Page 47 of Santa Has Tentacles

I wasn’t sure if I felt sorry for him or if it was funny, but Saint’s Dommy glare said he didn’t appreciate anything he was picking up from me.

“Sorry.” For a variety of things, probably, but I tried to fix the situation by stepping closer and wiggling my way under one of the larger tentacles he used as arms. “Imaginations are weird. It’s not meant to be offensive and no one is going to think that’s real. We know you’re not a shifter or…well, anything else like that.”

I was pretty sure serial killers should be in a different section too, no matter if it was a shifter book or not.

“Some humans have darker imaginations than others.” Wishing it was more socially acceptable for him to pick me up and carry me around, I stroked one of his smaller limbs and got a wide-eyed look from an older woman walking past us.

She’d definitely been reading naughty things because her eyes had gone way too wide for just being shocked by regular homophobic nonsense.

“Let’s keep looking for the right options.” What else? “Oh, at some point, we should look at the cookbook section to see what kind of recipes you want us to try.”

Bingo.

His brain took that jumping-off point and ran with it.

“Humans have books on a variety of interesting subjects. Do you know there are books on decorating and ones for how to telloffensivejokes?” Saint seemed confused about both of those, but I couldn’t figure out how they’d ended up on the same list.

“We’ve got books on just about everything.” I pointed toward one I’d heard about but never read as we got to the end of the paranormal books. “Elven princess with a fuck-ton of lovers. See? Everything. One of them even has tentacles but he’s not like you.”

Saint huffed again but his sigh was less frustrated. “We are here and now, my Colby. However, yes, all books are not here and now.”

Most of his were here and now, though, and I read a lot of the same kinds of books.

I just needed to figure out a way to get him to buy more online so we didn’t have to do this again. There had to be a way. But as I wondered if he’d accept surprise book boxes from his human, we finally got to the sci-fi section.

Oh.

Yeah, we were in sci-fi.

Not good.

Saint sucked in a breath doing a perfect shocked human expression with wide eyes and everything. “Oh, my Colby.”

I changed my mind…he was a shocked Mrs. Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote.

“At least we found the right place to look?” He was correct, though. Our relationship shouldn’t be next to a half-naked alien warrior prince fighting to fuck the woman he loved on some purple planet. “Oh, that one.”

Grateful to see a familiar author, I tugged on his tentacle and chuckled when he pretended to let me drag him down the aisle. “That’s the new release I was telling you about when we were walking over.”

“Ah.” Switching to his smiling, tender human expression, Saint sighed. “An example of a successful mating which has provided much information for the author.”

Huh?

Oh.

“I knew it.” Snatching up the new book as well as my favorite that’d come out last year, I waved them at Saint. “I knew they were mated. Their backlist isn’t the same type of story. The books started at regular alien smut but then they changed.”

I knew it.

Saint looked like he was trying not to laugh as he rubbed his tentacle over my head. “You are highly intuitive, my Colby. Some humans sense changes better than others.”

I didn’t care if he was humoring me or not, I just waved the books again. “He’s right? I mean, he’s telling the truth about stuff? It’s fiction but it’s not fiction?”

I wasn’t making nearly enough sense to be talking to someone whose third or fourth language was English, but Saint was smart and caught up quickly. “You would like to know if the human author has correct biological and cultural information? Fiction being not fact based but accurate when dealing with matings?”

“Yes.” He was brilliant.

And didn’t make me wait for my answer.

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