It was in the middle of the quiet Christmas night that Derrick rolled over and reached out for Lee. Either because he was happily sated and wanted to cuddle with the skilled artisan who had made him that way, or because the first rumblings of new want had set him to tingling and he wanted to wake the skilled artisan who could quiet them, these things are not always clear. But he rolled over, he reached out for long, luscious Lee, and he found nothing but rumpled sheets and a whole lot of empty bed.
The house was quiet and still, and Derrick lay half-asleep listening to silence. “Santa” had apparently been and gone—he didn’t hear his brothers or his sisters-in-law downstairs, which meant they had finished setting presents around the tree, and probably the eggnog. He didn’t hear his nieces
