54 - Catnip

Jon’s unhappy eyes dragged Sheridan’s smile down with it.  She was getting published, and wanted him to be excited for her.  Was that so wrong?  Why did he look like she’d just scheduled a root canal for him? 

“She found somebody who wants your writing, huh?  I don’t remember talking to her,” he joked, the ghosts of discontent overshadowed by his light words.

Okay, good.  I was wrong.  He looks and sounds fine now.

“I wouldn’t dream of letting her talk to you,” she chided gently, flexing her toes to continue their subtle game of footsie under the table.  “But the people at Cosmo?  I kind of liked her talking to them.  They want a series of four articles.”

“Cosmo?  The magazine?”

“The one and the same.”  Sheridan nodded her enthusiastic confirmation, waiting for his excitement to build.  It was unlikely that he would be as pumped about it as she was, but he would naturally be thrilled for her.  That’s how relationships went.  You reveled in one another’s accomplishments. 

“Oh.”

Or not.

Fully extending her reach, she lightly curled her fingers over his forearm.  “You’re not exactly brimming with enthusiasm.  What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’s wrong.”  The sentiment was polite and politically correct for the situation, but the sincerity behind it was sorely lacking.  He didn’t even break eye contact with the wineglass he was bringing to his lips. 

“Yes, there is.”  Avoidance games weren’t something she had a lot of tolerance for.  If there was a problem, she preferred to acknowledge it, address it and move on.  “Tell me.”

“I said there’s nothing wrong,” he reiterated decisively.  “I’m a little concerned about your new hobby, but I don’t wanna talk about it tonight.”

“Jon, if you have a problem, we should talk about it.  Putting it off isn’t going to solve anything.”

Huffing quietly, he lifted her hand, using a subtle guiding pressure to coax her into standing.  When she was on her feet, Jon scooted his chair back from the table and brought her around to perch in his lap. 

“Sheridan…”  Strong arms anchored her safely in place when he scooted her around so that they could see one another.  “I don’t have a problem, and nothing’s wrong.  I just want to make sure you’re seeing the big picture.  It can wait.”  He brushed back the loose locks of hair from her face.  “It’s Christmas Eve.  Peace on earth and all that jazz.  Let’s just enjoy it… and us.  Okay?”

It wasn’t okay.  If she hadn’t been so keenly anticipating this night all week, she would have put up a fight and demanded that they deal with this here and now.  But…  she had been anticipating and wanted a nice night as much as he did, and that meant she was willing to compromise her beliefs.  Temporarily.

“We will talk about this right?”  Peering down into the blue eyes she could clearly picture without seeing, she admitted, “I can’t see you being the sullen type and not willing to share your opinion, but I want to be sure.”

Those muscular arms locked down around her waist again, hugging her close as he nosed his way into the crook of her neck with a snort.  “Baby, I got no problem sharing my opinion.  You’ll be asking me to keep it to my damn self in no time.”

“Good,” she giggled, squirming in his lap when greedy lips tickled a particularly sensitive spot .  “I hate that passive-aggressive stuff.  It gives me ulcers.”

“Speaking of which...”   He gave her two sharp taps on the butt.  “Hop up.  It’s time for catnip.”

“You brought catnip that will give me ulcers?  What is that?  The gift that keeps on giving?”

His geeky laugh had Sheridan grinning as she cleared away their plates.  Her boyfriend was, undisputedly suave, sophisticated, and refined.   

And yet when he gets tickled, he sounds like such a dork.

It was one of her favorite things about him – that tiny chink in the façade of the ‘perfect’ man. 

“Aren’t you the clever little kitty tonight?” The sarcasm was muffled as he bent at the waist, rummaging in his overnighter.  When he extracted a white box tied up in red ribbon, Jon resumed his upright position and held it aloft.  “It’s not a gift, per se, just something I ran across.  Come open it.”

“Let me clean up dinner before we start opening anything.  It won’t take five minutes and then I can relax.”

“Damn neat freak,” was his only teasingly grumbled protest as he set the package on the table and carried what was left of their place settings and dinner the short distance to the kitchen.  With her guidance, he stowed the placemats and napkin rings, put the napkins in the laundry and tucked the unfinished bottle of wine in the fridge.

In the promised five minutes, everything was restored to its former tidiness and she hovered over him as he patted the couch and taunted her with the beribboned box.  “Come sit with me and open this thing already.”

“If we’re opening gifts, I need to go upstairs and get yours from under the tree.”

“I told you it’s not a gift.  Open this, and then we’ll go up to the tree and do gifts.”  Impatient fingers waved her over.  “C’mon already, Slowpoke Rodriguez.”

“Okay!  Okay, Speedy Gonzales,” she countered on a huff, flopping down heavily beside him.  “I see you’re keeping your gift wrapper in a job.  That white box and red bow look awfully familiar.”

“Hush your sassy hellcat mouth and open the damn thing,” he growled shoving it into her lap and twisting sideways, putting his left leg under him so he could watch while the bow fell away. 

“Oh…  my word.”  There, in a nest of protective tissue paper was a bottle of tequila.  Mind you, not just any bottle of tequila, though…  Sheridan was overcome by giggles, inspecting the designer container. 

