by J. M. Snyder
Steve was frowning. Tip braced himself for flight or flattening. “To be honest, I think he’s got a new one out now.” The frown broke into a sunny smile. “Still, I like the ones with Mitch in the best—how about you?”
“Thank God!” Tip grinned somewhat moronically in relief. “I mean, yes. I think. Um, what was the question?”
“You know, you’re really very cute,” Steve said, brushing his fingers along Tip’s jaw line.
Tip swallowed, wondering if it was a good thing or bad that the bagginess of the clothes he was currently swamped in would completely hide the effect the contact was having on him. He leaned toward Steve, and those warm, soft fingers continued to caress his skin, the aroma of cheap hotel soap and expensive aftershave teasing Tip’s nose and bringing the promise of earthier scents to come.
Just as he was wondering if Steve was going to kiss him, there was a frantic knocking on the door. Tip jumped, then remembered he was (a) human and (b) decent, and relaxed. He cursed under his breath at the interruption.
“Come in,” Steve called.
The door burst open in a bustle of floral prints and sensible shoes. “Oh, Stephen! There you are! Something dreadful’s happened!”
Tip blinked.
It was Mrs. Bloody Helpful.
“Calm down, Aunty May,” Steve said in soothing tones. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
Aunty May? Mrs. Helpful was Steve’s aunt? Tip hurriedly reviewed what he’d said about her to Steve. He didn’t think he’d made any mortal insults.
She wrung her hands in time-honoured amateur dramatics tradition. “We haven’t got time for tea! We have to find him!”
Realizing just which “him” she must be talking about, Tip tried to make himself look as un-tortoise-like as possible. He comforted himself with the memory of Janey telling him he looked more ferrety than reptilian, although oddly enough he hadn’t really appreciated the comment at the time.
“Oh—I’m so sorry, Stephen, I didn’t realize you had company…” She peered through her varifocals at Tip, and her watery eyes narrowed. “Don’t I know you, young man?”
Tip swallowed.
“This is Tip,” Steve said quickly. “And I really don’t think we need to worry about the tortoise.”
Tip looked from one to the other of them as if they were on centre court at Wimbledon and he had a front-row seat. He frowned. “Did you just wink at her? And did you tap your nose at him?” Tip scrambled to his feet, holding up the too-large trousers with one hand. “Is this some kind of deranged conspiracy?”
“No—” said Mrs. Helpful.
“Yes, it is,” said Steve at exactly the same moment. “But not a bad one, honestly.”
“Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?” Tip asked suspiciously, trying to edge toward the door without tripping over his too-long trouser legs. “Stay away from me!” he yelped as Steve got to his feet.
“Just give me five minutes to explain. Please, Tip,” Steve said, playing the wholly unfair card of gazing at Tip winningly out of stunningly clear blue eyes whilst saying his name in rich, mellow tones. “I promise you’ll be free to go, afterward.”
“I’m listening,” Tip said reluctantly, the memory of Steve’s touch obviously interfering with his capacity for rational thought.
“Right. Well.” Steve hesitated, running his hand through his thick, dark hair. “It’s about that curse you mentioned. The fact is…Well, the witch who cursed you is my aunty.”
“No, she’s not,” Tip objected. “I’m not a total idiot—I think I’d have recognized the woman who turned me into a tortoise!”
“I’ve got it!” Mrs. Helpful said triumphantly. “You’re the young man from the café!” Her eyes widened, and her mouth made an O shape.
“Yes, Aunty May.” Steve turned back to Tip. “And no, not Aunty May—her sister, my Aunty June. She’s the one with the shop in Arreton Barns. I’m afraid she can get a bit irritable—”
“Irritable? Irritable?” Tip exploded. “I’d hate to see what she does when she’s really annoyed!”
Steve grinned unexpectedly. “Believe me, you don’t want to know. Anyway, she felt terrible about what she’d done to you afterward, so she’s been trying to find you and put it right.”
Tip couldn’t help feeling she mustn’t have been trying all that hard. “So where do you and Mrs. Helpful come in?”
