Page 17 of The Baker and the Kraken

And now they kissed! Bright, beautiful kisses that made Adam melt and get hard all at the same time. But they didn’t do anything more.

“I want to take my time with you, sweetheart,” Calder explained. “Preferably when you’re a little less exhausted and frazzled.”

Adam nearly whined in protest—but it turned into a yawn, so maybe Calder had a point.

Calder was smiling at him. “How’d you like to get together on the 16th? Just because.”

Adam bit back a smile. Calder had remembered his rant about caring about people every day and not just on the 14th of February.

“I’d really like that.”

A soft kiss. “Good.”

Calder let himself out, and as Adam brushed his teeth and got ready for bed, he tried not to let himself think thoughts that were too wild.

Yeah, things had gone completely wrong for his parents, and he didn’t even want to think about what had happened to Aunt Susan. But Adam wasn’t talking about a familiar bond. He didn’t have to worry about that. For the first time, it really felt like there was an alternative, something other than unhappiness or loneliness. Thanks to Calder, Adam had a chance when he’d previously been resigned that would never happen.

Adam was busier than ever between his extra-long hours and trying to make time for Calder. He was also happier than ever. As much as he resented Valentine’s Day for the time it was taking away from Calder, he was a little closer than he’d ever been to understanding why people liked a day dedicated to love and romance. His previous relationships had clearly not had the… the investment or the interest that made him want to give someone cake and cookies and flowers and chocolate and…

Yeah, Adam probably needed to get a grip. And the good thing about being a baker was that he could give Calder those things every day of the year. He didn’t have to concentrate on one holiday where he’d been working flat-out and busy making food for others. (But there was still that little bit of him that definitely wanted to do something special for Calder. Because it was a day where love was commemorated, and it suddenly seemed important to commemorate it with Calder.)

But Calder had accepted everything about Adam, including how busy he was around Valentine’s Day, and Adam knew without asking that Calder would prefer that Adam had one less task on his plate and that he gave Calder a cake the next day or the next week or the next month. Adam was definitely ready to do that. It would give him time to plan and experiment and come up with something especially delicious.

Because there was no doubt that Calder deserved all the best things.

It was still a lot, though, to the point that Adam was running even later than he’d expected in his long day. It was more than a week to Valentine’s Day, but it was looming ominously. He was speeding home at a brisk walk because the wait for a ride share had seemed too long, and at least if he was walking, he was doing something. Because Calder was going to be waiting for him—Adam had already texted six times when he kept being delayed and then when he finally got away. Despite the worries that Adam still found hard to shake, Calder had been as calm and understanding as he always was.

Adam still didn’t want to keep him waiting longer than he had to—not least because of how much he wanted to see him. (And kiss him and cuddle with him.) Jogging or running were not good ideas for Adam in general, but power walking wasn’t so bad. He just needed to watch where he was putting his feet, where all the people were, and if there were any obstacles around him, and it was usually fine. An unbreakable charm didn’t work on people, unfortunately, but he’d mastered a variety of low-level charms that could mend scrapes and bruises. He had improved since childhood and didn’t break as many bones anymore, thank goodness.

Besides, it seemed worth a bit of risk to get to spend more time with Calder. He was definitely getting spoiled as he grew so used to the man being in his life. He wanted to spend every moment with him, and he wondered if it was too early to start talking about moving in together.

It was definitely too early. Wasn’t it? They hadn’t known each other very long, and Adam had only admitted they were dating a few days ago. It was ludicrous, and yet… everything in Adam told him it was the right thing to do. He could only imagine how his father would react. But Adam was being sensible about this in so many ways, really he was. He’d given the man time to get to know him, to see how clumsy he was.

He was only a few blocks from home now, and he increased his pace.

While he’d always seen his clumsiness wear on people over time, it wasn’t universally true. Simon, Maggie, Evie, and Joseph saw him nearly every day at the bakery and had learned to cope with him as he was. His dad accepted him, too. So it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility that Calder would also do so.

As foreign as it was, Calder filled Adam with hope in so many ways, and that buoyed him even through the exhaustion of Valentine’s Day prep.

Unfortunately, it didn’t help with his focus, which he didn’t realize until the car horn blared and he froze, halfway through the street, not having noticed the light change. The car bore down on him, and he couldn’t move, couldn’t—

The world blurred, and the car sped by with the driver leaning on the horn. Adam was gasping for breath, shaky and confused, and it took him a long time to realize that he was wrapped in… tentacles?

They were dark gray on top, lighter gray on the underside, which was also ringed with suckers. They couldn’t be anything but tentacles. But that meant—

“It’s alright. You’re alright, Adam.”

Adam looked up into Calder’s face. He stumbled away from him, senses reeling, and the… tentacles—there was really no other word for them—let him go with what felt like reluctance. And then it was just Calder standing there, except he had tentacles sprouting from his upper body, three on either side, two longer than the others, so that he had a total of ten limbs when he should only have four.

They’d come through his shirt without the fabric being damaged. Because magic was weird. And if Adam concentrated on that, he didn’t have to think about the fact that—

“You’re a shifter,” he said numbly.

The tentacles recoiled a little. Calder’s face could have been carved from marble. “Yes.”

“You didn’t tell me!” Adam accused.

“No,” Calder agreed.