Page 26

Somehow, I got used to it. I even started to like it. It’s a perk of being a cat mama, and though I never expected I’d be one of those pet parents that doted on their babies—even if mine is an eighteen-pound chonk—I knew from some of the locals like Dr. Anderson and Bonnie, plus Cookie over at the Shadowvale Diner, that Mr. Whiskers had been one of the neighborhood strays for years; I figured he was part of the TNR program obviously considering his troublepuffs were gone, but he was always known to be an outdoor cat. He basically owned these streets, the nearby rats quaking in fear whenever he went on patrol, but after he hurt his paw… it was time he had a spoiled retirement.

At least, until I had the weirdest nightmare that Mr. Whiskers really is a gorgeous blond witch—no, warlock, he’s a warlock—who can only appear as a man and not a cat one day of the year: Halloween. And it was supposed to be a nightmare. Or a dream. Whatever. It wasn’t supposed to have been real, otherwise I’d have to come to terms with a few horrifying thoughts.

Like how magic is real, and I’m one of the clueless humans left out of the loop.

Like how he seems to think that I’m the one true love—the ‘mate’—that he’s waited forty years for, all while spending nearly every day in the form of a cat.

Oh, and like how, as said cat, I had no problem hopping off the pot to let him in, which means that I peed in front of him, got naked in front of him, probably even picked my nose in front of him because Mr. Whiskers is supposed to be my cat and not a potential boyfriend…

And that’s why, the moment I come to because my phone is beeping away somewhere in this room, I know that something is wrong.

For one thing, Mr. Whiskers usually sleeps at the bottom of my bed, though when he’s feeling clingy, I wake up to a cat butt on my pillow. He’s never managed to wrap a fluffy arm around my waist before. Since he’s a cat, he’s never had his broad chest pressed against my back, a warm breath tickling the shell of my ear, or a very human leg tangled between mine while I slept.

And he’s definitely never had a very human erection pressing against my ass…

My eyes snap open.

Oh.

Oh, no.

For a few glorious seconds after I became conscious, I didn’t really remember. Half asleep, I was warm and comfortable, and there was something undeniably nice about being held after going so long without it. I even snuggled backward, half-asleep and shamelessly enjoying the hard body curled around mine.

Then the hard body got a little harder and⁠—

Mr. Whiskers.

I’m in bed with Mr. Whiskers.

Except he’s not Mr. Whiskers right now. He’s Vincent Morrow, a thirty-one-year-old warlock who was cursed to be a cat in 1987, and who seems to think that I’m his fated mate.

Because magic is real, and warlocks are real, and my cat is a man who was supposed to sleep on the couch but, look at that, he’s found his way into my bed just like the real Mr. Whiskers.

I stare straight ahead at one of my bedroom walls, afraid that if I shift or wiggle or move at all, I’m going to discover something else I’m not emotionally prepared to deal with before I’ve had my morning coffee. On the plus side, we’re both dressed. I’m still wearing the pajama pants and T-shirt I had on last night, and I can feel the denim of Vincent’s jeans against my bare ankle.

That’s good. If he was naked again, I might just get that knife again and start swinging before he could use magic to take it from me again. But he’s dressed, and I’m glad, though I have to ask: how the hell did he get in here?

I think back to last night. I told him to sleep on the couch. I absolutely remember doing that. I remember shutting my bedroom door after him, too.

I just didn’t lock it.

Despite my grand plan to do exactly that, I stood there for a good minute after Vincent walked away before deciding there was no point. If he really is Mr. Whiskers, a locked door has never stopped him from making his displeasures known. I figured I had two choices: leave it unlocked and trust that he would listen to me, or lock it and risk waking up to knocking, scratching, or whatever a stubborn warlock with a cat’s hatred of closed doors would come up with.

I should’ve expected there to be a third option. Why wouldn’t he decide that an unlocked door was an invitation?

That’s just like a cat.

To add insult to injury, behind me, Vincent makes a low, satisfied sound. It’s not quite a purr—not like that sound I heard from him last night—but it’s close enough that I can’t help but look at the situation with the clarity of it not being midnight and think that, as insane as this situation is, I think… I think it’s real.

There’s a man in my bed who shouldn’t be, and a cat that won’t be himself until tomorrow, and what the hell does that mean for me when Mr. Whiskers is Mr. Whiskers but I know what he looks like as a man?

A naked man?

No. Bad Kate. Don’t think about Vincent wearing the tiny dish towel around his tapered waist. Think about how he thinks that sleeping with you is the answer to his curse, and while I’ve been known to have a few one-night stands during my wilder days when I was in my early twenties, my biggest fear was being reckless and getting an STI. Sex with Vincent? That comes with something called a ‘mate bond’.

And while I’m not quite sure what that entails, the fact that he thinks that a pity fuck would mean he’s Mr. Kate Bellamy… yeah. I would hate to say goodbye to Mr. Whiskers, but if sleeping with Vincent means I break his curse and he can be human again, I might take one for the team. He’s good-looking enough that it wouldn’t be a hardship, and I’ve had sex for less. But if it means that, by sleeping with him, I’m stuck with him… Sorry. I’m not signing up for ’til death do us part with a man I just met who used to be my pet.

Then again, Vincent could be an absolute loon, using this exact scenario every Halloween to convince lonely women to fuck him to ‘save him from his curse’. Not saying he doesn’t have magic. He obviously does. Not saying he isn’t Mr. Whiskers, either. I know it sounds crazy, but he knows too much about me and my habits not to be the human form of my cat. Add in the fact that I found him naked in my kitchen and none of the alarms on my doors ever were tripped and… yeah.