Page 23 of The Handyman and The Drama Queen (Myths, Legends, and Southern Charm #1)

Stone

“ I’m dead .” Ezra finally blinked, snark being his fallback response while his brain sorted through what I’d said. “You’re not Jesus or whatever the local religious equivalent would be.”

His head cocked and he looked confused for a moment. “I’ve been meaning to ask about that. You use gods in swear-type words.”

“Don’t tell my mother.” The automatic response made him smile. “But yeah, we can talk about that. Pushing religion on people isn’t our thing since there’s so many different variations around here.”

I wasn’t sure if he would get distracted about that but he gave his head a shake like he was clearing out the fog and got back on track. “Okay. Dead. We’re on the same page with that, right?”

How did he think I’d forget that?

“Yes. I didn’t say alive. I said solid. You’d still have all the limitations that you do currently with the dead thing. Can’t leave the property. Stuff like that.” The way he narrowed his gaze said we might be on the same page. “From what I’ve read, it would basically feel like a real body but no eating and that kind of stuff. So you’d definitely still be dead.”

Silence filled the room as I finished eating my sandwich, still slightly frustrated that I couldn’t trust the electrical system in the kitchen. We’d been making progress with the house right up until Elizabeth had been questioned by the assembly and then it’d all come to a grinding halt.

Part of that was also because the human company she’d been using was being sued by the feds in some kind of lawsuit over working conditions and the number of structures they’d fucked up beyond recognition…oh, and a few more deaths.

Thankfully, the assembly had realized right off the bat that they needed to go check for other ghosts but I wasn’t sure what they’d found. I had my hands full dealing with the house and my own ghost.

And how we were going to live going forward, because even I was tired of sandwiches and carting everything I needed in and out of the house every time I stayed over. We hadn’t reached our month deadline yet, but Ezra didn’t like the way packing up everything made him feel. I wasn’t sure about the optics of it looking like I’d moved into the house, though.

Once I’d finished my food and started putting away the trash, Ezra sighed. “Dead but with a body you can fuck?”

The way his mind had jumped right to that made me grin. “Yep, but we’re not mentioning that reason if anyone asks.”

That’d be weird since I was going to need to ask my relatives to help me with the project.

“What’s the downside? The catch?” Glaring at me, he crossed his arms over his chest. “There’s always a catch.”

He was sexy when he was suspicious.

“Let’s go sit on the couch.” Thinking about what he’d said about being given my will, I rearranged my next words a bit and kept my tone confident and assumptive. “I’m going to give you my will and make you solid enough to sit on my lap.”

It wasn’t quite my Dom tone, but it had Ezra blinking a few times and swallowing. “Yes, Sir.”

Oh, he hadn’t been downplaying the submissive aspect of it.

“Good boy.” Leaving my lunch box on the table, I nodded toward the front of the house and tried to tell my dick that he wasn’t getting any attention no matter how hard he was. “Come with me, baby.”

He rose quickly but his entire body seemed to shiver as he stood up and tugged on the front of his pants. For some reason he’d ended up in briefs as well as pajamas at his last switch and he was slightly frustrated with it.

Since he wasn’t actually playing with himself, though, I let my gaze drop to his bulge but didn’t tell him to stop. He blushed and did a little wiggle. “I don’t know why I have on underwear this time.”

I shrugged. “They’re sexy.”

I’d gotten a peek when he’d been frustrated enough to pull down the front of his pajama pants and complain about them. The fact that it’d been on the front porch just as I’d gotten to the house was also fun. I loved nearly everything that got him worked up because most of it didn’t matter in the long run and he’d run out of steam within minutes.

Then he started looking for a more interesting kind of attention.

“You like anything that makes me squirm.” His glare at the chuckle I let out was adorable. “Not even going to deny it.”

“Nope.” I was, however, going to have fun fucking with him a bit more. “Squirming looks good on you.”

And so did glaring and grumbling.

But I had to ignore all the cuteness he was radiating when we got to the couch. “Close your eyes.”

We’d discovered through a bit of trial and error that watching me do it was distracting for him and made it take more will to get him solid. He claimed he didn’t know why it worked like that, but I was pretty sure it was because he was focusing on how it worked, not letting it work.

