Page 46 of Earth-Bound

He stood and hurried over to me. For a second, I thought he was going to greet me with a kiss and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I’d never been with someone long enough to have them do that. I didn’t think anyone had ever been that pleased to see me.

I didn’t get that kiss. What I got was Terrund smiling up at me and two people either side of me, grinning like cats about to toy with a mouse. And, yes, I was the mouse in this scenario.

“Who’s this?” asked one of them.

“How does he know our Terrund?” asked the other.

Randall shouted from the kitchen, “Is that Joe?”

I called back, “Yeah, it is.”

Randall shouted, “Leave him alone, you two. He’s here for dinner. He can sit with Terrund.”

I was glad Randall had said that because I’d come up blank with how I was going to arrange for that to happen. It meant the two strangers muttered and backed off reluctantly, and Terrund led me to the next table along and pulled out a chair for me to sit. I sat, utterly confused as to what was going on.

Terrund sat opposite me and I tried not to stare at him. His jaw was strong and I knew from experience that his body was compact and strong underneath those clothes, but I couldn’t think about that right now or I’d get hard in front of all these strangers. Somehow, though, Terrund looked ethereal. Pretty, almost.

I’d been staring too long and he smiled at me. “Have you had a good afternoon?”

“Yeah,” I said, and then couldn’t think of a single other thing to say.

Across the room, a familiar face peered at me. It was Professor Anthony Beckinsale, the one who’d been going to clear the house. He asked, “Are you two…?” and then, apparently, he couldn’t think of a way to finish that statement, either.

“We’re friends,” I said, and willed myself not to blush. Just friends, I reminded myself. Just friends who sometimes rubbed up against each other until they came. Nothing to see here.

There was a snort of disbelief from one of the others but Anthony nodded and said, “Sure.”

He could have at least tried to sound as though he believed it.

The rest of them talked and I learned their names. Randall bought out a tray of cakes and put some on each table. I smiled to myself that Broadmire got just as many cakes as the rest of the tables, even though he was sitting alone and the other tables were full.

I tried one of the cakes and moaned quietly. They were delicious. Sweet and warm, soft and crumbly, with a little stickiness to make them truly indulgent.

When I looked up from my cake, Terrund was watching me with darkening eyes and I suddenly wanted to drag him outside and find a secluded spot somewhere where I could ravish him.

Before my mind slipped too far down that road, though, I heard Dum. “Hey, these honey cakes are as good as Marcia’s.”

Randall corrected him. “Nearly as good.”

Dum shrugged and stuffed another whole cake into his mouth. He had hardly swallowed before he started talking again. “So when are you going to go and get the magic out of that house?”

His boyfriend, Matty, replied. “We’ll start tomorrow. Ant and I will go in and he can identify the worst stuff; we’ll start with that.”

“I want to come inside with you.”

“No, Dum. I’m not letting you loose around all that magic.”

“But I won’t touch anything.”

Matty gave him a look of disbelief and Dum added, “Probably,” onto the end of that sentence. He turned to me. “You don’t think it’s fair that I’m not allowed in, do you?”

“In where?”

“Into Randall’s house where all the creepy spells are.”

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure what was going on.

They were talking about spells and magic. Which was weird. They were talking about it around me, which was usually a joke at my expense. It was just that they weren’t doing the nudging-each-other and sniggering that normally accompanied a joke like that.

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