The Better To Kiss You With

by Michelle Osgood

  “Well,” Deanna began carefully, “I don’t think that’s something Jamie and I need to worry about right now…”

  “Good, because Erica and Lowell definitely had puppies.”

  Deanna could feel her eyes go wide, because she knew— thought she knew— Jamie would have mentioned that, right?

  Kiara broke into a laugh that, compared to her usual serious expression, was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. “I’m sorry, oh god, your face. Lowell likes dogs. So, they had puppies. But Jamie was never a puppy.”

  Deanna knocked back the rest of her wine, unable to formulate an appropriate response.

  “Don’t worry.” Kiara patted her on the arm. “You’re fitting right in. Now go,” she ordered with a gesture toward the living room. “Uncle Trevor’s about to try to find people to play with, and if you volunteer you’ll have saved me from having to play. Consider us even.”

  Deanna gave an affable shrug. Surely it wouldn’t be that bad?

  “If I never see another pair of dice again, it will be too soon,” Deanna swore, holding out a garbage bag as Jamie emptied the last remaining veggie tray into it.

  Nathan, gathering glasses, snorted in amusement. “I think you’re just bitter because Malarth couldn’t make it through the White Pine Forest without rolling at least a nine and having both the Harp of Glory and the Flowering Spring cards.”

  “I’m not bitter,” Deanna argued. “I’m exhausted. And I can’t believe you not only understood that game, but won.”

  “It’s great.” Jamie was even more enthusiastic about Nathan’s win than he was. “You’re Uncle Trevor’s new best friend, and that means I can just send you to things in my stead.”

  “I don’t see how that’s fair,” Cole pointed out affably. “You’re not dating him.”

  “No. But it’s close enough. He’s practically Deanna’s brother, so,” she said as she winked at Nathan, “it’s like sending an in-law.”

  “I still don’t see why you had to have both cards,” Cole sighed under his breath, loading the plates into the dishwasher. “Or who let Uncle Trevor in the door with a board game.”

  Deanna had to stop herself from humming out loud as she moved through the room and tossed napkins and paper plates into her garbage bag. It was well past midnight and Jamie’s family had left half an hour ago. Nathan and Cole had stayed behind to help clean, and Deanna thought that the evening had gone very well. Both of Jamie’s parents were kind and welcoming, and with Kiara as her self-appointed, if prickly, ally, Deanna had had an easy time connecting with the rest of Jamie’s family.

  When they left, Michael had hugged her close and then, as he was pulling away, pressed his hand to the side of her neck. Deanna frowned. The gesture was oddly familiar, and it wasn’t until she’d begun to tidy that she realized he’d done what Cole had to Jamie when she was injured in the woods. Deanna wasn’t sure of the significance of the gesture, but found herself oddly touched. She knew enough about wolves—actual wolves—to know that necks and throats were significant when they interacted, and hoped that whatever the touch had meant to this pack, she wouldn’t let them down.

  Nathan dropped the last of the wine glasses in the sink and stretched, not bothering to hide the way he watched Cole’s ass as he leaned down to add another plate to the dishwasher.

  Catching Deanna watching him, Nathan flashed a cheeky grin. Deanna rolled her eyes, suspecting that if Cole had caught him looking, Nathan would have been in for a stern word or two. She hoped the next time Cole came to visit that it would happen. Nathan needed someone to call him out on occasion. It was good for his overdeveloped ego.

  “Thank you for hosting, and for inviting me.” Nathan pulled his attention away from Cole’s butt to give Jamie a quick hug. “I’d better get back home, though. They’re releasing Mirror’s Edge Catalyst tomorrow, and I want to be up early to start playing.”

  Jamie gave him a tight squeeze. “Thank you for coming,” she said, and Deanna had to stop herself from cooing with delight—she’d never thought that her best friend and her girlfriend wouldn’t get along, but the fact that they were friends made her impossibly happy.

  “I’ll walk out with you.” Cole emerged from the kitchen to give Deanna’s shoulder a squeeze and wave to Jamie as he followed Nathan to the door.

