Chapter Five
“Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh!”
I reach behind me blindly to slap at Bazzy, hoping to get his attention in case my deranged yelling hasn’t done the trick. He grumbles when I clip his ear with my nail in a flyby, then grabs my arm, pushing it down by my side and holding it there.
“Sorry!” I exclaim. “But, but, but! Oh my gosh! He gave her a marriage kitten !” I squeal. Then I squeal again. “It’s little and it’s cute and she accepted it and now they’re human married according to him and his fae understandings of human marriage and he’s so cutely happy and she’s so cutely confused.” I throw my head back and beam at the ceiling. “I. Am. Obsessed. Who knew the miscommunication trope could be so fun? Not me, that’s for sure.”
Baz hums his agreement. I squeal again.
“This is absolutely a tradition we should all adopt. Kitten proposals only from here on out! I’ll have to tell Stryker his marriage is null and void until a kitty has been exchanged. His dogs would love a cutie pie little friend!”
Millie, Stryker’s wife of about a year, is going to be so excited by this development – once she gets over the past year of her life being lived in sin, that is…
I’m sure it’ll be fine!
“Let me up!” I lean forward, struggling against the large, solid arm thrown over my chest. “I’m going over there right now. If I’m quick, I might even have time to get to the shelter for him! They could be married by sundown!”
I’m getting nowhere. Baz’s arm is an immovable prison.
“Bazzy! I said let me up!”
Instead of listening to me, he puts his hand not attached to the arm holding me down in my hair and grips. My stomach riots, butterflies and moths and dragonflies and every other flying bug on the earth waging war inside it. He uses his grasp to twist my head toward the window, where I see that it is very much dark outside, then he turns me toward the television stand, where our little yellow clock tells me it is 12:15 AM.
“Oh,” I say. I stop trying to get up. “Okay, I suppose I can go tomorrow – or, later today, I guess.”
My bottom lip pushes out in a not-at-all childish pout.
This sucks. I wanted to have kitten time.
Baz’s hand releases its hold on my hair, gently gliding through to the end of the strands. Electric tingles burst across my scalp, then again when his hand lands on top of my head to retrace the path down my locks. The bugs in my stomach riot.
This is a sensory nightmare.
I hate it – particularly the way that I love it.
“It’s time for bed!” I declare.
This time, when I push against it, Bazzy’s arm relinquishes its hold on me. I waste no time jumping up to start my journey toward the stairs – a journey that is immediately delayed when Baz leans forward, puts his hands on either side of my waist, and tugs me down on top of him, torso to torso.
A stampede of wild horses runs through my chest, deeply upsetting the carefully contained chaos the bugs have going on in my stomach.
The sensory input is never-ending, it seems.
“Did you need something?” I squeak, then clear my throat. “I mean, did you need something?” Much better. Totally cool. Great save, Heidi.
He shakes his head, and my eyebrows pull together. He just pulled me down here to torture me, then? Rude.
“Goodnight, Heidi.”
I blink.
What?
His stomach flexes beneath me as his face moves closer, and then, shocking me to my core, he gives me another ten percent kiss.
Once his mouth is one hundred percent off of me, he closes his eyes and runs his nose along my cheekbone. His arms tighten around me, pulling me down further until he’s laid back against the cushions and I’m over him, raised high so that his head is in my neck and my legs are straddling his chest.
Again, what?
“What’s happening?” I ask the top of his head.
He kisses my neck, and my eyes go wide. Seriously, what is happening ?
“I love you,” he says.
My jaw drops.
Why is he talking so much? Why is he acting so weird? Did I give up on the head injury thing too soon?
“Honey, are you okay?” I ask, concern lacing my words.
He hums in response, nose gliding up to my pulse point and pausing there before slipping past. His lips take its place, pushing against my skin where my heartbeat thunders.
That’s a kiss. A one hundred percent kiss on my neck.
I’m so confused.
I’m so worried.
I’m so hot.
“Bazzy? What’s going on?”
He kisses my pulse again, and I swear I feel the flick of his tongue against my skin before he pulls his head away.
I’m panting.
He shifts us, dragging me down his chest until our faces align. His eyelids rest low over his eyes, and he looks more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him. The tension that normally lives in his jaw is gone, replaced by a serenity that, at this moment, completely terrifies me.
My hand lands on his cheek, and my thumb rubs a path against the prickles of facial hair coming in this late in the day. His eyes close as he groans and leans into my touch.
“Bazzy?” I whisper. His eyes shoot back open, and I’m surprised – and even more worried – when his mouth opens as well.
“Let’s have a sleepover,” he rumbles, his accent rough.
I don’t have time to process this brand new sentence escaping him, because the next second we’re both up, him on his feet and me in his arms. I realize he’s not planning to let me walk on my own and quickly hold on with arms and legs as he moves us through the house.
We’re approaching the staircase when the lights go out.
I scream.
Baz stops moving, and my mouth snaps shut. I hope I didn’t ruin his super spy ears and our chances of surviving the pitch-black night.
After several long moments of Baz employing his super ears and me not daring to even breathe, he drifts through the shadows toward the front door. How he can be so quiet when it’s just himself, I’ll never know, but I take the silence while carrying another person as further evidence of the Christmas magic within him.
I slap a hand over my mouth to help stifle a hysterical laugh at the thought.
Now is really not the time to be losing it over the idea of my favorite holiday curmudgeon being filled to the brim with Christmas magic.
Baz’s hands tighten on my thighs almost painfully, and I’m sobered.
Right. Danger.
I turn my head to look out the entryway windows as we approach the door, and see the dark impression of a man standing in the middle of the road, backlit by soft lights pouring from the house across the street. I squint.
“Is that…”
“Archie,” Baz says, then repeats the name, managing to make the two syllables sound like the worst of four-letter words.
He pries me off of him and sets me down next to the door before opening it and marching outside. I grimace.
Welp, it was nice knowing Archie. I enjoyed – mostly – our time as friends these past several years. I will speak of him honestly always. Perhaps, if I am feeling generous, I will even erect a memorial to him.
I peek outside to watch as his doom finds him.
“What the–” Oop. Baz is talking. Loudly. And cussing . Good golly. I fan myself. “–do you think you’re doing? It’s past midnight. We’re in the middle of something, you–” Goodness. He knows a lot of cuss words.
Archie grins in the face of his demise.
“What were you two lovebirds doing?” he interrupts the slew of curse words – American, British, and what sounds like Russian – coming from Baz. “Something scandalous, I hope!”
Archie wiggles his eyebrows at the large, irate man in front of him. Baz falls silent and goes very, very still.
Uh oh.
That is really not good.