This time he wanted to be solid more than he wanted to dissect it, so he obeyed quickly and sighed as I leaned closer and pressed my lips right under his ear as I pushed my will into him. The shiver he let out as he grew more solid was sexy as fuck, but I loved the way I could almost feel submission rising from him.

It seemed like once he’d confessed it, he wasn’t worried about trying to hide it.

“Good boy.” Giving him another firmer kiss on his now fairly solid neck, I took his hand in mine. “Sit on my lap.”

That got another pleased sound from him and he kept his eyes closed as he let me move him into place. Even alive he hadn’t weighed that much, so the physics of a solid spirit made it easy for me to hold him like that as long as I wanted.

And I could snuggle him too.

“Good boy.” When he was in place and nuzzling his face against my neck, I kissed his cheek and relaxed into the couch. “Now, going back to our previous discussion. Is the catch question the first thing you want to have answered?”

It wouldn’t have surprised me if his brain had jumped to adding a dozen different others, but after a short pause, he nodded.

“Alright then, I’m just going with what I think are potentially the biggest issues, but you may see this differently.” He was a constant surprise. “Making you solid for the long term and not just using short bursts of my will uses magic that is put into something physical for you to wear. Something like an amulet if you’re thinking old school but these days it could be put into a watch or a necklace or even a collar.”

Mentioning the collar option got a wiggle out of him, but I just gave him another kiss in acknowledgment and kept going with my explanation. “So damaging that would affect your state of matter again. It wouldn’t damage you, though. It also wouldn’t necessarily damage the magic. We’d just need to replace whatever broke and the rest should be a fairly easy fix.”

He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before nodding against me. “So it would be like a plus-size version of will all concentrated in one place and when my…watch wore out, we’d need to get it fixed?”

“Yes on the watch part. Basically on the plus-size will. It would be a combination of will from a large group of magic users and they would also channel the will of the Earth. It’s a lot of combined energy. Too much to just use mine.” Unfortunately. “It’d be sexy if I could do it that way, though.”

It might be possible over a lifetime but neither of us had that kind of patience. I’d also end up getting old and we’d look like a creepy age gap relationship instead of a reasonable one.

“I’m not responding to that.” Ezra buried his blushing face tighter against my neck.

“You don’t have to.” My dry retort got a huffy sound from him. “Going back to my explanation…as long as you were wearing the magically enhanced object you would be a solid-looking ghost. That means no walking through walls or things like that.”

Ezra went still and since that seemed to mean he was thinking over what I’d said, I went silent and entertained myself by cuddling him. I could’ve sat like that all evening, but after a few minutes, Ezra shifted. “Why don’t more ghosts in town do it? I don’t think you’ve mentioned anyone like that.”

It was a good question, so I rubbed his back and gave him another kiss. “I’m pretty sure there are a handful.”

I just hadn’t realized it until I’d started doing more research.

“But it takes a lot of trust and acceptance on your part.” From what I’d read, most local ghosts had gone the what the fuck route and declined the offer. “You know that feeling you get when I give you my will? The one you said makes you feel submissive?”

I waited until he nodded to answer. “There are a lot of people who would run from that for a variety of reasons. Someone like the librarian might not see a need for a more solid state. He’s old enough he can do it whenever he wants and I haven’t seen him in any kind of personal relationship that might push him to open himself up to something like this.”

And a lot of the ghosts we had around the area had been prickly in real life and hadn’t improved with age.

There were a lot of local jokes where the punch line was always that the only people who became ghosts in death had been difficult in life.

Ezra was another note in the clichés have a basis in fact file.

“I guess I can’t see accepting it from just anyone. Trust is hard, you know.” Ezra shrugged as I tried not to smile. “And I guess I’d need a reason to push to get something close to a body back. It’s kind of weird when you think about it. Stressful maybe for some people?”

“What do you mean?” I’d never had a conversation like this with any other ghost, so I was curious to see how it felt to him.

Ezra shifted, settling in so he could rest his head on my shoulder instead of hiding against me. “I guess I was thinking that we get used to being dead and the limitations it has on it and then boom, someone offers to change it again but you have to trust them a lot to do it. Then there’s the almost a body but still dead thing. For some people it might be a constant reminder of being dead? A bad one? I don’t know. I’m just talking it out.”

Oh.

