A Very Armitage Christmas
Page 6
But maybe I’d grown as a person, because I bit them back. A year before, before Ian, I’d have said them. All of them, and more, and maybe I even would’ve felt justified. But that was before. Before nine months of being loved, and cared for, and honestly kind of cosseted and spoiled, though I never would’ve admitted that to Ian. He might stop if he knew I’d noticed how much he catered to my every whim.
Now I knew better, and I knew Arik didn’t mean it…or maybe he did. Yeah, it was Arik, he meant it. But I could let it go. Because that wasn’t all he meant.
“I’m sorry,” I said, instead of all the shit I could’ve said to hurt him. It felt strange, acknowledging that I could hurt him, that he cared enough about me to be hurt. But dammit, it was Christmas. Candy canes. Pie. Not being a total dick to your dick brother-in-law, and optimistically hoping he actually did care. Personal growth. Actually caring about your dick brother-in-law, in spite of what a dick he was. Fuck. “It’s not the, like, who’s more scared of meeting the parents Olympics, okay? We don’t need to compare. Neither of us are hot, fertile werewolf women, right?” Arik let out a shaky laugh, but he didn’t look at me. “But the pack likes us. They trust us. Ian and Matthew chose us, and they love us. And.” I stopped. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “I trust you. I like you. Okay? I mean, maybe I don’t count, but…you know. For what it’s worth.”
Arik turned his head just enough to peek at me with one bright-green eye, half-curtained by his long hair.
The sudden roar of machinery from outside — the snowblower — made us both jump, right as Bing Crosby sang about children listening to hear sleigh bells in the snow.
“Do you think there are kids somewhere listening to sleigh bells and not a snowblower blowing body parts into a heap?” he asked after a second.
I couldn’t help laughing. “Dude, I have no idea what a sleigh bell sounds like, so don’t ask me. Look, Janet wasn’t fazed by the whole zombie — sorry, revenant situation. Maybe this won’t be so bad. Maybe we should go downstairs and see if she’s made pie.”
Arik sucked in a deep breath. “Yeah. Unless you want to run away to South America after all.”
“You know they’d come and find us.” And wasn’t that a strange thought. Having people who’d care enough to follow me all the way to another continent just to bring me home, and not because they wanted to drain my magic, either. Having a home, period.
“Weird, right?” Arik said, laughing a little. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s go.”
We went down side by side, the noise and chaos growing exponentially as we turned the corner of the stairs. Little kids ran riot in the big den of the pack house, jumping on couches and shrieking, nearly drowning out the Christmas carols screeching out of the ancient record player in the corner. It was like trying to get through the inside of a pinball machine to make our way to the kitchen.
Janet had decided to hold court in there, apparently. We peeked through the doorway and found half the pack’s female cohort, drinking coffee and talking and shuffling pots and pans around and chopping things. Clouds of fragrant steam rose from the stove; flour dusted nearly every surface.
And a giant ham sat in a roasting pan, ready to go in the oven. Thank all the gods. I didn’t need to deal with anything else with a head that needed to be removed today.
“There you are!” Janet said. “Grab an apron.” She pointed at the pantry, where a few aprons hung from a hook. Where the fuck had those come from? The house had aprons? “Peeling potatoes or pitting cherries? Those are the two jobs left. Decide amongst yourselves.”
Tara and Elise, two of the moms of the hellions in the next room, shoved peelers and bowls and strainers and cutting boards at us and then pushed us toward the table.
My eyes met Arik’s over a pile of potatoes. He had a funny little half-smile on his face, something between resignation and — happiness? Was that what happiness looked like on Arik’s face?
“You can do the cherries. At least a peeler has a plastic guard thing and I probably can’t slice my finger off,” I said.
Arik nodded, his smile widened, and he picked up a knife.
“I trust you too,” he said so quietly I almost didn’t hear him over the din. “Only to a point, though. Try not to fuck up the potatoes.”
I kicked him under the table and grabbed my peeler. I’d show him.
