“FUCKING MOTHERFUCKING FUCKER! STUPID DEER! GET OUT OF THE FUCKING ROAD! Fuck!”
Felix sat there, panting for a minute, letting the adrenaline roll away until he could retract his claws back out of the leather steering-wheel cover. Great. He was going to need to get a new one when he got back.Ifhe got back.
He took his foot off the brake, crawling forward. It was time to turn around.
Except that apparently it wasn’t.
He came around another corner, still looking for a good place to pull a U-turn, only to come face-to-face with a gigantic unlit sign that read, “NEXT RIGHT FOR THE ALL CURLED UP BED & BREAKFAST!”
A gigantic sigh of relief that he’d found the place welled up in Felix’ chest. The cat shifter took the indicated road, immediately grumbling about the lack of signage between here and the highway.
“Seriously, someone did not think that through,” he complained to Clawson.
The drive up to the inn was extremely twisty-turny, and Felix was glad there was no snow. Despite his Subaru, he wasn’t sure he would have made it up the steep, all dirt road. And there wereno lights. It was black as pitch, if you didn’t count the millions of stars he kept glimpseing through the treetops.
Dark andcold. The temperature must have dropped a good 15 degrees or more between here & his getting off the highway. He shivered & cranked the heat.
Moments later he reached an enormous, circular gravel driveway in front of a very pretty Victorian-style bed & breakfast. A few lights were on here and there at the inn, but overall it was quite unwelcoming with the lack of lighting. Felix was glad his shifter-sight gave him better night vision than a non-shifter human, but still.
“They could have atleastsprung for some motion-sensing ones or something!”
He stopped the car awkwardly, unsure of where to park, before sticking his car just off to the side of the circle, hoping it was out of the way. He jumped, startled as his phone let off about a dozen notification pings all at once.
“Well, at least they have a signal booster!” he said, smiling at Clawson as he reached for his phone. He wondered where Evan was. “Probably got lost like I did…”
Several new texts from his sister & from Evan waited for him. He checked his sister’s texts first; they were less likely to be emotionally-charged. He recognized that this wasn’t exactly a healthy way to think about texts from his boyfriend, but it was what it was.
Blake:Did you make it to the mountains yet, furball?
Felix rolled his eyes, grinning as he texted her back:Nope! Got kidnapped by hillbillies. Being forced to polish their ‘guns’. Send help! Out of lube—I mean, ‘gun oil’!
Blake:Nasty! Don’t put guns in your anus! You can get an infection that way! Did you already run out of penis? I can send you one of mine! You might have to boil it clean first…
Felix coughed a laugh. His sister was crass, but he loved her.
Now who’s the nasty one?He typed back.
What! I just want to make sure you’re getting laid PROPERLY on your vacation! …The symbol appeared for a moment, before another text bubble popped up on the screen.Glad you made it in one piece! Have a good time! Send me pics, but not of your dicks; I don’t want to see those! Gotta run; on stage in 5. KISSES!
Felix chuckled, sending back a string of heart emojis and kissy faces. Blake finished off their convo with her own emoji string: eggplant, splash, peach. Felix rolled his eyes as he climbed out of the car and grabbed his bag out of the back.
He locked the car as he headed up the porch steps to the door. He’d check Evan’s messages as soon as he was inside. It wascoldout here!
A huge set of carved double doors greeted him beneath the covered porch. A hand-painted sign hung off to the side next to what looked like an oversized doorbell, a bell-pull, and some kind of pressure plate?
The sign read: “Ring, stomp, or pull bell for service!”
“Cute,” Felix muttered, ringing the bell.
Nothing happened, though he could hear a mild chiming tone coming from somewhere inside the building. He waited a minute, then frowned, shivering and shifting from foot to foot. He checked the time on his phone; maybe the owner was asleep? No, couldn’t be. It was barely 8:30. Though hewasin the country.
Felix rang the bell one more time and shouted, “Hello?! I have a reservation!”
He waited a moment more, then tested the doorknob. He could atleastwait inside where it was warm, even if it was weird to walk into someone else’s house uninvited.
Not a house, a hotel, he reminded himself.
The door was unlocked and he practically crept through the tunnel-like, heat-saving double-entry into the spacious foyer. A sign near the entry read, “This establishment is shifter-friendly!Please use a changing room on arrival! Clothing can be provided!”
