by Joey W. Hill
Then there were the spontaneous drop-ins by several of the neighbors, bringing Christmas cookies and good wishes, interspersed with at least three phone calls from Les, checking on the evening’s arrangements. In short, the usual holiday chaos Thomas was accustomed to experiencing, and which seemed to alternatively bemuse and amuse Marcus. After Betsy Dorsey and her ancient mother brought by their famous seven-layer salad, Julie pronounced it was official; she’d stepped into the Walton family Christmas.
Splitting the difference between her preference and Thomas’s, Daralyn came at three. Marcus and she worked together on the lighter fare yet appetizing dinner menu Marcus and Thomas had planned. Julie continuously replenished their wine glasses and provided the entertainment, keeping them laughing and engaged, so that even Daralyn was openly laughing after awhile.
As they closed in toward evening, Marcus and Julie disappeared to get dressed, then relieved Thomas and Daralyn so they could do the same. Marcus wore a green dress shirt open at the throat and loose over black jeans, his hair brushed and gleaming on his shoulders. Thomas did his best not to ogle, but it was hard. Julie made no pretense of it, teasing Marcus in her usual blatant way, whereas every time Daralyn looked at him, she forgot what she was doing.
“We’ll take over here. Go get beautiful, pet.” Marcus sidled over and nudged Daralyn with a smile that had her blushing four colors of rose. “And Thomas should go get ready, too.”
Thomas rolled his eyes. “You just can’t help yourself.”
“No, he can’t. He loves to fluster and frustrate us,” Julie said. “It’s his sadistic side. Be sure and spit in his food tonight.” Their guest directed that toward Daralyn. Julie was decked out in a little black dress that highlighted her lush curves. She’d made it seasonal with a glittering gold, red and green poinsettia-design pin that matched her tiny stud emerald earrings. Her abundance of hair was piled on her head and pinned with a glittering red barrette. For all her bohemian ways, Julie kept her Upper East Side roots polished, since that was the source of many of her donors for her community theater. She had hung her strappy black heels on a chair tip, however, and was wandering the kitchen in bare feet.
“C’mon, Daralyn,” the woman said cheerfully. “I’ll help you get dressed since everyone knows I’m useless in the kitchen.”
Thomas blessed Julie’s kindness. During their movie marathon last night, they’d clued her in on Daralyn’s nervousness about the party, and neither he nor Marcus could help the girl get dressed. It also gave Thomas a second alone with Marcus. Happily, his Master was already anticipating him. As soon as the two women left the kitchen, Marcus pulled him closer, making Thomas’s pulse jump as he ran a proprietary hand down his back and over his ass to squeeze him through denim. Then Marcus planted a nice lingering kiss on his mouth. “Go get ready for your family, pet. That’s an order.”
Thomas normally would have teased Marcus about trying to be so high-handed and lord of the manor, but something held him back. As he moved to the door, he stopped and gave his spouse a considering look. Marcus glanced up at him.
Setting aside the spoon he’d been using to test the gravy, Marcus moved back to the doorway with that unconscious masculine grace that always put Thomas in the mood to paint. Marcus touched his mouth with his thumb, swept it over Thomas’s chin.
Reaching out, Thomas ran his knuckles down the open neck of Marcus’s shirt, hooking there. “You okay?” No bullshit, no coaxing, just eye-to-eye, here-I-am, the-guy-who-loves-you.
Marcus pressed his lips together, green eyes darkening like deep pond water. “Yeah, pet. We’re good. Leave it for now.” He put his hand over Thomas’s where it was propped on the frame, and squeezed. “I’m where I want to be, with who I want to be with. And I’m glad he wants to put up with me.”
“Who said that? You’re a pain in the ass.” But Thomas leaned forward, kissed him. “Okay.”
However, as he turned away and headed for the bedroom, he wondered if he was going to have the opportunity to help the complex man he’d married have as good a Christmas as he deserved.
* * *
There was a flurry of hugs and removal of coats as Thomas’s family arrived for dinner, an unloading of a vast amount of gifts large and small, in all types and colors of wrapping. Thomas watched, filled with quiet pleasure as Marcus took his mother’s coat and Elaine pulled him down the distance needed to her far shorter form for a hug. She patted him on the back. “Did you call your mother today, Marcus?”
