early.”

  He tossed the bag to her and she caught it, held it in her arms. “Okay,” she murmured and he would have had to be blind not to see the sadness enter her eyes.

  It was damn pitiful that the highlight of her day was coming to the workshop so he could push her until she dropped, Rhys thought, more than a little disgusted. He wasn’t an easy instructor and he knew his moods were often mercurial. Yet calling the class off an hour early made her shoulders slump and her mouth turn down in a pout that was most likely unconscious.

  Rhys wanted to grab her, pull her against him and suck that full lower lip into his mouth. Bite her, just a little, gently, until he heard her gasp and then he’d push his tongue inside and see if she tasted as sweet as she smelled. Instead, he turned back to the window and stared outside.

  But when he heard her emerge from the bathroom in less than twenty minutes, he turned around. The sight of her was like getting punched in the throat—breath-stealing. Her hair was still damp and she’d pulled it back from her face in a loose braid. Her workout clothes had been replaced by the jeans and sweater she’d arrived in and her face was still flushed. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Holly said quietly, slinging her bag over her shoulder. Her other hand was jammed deep into her pocket.

  “We’re going to get something to eat,” Rhys said.

  Holly lifted a brow. “Something to eat…right now.”

  “You do eat, right?”

  She gave him a dour look. “Sure I eat. But it’s the middle of the Festival and I really don’t feel like fighting crowds.”

  Crossing the polished wooden floor and taking the bag from her, he said, “So we’ll go someplace that won’t be as crowded.” Through the soft sweater she wore, he imagined he co
uld feel the warmth of her skin as he slid the bag off her shoulder. “You deserve a night off from time to time, Holly and you should do more with it than go home and read.” He softened his words with a smile and murmured, “It’s hard to believe that there are any books left in the Reach that you haven’t read.”

  “Oh, Da is always happy to get me books,” she said. There was a faint, bitter edge to her voice and he glanced at her, curious. But her face was smooth, her eyes politely blank. She gave him a smile that looked more forced than usual. “But you needn’t bother yourself, Rhys. You deserve a night off far more than I do. Go ahead and take it.”

  “I am. With you.” Since she still didn’t seem in any hurry to move, he shifted her bag to his other hand and then cupped her elbow. As they neared the workroom door, there was a faint humming sound and then a blue light scanned each of them, reading DNA signatures. Security in the workrooms was tight, nearly as tight as it was in the shops. An outsider might look upon the Reach and not understand how closely the elves must guard their secrets. After all, mortals weren’t even aware of them.

  But it wasn’t the mortals who were the concern.

  The mortal world no longer saw magick, save for the children and a few precious others. Nobody believed in the world of magick any longer and while that disbelief wasn’t deadly to them, mortal curiosity could be. But even mortal curiosity wasn’t the biggest threat to their way of life.

  That threat came from within their own ranks. Not all the elves were happy with the lives that had been laid before them. Some felt as though it was time the elves reclaimed the world for their own and the first step in their plans was the eradication of Santa Claus and his yearly trek into the world. They saw that as a child’s fairy tale, something too far beneath them.