Ho Ho Homicidal Maniac (Murder and Mistletoe #2)

Chapter 18

Blake

It’s been four days since we arrived at the cabin, and while my thoughts often drift off to Carl’s betrayal, analyzing our relationship over the years, it’s been an extremely peaceful time. There isn’t that much to do so deep in the woods, so I settled on first watching Nico do some repairs, then helping him out. I felt guilty over not offering to help him clean as soon as we arrived. I’m so used to these things just being done it didn’t occur to me, but that’s no excuse.

We then progressed to making some Christmas decorations, because he insisted, and soon the cabin was adorned with cut pine branches, fairy lights, and paper chains made of magazine cuttings. As much as I detest Christmas, there’s no denying that our efforts have elevated the place, making it feel more lived-in. It was also a surprisingly lovely way to spend time together in the evening, just sitting by the fireplace, homemade cake at our side as I cut the paper and Nico glued the pieces together.

Guilt once again poked me straight in the face when during cleaning I found a basket with yarn and a crudely drawn design of a sweater. In an instant, I realized that Nico made the piece of knitwear I called the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. It must have taken him hours, if not days, and he wanted to give it to me . I know it’s somewhere in the back of his car, but it would be weird if I started to wear it all of a sudden, accepting his gift out of pity, so I’m stuck in a guilt limbo any time I see the basket of knitting supplies.

There are still moments when I worry that Carl’s people will track us down, and I’ll find myself with a red laser dot in the middle of the forehead right before it explodes, but Nico’s relaxed attitude has rubbed off on me, and the idea of staying hidden until Carl’s back from Aspen no longer feels like the slowest of suicides. A part of me detests that he gets to celebrate and have fun with friends he never introduced me to as his last hurrah, but I console myself with the fact that he surely is beside himself over my disappearance. After all, the money won’t be his until I turn up dead.

But it’s easy to forget Carl’s existence when I have a beautiful cock to suck for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Is it a crass thought? Certainly, but there is something about lewd words that makes my body heat up and long for touch. Nico has been a perfect gentleman about my inexperience, never trying to push beyond what’s comfortable for me yet always happy to feed me a steady diet of dirty talk. He’s attentive, never fails to make me comfortable, and while the fact that he is a murderer is still present at the back of my mind, it’s very easy to ignore in the face of his gentle kisses, passionate touch, and our long conversations over a variety of cakes we bake together.

Is his Christmas obsession strange? Sure. Is he a murderer who likes creepy crafts a bit too much? Yes. But is he also the most caring boyfriend I could ask for? Pretty much.

I haven’t actually called him my ' boyfriend' , but I do like to toy with that in my mind. A lot.

I don’t ever feel lonely when I’m with him. He never trivializes anything I say and looks out for me. That’s how a good relationship should feel, right? Maybe it’s the isolation playing tricks on my mind, but in the face of his attention and care, all the worries I have about being around a killer seem like minor details. In fact, I have a sick fascination with every single murder he admits to me. Am I complicit at this point? I could go to the authorities and make a fuss, discouraging Carl from ever trying to go after me again, but I don’t want to.

I will never feel safe until the flakes of his teeth float in Nico’s new snow globe.

I don’t want to appear like a lovesick puppy, or bare myself to him too much, but reciprocating his attention feels natural, so I applied my new skill and cooked some eggs for him as he forgot all about breakfast, busy planning a way to get his hands on Carl.

He does spend quite some time researching things, learning about the house we have in Aspen, and ways to get there with least possibility of being tracked. I don’t know if I should be happy about that or frightened of just how excited he is to kill someone.

Because that’s the thing with his morbid and dangerous side. It’s all fun and games until it turns against me one day. If he doesn’t get his fill of murder because the circumstances aren’t right, will his frustration rise? Will it one day overflow to a point where he gets violent with me? It’s only reasonable to think about such things. My brother, who seemed perfectly civil, has ordered a hit on me, so how can I not expect a serial killer to turn on me one day?

I think about that any time I get all gooey about Nico and consider if we would work as a couple in real life instead of our la-la land in this cabin. The answer? I don’t fucking know. I’ve never been with anyone else.

But I’m happy when I’m around him. He listens to me and answers requests before I can even voice them, and today is no different. I complained about not being able to publish the next episode of my podcast, so knowing how much that means to me, Nico set me up with a phone and computer for recording. They’re not the professional tools I’m used to, but more than enough for my purposes.

“Will it be about me?” he asks excitedly as he adds wood to our fireplace.

I snort. “You can’t be jealous of the Zodiac. I bet he attacked couples because no woman wanted someone with his horrible personality.”

“But it’s December,” Nico whines like an impatient puppy. “It makes sense to have another episode about the Christmas Killer.”

“There’s only so many times I can recycle the same information. There has been no new victim, at least not to the knowledge of the authorities.”

“Oh! I know!” Nico paces the room, rubbing his hands. “What if I sent you an anonymous letter, and you could have an Interview with the serial killer segment.”

Excitement rushes through me like a shock of electricity, but as I imagine the hit that would have been, the amount of things that can go wrong, especially in my current situation, is simply too great.

“That’s… so sweet of you. It would do amazing things for my show,” I say, watching him grin in self-satisfaction. “But it’s too much of a risk. What if they track us down, and then check your place and somehow find out who you actually are?”

His face falls, and he nods, turning his face to the fire with a thoughtful expression. I’m struck by how eager his offer was. I’ve never worked on the podcast with anyone, and here he is, so excited to be a part of what I love to do. It’s touching, even if misguided.

