I take a deep breath, then open my eyes fully. Dennis’s one eye is staring at me.
‘Hello,’ I sign.
He blinks slowly. I swear I remember reading somewhere that a cat’s slow blink is a sign of affection. Or maybe it’s a sign they’re about to murder and eat you. I’m not really sure. This is my first experiencewith a pet.
‘Can you move, please?’ I ask, trying to rub my hand on my chest, but his butt is in the way.
Dennis opens his mouth and yawns directly into my face. His breath smells like fish and ass. Wonderful. He licks his chops, and I can see then he’s missing his left fang. He sure has a sharp fucking bite for a creature without most of its teeth.
Sucking in a breath, I lift my hand and hover it over him. He stares at my face, then glances up at my fingers. His claws sink a bit deeper again, and I suck in a breath, trying not to make a sound.
He won’t hear it, but I know he’ll feel the rumble in my chest.
After a short forever, Dennis’s claws retract, and he lifts his head, bumping his nose against my fingers. I start to pet him between his ears, but I feel the rumble of a growl, so I pull back.
He meets my gaze as he stands on my chest, arches his back, turns to flash his butthole at me, then uses as many claws as possible before he springs from my body to the floor.
Rolling over, I soothe the sting of his so-called affection with the coolness of Dex’s sheets. They’re very silky and soft, and they smell like us, which I love.
Fuck, what a concept, I think as I head for the bathroom.
Us.
Him and me.
Boyfriends, but with the promise of more. Of a future. Of something bright on the horizon that is now eclipsing the melancholy fog I’d been walking through before. I feel odd. Different, in a way. I look at myself in the mirror as I wait for the shower to warm up, but I look exactly the same. Only I know I’m not. It feels like Dex has fundamentally changed who I am as a person, and as much as that should probably piss me off, it doesn’t.
Maybe because he’s the exception to all of my rules. He’s proven to be everything I assumed he wasn’t.
Proof of that is sitting on the kitchen table in boxes because he paid a fuckload of money for doorstep delivery service simply so he could install things in his home that will make me feel safe here.
All of it will remind me I belong. That I don’t have to compromise on everything. That sometimes meeting halfway is good enough.
My throat feels a little tight with emotion, so I hop in the shower and try to scrub it off my skin. I fail miserably as I think about the way he felt last night. The moans he ripped from my chest, the way he made me come so hard I saw double.
My cock is half-hard by the time I’m done soaping up, and while it feels like a shame to wash the scent of him off my skin, his soap clings to me. It’s an odd comfort as I dry off and get dressed.
I have no idea where Dex is, but him not coming in after I got in the shower tells me he’s not here. Normally, after a night like this, I bolt. I did this several times at Robbie’s when he and I were fooling around. I had a key to his place, but I rarely used it. I was gone long before I could feel at home.
Now, there’s no sense of urgency.
Padding into the kitchen to start the coffeepot, I notice a note on the counter in Dex’s neat but scrawling handwriting:
Had an early morning class and a couple of private sessions this afternoon. Stop by if you want, otherwise we can do dinner when I get back after class. Text me when you’re free.
At the end, he attempted a little scribbled ILY sign, and my heart leaps. We haven’t said it yet, and that sign doesn’t always mean the big I Love You.
Even so, those three words are so profound.
A part of me hopes that little scrawl is not his way of saying it for the first time. I want to see the words on his lips, feel the rumble of them in his throat, see the way it falls on his fingers.
And I want to give it back to him in the same way.
I turn to get coffee, then go in search of my phone, which is sitting on the table next to the packages. There are a few texts—none from Dex, but that’s not a surprise since he’ll be busy for a few hours.
One is from my dad though. He and my aunt had gone down to San Francisco for the last two weeks, and I wasn’t expecting him back so soon.
It feels like a lifetime has changed since the last time we talked.