It felt good to be doing something so normal, especially with the most abnormal person I’d ever met.
And knowing Ian and Matthew were dealing with the body-part snowblowing while we sat warm and cozy in the kitchen dealing with nice clean edible food added a little delicious je ne sais quoi to the whole affair.
Maybe I was kind of a petty bitch. But they all loved me anyway.
I peeled my potatoes with a smile on my face, even when Arik told me I was doing it wrong.
Chapter 6
Matthew & Ian
It took a couple of hours to get all the last zombie parts blown into a heap, gathered up, and burned, and by then the sun had started to sink behind the horizon, lighting up the remaining snow all pink and making the dead lawn underneath look even deader.
Dad spent the whole fucking time leaning against the hood of his ridiculous, too-expensive car that would’ve paid off all of our utility bills for six months, and then some — It’s an investment, Matt, and why can’t you enjoy life a little? — smoking and critiquing our snowblowing form.
Ian’s teeth-grinding was almost louder than the snowblower.
But we finished at last, and dad sloped off to put his stupid car in the garage and probably hide from mom, who might give him something else to do.
“What the fuck are they even doing here?” Ian demanded as soon as dad was out of earshot. “Did they call you?”
“Nope. No call.” I stretched my arms over my head, trying to get the ache out of my back. Even alphas had physical limits, and I’d started to run head-first into mine with the day we’d had. “I wonder how Arik and Nate are doing with mom.”
“Fine, unless they ran away together and assumed new identities in Venezuela, or something.” The words kind of sounded like he’d meant them as a joke, but the delivery fell flat. I could feel Arik close by through the mate bond, but if I hadn’t…yeah, that had been my first thought too, when we got back from the cemetery and found dad. That Arik had barely adjusted to being with me, let alone doing Christmas with my parents. And that he and Nate had enough magic between them to get away clean if they needed or wanted to.
“They’re here. You can feel Nate too, right?”
“Yeah.” Ian sighed. “Maybe I’m a coward, but I can’t go inside right now. I ought to go bail Nate out, but I’m going to fix the inflatable Santa first. Maybe he’ll forgive me for leaving him to mom’s mercies if I get that done in the meantime.”
“You’d better do more than fix the Santa. I think we’re both going to be groveling for a while. Can you imagine, mom and dad driving up and finding them there with all the body parts? With us not even there to run interference?”
Ian looked at me, and I looked at Ian, and we both doubled over laughing like hyenas. Fuck, it felt good to laugh with my brother again. When had we gotten so fucking serious? Maybe having our parents around was good for something, after all. Even though they mostly just pissed us off.
I slipped discreetly inside the house through the weird little side door no one ever used because it always got stuck, spent a minute unsticking it and shutting it again, made it upstairs without running into anyone, and got myself cleaned up. The house smelled like ham and coffee and cinnamon, someone had put Christmas carols on the record player, and all the kids seemed to be having a party — or maybe staging a revolution. I couldn’t tell. The noise could’ve gone either way.
The pack house felt like home, like it had when Ian and I had been growing up. It hadn’t been all roses, but…yeah, I suddenly really, really wanted to hug my mom.
I’d gotten as far as drying off when I heard the bedroom door open and shut.
My stomach rumbled.
“I heard that,” he said, and opened the bathroom door, leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed. He had a smudge of flour on his nose, and his fingers were stained all purplish-pink. “I’m glad my suffering makes you hungry.”
I dropped my towel on the counter and crossed the small distance between us. He’d put his hair up in a ponytail, probably to keep it out of the pie he’d obviously made — and it was making my eyes cross, imagining my prickly, dangerous, revenant-raising mate baking a pie with my mom, but I knew saying that would only piss him off. A long strand of pale blond hair had escaped to hang over his forehead. I pushed it back, letting my finger trail down over his cheek and jaw after I had, using my thumb to rub the flour off.
“You smell like pie. I can’t really help it. Also, suffering? I’m the one who had to do the snowblowing. A finger hit me in the nose.”
“I had to meet your parents. Without you. While standing in a yard filled with pieces of revenant.”
