KISSMAS GOES ON to be our best Christmas vlog yet. Viewers rave about the ingenuity, commenters sign up to join the Jasiper ship, and our Christmas special makes the front page of the VlogIt website—and it's only the fourth day.

After kissing lip balms off each other's mouths, we treated a peppermint stick like spaghetti noodles (a bad idea that hurt our teeth and made our mouths sting from the mint—we gave up before our lips even touched), and watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and kissed every time the word "Christmas" was said (fourteen times, to be exact). So today, the fourth day of Kissmas, we're giving each other hickeys—shaped like Christmas trees.

I have a few concerns about the fourth day of Kissmas, and they go something like this:

1. The most appropriate place to make a hickey (that isn't totally lame) is on one's neck.

2. My dad has saved his vacation time for Christmas, and he's off starting tomorrow.

3. There's a possibility he could see it.

4. Wearing scarves and turtlenecks every day is pretty fishy.

5. Concealer melts off.

There's only one way of putting this: I'm screwed.

I was hoping I could get away with wearing ugly Christmas sweaters with turtlenecks underneath—because 'tis the season, but I have one turtleneck, and since I don't get off school until next Tuesday I've concluded it'd look pretty suspicious—hence numbers two through four on my list. My other option was concealer, but I've found from having two past boyfriends and observant parents that concealer is useless.

Pros of having busy parents:

1. You get free rein of the house 99.9 percent of the time.

2. You can get away with being around friends all day long.

Cons of having busy parents:

1. Since they don't see you daily, they try to make up for things by being snoopy, asking questions, and staring at you for extended periods of time.

With that in mind, I tried to convince Jasper that hickeys weren't going to happen, but he blew me off, saying, "You already agreed, Juniper. No take-backs." Even explaining the situation didn't help. In fact, it made him more excited about the video. It was as though the idea of me doing the walk of shame and trying to hide the bruise was going to be the best part of the fourth day of Kissmas.

If I thought what we did looked like shooting amateur porn before, I really hadn't taken into consideration the possibility of shooting a hickey-giving video. The lights have never seemed so bright, Jasper's bed so sexual, and the camera so cheap. What is about to take place on said bed under lights bright enough to make me sweat and before a video camera that will broadcast those events to the entire VlogIt community is anything but innocent. Lips and tongue and shiny, bruised skin . . . I can see it now—a screen cap of our video used as a porn site advert.

Maybe I'm being dramatic, maybe I'm nervous, and maybe Lenny isn't looking at me from Jasper's desk with all-knowing eyes and a toothy grin. The lucky idiot gets to cop out after introducing the fourth day of Kissmas and saying something witty we can tag on at the end of the video. I hold his eye for a moment from the safety of Jasper's doorway and shake my head at him.

Lucky idiot.

He simply winks at me and then raises his eyebrows.

Jasper appears behind me, having left his room to freshen up or something as I came up the stairs. As he slides past me to enter his room, I notice he's changed his shirt. He wears a simple button-up with the first few buttons undone to expose the entirety of his long neck. He takes my hands once he's facing me and breathes on my hands, doing what he always does when I've been out in the cold. My hands are already thawed, but he keeps his lips on my fingers, blowing steadily on them and looking at me with big brown eyes. I meet his eyes with the same amount of flirtation—jokingly, of course—and greet him with a sassy smile. His lips tug up into a smile as well, and he drops my hands.

As he's walking away, he calls over his shoulder, "I hope you don't plan on wearing that for the video."

Even though I know what I'm wearing, I glance down at my sweatshirt and then back up at his undone buttons and realize what he's getting at. I actually don't plan on wearing the sweatshirt. I was going to throw it off before the video. However, as I look at Jasper sitting on his bed with part of his chest peeking out of his shirt and I envision myself next to him in a spaghetti-strap tank top sucking on his neck, I start to get some thoughts.

If any more skin gets flashed, I'm positive we could consider this whole thing to be borderline dirty. But Jasper's already made it clear that there's no way I'm getting out of this, so to answer him, I tug off the sweatshirt and toss it aside, receiving a cheeky smile in return.

"I value our friendship," he whispers to me when I've seated myself beside him in front of the camera. I know he's trying to crack an innocent joke, but all I can think about is the time he straddled me in his living room and pressed his lips along the side of my neck, making me crazy in anticipation for those lips to be on mine. It's a dangerous thought, so I distract myself by ordering Lenny to do the introduction, which he does excitedly—enjoying the way I squirm. He's been on Jasper's side since this thing started, and I just don't get why.

While Lenny talks, Jasper straightens the collar on his shirt, running his hand along the inside to pull the fabric off his neck. Feeling self-conscious myself, I pull the top of my tank top up, ensuring that it covers any and all cleavage. Jasper might be my friend, but he's ogled me in my underwear, and I don't trust his mouth being around so much exposed skin.

I really shouldn't be so worried about a little hickey, but it's Jasper, after all. For the sake of dramatic flair, he'll do anything. That's not skepticism, that's truth.

