Chapter 23
twenty-three
Things are Ramping Up
After three hours of protection spells, I finish my soup and immediately pass out. What feels like five minutes later, my phone blares Renee’s ringtone “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” I hit the speakerphone button and try to adjust my eyes to the light.
“Hm’ello,” I mumble.
“Hey sleepyhead, you’ve got wood!” Renee says in an overly chipper tone.
I chuckle, then gasp in a panic. “Are you outside?”
“Yep.”
Fuckfuckfuck.
I roll out of the air hammock and groan as I hit the floor. “I’m so sorry. I’m getting dressed!”
“No rush, girlie. It’s a beautiful day.”
I blink blearily at my phone. It’s 10:30 a.m. Jesus. I slept through my alarm and Oscar didn’t even bother me for breakfast!
“Be down in five, bye,” I say as I hang up and scramble toward Oscar’s bowl.
I grab a scoop with hurried apologies but stop when I see there’s already fresh food in the bowl with a little divot where he ate from.
“He wouldn’t stop yelling at me, so I put the pellets in the bowl,” Bastian says from his sanctum.
He fed Oscar for me.
A warm, syrupy feeling wells up in my gut. I swallow down the emotion and smile.
“Thanks a bunch,” I say.
Bastian cracks an eye and looks at me scrupulously as he grunts.
Flashes of him fisting his cock while he leans over me fill my mind. The sounds he made as he spilled himself all over me…
Clatters of a dozen kibble hitting the floor draw me back to reality. I look down at the scoop I’d carelessly tilted in my daydream, then dump the rest back in his air-tight bucket. I pick up the pieces with a nervous chortle as Bastian watches, a flicker of amusement on his lips.
I run to my bag for fresh clothes and grumble at the sight. My least favorite outfit of the bunch is all that’s left. I waited too long to do laundry. I open my phone and check on the progress of my cross-country bulk shipment.
Everyone’s shit gets rammed into one shipping container that drives all over the place to drop things off. Super cost effective, and I figured with how much work the place would need, it would be a good thing to be without my stuff for a while. But now I’m really wishing I had some more clothing.
“The dust mites have been fully banished from the shop,” Bastian says as I gather up my clothes. “I could lend my assistance with construction?”
That saccharine warmth overflows into my chest. “Yeah, that would be great.”
He nods, closing his eyes again. There’s a little smile on his lips. This one isn’t salacious, or rude, but grateful. Like the joy of being accepted.
My phone buzzes in my hand and I flip the screen.
Renee: Five minutes seems a little fast ;) you should take…
The message cuts off and I scoff. Freakin’ Renee, thinking we’re intimate or something. The moment Bastian came flashes in my mind’s eye. His opened mouth gasp, the pinch of his brow, the flex of his bicep, his dick gripped tight in his hand.
I growl and run into the bathroom, slamming the door. I power-wash in the shower, pits and slits only—and no I don’t spend any extra time rubbing anyplace in particular—then get dressed in a hurry. I don’t want Renee to think anything is going on, because it isn’t.
I fly out of the bathroom and toss my sleep clothes in the dirty bag on my way to the door.
“Coming, coming, coming,” I murmur as I run down the stairs, as if Renee can hear me. Then I rethink my murmurings, chastising myself because if she had heard me, she would definitely be making a joke.
I unlock the back door and throw it open with as pleasant as an expression I can muster for being so late, and tired. Renee and Drew are unloading the back of their truck, and she stops to run up to the door.
“Hey hey, sorry for interrupting,” she says, waggling her eyebrows.
“I was just sleeping,” I say, letting her give me a brief hug.
“Sleeping in because you were so worn-out from last night, right?” she asks.
My brain stutters as I remember what happened last night, and I hesitate before I squeeze out a, “No! I mean yes—”
Her eyes go wide and she grins at me open-mouthed.
“We were doing spells!”
She grabs my arm and tugs me into the shop. “What happened!”
“Nothing…” I say, and I know it’s even less convincing than my last refusal.
She only stares at me, waiting and expectant.