I moved a little closer, until I had him backed up against the door frame, turning so that I stood in the doorway and he had nowhere to run. Maybe he and Nate hadn’t made a break for Venezuela yet, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t change their minds.
“Yeah,” I said softly, leaning down and nuzzling his temple. “I do owe you for that.” I pressed a kiss to the sharp line of his cheekbone, loving the way I felt him start to flush under my lips. “I should probably make it up to you. Any ideas?”
“Christmas Eve dinner isn’t for a couple of hours. You could scrub the bathtub. Or organize my sock drawer. Or go downstairs and clean the kitchen, I think there’s kind of a mess — fuck, Matthew, put me down!”
I did, tossing him onto the bed hard enough that he bounced a couple of times, and then I landed on top of him, squishing him down into the mattress. He laughed and squirmed under me, his cheeks red and his hair flying out of its ponytail. I pinned him down by the shoulders and leaned up enough to look at him.
Stare, really.
“What the hell are you looking at?” Arik demanded.
How did I tell him what I saw when I looked at him, particularly like this: open and happy and smiling…joyful, even, and that wasn’t a word I’d ever thought I’d be able to use to describe my mate, no matter how much joy he brought me every day he chose to spend with me.
“I love you,” was all I could manage to say. “So fucking much, Arik.”
His blush deepened, creeping down his neck. He tried to scowl at me, but his lips kept twitching up. It was so fucking cute.
He opened his mouth, but I never heard whatever he’d been about to say.
“Hey! Look out your window, Matt!” Ian, shouting at me from right outside. “Merry fucking Christmas, big brother!”
A burst of laughter followed, Ian and Nate both, it sounded like.
Arik and I looked at each other and then scrambled off the bed, going to the window and pulling the curtain aside enough to peer out.
The sun had finally gone down, but the inflatable Santa had a small spotlight set up at its feet, the underlighting making its face look like it belonged in a Christmas horror movie.
One of its hands held a big bag of toys on its shoulder. The other had a huge middle finger up, pointed right at our window.
“Nate,” Arik hissed. “He did that. He fucking enchanted it! That little bastard!” I started to laugh, but broke off when Arik elbowed me in the stomach. Hard. “Not fucking funny!”
“It’s a little — okay, no, not funny at all,” I said, backpedaling quickly as his face went from angry to enraged, his eyes practically glowing. “Not funny. Totally serious. I’ve never seen anything less funny in my entire li— oof!” Arik shoved me so hard I flailed backward and landed on the bed, with him on top this time.
He straddled me, glaring, his chest heaving. I might’ve been more upset about it if he hadn’t positioned his ass perfectly on top of my cock, which liked that just fine.
“You’re an asshole,” he gritted out, and yanked his shirt over his head, flinging it away. My hands went to his chest of their own accord, stroking his soft skin and rolling his nipples between my fingers. “Fuck,” he said, arching into my touch. “Fuck, you’re such an asshole. I’m going to ride you, and I’m coming before you knot me or you’re sleeping in the bathtub.”
He shimmied his slim hips, somehow working his pants down without getting off of me. His long pretty cock popped free, and then he turned enough that I could glimpse the perfect, rounded curve of his ass.
“Not a problem,” I growled, getting one hand around his cock and slipping the other between his legs.
He stiffened and moaned as I pressed a finger inside him, simultaneously running my thumb over the head of his cock.
I grinned at him, not even trying to hide the way my fangs had dropped and my eyes had started to glow. Yeah, he’d come first.
And he did. Twice, the first time writhing on top of me, his plush lower lip clenched between his teeth, and the second time under me, sobbing out his pleasure as my knot forced him open.
When I’d filled him up, I lay on top of him, letting him take most of my weight, stroking his tangled hair off of his face. My whole body sang with the high of it: my mate hot and wet around my knot, his eyes half-lidded and gleaming with satisfaction, his lips parted and pink, and the mate bond pulled tight between us, not a bit of space between him and me either magically or physically.