“Mrs.—oh! You mean Aunty May?” Steve’s eyebrows rose in amusement, and next to him, his aunt preened, clearly taking it for a compliment. “Well,” Steve continued, “poor old Aunty June’s getting on a bit—her location charms aren’t what they used to be. So in the end she asked Aunty May to come over and help out. Aunty May’s a dab hand at all kinds of dowsing, aren’t you, Aunty?” He paused. “Actually, we were expecting you to be permanently tortoise-shaped. And tortoise-brained, come to that. Aunty June’s hexes clearly aren’t what they used to be, either. And she must have forgotten all about your clothes. It gave me a bit of a shock to see you change back in front of me, I can tell you!”
“I’d certainly have thought twice about sharing a hotel room with you last night if I’d known, young man!” Aunty May put in, folding her hands primly in her lap.
Tip stared at her for a moment in frank disbelief that she could ever have thought for one moment her virtue was in danger, even if he hadn’t been gay. “So if she’s here to find me, what about you?” he asked, turning to Steve.
“Well,” Steve said again, lounging back on the bed and smiling up at Tip. He got dimples when he smiled, and the corners of his eyes crinkled up in a way that did curious things to Tip’s insides. “Aunty June was worried you might get a bit, ah, vengeful once the curse had been removed. So she asked me to come over for the de-cursing, and Aunty May got me the hotel room.”
“She got you to come over—to defend her against me?” Tip actually felt quite flattered. He didn’t think anyone had ever been frightened of him before.
“Poor dear,” Aunty May put in, “her memory’s obviously worse than we thought.”
Tip’s ego, never very robust to start with, deflated rapidly. “So, let’s just see if I’ve got this straight. You did some kind of spell to find me, then went along to the café and tortoise-napped me so you could take me back to your sister, and you—” he turned to look at Steve “—came along to make sure I didn’t beat up a defenceless little old lady, despite the fact that said defenceless little old lady is actually a witch who can turn people into reptiles?”
“Well, she does mammals, too, and I think in her youth she once turned someone into a garden gnome, but essentially, yes.” Steve nodded, smiling as if this were the most natural thing in the world.
“And,” Tip said loudly, feeling Steve hadn’t quite grasped the most important point here, “said witch is going a bit gaga, excuse the phrase, and her magic’s about as reliable as the British weather, but nevertheless you expect me to go along and willingly let her cast another spell on me?”
“Um. It doesn’t sound quite so good when you put it like that, but yes, that’s about the size of it.” Steve shrugged and beamed like he didn’t have a care in the world, which, Tip thought sourly, he probably didn’t.
“Excellent. Good. Goodbye,” Tip said brightly, flinging open the door and dashing out as fast as his borrowed trousers would let him.
“What? Wait!”
“Enjoy the rest of your stay!” Tip called over his shoulder, and hastened his steps as he saw Steve coming after him. Stairs, stairs, where were the—ow.
Ow.
Ow.
Ow, ow, ow.
Ow.
Tip sprawled at the foot of the staircase, his borrowed trousers down around his knees (but that was all right, as his borrowed T-shirt easily reached that far) and groaned piteously as he tried to work out which bit to rub first.
“Tip!” Steve leapt down the stairs with irritating grace and knelt down beside him. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, fine—I alwa
ys come downstairs this way. Why do you ask?”
Steve dimpled. “You’re adorable when you’re sarcastic, you know that? Come on, let me help you up.”
He didn’t help Tip up so much as lift him up and cradle him in annoyingly strong arms. What was worse, Tip found he liked it. “I’m quite capable of walking,” he protested half-heartedly.
Steve’s breath was warm on Tip’s face as he answered. “Yes, but not without doing yourself an injury, apparently. Look, I’ll take you back to the room—is there anyone you can call to bring you some clothes that’ll fit better?”
“Janey. My sister.” Who was probably worried sick about him, Tip remembered guiltily.
“Good. I’ll lend you my phone, and then we can sit down and talk about getting this spell off you. And stop struggling; no one’s going to force you into anything you don’t want to do.”
