Shortbread and Shadows - Amy Lane Page 0,29
from our mouths. I… I couldn’t ask for what I really wanted, you understand? Because you can’t make someone love you. It has terrible consequences. So I was being perfectly logical asking for my business to do well. But I guess the magic got sort of pissy that I hadn’t even mentioned what was really in my heart, and everything went wonky, and all I could think was… well, it was aimed at you, really, but all I was thinking was ‘Why won’t you love me?’”
Lachlan gaped at him. “Why won’t you love me?”
Bartholomew hid his face. “See? Now you know. I had this stupid crush on you, and instead of… of talking to you like a human being, I managed to infect everybody on the vendor floor with… love. For, uhm, me.”
Lachlan groaned. “God, Tolly, seriously. Next time just say something!”
“You think?” Bartholomew shot back bitterly. “And you’ve been so kind, and helped me, and we had kisses, and they were really fabulous, and I’m so embarrassed, but yeah. If nothing else tonight, we have to cast a ‘Please don’t love Bartholomew Baker unless you really, really know him’ spell. And since I want my friends to at least like me, and you to maybe speak to me again when this is all over, I would like to make them protection amulets with little added boosts of ‘Bartholomew is your friend’ juice. Is that bad?”
Lachlan kissed him.
God. The things Bartholomew didn’t know about relationships were almost as vast as the things he did know about magic. But he had wanted Lachlan enough to go out and wreak some serious havoc just thinking about him, and Lachlan had to admit it.
That sort of longing could be sexy as hell.
His tongue plunged into Bartholomew’s mouth, and Bartholomew groaned, taking Lachlan’s cheeks between his chilled palms and welcoming him in. Lachlan kissed him until Bartholomew was flat back against the bench seat, eyes half-lidded and mouth parted, that wicked flush patterning his neck and ears and cheeks.
“Mm,” Lachlan said, skating his fingertips along the shell of Bartholomew’s ear. “This is really something amazing. I think… I think I want to see if this washes over your entire body at some point. Can we do that?”
Bartholomew whimpered. “I’m sort of a virgin,” he said, closing his eyes.
Lachlan laughed low in his throat. “So I’ve heard.” He gave Bartholomew a buss on the cheek. “Now go get your magic ingredients, and I’ll go get Epsom salts. Text me if you have to sprint through Bel Air with a crowd of old rich women on your heels, and I’ll be there to get you.”
Bartholomew’s smile wasn’t getting any less important to him. “Yeah?”
“Count on it. Now let’s go make some magic!”
Random Ingredients
A half an hour later Bartholomew was down fifty dollars and up a couple of bags of groceries. Granted, some of that was energy drinks, flour, sugar, vanilla, and salt, but he also had a bouquet of red-and-white chrysanthemums, along with amaryllis, a single red rose, clove oil, fennel, chamomile tea, rosemary, and witch-hazel hemorrhoid pads, which was the best he could do. And two cheap and tiny saucepans so he didn’t wreck Lachlan’s pots and pans.
Lachlan was waiting for him in the truck, texting madly on his phone as Bartholomew hopped in.
“No, no, no, no,” Lachlan muttered. “Erin, you shit, don’t you dare.”
“Who’s Erin?” Bartholomew asked, trying not to be jealous with no good reason. Lachlan had kissed a lot of different people those first months.
Apparently not this one, though. “My useless sister who leeches off my parents every chance she gets. She’s threatening to come over to check you out, and I’m trying to tell her you scare easy.”
“I do not!” Bartholomew’s voice cracked on “not” and he sort of wanted to die.
Lachlan sent him a fond look and resumed texting. “Yes,” he muttered. “Yes, I’m serious. No, heifer, no, don’t.”
Finally he gave a snarl and held the phone up to his ear. “No,” he said almost immediately. “Don’t come over. Because I really like this guy. Yes, guy. You know that. I like him. He’s terrified of… well, other people. No, he hasn’t been locked in a cage. He’s been… wounded. No—not like tragic backstory wounded. Just hurt. You’re hurting my ears right now—I have no idea what you’ll do to him!”
The next squawk sounded legitimately indignant, and Lachlan took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and his thumb.
“I’m sorry. Sweetheart, I am. But