All mine. And when we finally separated and dressed, and headed downstairs for dinner, where we’d sit next to each other and hold hands and try to ignore my dad being an ass…he’d still be mine. Part of my family. The most important part.
“Next Christmas, can we skip the revenants?” I asked him, kissing the side of his neck.
“No promises.” I could feel Arik’s smile through the bond as much as I could see it on his lips. “But maybe next year’s disaster will be Nate’s fault.”
I laughed. “Something to look forward to.” I paused a second, nipped his earlobe, smiled as he gasped a little and squirmed under me. “We have a lot to look forward to, right? Starting with the best dinner we’ve had in this house in ages.”
Arik stayed silent for long enough I wondered if he’d started to reconsider Venezuela.
Finally he said, “I can even do family dinner if it’s with you.”
I wrapped an arm under him and held him close, burying my face in his silky hair. “I love you too.”
Arik kissed my cheek and wrapped his arms around me. “You’re still an asshole.”
“Like I said. I love you too.”
Arik laughed, and I closed my eyes and rested my head next to his. Dinner could wait a little while. I had everything I wanted for Christmas already.
***
Nate escaped out of the back door from the kitchen, chased by a puff of fragrant steam and a burst of laughter from the people still inside, right as I finally got the stupid Santa upright again. The fucker was about half duct tape by weight, but he stood tall and proud, and I’d even rigged a spotlight so he’d be visible all night.
And so I could tell if anything tried to crawl out of the woods to gnaw on him. I was fucked if I was doing this a third time.
“I was getting ready to yell at you for leaving me alone with your mom for so long,” he said. “But I see you planned on that and headed me off at the pass. Well played.”
I grinned at him. “I’m not always an idiot.”
Nate grinned back, strolling around the Santa and inspecting it from all angles, his hands shoved in his pockets. “Not bad, not bad,” he said airily. “But it’s missing something.”
He pulled his hands back out of his pockets and laid them against the Santa’s leg, closed his eyes, and whispered something that didn’t sound like real
words. Right. Some kind of spell. A soft glow transferred from his palms into the Santa, traveling up and up, twisting and whirling like smoke in the wind.
Santa’s upraised waving hand blurred, glowed, and transformed into a giant fist flipping Matthew and Arik’s bedroom window the bird.
Fuck. Yes.
“You like?” Nate pulled his hands away and raised his eyebrows at me expectantly, bouncing on his toes. He looked like a little kid, well, seeing Santa for the first time. God, I loved him so much.
“Yes, I like,” I crowed. “Arik’s gonna be so pissed. Hey!” I shouted. “Look out your window, Matt! Merry fucking Christmas, big brother!”
Nate and I stared up, and a second later the curtain twitched aside at Matt and Arik’s second-floor window. Two faces appeared: my brother, looking first annoyed and then amused, and Arik giving us an open-mouthed glare of fury.
“Oh shit,” Nate said. “Run!”
I grabbed his hand and we fled into the woods, giggling like kids and dodging behind a tree where I was pretty sure Arik couldn’t see us to fling some kind of nasty magic at us.
Nate slumped against the tree, holding his sides and shaking with laughter. “Oh my gods, he’s so going to kill us,” he choked out. “So worth it. So, so fucking worth it. Did you see his face?”
“That’s all I want for Christmas right there,” I said. “Probably a good thing, since we can’t afford anything else.”
A guilty look crossed Nate’s face, and he sobered up from his laughing fit. “I spent my whole Christmas budget on decorations and groceries, so I guess… But on the other hand,” he said, brightening up again, “if that makes you happy, then I did get you a present. And you told me to return the inflatable Santa. Ha!”
I ignored that. “What, no socks?”
Nate scoffed. “Of course I enchanted more of your socks. Who do you think you’re mated to? Now you have a pair that repels fleas. Since, you know, you’re furry a lot of the —”
I dived in and dug my fingers into his ribs, and he cut off with a squeak and tried to flail away. He failed, obviously, but after a second I stopped and let him get a breath.