Baby, You’re Making Me Crazy

Chapter 1: Start of Something Magical

The january cold didn’t just bite, it ravaged, shredding through fleece and wool like they were candyfloss. It drove the bobcats to their dens and the birds to their nests, and their human watchers to the equivalent: indoors, fireside, and under blankets, usually shared to make more heat. Of course, sharing heat led to sharing other things, too, like playful challenges, coaxing touches, and teasing kisses that warmed more quickly – and much more enjoyably – than any crank of the thermostat. Hank was particularly adept at making Dawn flush, gasp, and sweat while outside the wind whipped and snow came down in sheets so thick as to turn the daytime dark.

His mouth knew her as well as his hands, from her earlobes and lips to her nipples and navel, and everything in-between and beyond. His deep-seated issues around self-control and abandonment meant he usually left the commencement of actual sex to her, but Dawn didn’t mind. While Hank outmatched her in size and strength, whenever she’d look at him stretched out beneath her, or scrape her nails across his wide, working back, or thrust against him with her hips, she always felt privileged and powerful to have him.

They’d learned, over time and with practice, how to make sex gratifying for both of them, a more or less equal give and take. The cold brought out something new in them, though. Fueled as much by Chaos magic as by his natural metabolism, Hank’s heat flared against the chill. And that heat sang to something deep and ageless inside of Dawn, something that fascinated and exhilarated and aroused her.

While Hank went out to check the mailbox at the end of the drive, Dawn snuggled under a fluffy blanket on the sofa, cupping her hands over her nose and mouth to try and create her own warmth. It didn’t quite satisfy; she had never been able to generate the kind of heat he did. Even in the winter, he could get away with a short-sleeved shirt and shorts as pajamas, while she had to bundle up in full-length cotton and fleece. Unless he was willing to share. Which, thankfully, he always was.

He came back amid a blast of cold from the open door, declaring, “It is fucking brisk out there!”

She leaned her head over the back of the sofa to watch him upside-down as he shut the door, slipped out of his jacket, and stamped his boots. He pulled his outdoor hoodie off over his head, too, working those big arms and broad shoulders in a smooth, supple sway that left her biting her lip. “Well, why don’t you get under this blanket with me,” she told him with a smile, “and we can warm each other up?”

He grinned his agreement and started toward her, then paused to bob his head at the sizzling fire. “Should I get more wood?”

A vulgar innuendo about him “getting wood” popped into her head. She didn’t voice it, though, instead just shifting against the cushions to make room as she offered him a simple, “We’ll be fine.”

He came around the sofa. Before slipping under the blanket with her, he shoved off his jeans and tossed them to the side.

Dawn formed her lips into a teasing moue. “Take it all off!”

Hank chuckled. “No way.” He hurried under the blanket and stretched out with her. “But body heat’s nice,” he said, his words blowing softly over her cheek as he put his hands on her waist. Even through the cotton of her nightshirt, she felt the chilling effect of the outdoors, though it was fading fast.

She breathed a hum as she settled her arms into familiar place around him. “Especially this body,” she said, and slipped her hand under the waist of his shorts to squeeze her fingers into one cool and firm buttock.

He reacted with a grunt, and she felt a faint, fluttering bump against her hip. Then they kissed, softly and sweetly, and the warmth from where their lips touched spread through her whole body, tingling her nerves and setting her senses to overload. Five minutes later, she was asking him to make love to her. Three minutes after that, they were naked. One minute after that, she was rocking on top of him and he was rolling his hips against her, quickly finding their familiar sexual groove.

She guided the path of his hands, one to her breast and the other to her mouth, where she sucked his thumb hard and deep, the nail scraping the tender skin near the top of her throat. That was always a bit much for him, and she watched him peak first in the astounded drop of his jaw and the dilation of his pupils, then felt him shudder a second later.

His coming incited hers, so even as she felt him slowly waning, she swooped in to latch her mouth to his. Pressed tight to him, she pumped her hips down vigorously and clawed her fingers into his thighs. She clenched her muscles into a rigid grip, holding him inside of her until stars started to pop in her vision even behind her eyelids, and she had to let go of his lips to loose a quiet, whimpering cry of delight.

They were both still breathing hard as she slipped off of him. Loathe to actually get up, Dawn snatched her pajama bottoms from the floor and tucked them between her legs, then pulled the blanket up around them again; the cold was already starting to leech what heat lingered from their sex. Hank was still warm, though, so she cuddled close to him, rustling her head against the hollow of his shoulder.

He slipped his arms around her and squeezed. “I love you,” he mumbled into her hair.

She answered back the same with words and a hug. She closed her eyes and tapped three light kisses to his chest, and was about to suggest they take a nap when he said:

“I’m hungry. Are you hungry?”

She’d just gotten comfortable but had to admit: “A little.”

“I was thinking I’d make us some scones.”

That snapped her eyes wide open. “Oo!” she said, lifting her head to stare at him.

He smiled. “Yeah?”

“Yeah!”

Hank shimmied out from her arms and climbed, long-limbed and naked, over the back of the sofa. He gave a quick all-over shiver that tightened the perk of his nipples and clench of his belly and made his shrunken dangly bits jiggle.

Dawn snickered from under safe cover of the blanket. “You going to do it like that?”

“No,” he said, stepping into his shorts and wriggling into his Henley again. He lunged over the length of the sofa for a quick peck of her lips. “Sit tight. This should take me about thirty-five minutes.”

