“Don’t.” I rushed to get my phone out, and he carefully dictated his number, three different times and then made me call him for good measure.
Grinning, I stepped back and watched as he padded barefoot out the front door, blinking into the bright sunshine. He didn’t trust me yet, but that was fine. By the end of the week, I wanted to convince him to give me a real kiss. I’d love a hell of a lot more, but I wanted those pretty lips underneath mine more than anything.
I tried to wait around the house, but about ten minutes after Harley left, I got dressed for the day and then set out to the mall. It took about a half hour to get there, and I’d already been in the store for a while, with a pile of toys and other things collected in the red plastic basket I held, by the time Harley walked into the cat aisle. The shelves were tall, taller even than me, but for some reason they seemed to dwarf him more than they should have. Maybe that was because I wanted to think of him as a cat. He looked good in skinny jeans and a pink fitted short-sleeved button-up shirt. He toyed with one of the canary-yellow buttons at his collar. He sent skittering looks around us, clearly not comfortable, but I straightened up and did my best to be his rock as he stepped in close to my side.
Harley sent an assessing gaze down my body, and I got the same impression today I had last night: that he found me painfully underdressed in my black shorts with the rainbow pride roll on one leg, and a plain white T-shirt. He touched my arm and leaned forward a little so he could look into the basket. I turned it toward him. My stomach jerked with a thrill at the small ways he communicated with his body instead of his voice, so unlike most people. There was a sensuality to the way he moved when he did that.
“Hey, pretty Harley.”
His face flushed lightly, a there-and-gone hint of pink that made me want to pet my fingers along his cheeks.
“Can I help you?” came a cheerful call from the end of the aisle, and before I could say anything back, a young guy, probably a high-schooler with a part-time job, sauntered his way toward us with a hopeful shine in his eyes.
“Yes, I have a new kitten,” I said without any hesitation. Harley let out a low, irritated sound and scowled at the kid approaching us. “Be a nice kitty,” I said and held out an arm toward him. He glared at me, but slipped in closer and hid against my side, even going so far as to let me hold him around the waist as the boy stopped near us. True brown eyes, short microbraids, and a cleft chin. Yep, a cutie.
“I’m Dustin,” he said, pointing at his name tag with a flourish. We grinned together, and Harley let out an irritated little huff that had me giving him a squeeze around the middle. “What are you still looking for?”
“Collar.”
Dustin stopped to glance around himself, almost like he was lost in the store too. “Oh, we have some down there,” he said, heading back in the direction he’d come from.
“I saw that, but those won’t fit my kitten.”
“Uh.” He stopped and swung back around toward me. Between his eyebrows a tiny wrinkle of confusion formed. “We have collars in the dog aisle that might fit it, then? What kind of cat do you have?”
“Oh, it’s fairly big. Might be part mountain lion,” I said, keeping a completely straight face. Dustin stared at me. I stared back.
Harley pinched my side so hard I nearly laughed.
The boy nodded fast at me after getting one good look at Harley’s glare, but he had scandalized, rounded eyes now, like he knew I was pulling his leg but wasn’t quite sure how, and waved me to follow him over to the dog aisle, next to this one. I’d already known where everything in this store related to dogs was, so I’d figured that’s where we were headed.
“I like the other pink bowl better. The ceramic one,” Harley said softly as we were walking after Dustin. “The one with the pawprints.” I abruptly turned and jogged back to the bowls, leaving him looking after me. After a quick switcheroo, I hustled back to him and took his hand to drag him along. Dustin was already in the next aisle over, but he smiled at us when we got there.
“Collars,” he said proudly, pointing. Ah, he was adorable. I wanted to pat his head too, but maybe that was because I’d actually played with a pet last night, and not because he was so happily helpful.
“Thanks, this will do it,” I said, and Dustin nodded and took off. Maybe he’d caught on to what was going on more than I thought. I laughed to myself.
“I already have a collar,” Harley snarked, poking in my basket to see what toys I’d tossed in there. He made an interested sound at the fake mouse, but he didn’t seem too amused by the laser pointer. He hid that under the bowl.
“I know.” I’d already spotted one I liked, though—pale pink with sparkly stones set into the leather every quarter inch. And yeah, it was for a dog, but who cared? I picked it up. The idea of putting something on Harley, something I’d bought to mark him as mine, had excited tingles racing over my skin. We barely knew each other, so it was stupid to feel that way, but I wanted to see this on him. I turned and held it up for him to inspect.
“You embarrassed me.” His nose wrinkled, but he nodded, and I dropped the collar into the basket.
“Why?”
“You talked to that… human, about me.”
“He had no clue.” I laughed, but Harley’s body language screamed that he was actually upset. I didn’t know how I’d missed this last night, except maybe he was more comfortable the closer he was to being his cat. Hell, maybe the suit, which was slightly bulkier than what he was wearing now, hid some of the tension in his body. I stroked a hand down his arm, and he watched me do it and then looked up at me. I jolted. He’d taken out his contacts, and his eyes were a deep brown, the kind that faded to a hunter green near the center. They were a human color, but still dazzling. I took a long breath.
“Sorry you were uncomfortable.”
He sighed and stepped away from me. “No… I suspect I’m not very likable as a man, and that’s not me fishing,” he said quickly when I opened my mouth. “It’s just true.”
That pissed me off. I hated the way he looked right now, so unlike that confident kitten who would swat at me and bite me at a moment’s notice, without even a second thought.
“Let me decide what I like,” I said sternly. We eyed each other, then he nodded carefully. I knocked my shoulder against his, and the air leaked out of him in one long, gusty sigh before I got a growl. That had me laughing again.
“Let me take you out, pretty Harley, and you can tell me about Harley the man for an hour, and then you can be Harley cat as much, or as little, as you want for the rest of the day.”
