Crawling Into Bed With
(Morticia Knight)
And a Good Book
Important
things first, are these sheets silk or cotton?
Flannel. I live in the
Pacific Northwest.
What
are you wearing?
Ahem. Predictably,
flannel. But they’re men’s jammies, so they have that drafty front door in the
bottoms.
What
are we snacking on in bed while we read tonight?
Jalapeno Cheetos – yum!
I can’t have chocolate until I finish my latest WIP. Then I get a Reese’s
peanut butter cup. I’m like a Labrador that way - you can bribe me with treats.
Please pass this along to my editor.
I'll be sure to tag her! If
I open this nightstand drawer, what will I find?
Condoms from 1997. I
might want to rethink those. Oh wait, I bet these breath mints are still good.
*pops one in mouth then gags* Nope.
Do
you roll up in the blankets like a burrito, or kick the covers off during the
night?
Burrito, then weird scrunched
up tutu, then I re-burrito in the morning after all my limbs have frozen.
Can
I put my cold feet on your calves to warm them up?
Not unless you want me
to drop kick you across the room.
What
are we reading?
Secret Fire (Uniform
Encounters 5)
Even though it’s part
of a series, you can read it all on its own. Here’s a sample taste:
As
soon as he rounded the corner to where he knew Daryl would be, he halted in
shock. It resembled some sort of man nest. There were empty soda and beer cans
strewn about, dirty clothes and underwear scattered on the floor, an empty
pizza box and paper Chinese food containers—all in some weird semicircle around
Daryl’s zonked out body on the couch. Before him on the coffee table were the
remotes, a gaming controller and…
Is that a whisky bottle?
He
gazed down at Daryl, heartbroken for him, for both of them. It was so silly.
Why was he doing this? It was as though he was making himself suffer, as though
he’d woken up the other morning, realized that he was unbelievably happy and
had to piss all over it.
Like that first time at the park.
“Okay,
big boy, let’s get you in bed.”
It
was obvious there would be zero chance of having a decent conversation with him
in his current state. He jostled Daryl’s shoulder and he didn’t budge. He shook
him harder and he heard a grunt.
Fuck. How much did he drink?
He
knew hard liquor wasn’t Daryl’s thing, so he must have been really beat up
inside to want to opt for it. Finally, he managed to get a louder grunt out of
him.
“Daryl.
For real. Come on, you can’t stay out here on the couch all night.”
Zach
tugged on his shirt, and Daryl performed his own version of sluggishly yanking
it away.
“I
fuckin’ do what I want.”
He’d
growled it out, his speech slurred, his eyelids barely able to stay open.
Zach
leaned over to pull Daryl up by hugging him and slipping his arms under
Daryl’s.
“Of
course you do. Now let’s get you to the bedroom so I can tuck you in.”
Daryl’s
head lolled back and he squinted at Zach, frowning.
“Where
you come from?”
“Ah,
butchering the English language, I see. Now I know it’s serious. I came from
outside. Come on, babe, help me out here.”
Zach
tugged, but Daryl was like a fleshy bag of dead weight. Breathless, Zach
plopped down next to him. Daryl kept frowning and staring at him as if he were
one of Jacob Marley’s ghosts.
“Why,
Zach? Why?”
It
was Zach’s turn to frown.
“Why
what?”
“I
thought we haz somethin’ good here, somethin’…” He looked around the room then
grabbed his head. He moaned. “Us, good with us.”
Zach
took Daryl’s hand and held it sandwiched between his. There was so much agonizing
pain on Daryl’s face. Touching him like that for the first time in almost a
week brought him back to the place where he knew that Daryl’s touch was the
only one meant for him.
“Daryl,
it’s so much more than good, it’s the most amazing thing ever. I don’t know
what’s going on with you right now, but you are wasted. Let’s go to bed and we can talk about it in the morning
when you feel better.”
****
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