“I spoke to her and John earlier in the week, and I’ll call to wish them a merry Christmas tomorrow. Thomas and I are likely going up there for New Year’s.”
“He told me.” Her look was approving. “I’ll be sure to send some of my canned potato soup along with you, because I promised Connie I’d share the recipe with her.”
Which meant they’d have to figure out a way to get a half-dozen glass jars of potato soup safely from here to Iowa on a commercial plane. Thomas hid a smile at the subtle look Marcus shot him, registering the dilemma. Marcus and his mother were still quite capable of butting heads and had had the odd argument or two, but now it was mostly about politics or how they should decorate the living room, not whether or not Thomas and Marcus belonged together. Sometimes their ways of expressing their viewpoints were so similar, it couldn’t help but make Thomas’s siblings snicker behind their hands. Especially Rory, who still insisted Thomas had married his mother.
She and Les had brought desserts to supplement what they already had. As Thomas took those and ferried them into the kitchen, he realized Daralyn had not yet made an appearance. Putting them down on the stove, he went looking for her. He found her in the cellar pantry, organizing soup cans.
“Daralyn, what are you doing?” He stepped into the small space as she turned, taking the can away from her to put it on the shelf before he closed his hand over hers. Her fingers were trembling, cold. And sure enough, she was pale, not flushed. Eyes too wide and bright, like a trapped wild animal. “Hey, it’s okay.”
“I…this may have been a mistake. I don’t like being the center of attention. This is so different.” She looked down at herself, clad in a green dress of velvet and gauze with a gold waist sash that brought out the hazel in her eyes. Her hair was loose and waving on her shoulders, probably the first time he’d ever seen it unbound. Les had loaned her the gold necklace with a delicate small cross their father had given her on her sixteenth birthday, a perfect accent for Christmas Eve night. She didn’t have pierced ears.
Les had helped Daralyn choose well. The dress highlighted her figure, showing Daralyn was a lovely young woman. The scoop neckline showed a hint of her pretty breasts and the hemline was right above her knees. The outfit was age appropriate, but not over-the-top sexy, something that would have really spooked her. Apparently, just dressing up was enough to do that.
There were times prison was not enough punishment. When he’d learned her history, Marcus had said he hoped her father and uncle went straight from prison into the bowels of hell and roasted their fucking nuts off for all eternity. Thomas agreed with him.
He pushed that back for now. As if he had all the time in the world—and for this he did—Thomas eased a hip onto the step ladder they kept in here, drew her in between his knees and chafed both her hands between his. “How do you think you’ll feel if Rory sees you and his jaw drops to his knees?”
“He won’t, but if he did…that might be nice.”
“You’re going to be fine. Everyone in that room loves you. We’re your family, the real one, the one that treats you the way you should be treated. You understand that, right?”
Daralyn nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know I’m being rude.”
“You wouldn’t know how to be rude if you tried. You also don’t know how excited Les is to see you in that dress. You don’t want to disappoint her, right?”
Daralyn shook her head. But she still wasn’t budging.
“Daralyn.”
; Thomas lifted his head, saw Marcus in the doorway. Earlier, he’d flirted with Daralyn, made her smile and blush. Now he gave her an even look that, while kind, was firm and not flirtatious at all. “Our guests are waiting. Come out and see your family.”
Marcus’s expression was a different version of the look Julie had claimed could make her instantly wet. Not sexual this time, not exactly, but a look that tested the waters that they had discussed earlier. To good effect. As Thomas watched Daralyn closely, he saw a tiny click happen inside her mind, almost as if a platform had been placed right before her, a small square of stability in a tumultuous storm of uncertainty. She straightened, her eyes darting around as she processed her unexpected reaction. Marcus extended his hand. Not another word, because he’d made his intentions clear. When he let his Dom side rise to the top, Marcus didn’t repeat himself.
With barely another blink, Daralyn put her hand in his larger one. Marcus steadied her up the two steps out of the pantry, guiding her past him. “There you go,” he said.
