Scarlet peeled the gray one gently off her sleeves with a ripping sound as it clung to her, mewing its protest, its tiny tail tucked in tight. “This is the sweetest of the two,” she said, dropping it into Gizelle’s waiting hands. It immediately started to purr.
The other kitten bolted for Scarlet’s shoulder and tried to hide beneath her hair, but it wasn’t fast enough to escape her. “I’ve been calling this one Tyrant,” she said, extracting it from her hair.
The kitten mewed and tried to catch her with its needle-sharp claws before Scarlet set it with the other one into Gizelle’s arms. “You are of course free to name it whatever you like. My staff is not paid to scoop litter boxes, and Graham will not be happy if they use the gardens or planters. Do not flush litter into our septic system. They need to stay out from underfoot, and away from guests who may be allergic. And keep your toilet paper out of their reach.”
Without waiting for a response, Scarlet turned on her heel and left.
“Kittens!” Gizelle repeated in awe as they scrambled over her, clumsy and eager with their tiny claws and giant eyes.
She looked up at Conall with laughter dancing in her eyes. “Now I won’t miss you when you go to Boston,” she teased.
Conall mimed a knife to the heart. “You wound me!” he said dramatically.
Arms full of squirming kitten, Gizelle still tried to hug him, with very mixed results and squawks of protest from several parties. “Of course I will miss you, my beautiful Irish elk,” she insisted.
“And I will miss you, my gorgeous gazelle,” Conall echoed.
When they drew apart, the cream-colored kitten was clinging to Conall and trying to scale his shirt to his shoulder.
CONALL SHOWED GIZELLE all about the kittens; how to feed them, where to put their water. They set up the litter box and the sweet one obligingly demonstrated how the kittens planned to use it.
Tyrant, whose name was clearly appropriate and inevitably stuck to her, in the meantime demonstrated why toilet paper needed to be kept out of reach, ripping chunks from the roll by jumping up and tearing at it with her tiny, determined claws and teeth.
After they had laughed helplessly at her antics for a moment, Gizelle pulled Tyrant reluctantly away from the toilet paper roll and scolded her gently. “That’s not your toy,” she said, distracting the kitten with a plush mouse that chimed.
She and Conall played with the kittens until they began to seem clumsier than ever. Gizelle was alarmed when they started to ignore the toys that had enraptured them moments before.
“Are they alright?” she asked in concern, when even a ribbon dragged across Tyrant’s toes couldn’t get her attention.
“They’re just getting tired,” Conall told her, and sure enough, they shortly collapsed into a boneless furry heap on a pillow. Even lifting the sweet one’s paws didn’t cause more than a minuscule twitch of her ear. “They’re just children,” he told her. “They’ll do a lot of playing and sleeping at first.”
Gizelle tucked the sweet one’s paw back into what looked like a comfortable position. “This was the best present of all,” she said with a sigh. “Thank you.”
“I hope you still feel that way when they destroy something you care about,” Conall warned her. “They will require a lot of patience and need a lot of attention and love.”
“I am so full of love,” Gizelle said, trying to describe how it felt inside her. “It will spill over if I don’t give some of it away.”
Conall’s look said that he understood, and when he took her hands and pulled her close, his kiss said that he felt the same way.
Gizelle opened her mouth to him, accepting his love even knowing there couldn’t possibly be room for it, because the overflow was so delicious.
It was hard to remember being afraid of his touch. It was so comfortable now, even when comfortable wasn’t quite the word for it; it raised a dizzy anticipation in her and his hands were so wonderfully large and nimble as he traced the line of her shoulder and held her in the small of the back like they were dancing.
There was no room on the bed for them among the piles of books and gifts and sleeping kittens, so when Conall might have laid her down, he picked her up instead, his breath ragged near her ear, and carried her out to the second bedroom.
Gizelle started to slip quickly out of her dress, and he caught her and did it more slowly than she knew was possible, one strap at a tantalizing time, kissing every inch of her skin as he carefully exposed it.
She took no such care with his clothing, unbuttoning as fast as her own fingers could go; they were trembling with something better than fear, something sweeter than panic.
Then they were naked at last, and Conall was a safe weight over her on the smooth bed; an invitation and a delicious demand as he lifted her legs and drove into her. As full as she was, with joy, with passion, with love, with him, there was more, and more, and yet more, until they were sweaty and spent and laughing together in release and Gizelle felt as boneless as her kittens.
He continued to caress her, as if even afterwards, he couldn’t have enough of her under his fingers.
“You make the most enchanting music,” he said, kissing her neck.
“You are the one playing,” Gizelle said dreamily. “You know all my strings and tuning pins.” He had shown her all the parts of his guitar.
He chuckled at that and gathered her close in his arms. “You write all of my songs,” he said into her hair.