I close my eyes and heave a huge sigh.
“Yesss,” she squeals. “Tellmetellmetellme.”
“It was really not much at all…” I start, my body getting hot at just the memory of what little there was. “He caught me masturbating,” I whisper.
“And?”
“And…then he also masturbated.”
She laughs manically and I shush her.
“Look, it was nothing, okay. People masturbate,” I say, leaving out the rest where I accidentally summoned him and he came all over me and then I came just from him coming.
“Together,” she says, her grin even wider.
“There was not really…hardly any…‘together’ about it,” I say, my face heating like a kettle.
Her eyes practically bug out. “But there was some ‘together?’”
“Babe, what’re we doin? Building or gabbin?” Drew calls from the door.
“Gabbing!” she yells back.
“All right,” he says with a guffaw as he drops off another set of tools.
“Well?” she demands when Drew is out of earshot.
I look around, noting the suspiciously dragon-shaped shadow on the wall by the opening to the office.
“Well,” I say with another huge sigh. “He came on my chest.”
Renee screams and I jump back, holding my heart.
“You’re gonna bag a dragon, you’re gonna bag a dragon,” she sings as she dances in a circle.
“Shush,” I hiss as I grab her arm, my eyes darting to the spot where the shadow used to be.
Gosh dang it…
“Look, I don’t know what this is but it’s not a relationship. I’m not bagging,” I say.
“Why not?” Renee asks, pouting her black painted lips.
“Because, this is his hoard. He won’t leave it. If things go wrong between us, we’ll be stuck together because there’s no way in hell I’m leaving.”
Not again.
She scrunches her face up. “Why are you jumping to things going wrong? What if they go right?”
My shoulders ache and I realize they’re scrunched up against my neck. I release them and try not to be such a defeatist.
“Things just rarely go right for me,” I mumble.
“Oh, Cait,” she says with a hint of pity as she grabs my hands. “It doesn’t have to be like that.”
Drew brings a stack of plywood into the shop. He stops, planting a kiss on the top of Renee’s head. “I love you, but if you’re gonna chitchat, you gotta go. I’ve got a ramp to build and a new System album to listen to.”
She gasps, grabbing his arm. “Maybe Bastian can help you while Cait and I go do some thrifting? She’s going to need furniture and rugs and art!”
Drew hums and plants another kiss beside her eye. “Go get it, babe.”
“I did say I would lend my assistance,” Bastian says as he appears in the hallway.
He has a shirt on, but all I see are his flexing abs as he jerks his hips into his fist.
My cheeks burn and I look away, but not before I catch Renee noting my expression. She greets him with a fist bump, which he doesn’t understand, so she starts explaining it.
“You good?” Drew asks as he looks at me curiously.
“Mhmm,” I hum as I try to get my overactive imagination under control.
“Looks like you just ate a ghost pepper,” he says with a knowing smirk.
I glare at him.
He puts his hands up with a big grin. “My bad.”
“And you punch each other as a sign of greeting?” Bastian asks.
“Well, you don’t really punch, you just sort of bop knuckles. It’s a way to say hello that’s friendly, but low contact,” she says. “Since I know you’re not really a fan of touching.”
The way she says it makes my imagination do another lap.
“We should get thrifting before everything good gets snatched up,” I say.
The excuse sounds so stupid I cringe.
Renee smiles like a teenager who knows a secret she could spill at any second. “Yeah, snatched.”
Oh my god.
“You girls have fun,” Drew says as he sets up a sawhorse. “Bastian, you know how to operate power tools?”
“I do not,” he says.
He approaches Drew and the quick, subtle caress of his tail against my ankle makes me shiver. Renee is staring straight down, and there’s no way she didn’t notice it.
She looks up at me with that perpetual smile and loops her arm in mine. She hums the “bag a dragon” song as we walk, bumping my hips with hers.
“Be safe, Cait,” Bastian calls when we reach the hall to the office.
I wave, my face on fire as I fail to find the right reply.
What is happening right now?!
Renee grabs the keys to their truck on the way out as she whispers, “Dragon Baggin’.”