"We're like vampires," Jasper whispers under Lenny's voice.

My eyebrows pull together, and I give him a worried face. "What does that even mean?"

"I would demonstrate," he says around a naughty grin, "but Lenny is still introducing the video, so that would be rude."

"If you bite my neck," I warn, lifting a finger to shove it at his chest, "I will bite you back harder."

"Kinky," he mumbles with a smug grin.

I'm about to say something back, to warn him that I'm not playing games since this request leaves a visible mark I'll have to explain to my parents, but Lenny's final words drown me out.

"And on the fourth day of Kissmas, Jasiper gave their team matching hickeys—fangirls now scream!"

Lenny stands up and pauses briefly before the camera to adjust his jeans (giving him more to edit out) and turns to Jasper and me with a wrinkled nose. "Have fun," he coos, and walks away, saluting us at the door. "Lenny out."

Jasper's taken over the talking, but I can't hear much over the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears. It's silly that I'm being so uptight about this, but Lenny—my rock, the one who pulls Jasper and me apart when we go too far—is gone and I have to pull myself together. It's just hickeys. It's just a bruise that I have no good way of covering up.

What if my dad sees? Or my mom? Well, I don't want to have to think about explaining myself. Long story short, I wouldn't be sleeping over at Jasper's anymore.

In short, Jasper really shouldn't be leaning toward me now, and he definitely shouldn't be pressing his lips to the side of my neck, at the bottom where my sweatshirt can probably cover the mark—so maybe it's not so bad. He's being careful.

Despite my best efforts, I have to stifle a groan when he starts sucking my skin between his teeth. My face heats, and I feel his smile against my neck. The camera is right in front of us, I have to remember that, I have to keep my eyes on that little red light. I know I can't do this in silence; just imagine how awkward our viewers would feel. Besides, it's too easy to get lost in whatever Jasper is doing with his mouth, so I start rambling. I start talking to the audience, hoping it'll distract me and keep Jasper in his place. There won't be any funny business tonight.

Things like, "Doesn't this make you guys feel weird? Aren't you guys like twelve?" and "Warning, do not try this at home unless you want to be thoroughly embarrassed by your parents," and "We're just friends, I swear," tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them. Every time Jasper moves his mouth or starts using teeth and tongue, something silly comes out of my mouth. It's like word vomit during a school presentation. Your hands shake and your head is foggy and all of a sudden you have no idea what you're saying or why you're saying it. The worst part is that Jasper actually cracks up here and there. He catches on quickly to what I'm doing and starts getting more creative to see what other ridiculous things he can get me to say.

It's only a couple of minutes, but it feels like hours when Jasper actually leans back to admire his handiwork. I sweep my hair to the unbruised side of my neck and lean into the lens to show the viewers and see what it looks like for myself. To say I'm actually disappointed that his turned out so well is an understatement. It didn't feel like it was going to turn out as a Christmas tree, that's for sure. But now it's there, and Jasper was careful about the placement—even though he made me think he wouldn't be—and it wasn't as bad as I anticipated. So I swallow down the nervous flutters that have been building since this morning. The worst part is over, and now it's his turn.

I thought Jasper would be more laid-back about the whole thing, but I guess he's determined to be difficult. When I start at the top of his neck, under his jaw where it will be more visible, he squawks his disapproval, saying he shouldn't have been so nice. Then, as I start to mark his skin, he goes on and on about how I'm such a "naughty girl" who deserves to be on the "naughty list," and that's what wins him a sharp bite, making him jump away and gape at me in horror.

"You are getting coal for Christmas, Juniper!" he shrieks.

I'm always saying how theatrical Jasper can be, but I can feel the mischievous inkling spreading through me now that I see how much control I have over the situation. Feeling particularly sassy now that my torture has ended and he's putting on a show, I flash him a wicked grin and lean toward him with wide eyes. "Really," I wonder, maybe a little too flirtatiously. "I thought I was getting mistletoe."

He sees the challenge in my eyes and smiles proudly. "And I'm the troublemaker?"

I laugh and pull him back by his shirt collar. "Settle down and let me finish. You brought this on yourself."

He snorts at this but allows me to finish. I'm not sure if it was worth it, though, because the hickey ends up looking like a snowman instead of a Christmas tree. Not to mention he decides it's okay to be totally obnoxious halfway through by moaning and embarrassing both himself and me. At first I thought the little sigh was an accident, like mine was at the beginning of the video, but no, justice was not served. He just got louder and louder. After a while I had to quit because things were starting to sound a bit too raunchy. At least the viewers will laugh.

Luckily, I don't have to face either parent all night. I've also discovered that as long as I wear a hoodie, the hickey isn't visible. The bulkiness obscures it almost completely—and if I wear my hair down, it's like it doesn't even exist.

Jasper dropped the camera off at Lenny's and walked me home. He also reminded me that tomorrow we order eggnog milk shakes and attempt to tie the stem of the cherry on top in our mouths. He thinks he's already victorious but I'm researching the art of cherry knotting.

Four days down, eight kisses to go.