It should be illegal for anyone to wear a smile quite that disarming, Tip thought. “Sounds like the triumph of hope over experience to me,” he muttered, but he let himself be carried back to the room.
* * * *
“Where the hell have you been?”
Tip winced and held Steve’s phone a little further from his ear as Janey’s strident tones attempted to pierce clean through his left ear drum. “I got…” He paused. Aunty May was in the room, smiling at him beatifically. Would it be impolite to refer to the kidnapping? “There was a bit of a misunderstanding,” he finished weakly.
Janey groaned. “God, you haven’t been arrested again, have you? I told you—”
“No! No, I’m in Sandown. In a hotel. I’ve, er, borrowed some clothes, but they don’t fit me very well. Or at all, really. Do you think you could…”
“Right.” She sighed. “I’ll come on over. You do realize this is a really busy time of day at the café, don’t you?”
“Janey, it’s always a busy time of day at the café. And you know I wouldn’t call you if I didn’t have to.” Tip felt a bit guilty there. He could have asked Steve to drive him back home, but he had a nasty suspicion Steve would insist on carrying him to and from the car as if he were a wilting heroine in a bad romance novel. And while part of him—all right, most of him but one part in particular—found that a rather appealing scenario, if Janey saw it…well, spending the rest of his life as a tortoise would seem pleasant compared to the mockery Tip would have to endure. Janey might be sensitive about his unfortunate condition, but when it came to his love life, the gloves were off.
Speaking of his love life, certain parts of Tip had very much appreciated his ride in those well-muscled arms, and he’d begun to see the advantages of remaining with Steve, even if the bloke did have rather worrying ideas about getting Tip de-spelled by a senile sorceress. One thing they didn’t need, though, was a chaperone. “Mrs., er, Aunty May?”
“Yes, dearie?” She gave him a denture-filled smile.
Tip tried to arrange his features into the most innocent look he could manage. “I’m sure you don’t want to hang around all morning while we wait for my sister to turn up, do you?”
Steve caught on quickly. “Yes, Aunty, there’s no need for you to be cooped up with us all day.”
“Oh, how thoughtful of you, dears. I’ll just have that cup of tea you promised me earlier and then I’ll be off for a bit of sea air.” She bustled around the room filling the kettle, boiling it, discarding the first kettle-full (“because you never really know, do you?”), then refilling, re-boiling, and finally drinking her bloody tea. By the time she’d finished, the tea wasn’t the only thing that was seething, although in Tip’s case it was with frustration.
As the door finally closed behind her, Tip turned to Steve with a pleasant shivery feeling in his abdomen. “Um,” he said eloquently.
“Yes?” Steve raised an eyebrow, his smile turning seductive.
“We, er, earlier…” Tip trailed off as Steve leaned toward him and took his chin in one large, capable hand.
“Yes?” Steve encouraged him, his other hand snaking around Tip’s waist as his warm breath ghosted over Tip’s lips.
“We, uh…” Tip lost all capacity for speech as the hand in the small of his back urged him closer, and soft, dry lips descended on his mouth. His body melted against Steve’s, and his cock rose, stiff and needy.
At which point, with impeccable timing, Janey turned up. She’d made it to the hotel in around twenty minutes. Tip was pretty sure it’d taken Aunty May around three times that. Absolutely bloody typical—just when you wanted someone to be slow, they shredded the speed limits to get to you. Her eyes widened when Steve opened the door. “Wow! Hello, I’m Janey. Tip’s keeper, I mean sister.”
“Nice to meet you, Janey. I’m Steve.” He smiled and stuck out a hand for her to shake.
Tip scowled as Janey held onto it way longer than was necessary. “She’s my older sister,” he said with emphasis. “My older, married sister.”
“I’m sure you’ve always taken very good care of him, Janey,” Steve said, ignoring Tip altogether.
She sighed. “I do my best, but as you can imagine, it’s not easy. He just seems to have a talent for getting into trouble.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s got other talents. Deep down,” Steve said, his eyes twinkling and his dimples deepening.
