Come home with me for Christmas

Love at first sight

Going home for Christmas was once Lena's favorite part of the winter months, back when she lived at boarding school year round and craved the holiday experiences that most children took for granted. Her parents were busy running a tech empire from January right through the end of December, but at Christmas time, Lena and her older brother had their full attention. In grade school, Lena would doodle little Christmas pictures on her Hello Kitty desk calendar while her roommate decked out their beds in tinsel and the twinkling lights she brought from home after the Thanksgiving weekend. Long weeks of anticipation led up to two whole weeks of fun. Christmas meant spending nights by the large stone fireplace and days of sledding and ice skating on their five-acre woodland property. It meant concerts with classical orchestras and performances of The Nutcracker, and it meant sleeping in her own bed in a room where wide windows opened on a bright smiling moon.

Some time in her late teens, after her first serious break-up, Lena started to hate Christmas. It might have been correlated with the fact that she found her girlfriend kissing another omega under the tall Christmas tree at the center of their town. That set Lena on a path that involved a lot of fooling around and very little commitment.

During her first years of college, Lena dated a string of alphas, but the relationships never seemed to last at Christmas time, and her older brother took a perverse joy in listing them off like all of Santa's reindeer.

"Oh, there's Jack, and Andrea, and Kate and James — "

It stole some of the joy of the Christmas season to hear Lex mocking her and sharing her business with her mother, Lillian.

Even with a thriving tech company that required constant supervision, Lillian Luthor was a meddlesome type who kept tabs on Lena from three states over, even though she was almost twenty-two years old and already in graduate school.

Lena tried to come up with several excuses to skip the holidays with her family – her new job at a biochemical lab was keeping her busier than expected, she needed to finalize a chapter of her thesis for early submission, and she had more than one appointment she couldn't reschedule.

Lillian just scoffed at her lies and dismissed them with a simple threat: "You'll come home for Christmas, or we'll come to you."

That would be the worst of two evils, Lena imagined — all of the Luthors packed into her apartment, demanding a five course feast when all she had in her fridge was a bottle of flavored vodka and two packets of mustard.

Lena meant to go grocery shopping, but then she spent an inordinate amount of time scrolling through YouTube videos of strange people whispering into their microphones, and somehow the noise of that made her fall asleep.

It was right after Thanksgiving that Lena's mother also began nagging her in earnest about bringing a date home for Christmas. For reasons unknown to Lena, her mother was convinced she was seeing someone new and just didn't want to introduce that person to the family.

Lena received such frequent phone calls about it that she decided to ruin her mother's expectations for years to come.

She scrolled through Instagram and Tinder for about twenty minutes in the hopes of picking someone terrible to take home for the holidays — but social media and her dating apps reaped no such rewards, because most of the creeps already had holiday plans. Lena reached the conclusion that she would have put in effort to find a date, which meant meeting someone at a bar and seducing that person in a bid to get them to waste their entire Christmas vacation.

She almost thought better of it, until she refreshed Instagram and saw that her ex, Andrea, had a new bimbo on her arm and that she was taking her home for Christmas.

In a petty and ruthless mood, Lena bought a new outfit for the mission — an off the shoulder black top and a tight little skirt that looked like it would fall off if the wind hit it the right way. With her devilish red lips and her dark hair pulled away from her face, she threw on her fur coat and headed out to a local bar.

In her college town, she figured it would be easy to find someone that would be capable of disappointing her mother and railing her within an inch of her life.

Lena scanned the bar when she entered, searching for her potential mark with hawkish eyes and the softest pout on her lips.

After presenting as an omega, she had learned that looking helpless was a good way to attract alphas, and that if she touched her neck or played with her hair, she could keep someone's attention even across a room full of people. Lena slid onto a bar stool with the sense that everyone was watching her and ordered a ginger ale with the plan of remaining alert and sober.

It took her all of forty-seconds to hook her first possible match, and after that Lena began interviewing every beta and alpha who came over to shoot their shot. She asked personal questions and dismissed them all the minute she didn't like one of their answers.

"Oh, you're a doctor?" Too successful. Next.

Lena sent away eight people in total, half because they were over-achievers. One beta knew too much about her family, and one of the alphas disgusted her with his pick-up line. She turned back towards the counter to sip her ginger ale, and that was when she realized someone else had sat down next to her.

The new alpha didn't even glance at her as she chatted with the bartender, sipped at her beer and ate some of the free snacks.

Lena took full offense at being ignored when she had gone to great lengths to draw everyone's attention. She shifted on the barstool to better flaunt herself as she peered at the blonde alpha with interest. The sleeves of her shirt looked precariously close to bursting at the seams and Lena gawked at her muscled physique until she was caught staring.

It bothered her that the eyes that locked with hers were startlingly blue, and for a moment, all she did was gape at the handsome face looking back at her in amusement.

"Hey, if you're waiting for someone, I can move down," The stranger said, her easy smile and relaxed demeanor alluring to Lena's omega, who found her natural confidence almost as sexy as the abs she could clearly see under the form-fitting button down.

"No, I'm here alone, but I don't mind a little company," Lena muttered, hoping that her cleavage was reason enough to keep the alpha busy while she assessed her potential for ruining her family's Christmas. "I haven't seen you around campus. Do you go here?"

"Ah, no, I dropped out the minute I could," The alpha laughed, touring Lena's body with her gaze rather respectfully before she stuck out her hand in greeting. "I'm Kara, and you are?"

Hoping you want to get in my pants.

"Lena." She stated, shaking Kara's hand firmly if only to get a good feel of how strong those hands were and how they might feel wrapped around her hips. "You know, with all those muscles, I expected you to say you were a coach."

That wouldn't have been a deal breaker, but the fact that Kara was a self-confessed drop out would devastate her mother way more than hooking up with someone from the sports' department.

"Nah, most people find my job pret-tee-boring." Kara shrugged, missing the chance to brag about any of her accomplishments and glancing down at Lena's voluptuous chest. She opened her mouth as she stared, and smiled with her whole face as she glanced back at the bar. "Can I buy you a drink?"