Page 5 of Don't Shoot Me Santa

He is thejudge.

The one who knows who has been good.

And who is simply pretending to be.

Brushing one last strand of hair from the boy’s cheek, light as snowfall on cold stone, a reflection forms.

Yes, the world might call it murder. Might even slap him with the labelserial killer.

But the truth is…

Santais mercy in red velvet.

Justice in jingle bells.

And only he decides who is agood boy.

Chapter one

Fever

Aaron had long since figured out Kenny’s game.

He couldn’t live with a master of the mind for two years and not learn a thing or two. Not that he minded playing, either. But the thing was, Kenny could have him on his knees with a single look if he wanted. He didn’t need this slow-burn build-up, drawn-out performance he favoured like his pair of old comfy slippers. Aaron would crawl for him, no coaxing required. Kennyknewthat.

Which was precisely why he made him wait.

Why he dragged it out.

Which was exactly what he was doing right fucking then.

Arsehole.

Aaron got it. This was Intro to Psych. Foundation fucking year. Fuck it, they taught this at GCSE level. Conditioning. Positive reinforcement. Classical fucking Pavlovian seduction. That’s what Kenny was doing. Aaron knew it. As a fucking graduate of the forensic persuasion and taught by Dr Kenneth Lyons himself for most of it, he was smart enough to know what was going on in his own fucking house. By his own bloody boyfriend. Because Kenny was asadist. Usedaffection like a scalpel. Precise. Deliberate. Calibrated to elicit a reaction. Not praise for the sake of it. Not needy, or desperate. Oh, no. Kenny gave compliments the way he gave orgasms. Intensely, and only when earned. And because of that, they were addictive.

Aaron knew what Kenny was doing.

Knew the game. The psychology. The profile. Aaron could write the lecture himself. And he heard his own bored, mocking delivery in his head as he sat here, at the dining room table, the window beside him rattling faintly in the sea wind while he scribbled his fake name and fake shit all over the bloody Disclosure and Barring BS forms.

“Seduction through strategic withholding. Operant conditioning through delayed gratification. Control through softness.”

Outside, the coastline sulked beneath a heavy grey sky, the winter tide chewing quietly at the edges of the beach. Gulls wheeled lazily above slate-coloured waves, and somewhere beyond the dunes, someone’s dog barked into the wind. But inside, the cottage was all warm wood and dimmed lamplight, radiator ticking under the windowsill, the air thick with the faint scent of Kenny’s coffee and whatever ridiculous vanilla candle Aaron had accidentally come to like. Cosy. Lulling. A scene set by Kenny to orchestrate a patient undoing.

Still he fell for it.

Every fucking time.

Even though Aaron couldseethe strings, he still danced. Still trembled under the subtle brush of fingers that shouldn’t mean anything. Like earlier, when Kenny had walked past the dining table, spouting something about his A Level lecture prep—Freud or Jung or whatever other long-dead daddy complex bore—and as hepassed, he stroked the back of his finger up Aaron’s neck. There. Beneath his ear. Hardly touched him, really. But it was enough to make Aaron freeze mid-form, pen stuttering on the line, because that was how it always started.

Kenny’s opening move.

His first piece in their private game of seduction chess.

And that nothing touch made Aaron hyperaware of every inch of skin he had.

Kenny didn’t even look back as he did it. He wandered off into the kitchen as if he hadn’t set Aaron’s nerve endings on fire, phone still at his ear, talking about “attachment patterns in borderline presentations” as if he wasn’t currently dismantling Aaron with the same technique.

Aaron dropped his pen. Slumped back in the chair.