  “You want a ride to the hotel?” Nathan offered, all innocence save for the wicked gleam in his eye. Deanna muffled a snort with her hand, but by the side-eye Jamie treated her to, didn’t think she’d done the best job.

  “Sure.” Cole ignored them and followed Nathan out. As the door closed behind them, Deanna pumped a fist into the air and gave a silent “Yes!”

  “Oh, please,” Jamie said. “You don’t really think…?”

  Deanna laughed. “I think I can’t wait to see what happens.” She crossed the living room and wrapped her arms around Jamie, marveling at the solidity of her. Though it had been weeks, Deanna still couldn’t fathom how quickly Jamie had healed. The night of the Moon Revel, Deanna had been sure Jamie was mortally wounded. In Deanna’s nightmares, the furred head she lifted into her lap was entirely still, and the blood on her hands was cold.

  Jamie stroked Deanna’s hair, as if she could sense the direction of Deanna’s thoughts. “It’s over, you know,” she said. “He’s gone, and those kids are fine—thanks to you and Nathan—and Wolf’s Run is doing as well as ever.”

  It was true. If anything, the game had surged in popularity after the news broke that two of its players had been attacked by a wolf—a thing that hadn’t happened in the last decade in Canada. Deanna wouldn’t have imagined that something so horrific could cause people to want to play the game, but apparently it had added a verisimilitude that attracted new players like flies. The teenagers, both on their way to recovery, had each recounted their story of being stalked by a giant wolf to any news outlet and blogger that would listen, and were enjoying their newfound popularity as survivors of a werewolf attack. Deanna couldn’t decide if it was painfully ironic or just plain hilarious that they were capitalizing so easily on what had been done to them, but she wished them all the best. Last she’d heard, the girl was in discussions with a TV producer to tell the story of a young girl, attacked in the woods and bitten by a wolf, who later discovers she has gained unnatural powers. Deanna hoped she would be able to add it to her roster of TV shows next summer.

  “I know,” Deanna answered belatedly. “I still can’t believe we’re all okay. I thought…” she let her words trail off. They’d had this conversation more than once over the past weeks, and Deanna was getting sick of it. But she couldn’t help returning to it. She needed to poke at it, as if it were a fresh bruise and she wanted to be sure it was healing.

  “I’m not that easy to get rid of,” Jamie promised.

  It seemed, incredulously, that crywolf had been. Well, not easy, Deanna amended. But once Jamie’s family had arrived, the entire thing had suddenly no longer been Deanna’s problem. After having to deal with crywolf on her own for months, the lack of him in her life was startling. There were still annoyed game players, and Internet trolls who’d send her rude tweets, but she no longer had to logon to Twitter with an impending sense of dread.

  Deanna deliberately hadn’t asked what they had done with him. That might be cowardly, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want to spend another minute thinking about him—which, she realized ruefully, was exactly what she was doing.

  “So I see now why your place is so big,” she said as she moved away to turn on the dishwasher. “And you’ve got how many more pack members?”

  Jamie scrubbed a hand over her face. “So many. And Andrew is getting married next year, so you’ll meet them all at the wedding, if not sooner.”

  “Why, Jamie,” Deanna pressed a hand to her chest, affecting a tone of demure shock, though she couldn’t keep the sparkle from her eyes. “Are you making plan
s with me over a year in advance?”

  Jamie paused where she was tying the final garbage bag closed; a flush crawled over her cheeks. “I, um,” she stammered, “I don’t mean to—I know it’s only been… I—” She broke off, and only when she looked up and caught Deanna’s eye did she realize Deanna was teasing.

  “You’re not as cute as you think you are,” she admonished, setting the bag down with the others.

  “Oh, I think I am.” Deanna gave her most winning smile. “And you love it. You love me.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Deanna’s breath caught; her heart did an odd, tumbling fall. She hadn’t expected Jamie’s careful, measured response. Hadn’t expected to see the quiet certainty in Jamie’s eyes as she crossed the kitchen and slid her arms around Deanna’s waist.

  Jamie brought her head down and brushed her lips over Deanna’s. “I love you,” she said, the words no more than a breath of air.

