Mistletoe Mishap

by Siri Caldwell

  “Get in here,” Viv said, slamming her book shut. “Get under the sheets.”

  As Kendra obeyed and wrestled Viv deeper under the covers, the last cheesy line of the song came to her, and she sang it into Viv’s bellybutton. “And a love—”

  “That tickles!” Viv shrieked, pushing her off, which brought Kendra even lower down her body. Lucky her.

  She kept singing. “A loooove…‌that will last without end.”

  Chapter 6

  ———

  Day 6

  ———

  KENDRA 1 : VIV 1

  When Viv came home from the lab, Kendra was at the kitchen sink in yellow rubber gloves, wrist-deep in sudsy dishwater, scrubbing a casserole pan.

  “Back so early?” Kendra teased.

  It wasn’t early. Kendra had already eaten dinner without her, which was pretty much what always happened on days she stayed home and Viv drove to work alone.

  Viv circled around behind her and hugged her by the waist using only one arm, her body at an angle, like she wasn’t planning on staying, and dropped a kiss on the back of her shoulder through her worn thermal shirt. “Missed you.”

  “You saw me this morning.”

  Viv kissed her again, this time on the back of her neck, lips touching skin.

  The pan slipped out of Kendra’s hands and banged into the stainless steel sink.

  Kendra jumped.

  Viv jumped worse. She laughed. “I thought you were supposed to be the romantic one. Now you’re telling me you didn’t miss me?”

  “I missed you.”

  Viv hauled her close. “No you didn’t. You were too busy working to think about me at all.”

  Kendra sighed. She had been working. She’d finally made progress writing the grant proposal she’d been procrastinating on for weeks. Catching up on work was what vacations were for, right?

  “Your shirt’s wet,” Viv said, like she’d only just now noticed. Like it didn’t happen every single time Kendra did dishes, this big wet spot on her stomach.

  Kendra shook her head. “That’s what happens, babe. Things splash and water gets on the countertop.”

  “You don’t have to lean on the wet countertop.”

  “And yet somehow I do.”

  “You’re soaked.” Viv tugged the hem away from Kendra’s skin and wrung it out, but there wasn’t enough moisture for it to have any effect. “Maybe when we replaced the countertops we should have had this one installed at an angle so it would drain into the sink.”

  “While our dishes would magically not slide away in a crash landing?”

  Viv smiled against her neck. “Exactly. I’m sure we could engineer a solution.”

  Kendra loved that she could feel that smile on her skin. Viv moved her lips and sucked at her, and the only reason Kendra didn’t drop any dishes this time was that her hands were empty.

  Kendra gripped the edge of the sink. “Can you imagine trying to explain our innovative design requirements to the salesman?”

  Viv let up on the kissing. Or whatever it was called when a woman mouthed at a sensitive area and then did it harder and more insistently when it became obvious she was making you lose your balance. Like she wanted you to lose your balance.

  “That poor guy,” Viv said. “Remember the look on his face when you told him the granite countertop he wanted to sell us wasn’t granite?”

  Come on, Viv. Less talking. More kissing.

  “It’s not granite,” Kendra said, because she couldn’t take her own advice and stop talking. “Look at it! Anyone can tell.”

  “Anyone who’s taken your intro geology class.”

  “He works in a showroom filled with rocks. He should know the difference between granite and gneiss.” And schist. And gabbro. And and and…

  “If the company tells him all the pretty, polished slabs are called granite because it’s too confusing for the customers to use unfamiliar words…”

  “You’re taking his side?”

  “Aren’t you the one who told me I didn’t need to be precise when I measured my desk? That it was unromantic?”

  “I’m also the one who told you I’m precise when it matters.”

  “This matters? Eh. It’s just a rock.” Viv snickered.

  Kendra squirmed in her arms. “Get off me.”

  Keeping one arm firmly around Kendra’s waist, Viv rubbed the smooth surface of their gneiss countertop, tracing the black and white bands that Kendra had taught her were key to its identification, silently communicating that she understood that yes, this was important to the geologist in the house.

