“Does your bumbling-idiot routine work?”
“Uh, what do you mean?” I gestured with my beer, the last of the dregs at the bottom sloshing around.
“Does coming on like a helpful goof get you laid a lot?”
“Uh, well, you know… not really.” I shrugged and grinned. “I rely on my studly face for that.” I tapped my cheek.
He raised his eyes from the bar to me and his mouth curled in a quiet disdain that hit me in an unpleasantly emotional way. Nothing much usually got to me, life was short after all, but his aloofness had me turning toward him, curious in spite of myself.
The bartender came to a stop in front of him, and the pup ordered a cosmopolitan before the bartender could get a word in—a drink I didn’t think I’d ever actually seen ordered outside of a movie. Maybe I didn’t hang out with classy enough people. As I stood there, torn between taking my dismissal for what it obviously was and maybe trying again to spark up a conversation, the pup undid his tie until it was halfway loosened. I tried really hard to think of something else to say to him, but before I could manage, he sighed and turned toward me.
“ What is it that you want?”
“Maybe, after you finish your drink, we could go play?” I nodded toward the play area and took a nervous gulp of my beer, which only made me look dumber because it was almost gone. There were more people out there now than a few minutes ago, though I wasn’t as entranced as I had been earlier. There was someone more mesmerizing right in front of me. The carbonation from my beer tingled the back of my nose while I waited for him to respond. Several emotions flashed across his face, and he settled on irate. His lip curled in a snarl, and I firmed up my stance. Fear led to being bitten.
“I don’t play with dogs.” He sniffed and turned back to the bar.
“You don’t?”
He lowered his head and unbuttoned his black shirt. When he had the last button open, he turned toward me. I laughed at the cropped T-shirt underneath the fancy button-down. Daddy’s Little Kitten was scrawled across the front. He sniffed, as if that was that. The flash of his stomach, flat but not too muscled, just perfect for petting and stroking, had my dick tingling and plumping in my shorts. How this man, almost completely dressed, got more of a reaction out of me than the pups over there playing, I wasn’t sure, but why fight it?
“I’ve never played with a cat before.”
“Lucky for the cats.” He turned back toward the bar.
“I bet tugging a string would be as fun as tossing a ball.” Fresh excitement swooped in on me when he sniffed and tipped his head up to stare at the ceiling.
“Scratching your eyes out would be more fun.” His words were snipped, and I laughed, amused, but admitted my defeat. He ducked his head and his jaw tightened, almost like he was… nervous? Was he a newbie? He really was beautiful.
“Guess cats are more into napping, huh? They don’t play? That’s too bad.” Bouncing on the balls of my feet, I looked around at the rapidly growing crowd, but my eyes kept making their way back to him. He was the hottest man in the room, and that really sucked because he’d already decided I was dirt.
“Well, I’m bothering you. I’m just going to… yeah,” I said and laughed, turning to head toward the center where the pups played. I’d never wanted a cat before, and this one clearly hated me, so maybe that was okay.
I stood around for a while watching the other people have fun with their pups, but that just sort of bummed me out. Quick glances toward the bar let me know that the kitten— not a pup —hadn’t moved from his spot. His shoulders hunched farther the longer I watched him, almost like he was getting ready to run and hide. Maybe he was a feral cat?
At the bar, a brave man moved in to talk to the kitty, who still hadn’t taken his outer layers off yet. He scowled harder at the new man than he had at me, though. The guy touched kitty’s hand, and kitty flinched rather than going after him with a swat the way he had me. I didn’t like the way kitty curved his body away from the guy, and I wasn’t sure what I thought I was going to do when I got there, but I started meandering back their direction. I was tapping Mr. Kitty Cat’s shoulder and staring into his distressed blue eyes when a crack of thunder so loud it could be heard over the music boomed through the building. The walls rattled, the speakers fizzled with fuzzy noise, and then the lights cut out. A hand clamped onto mine, fingernails digging into my skin.
“You’re okay,” I murmured into the abrupt silence that descended over everything.
His grumbled “damn it” was loud and clear before the room burst with chaotic calls from people trying to find one another and cell phone flashlights flaring to life to cut the darkness.
2
Ididn’t know what I was thinking coming to this party. The majority of people here were after the mutts, not a classy kitten like myself. I didn’t understand the appeal, with their overzealous personalities and attention-seeking antics. That kind of thing was overdone, annoying, and being in the same room as dogs made my skin prickle and hair stand on end. I didn’t hate them, but I didn’t like them, either.
I’d forced myself to come, hoping that maybe I’d find an owner, someone who liked the quieter kind of pet. It’d been stupid now that I thought about it, but over these last few months, I’d been on the edge of insanity, strung so tightly I was about to snap. Work had been more stressful than usual, with Lewis on my back about putting together numbers and statistics for the latest flood of investment-property insurance applications, as though I could do it in the blink of an eye. I took my work seriously and wasn’t going to say yes or no to an applicant without thoroughly revising the numbers and probabilities of them needing to cash in on the insurance, should our company choose to issue them a policy. Being an actuary wasn’t easy work and it left me drained, tired, and needing release, which meant giving up my control.
However, men like the ones in this room didn’t have what I needed. They never did. Dog owners wanted something entirely different than what I could give them. Except this one guy. He didn’t seem to understand I had no interest in someone who’d never played with a cat before, but he kept coming back, and right now I was glad he had. With the flicker of electricity cutting out the lights, I was left in the darkness, something I’d always hated, ever since I was a kid and my grandmother locked me in a dark room to teach me a lesson.
I grabbed at his hand, holding tightly, even as the flashlights of phones went on. He crowded closer to me, the scent of his body a mixture of cologne and natural sweat that almost had me purring. There was something comforting about the heat he radiated, and I snuggled up closer to him. He patted my head again, but this time he wasn’t as rough, merely a palm sliding across my hair gently and with reassurance. That simple physical act melted my anxiety away, along with the stress of work, as though it was water filtering out of me through a sieve.
There was noise somewhere near the front of the room and flashlights centered on a man with stark white hair and dark roots standing near the front. He was handsome, in a unique sort of way, with an array of colorful tattoos that traveled up his neck and along his arms. He had a sleeve of ink as well, like the man beside me.
My gaze slid down his right arm, but it was too dark to really take in the artwork. This was a strange guy, I could tell immediately, and while that originally had irked me, now I was intrigued. I hadn’t seen anyone else wearing a baseball uniform with the words The Mighty Unicorns emblazoned across the white cotton in sequined lettering. But the letters were shiny, and I reached over to slide the pad of my forefinger across the U . He startled, glancing to me from the play area, where a man had started speaking about getting the power back on.
“You like it?” He grinned and flashed me his pearly whites. He had a nice smile. Bright. Happy. Genuine.
“It’s shiny,” I whispered, unable to look away from the glinting words. “Is it a baseball team?”