  Deanna reached up to cup Jamie’s face in her hands, tilting her head back so that she could look Jamie full in the face. “Say it again,” she demanded.

  “I love you,” Jamie repeated, eyes twinkling good-naturedly. “Despite your terrible sense of humor. I assume this means you’ll be my date to the wedding?”

  “I have a hilarious sense of humor,” Deanna corrected absently, pulling Jamie’s head back down so that she could press her lips against Jamie’s. “And yes,” she said against Jamie’s mouth, “I’ll be your date.”

  There was a cough from behind them, and they sprang apart. Deanna couldn’t quite meet Jamie’s dad’s eye as he handed Deanna a wine glass Nathan had missed, his lips quirking in a smile.

  “Hey, Dad,” Jamie shoved her hands into her pockets, looking adorably like a teenager as she tried to pretend she hadn’t just been caught making out with her girlfriend—never mind that she was a fully-grown adult in her own apartment. “Are you and Mom settled in the bedroom?”

  “We are,” Lowell said, stepping around the bags of garbage to take a bottle of water out of the fridge. “I don’t think your mother’s been this drunk since your Aunt Daisy’s sixtieth. She’s out like a light, but I imagine she’ll want this when she wakes up.” He lifted the bottle in a mini-salute. “You’re lucky you got my iron constitution,” he told Jamie. If Jamie’s dark hair and brown eyes came from her mother’s side of the family, her height was all her father’s. Lowell was tall, but, like Jamie, his size was disarmed by the gentle way he carried himself, as though he was aware of how his size could be misinterpreted and was careful not to intimidate.

  “I think my inability to get drunk might have more to do with the whole werewolf thing, but yeah, sure, Dad.” Jamie rolled her eyes, and Deanna muffled a laugh.

  “Now, I’m sure you don’t want this garbage sitting here all night.” Lowell nudged the closest plastic bag with his toe. “Why don’t you and Deanna take them out? I’m going to join your mother, and the rest of the cleanup can wait until tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” Jamie looked surprised, blinking down at the bags. “Yeah? I guess we could do that.” She glanced at Deanna and gave a confused shrug.

  “Well, that’s settled then. Take your time.” Lowell gazed absently out the window, though there was a gleam in his hazel eyes that Deanna thought she recognized. “It’s a beautiful night. And I won’t wait up for you.” He turned and met Deanna’s eyes, giving her a slow wink.

  “All right, if you’re sure.” Jamie still sounded puzzled, but, game as always, she had hefted the two heaviest bags, leaving the lighter one for Deanna.

  “See you in the morning.” With a perfectly straight face, he wandered out of the kitchen as silently as he’d come in. Deanna wondered if it would be awkward if she told Jamie that she had a crush on her dad.

  “Sorry,” Jamie said once they were out in the hall, Arthur leading the way, “I don’t know what that was all about.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Deanna raised an eyebrow. “Your dad just told us to go have sex.”

  Her mouth falling open, Jamie stopped dead in the middle of the hallway. “He what?”

  “Sorry,” Deanna said around a laugh, continuing toward the stairs. “He wasn’t exactly subtle. All that ‘I won’t wait up’ business? Besides, you didn’t really plan to spend the night on your couch, did you?”

  Deanna had been surprised when Jamie mentioned that her parents would be staying with her, but hadn’t asked to sleep at Deanna’s for the duration. Deanna had figured Jamie just assumed that would be the case, but when she didn’t bring it up, Deanna wondered if Jamie’s parents wouldn’t have been okay with it, and so she hadn’t brought it up either.

  Clearly, she thought with an amused grin, they would be more than okay with it.

  Jamie finally caught up with Deanna, and was apparently over her shock because she began to hustle Deanna down the stairs. Deanna shook with suppressed laughter, but managed to keep a straight face. The last week had been unusually busy—Jamie had a research ethics submission due, and since none of her family had visited her in Vancouver before, she’d scrambled to have her place perfect. Now that Wolf’s Run had become the city’s top-selling app, Deanna had been swamped at work. The number of new players meant almost twice as many moderation problems as usual. They’d still managed to see each other a few times, but it had been days since they’d managed a proper sleepover, and Nathan had already sent Deanna ominous texts about “lesbian bed death,” which he swore was a legitimate threat and that he had ample documentation at the library to confirm its existence.

