Marie Treanor - Oh No! Santa's Trapped Where???

In the City of the Damned... a dark, dangerous, ruined husk of a place, largely destroyed by nuclear war, the effects of which still block the sun. Somehow, people still live there - many of them very strange people, mutants like vampires, werewolves (lupi), oddly gifted or cursed individuals...

But you know all this, because you read about it in the City of the Damned series :).

What you may not know is that among those mutants lives the original, slightly mad, slightly punk, time travelling Santa Claus...

Well, didn't you ever wonder how Santa managed to get around the whole world in twenty-four hours? Time travel, of course.

But since the war, he just can't get out of the City of the Damned in any time, and his helpers can't get in. He has to hope his elves are taking care of the rest of the world, while he works alone in the City most people fear to enter, and somehow keeps track of all the children and their meagre toys - past, present and future. It's not easy without materials or workers - or safe, when he keeps running into himself from another time...

Then an unexpected helper shows up - but she's a thief, and she's on a mission to get out of the City. She could just be Santa's own sexy Christmas treat...or she could be something more. As one of his future selves has already found out... Will find out. Maybe. If his present self can persuade her to stay.

Well, I never said it wasn't confusing! Re-enter the City of the Damned for yourself, and all will become clear! In the mean time, before the contest, here's a snippet...



DAMNED SANTA (Santa's Helpers)
By MARIE TREANOR
Out Now from Changeling Press

Has Santa Claus really been trapped in the ruined City of the Damned?

Kate's a survivor who's had enough of the city. Escaping the lupi police, she hides out in the workshop of a sexy if insane mutant who claims to travel in time just to give presents to other people's children. Kate could be his lover, his savior, his helper -- if he can only persuade her to stay.

*

“It’s my busy night. Here.” He handed her clean plastic bottle of water. “I think it’s uncontaminated.”

“You think? Don’t you care?”

“Not for myself.”

Shit. She paused with the bottle not quite touching her lips. “Are you a mutant, Nicholas?”

 “Sort of. Are you?”

“No.”

“So you’re afraid of me?”

Was she? She stared at him. “Should I be?”

His blue eyes gleamed with wickedness. “Not if we’re to end up in that bed.”

She whisked herself away from him. “Dream on, asshole. I’m going.”

“Because I want to make love to you?”

She rounded on him from a safe distance. “Yes!”

His lips quirked , fascinating her. Treacherous moisture gathered between her thighs as she imagined those lips on her body, in all the places suddenly tingling under his scrutiny.

“I didn’t say I’d do it today,” he pointed out, glancing at a dial strapped to his wrist. “In fact, much as I’d love to, I just don’t have any time right now. Why don’t you wait for me? You can eat whatever you find in the cupboards beside the fireplace.”

He walked over to the bag he’d dropped earlier, picked it up and continued over to the corner table with the toys, which he began to stuff into the sack.

Baffled, she glared at his back. “Wait for you? Because you think you can come back and have sex with me?”

He glanced over his shoulder, grinning at her outrage. And Jesus, his smile was devastating enough to kill her anger stone dead. His eyes darkened.

“I live in hope,” he said. “Don’t you?”

Whoa, she wasn’t going there again, not after Lars had tried to sell her to his friends. With a touch of desperation, she countered, “Don’t you care that I broke into your home to rob you? Don’t you care that I still will the moment you’re gone?”

He dropped the last teddy bear in the bag before closing it, and swung it over his shoulder. “There’s nothing worth stealing now.”

She frowned, coming closer again as if she couldn’t stay away. A moth to the mutant flame that would probably kill her. Or at least burn her. “You’re weird, do you know that?”

“Yes, I know that. So I’ll see you later?”

She came to a halt a foot away from him and lifted her chin. “No.”

He took a step closer and her breath caught. It was as if some hot, magnetic current emanated from him. Something about his stance, poised and still, not even touching her, was more intimate than an embrace. She found herself watching his lips again, wondering how they felt, how they tasted. He stirred and her gaze shifted to the hand holding his sack of toys. Long-fingered, strong, deft. How would it feel on her body, on her breasts, between her thighs, stroking…?

She forced her attention back to his face. Mistake. He was even sexier when his eyes clouded with lust.

“We’ll be good together. So good…” he whispered, and bent his head. Her stomach seemed to dive and dissolve. Her pussy clenched with fierce, treacherous longing and she couldn’t make herself avoid it.

His mouth brushed hers, caressed and fastened. His hand came up and cupped her cheek, his skin rough, exciting, although his touch was gentle.

There was nothing she could do except open to him, helpless with totally misplaced desire. His tongue slid along hers, hot and exciting. And then, he was gone.

Not just stepped away from her, but totally gone.

  

:) So tell me, do you think time travel is a reasonable explanation for Santa's speed dash around the world on Christmas Eve? Or do you have a better explanation?

Commenters on all Changeling Press posts - including this one! - will be entered to win a past Changeling Christmas series! 

Happy Christmas!
Marie