Let’s just say both have left me traumatized.
“Oh, come on, she doesn’t bite,” she teases, bridging the gap between us. Both of them gaze at me earnestly. “Pretty sure she hasn’t grown teeth yet. Pihu is super friendly.”
I eye the creature, who has moved on to burying her face between her breasts. “She looks content where she is.”
“Stop acting like a baby.” Lifting the kitten off her, who makes a noise of displeasure, Arya holds her out for me. “Gently. Don’t squeeze her too hard.”
“I think I can manage to hold a cat, Ari.”
“You have big hands, Nathan,” she retorts. “You could crush her.”
“Noticed, did you?”
“You always have a sexual response ready, don’t you?”
I graze my knuckle across her left cheekbone, dark in a pretty shade of pink. “I can’t resist when you blush like this.”
Staring into my eyes for a beat with mischief glittering in her brown eyes, she lowers it to her cat twisting and turning in my hand. “See, she likes you.”
I peer down, meeting the kitten’s piercing gaze. I caress behind her ear, making her mewl in delight and lean her face into my palm.
“Say hi.”
“Not gonna happen, angel,” I utter dryly. The kitten flicks the row of buttons on my silk shirt.
“You hurt her feelings.”
“Funny.” Tightening my hold when she tries to slip from my grasp, I ask, “How many months old is she?”
She’s too freaking small and lightweight as a cotton ball.
“Three,” Arya answers, her voice taking a sad quality. “I almost ran her over with my car in my office parking lot. I think she was meant to come into my life.”
She adopted a stray cat.
Just when I think she couldn’t have a purer soul.
“Is she your first pet?”
“Yeah.” Caressing Pihu, she shares, “I always thought I’d get a dog. My parents definitely wouldn’t have allowed a cat.”
“Why?”
“It’s said that a dog keeps the family together, while raising a cat causes fights, and would love watching the family tear apart because they’re selfish and want all the attention on them. It’s a silly superstition my mother wholeheartedly believes in.” Huffing a pained laugh, she says almost to herself, “In the end, it didn’t matter since our family is broken.”
“People always look for others to blame rather than accept their faults.”
Her soft eyes clash with mine, searching for a deeper meaning behind my statement.
It’s futile.
My closest friends haven’t seen the demons I hide.
Neither will she.
“Didn’t you have to feed her?” I remind her, severing the tension.
She clears her throat, inching back slightly. “Yeah. Let me take her.”
