Page 24 of Purrfectly Outfoxed
You have no idea how close to the truth you really are, Bea.
She sets the dish in front of me. “I should go and check on Sox. He’s probably feeling terribly frustrated cooped up in the laundry.”
‘Are you back?’I reach out frantically in my mind.
‘Almost.’
Shit. I need to stall. Bea is already moving toward the laundry room, so I do the only thing I can think of to get her attention—I deliberately knock her purse off the counter.
It hits the floor with a crash, contents spilling everywhere.
“Oh! Whiskers!” Bea turns her attention to the mess, and I feel guilty immediately. But at least she’s not going into the laundry room and finding it empty—or occupied by a naked man.
She crouches down and picks up a few things, and I decide to ‘help’ some more by pawing at her keys, dropping them onto the floor as well.
“Silly girl,” she says, looking up at me. “You’re acting very strange today. Are you feeling all right?”
I’m feeling like I almost had sex with a fox shifter on your bathroom counter and now he’s breaking back into your house through the laundry.
I meow innocently.
From the corner of my eye, I catch movement under the laundry door.
‘I’m good.’
Relief floods through me and I hear a chuckle in my mind.
‘Nice to know you care, kitty.’
‘I don’t. I just don’t want poor Bea being tortured by the sight of your humongous dick.’
Another chuckle.‘Noticed you couldn’t keep your eyes off it,’comes his reply, smug as ever.
‘Don’t flatter yourself. I was staring out of pure shock.’
‘It’ll be inside you next time, so count on more than just shock.’
I nearly yowl aloud at that, tail bushed out in feline scandal. I’m so startled by the mental image that I forget to block him from my inner thoughts, and a jolt of molten want ricochets through our link. His answering glee sends another burst of heat up the back of my neck.
‘Get out of my head,’ I snap, regretting it instantly because of the mental images he immediately bombards me with: my knees on the tile, his hands in my hair, my mouth full of his?—
I bare my teeth at the inside of my own skull. ‘I hope you choke on a chicken bone.’
‘I’d rather you choke on my dick, kitten.’
I ignore him, summoning all of my willpower to put that block back in place.
“There.” Bea finishes gathering her things and stands, organizing her library books into a neat stack. “I’m going to read through these this afternoon. Maybe by dinnertime I’ll have a better understanding of how to help Sox adjust.” She looks at me fondly. “And how to help you two become friends.”
We’re way past friendship, Bea. We’re somewhere in the territory of ‘ill-advised mating’ at this point.
“I think I’ll make some tea and settle in with these books,” she says, filling the kettle. “Why don’t you eat your turkey, sweetie?”
I meow yes, because even in the midst of chaos, a cat’s gotta eat.
As Bea busies herself preparing her lunch, I force myself to focus on eating instead of the fox shifter currently making promises in my head that my body very much wants him to keep.
“You know what this book says?” Bea muses, flipping through pages while her tea bag steeps. “‘Foxes mate for life.Once they bond with a partner, they’re loyal until death.’ Isn’t that sweet?”