Page 53 of Santa Has Tentacles

It also seemed to be the Dom’s job to carry shit.

When I’d tried, he’d looked at me like it was the strangest thing he’d ever seen. Then he’d very carefully taken everything out of my hands and patted me on the head.

“You moving in?” Human helper dude was still hanging out or maybe he’d come back…either way, he was at his post and had given up trying to take his job seriously.

“My human isvisiting. We are not rushing.” Saint shrugged a few tentacles as helper guy tried not to laugh. “Human limits are fascinating.”

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

There was a difference between negotiating spankings and when we could move in together.

“If you bring your human down tomorrow mid-morning, I’ll get him a badge so he can come and go as he pleases.” Human helper guy managed not to laugh that time. “For when he comes to visit.”

Saint seemed to agree with him because he gave a dramatic human sigh. “Yes,dailyvisits the humans label as sleepovers.”

I was starting to see why Saint liked human helper guy.

They were both ridiculous.

“I have to check my mail and do stuff at my place once in a while.” So it couldn’t be daily sleepovers with Saint. “Thank you for your help with the badge.”

Being polite got a smile from Saint but human helper guy chuckled. “You’re welcome.”

Brat.

“My Colby, your body is hungry. Is there a specific meal you would like to consume? No. Eat. Is there a specific meal you would like toeat?” Saint wrapped one tentacle around me and looked like he wanted to pout.

It was probably the not carrying me thing, so I snuggled closer and ignored all the shit he was holding. “Nothing comes to mind right off the bat. Right away, I mean. Is there anything you would like?”

“Specific food cravings seem to appear more strongly in humans and are often based around nutritional deficiencies. However, there is nothing I must eat at the moment.” Herding me into the elevator, Saint made a cute thinking sound. “Our options are a restaurant, to eat in our dining facilities, or to make a meal in our kitchen.”

He didn’t seem to be leaning one way or another, but kind of shrugged when he looked down at the bags. “While I have what is labeled as basics, I do not think we have the ingredients for a proper meal.”

“Probably not.” But I’d fix that at some point. “Let’s do the dining hall. I’d like to start getting to know more people here.”

Because that was important when visiting.

“The human need to nest and toget to know the neighbors. Yes.” He said it like it was a strangely human thing. “My people do not have the same instincts, however, they arerubbing off on us.”

“I don’t think that’s a bad thing to have picked up from humans.” There were a lot of other stupid things they could’ve learned from us. But luckily, they were really smart and the only thing they seemed to get addicted to were their mates.

“Our civilizations are surprisingly compatible, my Colby.” When he finally got to the door, Saint actually let me open it and I still couldn’t help smiling when I could just walk right inside.

No crime meant no locks.

And since they could hear what was going on inside anyway, they always knew when it was safe to interrupt.

“Did you have any kind of locks on your doors on the spaceship?” He set my stuff down on the bed, which seemed to be the signal that I could finally start helping…nesting and all that. “I know there were some documentaries but they were on the engines and technical parts.”

I’d been hoping for Star Trek and I’d gotten engineers droning on about stuff that made no sense at all. It’d been frustrating and the show had gotten such low reviews from the average viewer that they’d stopped doing any more.

They’d learned the wrong lesson, but I was hoping we’d get better movies in the future now that we were getting better books.

“Not in the way you are picturing, my Colby.” Saint walked around the room, opening up a closet and showing me that there were drawers under the bed that I hadn’t noticed. “Our method of isolating sounds between rooms made it necessary for privacy.”

Made sense.

“So you had something to keep people from accidentally wandering in when you wanted to be alone but it wasn’t really about protecting your stuff?” When he nodded, I pictured something like the doors in Star Trek. “Why don’t you have the same problems with theft like we do? Someone said you guys started off more aggressive than we are?”

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