It makes me imagine him as part of my future, which is something I’ve been trying to avoid in our little bubble of bliss.

Nico finally speaks again. “What if you talked about a theory that the Christmas Killer is a vigilante? Maybe we could reverse engineer some evidence in a way that is plausible that you unearthed it?”

I grin and lean against him, happy to have a collaborator of sorts. We spend the next hour coming up with ways to bring his idea to life, and by the time we untangle the Gordian knot of problems his suggestion brings, it feels like I might just have a future hit on my hands.

Conversation moves from one topic to the other as we drink hot chocolate. I don’t remember ever feeling so at ease with anyone and mention that my most treasured memory of my dad is when a snowman I built fell off the sleds I was using to transport him closer to my bedroom window. The figure fell apart and I was inconsolable. My dad took a break from work to help me build another snowman, which I insisted needed to be identical to the first one, like the brat I was at the time. And he even put his own tie on the finished thing .

I feel loved whenever I remember that day, and the moment I share that, Nico decided we should build a snowman of our own.

So here we are, getting our boots soaked, rolling snow into balls, which will soon become a head and a torso. The sun sets quite early in December, so it’s already getting dusky, but that doesn’t dampen Nico’s excitement. Nor mine.

He’s attractive when he gets intense in bed, but he’s just as handsome now, smiling and red from the cold.

“I don’t have a carrot for the nose. Any ideas what else to use? Oh! Oh! Just imagine if we still had the assassin’s body. We could have used the nose I cut off him.” He sighs as if that idea isn’t absurdly awful.

“We wouldn’t be able to see it from the cabin. Let’s just use a piece of wood,” I propose and twist on my heel to look at the fallen branches within sight. I come back with a twisted piece of bark and shove it into the snowman’s face.

Nico rests his gloved hands on the back of his head, and I notice they’re the same red leather he had on when I first met him. Is it wrong to think they’re kind of hot?

“It’s okay. I guess,” he says, but it’s obvious he’s not impressed.

Stifling a laugh, I approach the snowman and lean against him, with one of his stick arms touching my back. “Well, hello, handsome. Bold of you to just come over and prod me like this,” I say but slide my cheek over the snow as I catch Nico’s eyes.

Blood drains from his face, and he pins me with a deadly gaze, as if he’s really getting jealous over a snowman . “Don’t do that.”

I bite my lip, trying not to grin. “Are you talking to me or this guy ? ”

“This fucker!” Nico says and punches the snowman so hard his head falls off.

I get such a hysterical fit of giggles I have to grab one of the branch-arms to stay on my feet. “You gotta get used to this. They all seem to want me.”

Nico reaches into the pocket of his jacket and I stop laughing when he pulls out the black balaclava. He puts it on and stares at the snowman’s headless body.

“That’s no surprise, but you will have to learn to deal with their flirting if you don’t want them dead.” His voice is a little muffled through the fabric, and I’m embarrassed what hearing him say such things does to me. Nico leans down to grab the fallen head and I sneak a glance at his ass. He’s such a fine piece of man. Lean and strong as a lion, and just as deadly. I’m breathless when he picks up the head and shows me that the bark nose is cracked, twisted out of its original place, and located right next to an imprint of Nico’s fist.

Blood floods down my body, and I find myself hot with excitement. “You can’t kill people just because they look my way. I’m good-looking. It’s gonna happen,” I tell him, trying to steady myself on my feet.

Nico places the head back on top of the other balls of snow, but he watches me intently from behind the fabric mask. It’s both unnerving and exciting to not see the rest of his face. “I can’t? You sure about that?” When he cocks his head, a shiver runs down my back, because I know he’s joking (or at least I think so). I also know he’s capable of murder, so is it even a joke in this situation?

I once read a study about excitement and fear stimulating the same places in the brain, so if you’re afraid of something, you need to tell yourself you’re excited, and your brain will align with that. Now I’m not sure if that’s such a good thing, because my balls are starting to tingle, and I’m imagining this masked Nico over me, slamming in over and over to teach me a lesson.

“Are you threatening me?” I ask, trying to breathe. At this point, I don’t know if this is a game of arousal or if he’s being serious, but like the adrenaline junkie I’ve secretly been all this time, I am provoking him, regardless.

"No. I'm threatening any man who stands too close to you, who dares lay a finger on you or disrespect you,” Nico steps my way, and I’m suddenly aware of the crunch of snow under his boots, our darkening surroundings, that we’re here alone, and that I can’t drive.

My heart beats ever faster. I’ve not promised him anything. We’re just two guys fucking as we plot my brother’s murder. Completely normal stuff.

And yet, he’s claiming me.

Or joking? Role-playing?

Or maybe this is what I want? To be claimed by someone who can’t stand the idea of anyone else encroaching on my personal space? Someone for whom I’m not unimportant or interchangeable. Someone who wants me without question.

My heart is burning. And so is my groin.

“I didn’t feel disrespected. You don’t own me,” I breathe out, focused on his blue eyes watching me from behind the mask that takes away all his softness.

“You sure about that?” Nico rasps, and when he takes another step toward me, I back away.

He steps forward, I step back.

Only inches between us and vapor from my mouth in the freezing air.

He steps forward, I step back. Our deadly dance of lust.

He steps forward, I turn around and dash for the house .

Nico follows like the predator he is, boots crunching snow as if it’s the bones of his enemies under his feet.