2
“So, have you met the new guy yet?” Oscar asked as he guided Spot up onto Finn’s examination table, petting her head when she lay down cooperatively.
Oscar suspected she was the only animal on the planet wholikedvet visits, but then Finn was gentle and ridiculously good with animals. Maybe she would have been more difficult for someone else.
“Not yet. I missed him yesterday and I haven’t been inside yet today. He’s living in, right?”
“Right, yeah, looks like it,” Oscar said.
He’d been paying a little more attention to Ryan than he should have if he was trying to be professional. The guy was cute, with stormy blue eyes, caramel-blond hair, and a shy little smile giving him all the boy-next-door charm he could want.
Not to mention the fact that he had to be well over six feet tall.
Oscar was weak for tall men, especially the ones who had a little bulk around their shoulders to go with it. Which Ryan definitely had.
The kind of man you could climb like a tree and wrap your legs around while he fucked you against the wall.
He’d… been paying alotmore attention than he should have. That was the opposite of a professional thought.
As long as he didn’t actuallyacton it, though...
“I know he’s May’s nephew, and I heard something about a divorce, I think. I don’t wanna gossip, but…”
“Since when do you not want to gossip?” Oscar asked, grinning at him.
Finn fixed him with a filthy look, but it was true. Nothing happened here without Finn knowing about it. It wasn’t even that he did it on purpose, he just seemed to have a knack for stumbling across things.
“You’re lucky I like you,” he said after a moment.
Oscar figured that was true. Finn was an incredible friend to have.
“Yeah, yeah,” Oscar responded, smoothing down Spot’s whiskers and smiling as she started purring. He loved this ridiculous, overgrown house cat. Her previous owner had treated her poorly, but she didn’t hold it against people. She hadn’t even held it against the guy who’d done it.
People could have learned a lot from Spot.
“Just remember that I saw him first,” he added.
“Are you seriously calling dibs?” Finn asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Absolutely,” Oscar said. “Come on. He’s only meant to be here for a couple of weeks. There isn’ttimeto share.”
Finn snorted. “Do you ever think about anything other than sex?” he asked.
“I think about food sometimes. And naps.”
The eyeroll Finn responded with put him in danger of straining something, but Oscar knew that deep down, Finn loved him. It was kind of a shame that there was really no spark between them.
“So basically you’re a cat,” Finn said, peeling up one side of Spot’s lips to get a look at her teeth.
If Ryan came in here now he probably would have fainted.
Of course, if any normal person was faced with a normal tiger, they’d probably berightto faint. In the wild, humans didn’t have a whole lot of defenses against tigers.
Spot was gentler than even the average tabby, though. Docile and loving and so used to humans by now that she’d never have a hope in the wild, or even in the zoo. For all intents and purposes, shewasjust a big cat.
“There are worse things to be. Cuttlefish, for example.”
“Whatisit with you and sea creatures?” Finn asked. “Like, what did they ever do to you?”
