On paper plates.
Though I’d already met several of them, I lingered in the arched entryway for a minute, watching. Trying to decide how—and whether—I fit in. Trying not to be intimidated by the crowd, and by how close they all obviously were.
I’d spent more than two months with the Di Carlos and never felt like I knew a soul, other than Dr. Carver, who only visited to draw my blood.
“Hungry?” a voice asked from my left, and I jumped, startled to find that Drew Borden had snuck up on me. Only he hadn’t really snuck. He’d probably just walked with a cat’s inherent silent grace.
Even in human form, my hearing was excellent when I paid attention to it. But I hadn’t yet mastered the art of listening to my surroundings without conscious effort, something a natural-born shifter never had to learn, as far as I could tell.
But these weren’t natural-born shifters. I was finally among people who truly understood what I’d been through and what still lay ahead. I should have been thrilled for the company—for the commiseration—yet the thought of stepping into Titus’s kitchen made my chest feel tight.
My presence had put them all at risk from the US Prides. They would either hate me for bringing war to their doorstep or be all over me, because I was only the second tabby they’d ever met.
I gave Drew a hesitant smile. “Yeah, I could eat, but…” I let the statement trail off when I realized how pathetic my fear of a hot-or-cold welcome would sound. I’d made my own bed.
Drew smiled. “They don’t bite. Not in human form, anyway.” He’d exchanged last night’s jogging pants for a snug pair of dark jeans, but instead of an enforcer’s typical black tee, he wore a navy polo, which distinguished him from the other enforcers laughing and talking as they put away massive quantities of food. And somehow, Drew wore the minor wardrobe upgrade as if it were a hand-tailored suit.
Still, though I could see in an almost academic way that he was hot as hell, I felt no real attraction to him. So how come every time I got even a whiff of Titus, I wanted to rub myself all over him until we both smelled like each other?
Maybe it was his scent. I’d spent four hours in Titus’s, yet I hadn’t really gotten close enough to the others to notice anything from their scents other than the obvious trace of werecat.
Indulging a sudden impulse, I stood on my toes and pressed my nose against Drew’s neck, inhaling deeply. He smelled good. Clean and masculine. Yet…nothing.
He chuckled. “What was that for?”
I shrugged. “Just testing a theory.” Then I turned to the kitchen and changed the subject while my face flamed. “How long have you known them?” I asked him.
“About a year and a half, for most of them.” His gaze scanned the kitchen, and I could practically smell pride emanating from his pores as he studied his fellow enforcers. “Nearly a decade, for Titus. We met in college. He got me a job at his dad’s company a couple of years before his parents died and he took over the reins.”
“You were friendsbeforeyou were both infected? That’s a hell of a coincidence.”Or maybe not. Being Abby’s friend is what got me infected.
Drew nodded, arms crossed over his polo. “We were actually scratched on the same night, at a work event, and were dragged into this whole shifter thing together. We came up with the idea for a stray territory over fish tacos and imported beer about a year later, and look at it now.” He spread his arms, full of pride for what he and Titus had created, and I couldn’t resist a smile.
“Yeah, you guys are doing good work.” But then I glanced again into the bustling kitchen, and my insides began to twist with nerves.
Drew stepped over the threshold and tugged me along gently by one arm. “Hey!”
All laughter and conversation came to an abrupt halt as everyone turned to look. Abby’s green eyes brightened when she saw me, a bite of whipped cream-covered waffle inches from her mouth.
“For anyone who hasn’t heard, this is Robyn Sheffield. She’ll be staying with us for a couple of weeks, so I want you all to dust off your manners and put them to use. When she goes back to her territory, we’d like her to have only good things to report about the world’s first stray Pride.”
“Does that mean I have to put on a shirt?” the youngest tom in the room asked with a light-hearted grin. He was about my age, with dark brown hair artfully tussled all over his head and the suggestion of a six-pack peeking through the bare, tanned skin above the waist of his jeans.
“It means you have to eat with a fork and pretend there’s a target in the bottom of the toilet bowl, Brandt.” The tom manning a matching set of rotating waffle irons dropped a fork on the younger man’s half-filled plate. Except for his face and the palms of his hands, every visible inch of the cook’s skin was covered in swirling geometric-patterned tattoos, from his neck to a low-hanging pair of jeans. “Hey, Robyn, come grab a plate.”
I dragged my gaze up from the fascinating canvas of his sculpted chest to his face, frowning as I searched my memory. He spoke to me as though we’d met, but I would have remembered those tattoos.
Then I saw his eyes. Brown with a ring of gold around the outside. Just like the cat who’d growled from Titus’s front porch the night before. “Knox?” A single sniff in his direction confirmed my guess. “I didn’t recognize you.” Without fur.
He laughed. “I don’t hear that often. Here.” He held out an empty heavy-duty paper plate, and I took it, grateful to have recognized one more not-unfriendly face. Knox motioned to the rotating waffle iron on the left. “This one will be done in a few sec—”
The waffle iron beeped, and Knox flipped it by the handle, then opened it to reveal a perfectly toasted Belgian waffle. He pried it loose with a plastic spatula, then slid it onto my plate.
“We have butter—whipped or melted—fresh berries, chocolate chips, and chopped bacon,” he said, waving one hand down the long kitchen peninsula at a series of disposable paper bowls and platters. “Also caramelized banana slices, toasted pecans, chocolate and caramel drizzle, and my favorite: homemade whipped cream, in the mixer at the end.”
“Homemade…?” I looked up at him, wide-eyed. “Did you make all this?”
“What, like waffles are so hard?” Drew grinned as he reached around me to sprinkle a heaping spoonful of chopped bacon on his waffle. “The directions are on the back of the box.”