“I am in the room, you know,” Tip muttered sourly. “Did you bring my clothes?” he asked in a louder voice, with a pointed look at the carrier bag dangling, seemingly forgotten, from Janey’s left wrist.
“Here you go.” She handed him the bag. “You can go in the bathroom to get changed. Steve and I will just talk amongst ourselves, won’t we, Steve?”
“It’ll be a pleasure,” Steve assured her. “Take all the time you want, Tip.”
With as much dignity as he could muster whilst holding his borrowed trousers up with one hand, Tip stalked to the bathroom. Bloody typical. Next, she’d be coming out with all the embarrassing stories of his childhood, such as the time the neighbour’s rabbit had burrowed under the fence to jump him in the garden and he’d wet himself in terror.
* * * *
He pulled off the borrowed clothes, taking a last lungful of their heady aroma of eau de Steve with an odd mixture of relief and sadness. Okay, he knew he looked bloody ridiculous in them, but he wasn’t yet ready to relinquish the entirely spurious feeling of closeness they gave him to Steve. Probably the nearest he’d be getting to the man—Tip knew he had a certain superficial attraction for some men, but he doubted it’d be enough to carry them over all the setbacks he and Steve had been having.
He was just pulling his T-shirt over his head when the door opened. “Janey?” he asked from underneath the fabric.
“No, it’s me,” said Steve’s mellow, mischievous voice.
Tip swallowed as he struggled to get his shirt down to cover what he was painfully aware was a rather slender, pale chest. There was bugger all he could do about his legs, though, sticking out from his boxer shorts (and why did Janey have to bring the ones with SpongeBob on that she’d given him for Christmas?) like a couple of whitewashed matchsticks.
“I have seen it all before,” Steve pointed out, a hint of laughter in his voice.
Tip flushed, not sure what was embarrassing him most: his present semi-nudity, his earlier total nudity, or just the fact that Steve could quite clearly tell how embarrassed he was.
“And if you’ll recall, I didn’t have any complaints,” Steve added. “In fact, I rather liked the view.”
Now Tip had another cause for embarrassment, rapidly tenting the front of his boxers. “Um. Is Janey coming in, too?”
“No, no. She’s gone back to the café,” Steve said, moving closer. “So, like I said, you can take your time getting into those clothes.”
“Oh!” said Tip, feeling a bit daft for his earlier jealousy. “I thought you meant—” He broke off as Steve’s large, warm hand came to rest on his hip, curving round it possessively. “Never mind.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t,” Steve r
umbled, pulling him in closer. Tip whimpered as his cotton-clad cock pressed against Steve’s muscular thigh. He barely retained enough presence of mind not to hump Steve’s leg like a randy Jack Russell, especially when he felt Steve’s erection boring into his belly like it was drilling for oil. Their lips met in a heated kiss…
“Stephen? Are you there, dearie?” Aunty May’s voice trilled at them through the closed door. “I’ve spoken to June, and she’s expecting us there in half an hour!”
As they broke apart, Tip sighed. “You know, it only takes fifteen minutes to get to Arreton from here. Twenty, tops,” he said without a lot of hope.
“Maybe, but it’d take us at least half an hour to get rid of Aunty May again.” Steve gave a rueful smile and stepped back. “Come on. Let’s get this over with, and then we’ll have as much time as we want together.”
“Yes, but will you still fancy me after whatever your Aunty June does to me this time?” Tip muttered under his breath as he pulled on his jeans and allowed himself to be led out of the room.
* * * *
As they approached Arreton Barns, Tip’s stomach curdled with unreasoning—no, make that entirely reasoning—dread. The low-roofed buildings, with their jolly signs painted in Ye Olde Englishe Spellynge, seemed even more sinister in the bright noonday sunshine than they had in the murky twilight of his nightmares. Hiding in plain sight, wasn’t that what they called it? He had a brief urge to run through the complex shouting “Run! Run while you still can!” to all the unsuspecting tourists who ambled sluggishly from shop to shop.
He jumped as Steve placed a hand on his arm. “Relax, Tip. We’re just going to talk to her, okay? No spells unless you say so.”
“Promise?”