“Yes, I see them too.” His gaze softened, and that was something else I loved about Cipher. He never denied my feelings or made me feel foolish for having them. He always provided his side of the situation and helped me work through it, even if we didn’t agree.
“I was thinking about something you said,” he continued.
“Uh oh. What?”
“About love being like your favorite song. I want you to know, you can play our song as often as you’d like. You can call on me, Kitten, any time, and I’ll come running. I don’t want to leave you, ever, and I don’t think our love will fade away. I think it will grow stronger because it already has. Every day that I’ve known you, I’ve fallen more in love with you. You’remyfavorite song, my love song.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and blinked back the sudden rush of tenderness. Cipher was rarely sentimental, but when he was, it nearly bowled me over. I opened my arms, and he sauntered over to the bed, ducking his head as if suddenly shy. Grappling him with my arms and legs in a wrestling move my brother taught me, I hugged him tightly and kissed the side of his head while murmuring into his ear, “You’re actually very sweet, aren’t you?”
He chuffed a little laugh. “Don’t tell the others. It would ruin my reputation.”
I kissed his hair, soft as silk, and whispered, “I’ll be your love song, Nikko, and you can be mine.” He sighed and stared at me with what looked like longing in his eyes. “What is it?” I asked, sensing there was more he wanted to say.
He grabbed my face in both hands and said in a voice rough with emotion, “You’re my one and only, Kitten. These feelings I have for you scare the shit out of me. So, please, try not to hurt me.”
I smoothed the hair from his handsome face and touched his strong jaw. “I won’t hurt you, tough guy. I promise.”
SEVEN
CIPHER
I won’t hurt you,tough guy. I promise.
Kitten’s words echoed in my head as we lay together in bed. Even with him right there in my arms, I was lost in the recesses of my own paranoid mind, my fears ranging from all the ways I might fuck this up to all the ways I could lose him.
“This is why I’m so protective of you,” I said, still thinking about some of the claims he’d made the day before. High or not, he’d spoken the truth. “It isn’t because I don’t trust you and it’s not because I want to control you either.”
“Then why?” he asked, staring up at me with his dewdrop eyes.
“Because I’ve lost so much. I couldn’t handle losing you too.”
He nodded and cleared his throat and said with a certainty I didn’t share, “You won’t.”
I hoped not, but feelings changed, circumstances changed, and the only thing that was certain in life was absolutely nothing at all. In the blink of an eye, he could be gone, bitten by a Rabid or snatched up by some nefarious raider. I didn’t like to consider all the dark possibilities, but I just couldn’t help it.
His stomach grumbled–he’d slept through breakfast–and shortly after that we heard the sounds of our roommates returning.
“You want me to go get us some food?” I offered. “Breakfast in bed?”
He turned toward the open window and said, “It’s such a nice day outside.”
“How about a picnic?” I suggested.
He nodded enthusiastically. “First, I gotta go pee and get dressed.”
“I’ll meet you downstairs.” I grabbed my backpack as well as a few of my weapons before heading down. I caught up with the Assholes while stuffing some of Kitten’s favorite foods into my pack. He came down a little while later, wearing a butter yellow t-shirt he’d outgrown a while back and a pair of cut-off shorts that showed off his tanned legs. He smiled at me and the others, a bit shy.
“I hope I didn’t embarrass anyone yesterday,” he said. “Or myself?”
Gizmo was already cloistered in his workshop with Wylie, but the girls shook their heads and Macon said with a laugh, “You were funny as fuck. I should get you high more often.”
“No, you should not,” I said curtly. Slinging my backpack over one shoulder, I guided Kitten out the front door with a brief but pointed, “See you Assholes later.”
On our walk to the woods, I decided to broach the topic that had been on my mind since coming back home yesterday from my contentious visit with Larry to find Kitten laid out on the carpet, tripping balls. “I’d appreciate it next time you plan on doing ‘shrooms or anything else, if you’d give me a heads up.”
“You said you weren’t mad at me,” Kitten said with the trademark jut of his lower lip.
“I’m not mad at you.”
