Christmas Tales - Brandon Witt Page 0,35

bathhouse and find someone I figured would be desperate enough to settle for me. But they never came to my apartment, nor I theirs. And they never looked like James. I scoffed at the thought. No shit. Who really did look like James? Guys like him were so few and far between they barely existed, and they definitely didn’t look twice at me.

Oh. And my apartment. It was clean. I always kept it clean, but there was no hiding what I was. It was one thing for him to hear about the role-playing games in abstract, but he was about to see firsthand what a dork he’d just followed home. All my action and fantasy figures. My Dungeons and Dragons collectables. My limited-edition Barbies I kept in their boxes. Maybe I could leave the lights off and rush him by the cabinets in the living room. But then there were the cabinets in the bedroom. Well, I could distract him there for sure. He wouldn’t notice.

No. He wouldn’t notice all the toys. I flicked my gaze to the rearview mirror. I wasn’t sure if I hoped he would still be following me or he’d changed his mind and driven away. He was still there.

He wouldn’t notice the toys. He’d notice me. I suddenly realized he didn’t actually know who he was going home with. He’d seen my face and the rest of me in clothing. I’d seen him naked, not the other way around. I didn’t love my body in clothes, but I hated it out of them. And he was going to see why.

I looked at the rearview again. Still there. Please go away. Please go away. Just keep driving.

I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment complex and noticed a visitor spot actually available for him. Another fucking Christmas fucking miracle. Fuck.

For nearly thirty seconds, I sat in my car, the engine off, and tried to quit sweating. Which only made me sweat more. Even the icy air and drifting snowflakes didn’t help once I finally forced myself to get out of the car.

James’s smile was hesitant as I walked across the parking lot. “Everything okay?”

“Oh yeah. Just… needed to put some stuff away in the glove compartment.”

The look in his eyes and his tone let me know I’d not been convincing. “Have you changed your mind? Do you not want me to come in?”

For a moment relief flooded through me at the thought. He could leave. I could go inside, put away the new vampire, hang out with Angel and Spike, and have my normal life. And I could keep my clothes on.

Disappointment and shame washed the relief away. Was I really going to turn this down? For a guy like me, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “No. I mean, yes, I want you to come in.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“I do. Come on, let’s get out of the cold.” As we entered the building and walked toward the elevator, I started to warn him about what he was going to find inside, but then decided to hope he wouldn’t notice. Maybe he wouldn’t. And if he didn’t, maybe I really would start to believe in Christmas miracles.

As the elevator doors closed, James leaned into me, his face close enough I could feel the scratch of his beard against mine. “This okay? You seem nervous.”

I nodded. Barely, but it was all I could manage.

And it seemed all the encouragement he needed. He readjusted his angle and kissed me.

It was pretty inconceivable a guy like James would want to fuck me, but it could happen. I was available when he needed me. An easy lay showed up on his doorstep, or at the toy store, as the case may be. But kiss me? Fucking and kissing were two totally different things. I didn’t have any delusions about there being kissing.

But there he was in all his huge masculine beauty, kissing me. And not the tongue-shoved-down-the-throat, teeth-bashing-together kind. But soft. The kind that made me breathe out a sigh of relief after a moment, a sigh that didn’t make him move away, but press in closer. The kind that made my lips realize what they’d been missing their entire existence. The kind that made me feel like he was actually kissing me. Me, Brian McKay. Like he wanted to be kissing me in that moment. Which was ridiculous. But it’s how it felt.

Then it was over. The elevator chimed, the doors opened to the fifteenth floor, and James pulled