Accidentally in Love (26 page)

Tom woke up feeling like he’d slept for at least twelve hours. He could vaguely remember having woken at least eight or nine times during the night, the warm and comforting press of Cal’s body against his sending him almost immediately back to dreamland. Now he shifted his knee outward and didn’t bump into Cal, so he opened his eyes and found himself alone in bed.

That Cal had let him sleep in made Tom smile, and he stretched luxuriously. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept so well. He could only hope Cal had experienced the same.

Yawning, Tom put on his bathrobe and paused in the hallway to listen for Cal. The house was quiet. “Cal?” He made his way down the stairs slowly, and there was no sign of Cal there either. Where the hell had he gone? Oh God, had Cal changed his mind and left, this time for good?

Tom’s pulse finally stopped racing when he went into the kitchen and found a note on the countertop. Cal’s handwriting, saying he’d gone to pick up breakfast and would be back soon.

With the note still in his hand, Tom heard the front door open and the sound of footsteps. “I’m up,” he called so Cal wouldn’t have heart failure when he came around the corner and saw him.

“Oh, good.” Cal came into the kitchen juggling two cups of coffee and a large cardboard box, with a paper bag tucked under his arm. “You looked so cute sleeping, I didn’t have the heart to wake you. Here, I brought you a present.” He set the cardboard box—white with a brown design on it—on the kitchen table and stepped back.

“Don’t shake it!” Cal warned him when Tom reached for the box. “In fact, maybe just open the top.”

“Is it a fancy pastry from Derek’s place?” Tom guessed.

“Nope, but I got us some chocolate croissants to go with the coffee.” Cal put the bag and the coffee cups down. “Open it?”

With a puzzled, pleased smile on his face, Tom carefully lifted the flaps and peered inside.

A kitten, ink black, a curled-up ball of silky fuzz, lay nestled in a scrap of blanket fast asleep, its whiskers, impossibly long for such a little creature, twitching now and then. Tom touched the tip of his finger to the rounded head, its fur incredibly soft. The kitten stirred, gave a protesting murmur, and settled back to sleep.

Speechless with delight, Tom glanced up at Cal. Cal's smile held so much hope that Tom would be pleased that the box could’ve been empty and Tom would still have smiled back.

“You said you wanted one.” Cal fidgeted with the edge of the bag holding the croissants, crumpling it between his fingers, smoothed it out. “He’s eight weeks old. His mom died a month after giving birth, and the kittens were found in a shed, half starved, poor things. Do you like him?”

“He’s the second cutest person in the room,” Tom said, finding his voice at last. He walked around the table and hugged Cal with an exuberance he didn’t even try to tone down. “You—I can’t believe you did this for me.”

“Hey, I want a share in him too,” Cal said, nuzzling Tom’s cheek and kissing him. He smelled of fresh air and sunshine. “I can see us fighting over whose lap he sits in. Maybe after breakfast, we should go back to the shelter, and you can adopt one for me.”

“What if they don’t like each other?” Tom was surprised to find he was already feeling protective of the new kitten. “Hey, what’s his name?”

“At the shelter it was Sammy, but they said he doesn’t know it yet, so we can change it to whatever you want.”

The kitten was sitting up now, blinking sleepily and peering over the edge of the box. Its eyes were green.

“He was friendly at the shelter,” Cal said. “You know, purring and stuff.”

“He’s adorable.” Tom gave in to the urge to scoop the kitten up in his hands to cuddle him. “God, he’s so little.” The kitten investigated a loose thread on the front of Tom’s robe, sniffing at it curiously and batting at it with his paw, tiny white claws extended. The vibration of his purrs could be felt even though the thick material. “Sammy?” Tom tried the name and tickled the kitten under the chin. “Is that your name?” The kitten ignored him with a lofty disdain and swarmed up Tom’s front to find a perch on his shoulder. Tom gasped at the sensation of dozens of spikes being driven into his skin and clutched frantically at the small, squirming body. “God, he’s fast! Cal, grab him quick, before he falls off or something.”