“I don’t want you to let me talk you into anything you don’t want to do. You know that, right?” Just as I was ready to charge into my lecture on safewords again, he nodded and didn’t hesitate to share how he was feeling.

“Yes. I want this.” Ezra’s tone was relaxed and I couldn’t hear any hesitation in it. “Well, weirdness aside, and if I’m only thinking about being solid, yes, I want this.”

That was so Ezra, I couldn’t help chuckling.

He let out a long, theatrical exhale. “You know what I mean. I can only assume lots of people and lots of talking and lots of being nice and grateful for their help and then they’ll be guessing why I want a body and what we’re going to do with my new solid form…because we probably shouldn’t call it a body…and then they’re going to have questions about our relationship and you being…not a ghost…”

I was pretty sure he’d started to say human before he’d stopped himself and given a dramatic sigh.

“And then someone’s going to talk about how nice you are and your heritage and they’ll ask if I’m confident in my decision because I’ll feel dependent on you and that’ll get weird because I’ll blush and probably look weirdly guilty or say something sarcastic because I’m uncomfortable, and don’t even get me started on how I feel about having to talk to your mom, oh, and we’re going to make sure I don’t end up naked in front of your family. I mean, it’ll be like a religious doctor’s appointment, so I’m not really worried about some of that but just not your family, Stone.” His head popped up as he got to what he seemed to think was something he needed to reiterate. “I will not be naked in front of anyone you’re related to. That’s a red. I found another limit. Ha. But I’m serious.”

Oh yes.

I got that very clearly.

I also understood that most of his limits related to my family, which showed how smart he was.

Nodding, I made sure he could see that in my eyes. “I understand that limit and I will make sure it is respected. There has to be an easy way to make sure of that even though I have no idea if you’ll reform with what you’re wearing now or when you died or if you’ll form wearing nothing.”

Ezra sighed again and gave me a look like he thought I was stupid. “Look at my life and think about what you just said.”

“Okay, it’ll definitely be naked or SpaghettiOs, so we’ll make sure you’re covered and we’ll have a set of new clothes waiting for you.” I was at least eighty percent sure he’d want more pajamas but he didn’t actually say the words when he looked down at what he was wearing and frowned.

“I should…jeans or pants.” He looked up at me again, highly conflicted. “I should want real clothes, right?”

He could make decisions about who got to see him naked.

He could make decisions about getting a solid state again.

He couldn’t make decisions about his clothes?

“We could always have two different options and you pick what feels right in the moment.” The way his face scrunched up said that wasn’t the best choice. “Or we could look for something that looks like pants and feels like sweats or pajamas? If women have those weird half-pants half-workout clothes, there has to be something for men too.”

I’d just never looked for them because I wore jeans or heavy-duty khakis all the time. It was what people expected me to be wearing and I’d found that meeting their expectations of a handyman was half the battle in getting hired.

“Oh.” Ezra seemed stumped with that one, staring at me like he couldn’t quite process the information. “That’s…yes…let’s look for that.”

Glancing down at his body again, he frowned. “I don’t mind wearing women’s clothing as long as it looks neutral. I just don’t want to look like I’m in women’s clothing. I’m already interesting enough at this point and I’d rather not add to that list.”

Did that mean…

Nope.

We could come back to how that’d sounded later.

“Ugh.” Shifting back to being adorably dramatic, Ezra collapsed against me. “I’m going to have to meet your mother before we start asking everyone and their brother to help me be more solid so you can fuck me and I can do shit around the house.”

His solid state to-do list was interesting.

“Yep.” Manners stated that was the correct order of events. “But my mother will probably be nosy enough to bring up the option herself and then we won’t have to do anything but keep her mostly reined in.”

Ezra couldn’t seem to decide if he wanted to laugh or groan at that and settled on hiding against my neck again. “Well, I can’t worry too much if it was her idea and she’s going to plan everything.”

“I agree.” Kissing the side of his head again, I shifted to snuggling him while he was solid enough for it to help him relax. “And she’ll feel appreciated and it’ll feed whatever nosy black hole lives inside her.”

And the snickers won.

I just hoped he found it just as funny when she railroaded us into something ridiculous…but I was going to wait to point that out until I had to.

She was a force of nature and it was going to be interesting.