  “You did an excellent job of explaining metamorphism to him,” Viv said. “I was a little turned on.”

  “You were not.”

  “I was. And I think the salesman might’ve been—”

  “Stop! No. Yuck. Don’t say things like that. Honestly, Viv. He thought I was harassing him. I feel bad.”

  “You weren’t harassing him. You were…‌enthusiastic about your topic.”

  Kendra turned on the water to rinse her abandoned casserole pan.

  Viv’s hands snaked around Kendra’s waist and fumbled for her belt.

  “What are you doing?” Kendra asked, shutting off the water and immediately wanting to kick herself, because when Viv got daring, the best thing to do was let her do whatever she wanted. It was always worth it.

  But Viv wasn’t undoing Kendra’s pants. Viv was…

  Kendra glanced down. Her belt had already landed on the floor, but her pants remained buttoned and zipped. Viv wasn’t touching her zipper at all. Instead, she was threading a handful of mistletoe through Kendra’s now-empty belt loop. Trying to, anyway. She wasn’t having much success doing it blind from behind.

  “Where’d this come from?” The vine looked relatively fresh, so definitely not the same one they’d fought over the other day.

  “When I checked in on my experiment this morning, Min-Jeong was in, picking up her students’ exams, and she told me there was chocolate in Thor’s office. When I stopped by to see if he had any left, he was in his doorway balancing on an out-of-date edition of the Glossary of Infectious Diseases, struggling to remove the mistletoe some kid had nailed there as a prank. Never noticed how short he is.”

  “So he handed the mistletoe over to you?”

  Viv rested her chin on Kendra’s shoulder so she could see what her fingers were doing. Didn’t seem to help.

  “I may have mentioned I’d be passing by the on-campus compostable waste disposal bin on my way out.”

  “Cute.”

  “Just trying to be helpful. You know me, always willing to step up and help out a colleague.”

  “Hmm. Is that what this is? You’re helping me do the dishes?” Kendra removed her dishwashing gloves. If Viv got any more adorable, Kendra was not going to be able to concentrate on household chores. “Can’t say I’m finding it very helpful.”

  “Did I say anything about dishes?”

  “What, then?”

  Still peering in vain over Kendra’s shoulder, Viv grumbled something unintelligible and yanked on Kendra’s belt loop.

  Kendra smiled to herself. “Having trouble?”

  “Is there a reason this mistletoe hates me?”

  Kendra took Viv’s hands and gently disengaged them from her waistband. “Can’t decide if I should try to escape or if I should be patient and wait to see what your plan is.”

  “I think you have a pretty good sense of the plan already.”

  Viv turned her head and pressed a teasing kiss to the side of Kendra’s neck in an obvious attempt to distract her while she freed her hands from Kendra’s hold.

  “You know what? I have a better plan.”

  Kendra spun around, and before Viv could react, Kendra had the mistletoe in her own hands and was tucking it into the waistband of Viv’s jeans.

  “Belt loops are too complicated,” Kendra said, taking Viv by the shoulders and nudging her away from the sink as Viv gasped i
n indignation. Kendra backed her into the dining room toward the only wall that wasn’t obstructed by furniture or artwork. “This way.”

  “Why?”

  Kendra pressed Viv’s back to the wall. “Why? Because I’m going to help you calculate your students’ final grades.”

  “You’re going to…” Viv tried to scowl at her, but she couldn’t fool anyone with that cute face. “Unlikely.”

  Kendra cupped Viv’s cheek, combed her fingers through Viv’s hair, and trailed down her neck. “I knew you were smart.”

  Viv’s lips parted. She wasn’t breathing faster, but she wasn’t arguing, either, so the reason her mouth was open wasn’t speech-related. Maybe she was breathing a little faster.

  “I liked my plan,” Viv said. “You would have liked it, too.”

  Yeah, okay, fine. Talking. Kendra knew what Viv looked like when she was turned on, though, and this was unmistakably it. Her mouth kind of went slack and her forehead pinched and her eyes darkened and…

  Kendra dropped to her knees less gracefully than she meant to.