Thomas heard his mother and Les enter the kitchen. “Oh, Daralyn. How beautiful you look.” His mother’s exclamation was followed by Les’s delighted reinforcement. Daralyn disappeared, Marcus’s hand sliding away from her lower back as she was drawn into the kitchen. Thomas heard her tentative reply to the compliments, the shy pleasure in her voice.
He met Marcus’s gaze. Marcus nodded, a confirmation. “I’ll talk to Rory after Christmas,” he said, low. “If it’s clear that he feels for her the way we’re all pretty sure he does.”
“Yeah.” Thomas swallowed and rose. Marcus started to move away, but when Thomas lifted his hand, he stopped, arched a brow. Waited.
Cognizant of his family on the other side of that wall, Thomas nevertheless came to the bottom step with the request clear in his expression, the sudden tautness of all his muscles. Reading his desire, Marcus moved down a step, but he still had a significant height advantage. Thomas didn’t care. He reached up, gripping Marcus’s shoulder, and drew him down, his lips already parted to coax the hot kiss out of Marcus he needed like blood running through his veins. His Master. His gorgeous, broken, amazing, indomitable Master, who could make him hungry for the touch of his hands, mouth and cock, with nothing more than a quiet exercise of that side of him that could drive Thomas to his knees in a heartbeat.
Marcus proved it now by banding an arm around Thomas’s shoulders to hold him hard against his chest, deepen the kiss, make it sizzling, a demand for surrender. Thomas wanted to simply moan into his mouth, convey every bit of his desires, feelings and need, all of which were overflowing his heart, soul, mind and cock.
Marcus broke the kiss at last, lifting his head and staring down into Thomas’s eyes. He let his thumb rub over Thomas’s moist lips. “You’re going to embarrass yourself, pet. At least I wore a shirt with the tails out. You better stay in here a moment or two.”
Marcus left him there, but with a molten look that said there would be a follow-up to that kiss later.
As Julie said—he and Marcus could have whole conversations without words.
* * *
Dinner and gifts, laughter and love. As if the gods themselves were having as much fun, at one point, trying to clean up discarded wrapping paper, Daralyn tripped while backing up. Fortunately, the arm of Rory’s wheelchair was there to tumble right over, into his lap. He caught her, giving her a secure landing pad. Though Rory’s legs couldn’t support him, he was strong as an ox from the waist up. Since he’d taken over more of the duties of managing the store, he’d increased the muscle definition he’d had even before the accident, and age was starting to broaden and thicken his shoulders.
As she started to scramble up, all flustered apologies, he put a finger to his lips, a mute suggestion to silence. It startled her enough that she went quiet. His lips curving faintly, Rory lifted that finger, pointed up. Following the direction, she saw the mistletoe ornament. Thomas had strategically hung it in the open section of the room he knew would be Rory’s most likely spot to park himself.
Rory bent closer, murmured something in Daralyn’s ear. Her quivering hand fell on his biceps, fingers curving into his twill shirt sleeve as his arm stayed quite naturally curved around her waist, palm against her back. When he lifted his head, his lips brushed a loose strand of hair curved around her heart-shaped face. Daralyn stared at him, then nodded. His brown eyes warmed and he closed the distance between them to put a kiss on her mouth that, while light, lingered, as she seemed to draw all her breath and his into a dense ball of energy deep inside of her.
They were so wrapped in the moment, neither was distracted by the silent high five Les and Julie exchanged. Elaine reached over the sofa arm to the occasional chair where Thomas was sitting and gripped his hand. Thomas smiled at her, nodding, and glanced at Marcus, who was studying the couple with that intent look he had when considering a problem no one else thought could be solved, but to which he clearly saw a solution. Then his gaze shifted to Thomas, his brow cocking, and Thomas’s smile deepened into a grin. Actually, everyone was grinning like fools, particularly Rory when he finally drew back and he and Daralyn continued to look at each other as if there was nowhere else they intended to look until the end of days.
