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“You need fewer hobbies.”

“I only have one.”

I look at him suspiciously. “Harassing me?”

He smiles against my temple. “If that’s what you want to call it.”

He drags the plate in front of me and doesn’t move me off his lap, which is deeply inconvenient, or not.

“Eat.”

I glance back at him. “You’re very bossy, you know.”

“I’ve been told.”

I mutter something vile under my breath and pick up the fork.

The food is absurdly good.

And while I eat, he keeps touching me in all these small ways, brushing my hair back when it falls in my face, kissing my temple.

It makes me feel odd.

At one point, he takes the fork from my hand, cuts something smaller, and lifts it toward me, and I eat it.

When I’m done, he sets the plate aside and just holds me there for a while, one hand rubbing circles into my side through the shirt, the other resting warm at the back of my neck.

I find myself smiling. Then I remember, and I go rigid. I twist around in his lap, staring at him. “W… where is the spider?”

He blinks, then his mouth twitches.

I narrow my eyes. “Don’t—”

A laugh escapes him, and I glare harder because this isn’t funny. This is a matter of survival. Psychological survival, at minimum.

“Kento—”

He’s outright smiling now, the bastard. “The spider.”

“Yes, the spider.” I point toward the hallway. “That eight-legged Satan. Where is it?”

He shifts one hand to my waist more securely when I make to slide off his lap, anchoring me there while amusement darkens his eyes.

“I moved his tank to the guest room.”

I stare at him. “Really?”

“Yes.”

I study his face suspiciously, searching for the point where he admits the abomination is actually still three feet away, silently plotting my death from some shadowy corner.

“You moved him?”

“I did.”

“Voluntarily?”

His brows lift slightly. “Do you think someone forced me?”