Page 260 of Ten Lords for the Holidays

You make me find myself.

“’Tis after midnight.”

“Happy Christmas,” she said, gulping down sorrow and regret, fearful she might never again know anything as wondrous as the last few minutes.

“Think you can sleep?” he asked, his tone a soft husk.

“Not a wink.”

“Mewrowll?”

“See there?” His lips breathed over the shell of her ear, fingers flexing on her shoulders as though maintaining distance strained him as much as it devastated her. “Barnabas is worried about you. Says he’ll tuck you in, and the three of us can have a quiet Christmas tomorrow.” When the store would be closed.

A mere two days before she made the outrageous Sunday call to secure a job. For a position she didn’t want but desperately needed.

I need Brier more. What he makes me feel…remember.Family and laughter.

What he makes me yearn for…

The culmination of these heated kisses.

She wanted to sulk. Wanted to cry and tantrum. Her loins wept with wicked intensity. The peaks of her breasts called out for his hands. Her lips for his mouth.

Quivering, she licked hers. “Christmas.” She’d given the holiday so little thought this year, so many other things battling for resolution. “I don’t have you a gift.”

And stop thinking of gifting him yourself.

He chuckled. Laughed outright, finally straightened and took one full step back, his hands sliding down her arms and then away. Leaving her alone. Barren. Save for the half grin he graced her with in the near dark, the closest candle having sputtered, a single waft of smoke its dyinggoodbye.

“Considering yon goodnight kiss is mayhap the finest in memory, what other manner of gift could I have need of?”

* * *

Ho, tomling! Are you near?

Was he being hailed?

Barnabas left off his kneading of the lightly “purring” female. For one who had been all topsy-turvy earlier this eve, after meshing mouths with his man (who hadneverlaughed nor smiled so much as he had since their brief acquaintance began), she had fallen quickly to slumber after Mr. Chapman gifted her with clothing shared by Mrs. Hurwell.

Exclamations all around, surprise and appreciation most robust (even another kiss or four), until his landlord’s slow steps retreated upstairs and their female changed into the feminine night-rail, sighed and drowsed off in a trice, soft murmurs and low whimpers accompanying her fitful doze. His attentions seemed to soothe, and what was he, if not generously accommodating? So he flexed and retracted, applied his paws against her restless form until—

Tomling! Kitty! I bid you come near.

Fish heads and turkey gizzards, hewasbeing called!

Barnabas jumped from the cot, ducked beneath the curtain and raced toward the bow window, easily launching himself onto its spacious environs to stare out into the darkened night beyond.

The orange glow of beastly, if familiar, eyes his reward, fairly beaming from across the rain-slicked street.There you are. Good. Is your female visitor still in habitance?

Barnabas gave a single, slow-lidded blink.

Very well. I am relieved it is so.The man—being?—lifted a traveling bag.I believe we located some of her belongings.

The bolted front door drew Barnabas’s gaze.

Nay. For it was locked when I tried. The alley? If I tuck it away back there, behind your shop, can you sniff it out, see it makes its way back to her?

“Mew.”

---