Page 33 of Kringle and the Kraken

“Carefully.”

Levi nodded, and I picked my way down to the tree. “This one is going to be heavy, so I’m just going to let it drop, then we can carry it up.”

“I’ll follow your lead.”

I nodded and climbed under the branches. The trunk was a little thicker than what we normally liked to sell, but it was still okay, and I started cutting through the bark. Without Levi holding the tree steady, it was more difficult, and the increasing wind rustled the branches. I tried to push the tree away, but in my position and with the slant of the hill, I misjudged, and the tree started to fall toward where I was still on the ground.

“Kris!” I heard Levi’s yell while I waited for the tree to hit me, but it never did. Instead, it was suspended in midair, being held by something I couldn’t see through the branches. Scrambling out from under the spruce, I blinked rapidly, not quite able to believe what I was seeing. Levi was standing about four feet from the tree, his coat shredded and lying at his feet, surrounded by long deep purple and blue tentacles, two of which were holding up the tree.

What the actual fuck had Stan put in that eggnog?

I took a step back, my foot slipping on the hill and my arms windmilling to keep me upright even as I started to slide. And then I stopped, a purple-blue tentacle now wrapped around my waist. I freed a hand, my skin sliding along silky flesh that didn’t feel like skin and that reminded me of the texture I’d felt wrapped around my cock on Thanksgiving when Levi jerked us off in his apartment. Had his tentacles been involved? Is that why he told me to keep my eyes on him?

Holy shit.

Tentacles.

I rubbed my eyes, but the tight band around my torso didn’t loosen, and I started to get lightheaded as my brain tried to put the pieces together.

Levi’s muttered curse was the last thing I remembered before my vision went dark.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

LEVI

“Well, fuck.”

Kris hung limply wrapped in two of my tentacles while two others held the gods-damned tree that had started this whole mess when it had attempted to fall on Kris. Obviously I couldn’t let that happen, and my body did its thing without any real input from me, my tentacles snapping off my skin and my body going into a partial shift just in time to grab the trunk before it fell on Kris.

The tentacles holding the tree stretched, dropping the tree into the bed of the ATV’s little trailer while other tentacles gathered the shredded remains of my coat and laid them out so I could gently lay Kris on the ground.

The whole time we’d been at the KELPS party, I’d been replaying Marvin’s words in my head. Since we’d met, I’d known deep in my core that Kris Kringle was a great guy, but getting to see him interact with his family last week and his friends earlier that night made me fall a little harder for him. He looked like a gruff and grumpy lumberjack—and maybe the grumpy part was kind of true in some ways—but he was also unfailingly kind and compassionate, and as we drove out to the tree farm, I’d more orless made the decision that I was going to tell Kris I was a kraken tonight. Marvin was right. He deserved to know.

But it wasn’t supposed to go down like this.

In my fantasies on the drive over, I was hoping he would swoon over the fact that I was the living, breathing embodiment of his nautical mythology study, and then we could swim out into the sunset.

Okay, that was maybe a little overly romanticized and totally unrealistic, but still, I didn’t think springing it on him while saving him from being crushed by a falling evergreen was a real possibility either, yet here we were.

Now that my tentacles had fully come out to play, wrangling them into submission took an epic effort. Several were twining around my body, suckers up, catching snowflakes on the sensitive pads, and I mentally promised them more snow time if they’d just stand down for now.

By the time they were tucked against my skin again, Kris was starting to stir, a faint groan falling from his lips.

I knelt by his side. “Kris?” I brushed a hand over his cheek which was now wet with melting snow.

“Uh…” He brought a hand to his head like he was trying to hold it in place. “What happened?” His eyes flew open, and he looked up at me, his mouth dropping open when he realized how close I was. Backing off, I gave him some space, and he scrambled into a sitting position and looked me over from head to toe. “You… I saw…tentacles.”

My eyes fell closed and I tipped my head to stare at the snow on the ground while I took a breath and prepared to rip off the proverbial Band-Aid. I couldn’t bear to look at him while I told him the truth in case he freaked out even more than he already had.

“You’re right. I promise your mind isn’t fucking with you. I’m a kraken. The sea monsters you teach your students about?Yeah, we’re all real, and there are a lot of us living in Lifeboat.” In for a penny, in for a pound.

He gasped, the sound swallowed up by the wintry stillness around us.

I kept my eyes trained on the ground, counting the pine needles scattered around my shoes while I waited for him to start screaming or something. Honestly, I’d never had to tell someone I was a kraken before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

It sure as hell wasn’t Kris’s tentative fingers running over the lines of my tentacles where they lay against my skin. I was still too much of a coward to look at him, though.

“These aren’t tattoos?”

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