  Viv bit her lip in that way that meant she really, really wanted to say something, but she didn’t think she should.

  Kendra narrowed her eyes.

  “Interesting technique,” Viv commented.

  Kendra shifted her weight and winced. This was why God invented beds. With comfy mattresses. And kneepads. And why it had been years since either she or Viv had attempted this.

  “How do straight women do this?” Kendra said. “Because, one, this hurts my knees, and two, the angle is all wrong, so three, it’s not my knees I’m most worried about, it’s my neck, and four, I know the anatomy is different but is the angle really that different?”

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to be talking while you do this.”

  Oh good, now Viv thought there was too much talking.

  Kendra changed the way she was kneeling. Nope, didn’t help. “I’m going to go with yes, the angle is different.”

  “Did I say while doing this? I meant instead of doing this.”

  “Maybe it’s a height thing. If you were taller…” Kendra bent down and dropped a kiss on Viv’s knee, the heavy denim cool against her lips.

  “Or you were shorter…”

  Viv rocked her hips. It was significantly more suggestive than Kendra had expected.

  Kendra kissed a line up her inseam. “Does either one of us really know the answer?”

  “No,” Viv replied, wiggling like she was trying to maneuver Kendra into position.

  Yeah, Kendra saw where this was going. She should reverse direction down Viv’s thigh instead of higher where Viv was trying to lead her and see what happened.

  “You don’t know?” Kendra looked up. “Didn’t you ever—”

  “No.”

  “—with your boyfriends?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Not even on a bed?”

  “No,” Viv said, sounding affronted. “Not vertically, not horizontally, not whatever.”

  “Not diagonally?”

  “No, not diagonally. I don’t even know what that means.”

  Kendra squinted up at her. “How did I not know this about you?”

  “You never asked.”

  True. She knew Viv had dated guys when she was a teenager, but she’d always shied away from asking about the details. Some things were better left unsaid. Because she’d assumed there were details.

  “You said you made out with some of them. I guess I thought—” Kendra stopped herself. Not going there. So it made perfect sense that her next words were, “You never did this with a guy?”

  “I was saving myself for marriage.”

  After thousands of hours of conversation, Viv could still surprise her. Was that anywhere near the right number? Hmm. Say it was one hour of conversation per day. Three hundred sixty-five hours a year, bump it up to four hundred to make the math easier, four hundred times twenty-six years was…‌let’s see, fudge the twenty-six to twenty-five…‌four quarters in a dollar…‌add two zeros…‌and end up with…‌ten thousand.

  That didn’t sound like much, not for twenty-six years. How could ten thousand‌—‌or even twenty thousand‌—‌hours feel like a lifetime?

  Kendra opened Viv’s zipper. “We should send you out on a research expedition to find out. See if the different anatomy makes a difference.”

  Viv pushed her hips forward, seeking Kendra’s hand. “What kind of girlfriend are you, telling me to find a guy and report back like it’s some scientific experiment?”

  Kendra smiled into her denim-clad thigh. “A girlfriend with scientific curiosity?”

  “You can picture it without collecting data.”

  “Ew. No visuals. Not while I’ve got my mouth on your mistletoe, thank you very much.”

  “I’m sorry, was your mouth actually touching me? I could have sworn I didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Oh, you’ll feel it.” Kendra hooked her fingers under Viv’s waistband in warning. The score was one and one, and Kendra was not going to let that stand. “I’m not scared of your good-girl reputation like your high school boyfriends were.”

  “They weren’t scared. I was good at resisting.”

  “That does not surprise me in the least.”

  It pained her to think of a young, serious Viv doing her determined best to preserve her virtue, convinced that all the good behavior in the world wasn’t enough to make her a good person unless she stopped boys from touching her. It was probably a blessing that Viv had never wanted them to touch her. All she’d wanted was for someone to like her. Kind, intelligent Viv, whose goodness should never have been questioned. Sweet, prickly Viv, who’d grown up to think it was okay that the viruses in her experiments saw more action than she did.

  Wait, did viruses do that, or did they reproduce by…? Kendra shook her head. Never mind that.