Laughing, Cal unhooked the miniature claws from Tom’s robe and transferred the kitten to his chest, his hand curving protectively around it. “Maybe he’s hungry. There’s some food in the car and a litter box and stuff. I bought it all at the shelter. I figured we didn’t want to leave him alone the first day, and we should get him trained from the start.”

“Right,” Tom said with a nod. “That’s great. I’m just—a
kitten
. You got me a
kitten
.” He moved close enough to kiss Cal, leaving enough space for the kitten, who had settled down in the crook of Cal’s arm. “You’re perfect, you know that? I love you.”

“I’m nowhere near perfect,” Cal said. “But I love you too.”

Tom took another kiss just because he could, then backed away in search of his coffee. “I need this,” he said, uncapping it so that he could take a gulp at it, the first swallow pure bliss. “Okay, now I’m all the way awake.”

“Good, because we need to call people,” Cal pointed out. “Friends who’re wondering if we’re still fighting or tucked up in bed having wild makeup sex.”

Tom grinned. “We’re not doing either of those, but if I get to vote, guess where I’m putting my X?”

“Is that what the cool kids are calling it these days?” Cal said with a wink, playing along. He tickled the kitten’s ears, which it took as a challenge, sinking his teeth into Cal’s finger, its tail flying high. It seemed perfectly capable of biting and purring at the same time. “I’ll happily get naked once we’ve fed this little vampire draining me of blood.
Ow
, his teeth are
sharp
. But I still think we should call people.”

Tom surrendered. “Fine. Pass me Sam, and I’ll make the calls while you’re bringing everything in.”

Cal grinned, unhooked the kitten, and deposited him in Tom’s arms. “All yours.”

Sam decided the floor looked far more interesting than Tom’s face and squirmed enough that Tom, after checking that Cal had closed the kitchen door securely, let him down. He kept a watchful eye on the kitten while he retrieved his phone from his jacket, left slung over a chair the night before.

Derek’s cell phone number was in his incoming calls list. Knowing hospitals, Tom figured that Derek and Marianne had been up for hours. He hit the buttons and waited, listening to the ringing on the other end until Derek picked up.

“Hi! Tom!” Derek said. “Please, please tell me that you and Cal are back together, because as far as Marianne is concerned, that would make this the perfect week.”

“It’s perfect,” Tom assured him. “How’s the baby?”

“Amazing. I don’t know if it’s because of the exhaustion of being born, but she slept for like two hours straight and only woke up when they came in to stick her with pins or whatever.”

“Pins?” Tom was horrified.

“Not really,” Derek said, and in the background Tom could hear Marianne saying something. “To check her blood sugar.”

“Okay.” That didn’t make much more sense to Tom than pins. “Did you settle on a name?”

“Juliana,” Derek said proudly.

“Love it. We’ve decided to call ours Sammy.” Tom managed to sound casual about it, even as the kitten climbed his leg.

The stunned silence was enough to make Tom smile through the pain of being used as a tree. Could claws be trimmed like fingernails? Or would the scratches he’d get trying it make it not worth the effort?

Getting his revenge on Derek was sweet, even if he wasn’t really mad at the two of them for matchmaking—considering the result.

“You, uh, you adopted? I thought that took months. Oh, you’re kidding, right? You have to be.”

Tom laughed, amusement and happiness bubbling up. He pried Sammy off his leg, getting an indignant squeak in response, and put the kitten back in his box, moving it to the floor to be safe. “Relax. It’s a kitten. Cal surprised me with it this morning. He’s adorable.”

“Cal or the kitten?”

“Both,” Tom said. “Look, I’ll let you go now, but we’ll both be over to see the new baby very soon. And Cal says to tell you that he’s bringing his camera when you’re ready, if that’s okay. He wants to take a photo of you all as his baby present. Maybe even a whole series during the first year, if you like the idea.”

“I like it better than the idea Marianne’s friend had about me filming the birth.” Tom grinned, picturing the revolted expression on Derek’s face. “Much better. Tell him thank you very much.”

“Let us know when you’re ready for visitors.”

