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I followed, unable to resist being away from him for longer than three minutes, at most.
“What are you thinking?”
Theo cocked his head, looking up at the ceiling before turning his sexy hazel-green eyes toward me. The sunlight streaming in through the row of windows had turned them a brilliant emerald, practically taking my breath away.
“The killer’s in this room,” he said, his voice low and deep.
“Well, yeah… I think the entire party’s in this room.”
“I know, I just wanted to be dramatic.” He laughed, the sound filling me. “It’s definitely someone from the Miami branch, we know that. And Rocky was fighting his case a little too—Hey there, Beckham.”
“You all right?” he said, patting Theo on the shoulder.
Theo smiled, pointing to me. “You two have met already, right?”
“Yeah, earlier this morning.” I remembered chatting with the British detective and his partner, Oliver, for pretty much the entire breakfast.
“Where’s Olly?” Theo asked, looking around the room.
“He went to go look for clues upstairs. Said he had some sort of feeling.”
“The last time people split up”—Theo nodded toward Sam, who was still giving dramatic twitches on the floor“—it didn’t end so well.”
“You know what… deadass, you’re right. I should go make sure he hasn’t been Santa slayed.”
Beckham turned and wound through the dispersing crowd.
“Did he—did he just say ‘deadass’?”
Theo nodded. “Yeah, he says that a lot. No se porque.”
We both laughed, even though I mostly wanted to swoon and fall into Theo’s chest. I could speak some Spanish, thanks to an excellent app on my phone that shamed me whenever I missed a lesson, but it didn’t even matter if I understood that he said “I don’t know why.” The words didn’t even have to make sense to me, it was just something about the way he said them that got me revved the fuck up.
And when he’d speak Spanish during sex… fuck, nothing was hotter than that. Just thinking about it was making my core tighten, matching the tightening of my briefs. Theo’s hand landing on my lower back was all I needed to go from semi-hard to pulsing steel. I turned away from the crowd, hiding the outline of what Theo was doing to me.
“Should we check out the other rooms?” he asked, his voice settling deep down in my spine, close to where my cock throbbed between my legs.
I’d never been this horny, this hungry for it. I’ve been with plenty of guys, all different kinds, and not a single one kept me this permanently turned on.
“Yeah, let me just, uh, look out this window for a second.”
“Oookay.” Theo leaned forward, looking out the frosted window, the front lawn dusted by a fresh powdery layer of snow. “Why?”
“I think I spotted a clue.”
And I don’t want to walk with a rock-hard boner about to tear through my jeans.
“Where?” He leaned farther.
“Um, over there.” I pointed at a random tree. “Oh, no, you know what—it’s just a squirrel. A really cute one. But just a squirrel. You know, one time, my moms had about fifteen of those little suckers in our house. I don’t know what the hell happened that fifteen squirrels suddenly needed rescuing, but they were there. And so were their little pellet poops. Which seem to multiply as much as they do, it’s fucking nuts.”
All right, there. Squirrel talk was a guaranteed boner killer.
“Your moms’ sanctuary sounds incredible.” His head tilted, his eyelashes brushing up and down. “When are you taking me?”
“To the Gold Sanctuary? Uh, whenever you’re free. I was thinking of going for the New Year. Want to come for that?”
“Sounds good to me,” he said, surprising me with a wet kiss.
And instantly erasing all the progress I had made with the thoughts of squirrel shit.
CHAPTER 3
Theo Perez
Making plans to meet the parents—what the hell happened to me? Mav had me under some kind of spell. That really had to be the only explanation.
Bueno, what was done was done. I certainly wasn’t going to take it back. I genuinely did want to meet Mav’s family. I wanted to see where he came from, where he’d been raised. His moms sounded like an amazing pair, and the rest of his family certainly didn’t sound any different. Hell, even his best friend, Rex, was a stand-up guy. I had helped him with a case recently, although unfortunately I got his answers too late.
No thinking about that now. Today, I was determined to crack the case of the Secret Santa Slayer before anyone else did.
“Hey, check this out.” I waved Maverick over as I crouched down by a closed door. There was a dusting of fake snow on the floor and in it were two tiny reindeer footprints, the rest seemed to go under the door.
“Where does this lead?” Mav asked, grabbing the doorknob.
“Let’s find out.”
He opened the door and a dark set of stairs twisted downward. “It’s a basement,” I said, flicking on the switch and turning on a string of bright Christmas lights that wound through the handrails. The fake snow continued downward. I stepped forward first and reached out for Maverick’s hand, his warm grip closing around mine almost instantly.