  “Is this really hurting your neck? We don’t have to…” Viv started to push away from the wall.

  Kendra gripped her hip bones and pushed her back. Viv’s shoulders met the wall with a thud.

  “We have to,” Kendra said. “Now take these off.”

  Viv met her gaze for a long moment as if trying to decide whether Kendra was going to be complaining about neck pain for the rest of winter break if she let her go ahead with this.

  “I’m already down here,” Kendra said. “Getting up will hurt worse. So come on. Stop worrying about me and take your jeans off.”

  Viv laughed. “Stop. Your grumpy sex talk is turning me on.” She smoothed a lock of hair off Kendra’s forehead with a gentleness that made Kendra’s throat tighten. “You’ll make me come if you keep talking like that.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s going to take a bit more work than that.”

  “Mm.” Viv toed off her shoes and curled her fingers around her waistband as Kendra helped her tug downward. The mistletoe tumbled to the floor, and Viv kicked it aside and stepped out of her jeans.

  “Green underwear?” Kendra played with the elastic but made no move to pull it down. “How Christmas-y. Was this on purpose?”

  “It was.” Viv rocked forward a little, pushing into her hand.

  It ought to have been tame‌—‌just Viv standing in her underwear‌—‌but kneeling and looking up at her, knowing Viv trusted her, was the best feeling in the world.

  “Do I need to buy you Rudolph lingerie for your Christmas present?” Kendra asked.

  “I think you meant to say you already have my Christmas present picked out.”

  “Yup. That is what I meant to say.” It wasn’t even a lie. They’d agreed years ago not to give each other Christmas gifts, but somehow they always ended up exchanging a couple of small, fun things they couldn’t resist.

  “And it had better not be Rudolph lingerie,” Viv said.

  Why? Because Viv had told her in no uncertain terms to never buy her lingerie? “Poinsettia.”

  “You’d better be lying.”

  �
�Yeah. Actually I found a set with gingerbread men performing questionable acts.”

  “You did not.”

  She didn’t. “What’s that supposed to mean? You think I don’t know your size?”

  Viv nudged her with a knee. “It means I already know what you got me, and I can’t wait to see what kind of it’s-not-granite you came up with this year.”

  “What? Why would you assume I’d give you a rock?”

  “A rock wired as a desk lamp? A rock that’s a decorative planter? A geode clock? A rock paperweight? Feel free to stop me anytime.”

  “You didn’t like the desk lamp?” She really did try to think about the recipient, and what that person’s interests were, when deciding on a gift. It was just that rocks were so fascinating, and so easy to turn into gift ideas, and viruses were so…‌not.

  “I liked the desk lamp,” Viv said.

  “I wired it myself, you know.”

  “And I was impressed.”

  “Not everyone knows how to wire a—”

  “I believe I may have shown you how impressed I was. With my mouth. And I wasn’t using it to form words.”

  Oh yeah, she remembered. Viv had turned off the overhead lights and undressed by lamp glow. Followed by the not-talking part. That had been a fun Christmas.

  “This year you’re getting a really large decorative boulder for the front stoop,” Kendra lied.

  “Which you picked up during a field trip you were leading for your students?”

  “Umm…” That did sound like something she’d do. Perhaps Viv knew her a little too well.

  Kendra pressed her mouth to the inside of Viv’s bare thigh. They both fell silent. Yeah. Much better than talking.

  Kendra worked her way up until she reached the crease of Viv’s thigh and licked along the length of it, finding the spot where the femoral artery‌—‌Viv had taught her its name‌—‌pulsed just beneath the surface. God, she smelled good. Tasted good.

  Viv reached for the wall behind her.

  “Your knees okay?” Viv asked, her voice tight and her breathing a bit too fast.

  “Absolutely.”

  Viv rocked her hips hesitantly, like she was holding back, afraid of knocking Kendra off-balance or hurting her.

  Kendra dug into her with her thumbs to steady those hips, or maybe to steady herself. She felt Viv’s pulse speed up, strong and even, under her tongue.