Very similar to the ‘Leg Lamp’ in “A Christmas Story”, this bottle was a modeled after a woman’s foot, ankle and lower calf.  The foot, however, was encased in a brown, leopard-pattered high heel shoe,  a delicate gold ankle bracelet looped elegantly around the ankle, and the agave tequila was kept safe inside with an orb-shaped stopper in the same pattern as the shoe – and the lingerie she was now wearing, coincidentally enough.

“You and your cat fixation.  You’re crazy!”

His grin was a mile wide as he hopped up off the couch and foraged in her cabinet for glasses.  “I’ve been called worse, and prob’ly by the guy who sold it to me.  He was lookin’ a little concerned at my selection,” Jon confessed, taking the bottle and pulling the stopper with a ‘pop’.

“You really think you need to get me drunk on Christmas eve?”

“I’m not getting you drunk,” he corrected, handing her a juice glass that sloshed with its splash of Mexican mojo.  “We’re having one drink, because you can’t open booze and not drink it.  The rest of it we’re going to save for body shots.”

Sheridan’s brows arched as he closed the bottle and lifted his own glass.  “Body shots?”

“Oh come on.”  Disbelief seeped from the three short words, before he reverted to the dark voice that sent heated chills through her.  “You didn’t think I’d forget did you?  This tequila is ultimately gonna be sipped from every beautiful bit of your body, but tonight’s just an appetizer.  I’m starting with your mouth.”

The blinding orgasm before dinner may as well have never happened.  Her nerve endings thrummed with heated anticipation of his sipping, wondering if he truly meant that ‘every bit’ bit.  She would gladly be his shot glass. 

Although…

“You’re going to drink tequila from my mouth?” Skepticism tainted her blissfully smutty horizon.  Not only did what he was proposing sound tricky, it was a little bit gross.

He chuckled, swirling the tequila lightly in his glass.  “Obviously not the way you’re thinking.  We’ll both do our own shots, but I’m gonna be all over you before it has a chance to dry on your lips.”

Her nipples stabbed against the leopard lace bra cup and her folds bloomed against the matching panties, rendering yet another pair uselessly wet. 

“You realize there will come a time when it’s takes more than a few words to turn me into a panting, panty-drenched whore?”

“Ooo…”  He sucked air through his teeth, the creases in his cheeks digging deep under the weight of his full grin.   “Baby, if I knew I had that kinda power I would’ve been flaunting it a long time ago.”

“Bull,” she declared flatly, yet with a diminutive grin of her own.  “You’ve been flaunting it since the day we met.”

He held his hands up in helpless defense, thumb and index finger gripped tightly around the glass so that it didn’t tip.  “Pleadin’ the Fifth…  I refuse to answer on the grounds that what I say may incriminate me.  Now drink.”

If he weren’t so damn cute, he’d be annoying.

She held her glass up to match his, a single nod indicating her readiness.  Both simultaneously went bottoms up, and Sheridan had barely pulled the glass from her mouth when it was captured by Jon’s seeking lips.  Hard fingers knotted in her hair as he delved into the soft alcohol-laden recesses. 

Helpless to do anything but whimper, she pliantly submitted herself and savored him as he drank his fill.  His flavor blended with the smooth, crisp tequila in such an intoxicating way that, if she could bottle it, she would be a raging alcoholic inside a week.

“Yeah,” he breathed, the warm air blowing chills over the dampness of her lips.  “Sign me up for body shots.  You make tequila taste better than wine.”

“Mmm…”  His hand was gently kneading the back of her neck, and she leaned in to sip again from his mouth.   She would never tell him something as silly as what she’d just thought, about becoming a raging alcoholic, no matter how tempting.  Only puppy-crushed teenage girls did that kind of thing.  “You don’t totally ruin the taste either.”

“You’ll pay for that, my snarky little kitten,” he chuckled quietly, climbing to his feet and urging her to join him.  “Let’s go upstairs.”

She let him enfold her hand as she slowly rose from the sofa with a cattily arched brow.  “Are you anxious to get your Christmas present?”

“No,” he denied, bussing her cheek and then bringing her ‘tattooed’ wrist to his lips.  It was as though he were slightly obsessed with the souvenir he’d left behind last time he was here. 

She was no better.  Sheridan had taken embarrassingly good care of it, protecting it as much as humanly possible in the shower and during hand washings.   The ink was still dark and very legible, but it was starting to turn the tiniest bit faint and blur around the edges. 

“I’m anxious for you to have yours, though.”  One blue eye winked cockily.  “And to have you afterward.”

Her tummy muscles crinkled with sheer delight.  He could say anything in that husky, sexy, Jersey drawl and she was in.  No questions asked.  Well, only a few questions:  where, when, how and what could she do to help?

“A man who’s a giver,” she cooed, stroking the strong jaw that was starting to show signs of evening stubble.  “I have to say I like the sound of that.”

He leaned in to kiss the tip of her nose, and then immediately swatted her bottom, chuckling at her indignant squeak of protest.  “Then get your sweet ass upstairs.  I’ll grab my bag and meet you by the tree.”