Page 45 of Shroom for Improvement

Sonny was barely a foot inside my room when the door slammed itself closed.

Don’t look at his ass. Dear gods, do not look at his ass.“I’ll get you a blanket,” I said, busying myself in the opposite direction from Sonny’s half-nakedness.

“Uh, Claude?”

“Yeah,” I called out, bundling a puffy quilt from a blanket box into my arms and dropping it almost immediately after turning towards Sonny.

“Your couch is missing too.”

“What?” I said, even though I saw it with my own eyes. Four little circles were imprinted into the shag where the feet of the sofa had been. I glanced up at my four-poster bed on the mezzanine. Still there. Still huge.

“You said the house is magic, right?” Sonny asked. I nodded, unable to form words. “Do you perhaps get the sense it wants us to share a bed?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. Let out a lungful of air. “Yes. I think that’s exactly what it wants.”

Truth or Dare

Sonny

Claude bit his bottom lip—I did not fixate on it—then he glanced up at the rafters as though consulting with a deity. “If this had been your intention all along, for us to share a bed, you could have chosen a better time than after we’d both eaten a tonne of sprouts each.”

I looked around the space for a third person. Found nobody. “Are you talking to the house?”

The sprouts, urgh. I hadn’t even considered the gas. Damn, this was turning more awkward by the second. There I stood, in my ugliest sleep tee, my pasty bird legs on show because I never wore PJs, and a stomach full of potential silent-but-deadlies.

“I think I’ll just ask Willow and Oggy if there are any rooms left in the B&B?” I moved back to the door, but it wouldn’t open. Jiggled the handle, put a foot on it, pulled hard. “Uh …”

“I can loan you some pyjama bottoms,” Claude said, his eyes trained on the square foot of space below the hem of myshirt. I got the distinct impression the offer was for his benefit, not mine.

He already had his pyjamas on—navy blue with a silver pinstripe pattern—and matching slippers. He looked so cosy and adult and tactile. Like I needed to touch him, just to know what the fabric felt like under my fingertips.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Do you sleep on the right side or the left side of the bed?”

“You really want to share a bed?” I asked tentatively, like I might provoke the grumpy beast he was on the eight-thirty to Downtown.

“No. But I don’t see how either of us has a choice. I’m not letting you sleep on the floor. AndI’mnot about to sleep on the floor. I’m way too old for that shit.”

I nodded, no point in arguing. “Usually, I sleep in the middle, so wherever.”

“I sleep on the right. Left if you’re standing at the foot of the bed.” He turned on his heel and began climbing yet another spiral staircase. “You can take the left.”

When we reached the top, he crossed the space to a set of drawers and handed me a pair of bobbled cotton PJ pants. They were black with a bullet-train repeat pattern and they smelled like him. Like clean laundry and earthy, mushroomy goodness. Holy gods, they were the cutest thing a five-hundred-year-old fae could possess. I pulled them on right away. No point in excusing myself to the bathroom; Claude had already seen my boxers. He tore his eyes from my legs and glanced at the ceiling once again in a very clear demonstration of exactly how much he was not looking.

Even with the PJ pants riding low on my hips, they still ended a good four inches above my ankles.

Claude crossed over to the right side of the bed and freed the corner of the duvet. He sat down with his back to me, andput something away, or took something out of his nightstand. I couldn’t tell.

The bed was actually pretty big, which brought me a little relief. It was a four-poster with brown satin drapes that bore a gilt-embroidered mushroom pattern. I had enough time between wallowing in swells of shame to admire the beauty and craftsmanship in them.

“I’m sorry,” I said, sensing I’d stepped over the line of being slightly burdensome into annoying as fuck. “Tomorrow I’ll find something a little less... intimate.”

“You don’t need to apologise.” He slid under the bedcovers, his back propped up against the headboard, and he turned to look at me, still standing there, dumbfounded, wearing too-short pyjama pants next to the bed. “What kind of host would I be if I invited you into my”—he waved a hand vaguely—“cock mansion, and left you to sleep on the dusty rug?”

“But . . . the sprouts . . .”

“In case you weren’t paying attention, I have also consumed an inordinate number of the little green wind machines. I suggest you get into bed, and whatever happens tonight in this bed stays between us and the bloody dick palace. We tell no one.”

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