He hopped away into the kitchen, leaving her to snuggle into the comfort of the blanket. There was some residual warmth, but not enough to drowse. After listening to him rattle and rustle in the kitchen for ten minutes, Dawn put on her shirt and panties and padded after him. She stepped lightly on the balls of her feet to keep them from touching too much cold floor, so arrived without alerting him.

Hank had first started cooking because, as he lamented, sobriety made him feel “every single fucking hour of the day.” The effort-reward part of his brain liked tangible compensation, one that didn’t take too long to produce. Happily, cooking turned out be a task he more than merely enjoyed; he’d gotten pretty good at it, too. A marked improvement from the first dinner he’d tried making for them: a steak that had ended up scorched, wet, and thoroughly inedible.

Dawn usually helped with prep, but for some recipes, two people made things less efficient. Hank had committed this scone formula to memory, and he measured, mixed, and dropped the dough with easy self-assurance. When he had to bend over to slide the pan into the oven, giving her a delicious view of his backside, she finally announced herself with a sprightly tease:

“Barefoot in the kitchen. Just the way I like you.”

Hank shot her a smirk over his shoulder. “That’s sexist.”

“I’m glad you recognize that,” she said, as she moved close to put her arms around him.

He stepped out of her embrace to set the kitchen timer. Eighteen minutes. More than enough time to return to the comfort of the sofa for a brisk quickie.

When he came back, bowing his head for a lightly tonguing kiss, she just about grabbed him by his shirt in readiness of tossing him toward the living room. But he stopped her with a phrase.

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Uh-oh,” Dawn joked.

Hank smiled but his gaze was earnest. “I’m coming up on three years clean,” he said as he started them on a gentle sway. “And we’re in a good place, now. That Chaos magic stuff was the last boot thrown into our works, and that was over a year ago!”

She could guess where he was going with this, but she wanted him to say it. “So…?”

“So,” he repeated, as if on cue. “I’m thinking it might be time for us to make things official.”

She lifted her brows at him. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah,” he said, scuffing his foot and swinging his head like a much younger bashful lad. “We could set a date, shop for some rings, decide on the song we want to dance to…!”

She grinned, then pressed her lips together to make him suffer. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Oh,” he said, stepping back from her again. He turned to the counter and reached for the charming sugar bowl they used when guests visited. It rattled when he lifted the lid to present it to her. “You mean this?”

Dawn peered inside the bowl. It was empty…save for an elegant ring molded with Edwardian filigree, with a small, simple diamond embedded in the design.

Her heart pattered with inexplicable anxiety, and she put her hand to her mouth, no longer jesting. Her gaze jumped from the ring to his face, just past the rim of the bowl. The loveable fool had actually gone to his knees.

“Dawn Granger,” he began there, in a slow and atypically weighty tone.

She grabbed the shoulder of his shirt. “Get up!” she said, hauling him to his feet before he could go any further. She put her hand on the little sugar bowl, the ring still rattling inside, and mashed their mouths together in a powerful kiss.

When their passion softened and their lips came apart, he whispered, “You didn’t let me say it.”

“You don’t have to say it,” she told him, pressing her palm to his cheek.

“I want to make you happy,” he said, still whispering. “As much as you make me happy. I want to be your partner.” He kissed her softly. “And your lover.” Another, gentler kiss. “And your husband,” he said, punctuating it with the most delicate kiss so far. He rubbed the tips of their noses together and asked, “Will you have me?”

Even though her heart was overflowing, she kept her voice steady. “Yes,” she said with a stroke of his face. “I will.” She smiled. “For ever and always.”

His face flushed almost feverishly bright. Then he glanced to the bowl still in their hands. “You want to try on the ring?”

She felt a beam burst. “Absolutely!”

She drew back just far enough for him to bring the bowl between them. He fished out the ring and slipped it over her ring finger. While it was fairly loose going over her knuckle, she was struck by the feeling that it had always been and would always be there.

“It’s beautiful,” she told him. “Where did you get it?”

“It was my mom’s.” He shrugged. “After she died, my brother and I put it in a safe deposit box. Made it just hard enough to get to, to keep from hocking it on a whim. It’s been going from box to box and city to city for the last almost-twenty years. I think she’d approve of this, though,” he added in a quiet voice. “She’d have liked you a lot.”

The statement was so plain and forthcoming, but it set off in Dawn a feeling of acute sadness. She’d never known Hank’s mother, who had died when he was a teenager, long before the fateful day of their meeting on B Street. But her own mother had often expressed in not-so-subtle nudges how Dawn should settle down with a good, wholesome, handsome man. Not like her father. Never like her father.

She rubbed her thumb over the ring’s metal filigree, thinking how much her mum would have gushed over it and over the man Hank had become, so loving and stable and sober. How she would have hugged Dawn so tightly, her bosom abundant with joy. And how Dawn would never be graced with that feeling of a mother’s love again.

She laid her ring hand over her heart and raised her face to his, sniffling and wiping at her wet cheeks with her other hand as she said, “Thank you.”

A tender frown creased his brow. “I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he said, and she laughed. She didn’t think she would cry at this moment, either. They’d talked about the possibility a long time, though always in the abstract, and not with any tangible evidence of their intention.

Hank smiled wide again. “So…you like it?”

“I love it.” She stole her hands behind his head, rising on her toes as she brought him close for another kiss. “I love you.” She kissed him once more, then lowered herself to her heels and wound both arms around him.

A shiver of excitement ran through her, and Hank hissed and rubbed her back.

“Oh, babe,” he said. “I’m sorry. You must be freezing!”

Dawn shook her head and squeezed him tighter, feeling the glow of his heat flow from him and into her. “Not anymore.”