“Knowing Marianne, it’ll be ten minutes after we’re home. And knowing her family, you’ll have to fight off half a dozen people for a chance to hold the baby.” Derek sounded so happy that Tom knew this wasn’t a real complaint. “Take care, you two.”

“And you three,” Tom said and hung up as Sammy tried to leap from his box and succeeded in tipping it over onto its side. The kitten thought the box needed punishment for being so uncooperative and promptly jumped onto it before sliding off the other side onto the floor. He looked confused, and Tom laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Cal asked, coming in with an armload of things and putting them onto the counter. He stuck his still-bleeding finger into his mouth. “I need a Band-Aid,” he said, not very clearly.

“There’s a first-aid kit under the sink.” It had been there since the kitchen had belonged to Tom’s grandmother, and though the supplies inside were new, the kit itself was decades old and looked it. “No, Sammy.” As soon as he opened the cabinet, the kitten ran in, and he had to grab it with both hands and toss it out again.

“I think he might be bad,” Cal said.

“I think he’s possessed,” Tom said with conviction. “A demonic
fuzzball
.” Sammy chose that moment to roll to his back and try to catch his tail between his paws, a look of intense concentration on his face for about three seconds before he lost interest and began to wash his face. “Oh my God. Did you see that? I think I’m going to melt into a puddle from the cuteness.”

“Maybe it’s a survival whatchamacallit,” Cal suggested, eying Sammy with a look as goofy as the one Tom suspected was on his face. “When he destroys the couch and shreds the curtains, he’ll pull out the tail-catching trick, and we’ll forget to yell at him.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Tom said, even though he could sort of imagine it. “Come here, you.” He carefully applied antibiotic cream and a Band-Aid to Cal’s scratch, then kissed the bandaged skin gently. “All better.”

“Thanks,” Cal said gruffly, and when Tom looked up into his eyes, Cal stepped in close, crowding Tom into the countertop behind him and kissed him. It was a long, slow, intense kiss, and Tom’s cock immediately perked up in response to it. “I want to take you back to bed.”

Tom nodded and caught Cal’s hand, guiding it down to where his robe, gaping open, was failing to cover anything. “I don’t think there’s any part of me that thinks that’s a bad idea.”

Cal’s breath hissed out as his fingers caressed Tom’s erection with an eagerness that Tom could almost taste. The light, trembling touch became more confident. Tom groaned as Cal’s fingertips coaxed him harder, leaning in to rest his head on Cal’s shoulder when Cal cupped and rolled his balls.

“God, I’ve missed you so much,” Cal whispered. “So much.
Tom
.”

“Bed.” Tom could feel the hard, solid shape of Cal’s cock pressing insistently against his thigh, and he wanted to feel it against his skin, in him, taste it. There wasn’t anything he didn’t want to do with Cal, and he was filled with a burning impatience to begin. “Now. Please.”

They stumbled upstairs to the bedroom, Cal tugging Tom’s robe off him and Tom pulling Cal’s T-shirt over his head. They laughed when the kiss that followed resulted in their noses bumping together.

“
Ow
,” Cal said.

“I’ll kiss that better too,” Tom assured him, and he did.

Cal was already stripped off his pants, standing gloriously naked beside the bed, one hand around his cock. “What about this?”

Dropping to his knees, Tom pressed gentle, reverent lips to the tip of Cal’s dick, which twitched in response. “And this.”

“Jesus, Tom.” Cal’s voice was husky. “I want to fuck you so bad.”

Tom licked a wet stripe along the underside of Cal’s cock, taking his time, feeling the changes in texture as he went from the loose skin at the base to the taut skin on the shaft. “You can,” he said. “You can do anything to me.”

Cal shuddered, his hands warm on Tom’s shoulders as he drew him up. “You have no idea how much I have planned for you,” he said. “I’m going to put you on our bed and open you up for me, get you so fucking slippery that I won’t need to be gentle, won’t need to be slow.”

Tom felt his breath catch at the thought of Cal’s cock driving into him like that, giving him what he needed without making him beg for it. Not that he minded begging Cal. It didn’t feel like surrender when Cal was always so ready to give him everything he wanted.