“Let’s finish up the gifts and then we’ll do pie and coffee,” Elaine said, smoothly taking the focus off of them before Daralyn would realize it was there and freak out. “Thomas, that Yankee of yours has put his gifts for us toward the back of the tree, which tells me they better be the best ones.”
Though the ornaments had discomfited him, Thomas could tell Marcus was more in his comfort zone when it came to picking out gifts for his family. Knowing his Master as he did, Thomas suspected it had been easier—because he’d been shopping by himself—to simply shift into the mode he’d have used in past years to pick out appropriate, expected gifts for business associates. Saying “it was easier when it wasn’t personal” didn’t fit, because Thomas’s family did matter to him, but it was clear that getting them gifts didn’t cut as close to home. Still, handing them out and watching them be opened was a different matter. Thomas maneuvered Marcus into the occasional chair, taking a seat next to him in a chair pulled in from the kitchen.
His mother received a beautiful cashmere robe that matched her eyes. Marcus had bought Les an elegant charm bracelet, with a few pieces already added, thanks to his close attention to Thomas’s stories about his sister. He’d also included a charm-a-month subscription for it. Elaine said he was spending too much money and Marcus reminded her he was filthy rich. He’d gotten Rory a vintage replica Henry rifle, something Thomas’s brother had mentioned back at Thanksgiving he was planning to buy once he’d saved up enough spare funds. It told Thomas at least one of the gifts had not been bought in a marathon run through Macy’s.
Knowing Julie’s love of music boxes, Marcus had given her a carousel made up entirely of monkeys, a whimsical piece done by an obscure eighteenth century playwright and clockmaker that Julie knew about.
“Oh my God,” Julie exclaimed, opening it. “It’s the first time you’ve ever bought me a Christmas gift.”
“What are you talking about?” Marcus looked offended. “I give you a Starbuck’s gift card and a Christmas card every year. And I play Monopoly with you on New Year’s Eve and drink that horrible egg nog you make. That’s a present and a half.”
Julie rolled her eyes, but bounded over to give him a hug. “You know it’s different.” Bending to kiss his cheek, on the side where Thomas could hear her, she whispered, “He is so good for you. Don’t fuck it up.”
“It’s Christmas, don’t use the word fuck,” Marcus muttered, with an admonishing squeeze.
He’d given each of them something tailored to their interests, thoughtful gifts that earned him another hug from Les and an additional kiss on the cheek from Elaine. Even Rory offered a gruff thanks, his eyes bright as he handled the rifle.
Daralyn didn’t seem concerned that there appeared to be no more g
ifts under the tree, but of course Les, Julie and Elaine all gave Marcus a narrow look. Typical Marcus, he feigned obliviousness until Julie fired a thick ball of wrapping paper at him, accurate and weighted enough it bounced off his chest.
“What?”
Julie tossed him a mock glare. “Don’t even try, Marcus Stanton. I know you wouldn’t forget something like that.”
“Like what?” But he rose, going to the bookcase and drawing a decorative envelope out from between two of Thomas’s art books. It had a red and green design on the edges, and a gold sticker showing a vintage Santa delivering gifts held it closed.
Daralyn had settled on a foot stool near Rory, near enough she could have reached out and laid a hand on his foot if she were brave enough to do so. She wasn’t, but it didn’t mean that the connection wasn’t felt in the energy between them.
“Crip.” Marcus slapped Rory’s head as he went by. Rory provided the obligatory punch in Marcus’s side and follow up retort.
“Fag.”
“You’re getting better at that,” Marcus observed. “You hit like a really strong girl now.”
“Boys,” Elaine said severely, though it was for the inappropriateness of the language, not for their habitual way of expressing affection.
Marcus squatted down in front of Daralyn and presented the envelope, meeting her surprised gaze. “This is from Thomas and me. It has a bonus for cleaning up our messes, and you’re getting a ten percent raise both from us and the hardware store at the turn of the year. It also includes a registration confirmation for the local community college for the next four years. You can choose whatever you want, but you’ll choose a minimum of two courses a semester. Rory and Elaine are going to arrange your schedule at the store however is needed so you can attend. The college has a GED course as well, so you can get your high school diploma.”