  Nathan was, of course, full of shit, and Deanna suspected the “ample documentation” was nothing more than all six seasons of the L-Word, but Deanna wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to get her sexy werewolf girlfriend in the sack.

  After tossing the garbage bags in the bin, with Deanna holding her nose and making Jamie lift the lid for her, they gave Arthur a quick walk around the block. Lowell had been right, it was a beautiful night, and Deanna tucked her arm into Jamie’s as they strolled through the cooling air. It was oddly domestic, and Deanna felt a warm glow settle in her stomach as she realized that this time next year they both planned to be doing the same thing.

  Once they were back inside, they made their way to Deanna’s floor. Arthur flopped onto his dog bed.

  In preparation to meet Jamie’s parents and various extended family members, Deanna had bought three different dresses. Before going to Jamie’s she’d tried on all three many times, then dived into her closet and tried on another half-dozen dresses before she settled on the first dress she’d found at the store. After her frantic rush to look as cute as possible, she hadn’t had time to tidy, so the sofa bed was pulled out and strewn with her discarded clothes.

  “Sorry,” Deanna said, as she began to gather them up, “if I don’t hang them up now they’ll be wrinkled forever.”

  Jamie shook her head knowingly and gave Deanna a hand, passing her the dresses so that Deanna could hang them in the tiny wardrobe in the bathroom.

  “You know,” Jamie said, handing Deanna a pair of nylons, “this place is really small.”

  Deanna glanced around. She was hanging her clothes in a closet in her bathroom, so yeah, it was a small apartment. She shrugged. “It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”

  Jamie sank onto the unmade bed and toyed with the comforter. “You ever think of moving?”

  Deanna reached behind her back to get at the zipper on her dress. “Maybe when I first got here? But, I mean, why would I?” She fumbled with the clasp; the hook was at just the wrong angle. “My girlfriend lives in the same building. I’d be stupid to look anywhere else.” Jamie was off the bed before Deanna could ask for help. Her fingers brushed the bare skin of Deanna’s back.

  The simple touch made Deanna shiver, and she stilled as Jamie slid the zipper down. Jamie brought her hands up to the straps and pushed them down
Deanna’s arms, so the dress fell in a puddle at Deanna’s feet. A half-smile on her face, and her skin already hyper-aware of the heat from Jamie’s still-clothed body, Deanna turned around. Gently, she toyed with the short hair at the back of Jamie’s neck.

  Jamie looked nervous, and Deanna rose up on her toes to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth. Jamie melted into it, her lips parted against Deanna’s and she gave a soft sigh that pulled the tension from her body.

  “I don’t mean to push,” Jamie murmured. She pulled back so that she could nip at Deanna’s earlobe. “Because I know it might be a lot for one day.” She slid her lips lower, drifting them soft and warm against the delicate skin of Deanna’s neck so that Deanna arched back, confident that Jamie would and could hold her up as her legs turned to rubber. “But, if you wanted more space, you could move in with me.”

  It took Deanna a moment to focus on what Jamie was saying, since she was moving a hand up Deanna’s thigh and her mouth was still pressed to Deanna’s neck, but when the words sank in, she scowled and wriggled free of Jamie’s hands, only just managing to catch herself on the counter as she tripped over her dress.

  “Seriously?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest in mock dismay. “If I want more space?”

  Jamie winced and rubbed her hand over the back of her neck. “It is small,” she pointed out again.

  “Yeah, I know it’s small.” Deanna was trying very hard not to roll her eyes. “But do you want me—and Arthur—to move in because my place is small, or because you want to live with us?”

  Jamie blew out a breath and visibly steeled herself. “I’d like you, both of you, to move in. If you’d like. Or—we don’t have to stay here. We could find somewhere else, if you want. I don’t care. It’s just that this place is really small, and I don’t know what we’d do with my couch, and—” Deanna interrupted her monologue with a kiss, her hands grasping the collar of Jamie’s shirt as she dragged the taller woman down to her level.