Page 20 of Missiletoe
When I finished, Gareth said simply, “I’ll take care of it.”
I jumped up and clambered into his lap, straddling his massive thighs. I had to shift around a bit and ended up straddling only one because I couldn’t stretch my legs wide enough to accommodate both. I put both hands on his cheeks.
“No, Gareth. You cannot ‘take care’ of Paris. He’s good. Like really, really good.” Way too good for me, but I left that part out. “If you get rid of Paris, who’s going to feed his animals? They need him!” I also left out the part about me needing Paris too. I doubted it would help my argument.
Gareth watched me as thoughtfully as a man could when someone was smooshing his cheeks. I relaxed my hold, resisting the urge to smoosh them one more time just because I could.
I’m the only person alive who can get away with manhandling Gareth, and I try not to abuse the privilege.
“I’m not going to kill him,” Gareth said after I stopped making his mouth look funny.
“Maybe not, but you’ll do something bad, and Paris doesn’t deserve that. He helped me, Gareth. Paris put me in a soft, fluffy dog bed next to a shit load of baby bunnies and then tried to protect me from Baz. Please, just leave him alone. For me?”
“I will take you and Baz to see the Christmas lights tonight if you forget about Paris.”
I shook my head and began to tear up again, fighting desperately to seem like a logical, clear-headed adult. Going to see the lights with GarethandBaz would be like a dream come true, but I wasn’t folding. Not when Paris and his animals were on the line.
Gareth dropped a kiss on my forehead. “You’ve always been the kindest of us.” He didn’t say it in a mean way. It was more like he was trying to express confusion over how I’d ended up in a house full of killers.
“Paris won’t cause us trouble, Gareth. I know it. I don’t know how I know, but I can feel it to the very bottom of my toes. See?” I pulled up a foot and wiggled my toes at him.
“Those are very earnest toes,” Gareth said seriously, pushing my foot down and out of his face. Then he dipped his head and pressed his mouth to mine.
Gareth is an excellent kisser. Better than Baz, maybe even better than Vale. I’m not sure because I’ve never had a chance to compare the two properly. Neither are big on sharing, and I’d need to be able to swap back and forth multiple times to be able to make an accurate assessment.
That’s how I could say for sure that Baz was behind them both in the kissing department. Baz doesn’t count as sharing to them. Baz is part of me in their eyes, I think.
Anyway, getting Gareth kisses is top-shelf stuff.
So why did I find myself pushing him away?
Gareth’s eyes lit up with surprise. I didn’t blame him for finally cracking his impassive facade. The last time Gareth kissed me, my pants had vanished, and his cock was deep inside me before I came up for air.
I don’t know what possessed me, but I found myself saying, “No, Gareth. Not even for this. I won’t let you touch Paris. Find another way to keep us safe.”
Gareth gave me a searching stare before finally saying, “Okay, sweetheart. If it means that much to you, I’ll leave your friend alone as long as he keeps his mouth shut. And I wasn’t trying to bargain with sex. It’s partially my fault for letting a hole happen in the schedule. Let me make it up to you.” Gareth took me by the hips and pressed his half-hard cock against me.
Normally that would have had me swooning, but I wasn’t feeling it right then for some reason.
“No, It’s okay. I have…” What did I have? I had nothing to do because I was grounded. Now that the projects in my room were the only things I could work on, they were dead to me, but I didn’t want to hurt Gareth’s feelings. He rarely initiated sex, and I didn’t want to scar him for life by making him get rejected by the house nympho. “I’m starving and Baz was making me food. I’d better get back in there before Adam eats everything.” Adam was a bottomless pit, and food didn’t last long around him, so he was a solid excuse.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Gareth loosened his grip on my hips and let me slide back to sit on his lap. “Are you feeling okay? You don’t usually have two episodes in a row like that. Do you need Vale to look at you?”
Vale isn’t exactly a doctor, but he might as well be. There is nothing medical we’ve thrown at him that he hasn’t been able to deal with. Between my gadgets and his knowledge of the human body, we rarely ever have to go to an actual doctor.
Our evil little family tries really hard to avoid doctors. It’s tricky going to someone out of the house with the kind of injuries we all get. Some are clearly due to violence and others are clearly due to illegal experiments gone wrong.
“No, I’m fine, really, Gareth. Vale is grumpy right now, and I’m not going to bother him with something so small. I’m just a little wobbly.”
“Vale is always grumpy.”
“He’s extra grumpy today.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“You don’t always have to fix everything for me, Gareth. I’m not a child.” I hopped off Gareth’s lap before he decided to remember all of the ways I’d repeatedly proven the opposite.
No, I’m not a child, but I have a tendency to forget simple self-caretaking skills most adults have mastered by my age, and I’m self-aware enough to understand why the Vix protocols were necessary.
