“Nell, sugar, it was amazing. Next time I bring down a deer, I’ll take an extra one and drag it to your door.”
He was talking about bringing me a dead deer during the full moon. In cat form. A deer I’d have to butcher. An act that sounded a lot like a mating ritual for a big-cat. I scowled at him. “No, thank you. I can skin a deer, but it takes all day, working alone, without the proper tools. I got friends I can buy venison from for the cost of the processing. You eat what you kill. Just dispose of the remains in an appropriate location an’ don’t foul my water sources.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Occam said, sounding relaxed and Texan and . . . extremely, extraordinarily manly. Macho even, though I had never, ever used that term to describe a male. The muscles of his arm bunched when he lifted a hand up and shoved two couch pillows behind his head.
Torquil, the white mouser cat with the black helmet-shaped head hair, had settled into his lap. Without looking away from his cell, Occam petted the cat, his fingers long with prominent knuckles. He looked . . . Not kind. Not peaceful. He looked a little dangerous. A predator in his den. Even with a cat on his lap. Jezzie jumped to the sofa back and walked along it, watching cat and werecat with predatory interest. Occam’s blond hair caught the light and his muscles shifted again, just a bit, with the movements of his fingers.
I had a flash of curiosity, about what his fingers might feel like if they touched my skin the way they stroked the cat. I shook the thought away as totally unseemly and unacceptable.
Casually, or as casually as I could manage with the inappropriate thoughts I was having, I walked to the table, looked at the donuts, and asked, “What’s up?”
Occam looked up from his cell and gave me a grin that I could only call rakish. It made me take a breath that was too deep and somehow filled with electricity. I looked at the donut in my hand as he pocketed his cell and rolled up from the couch. He took a step toward me, the cat nestled in his arm. “Nell, sugar, I’ve been patient. I’ve been understanding of our cultural differences.”
“Mmmm,” I said, which meant nothing but was a noise Mama used to make when she was half listening. The donuts were fantastic. I wondered if I would be guilty of the sin of gluttony if I ate one more. And if I should care. I took another.
Occam took another step toward me. “Nell.”
My head came up fast and I forgot all about donuts. There was something in his tone that stole all my interest.
“I’ve given you time to think things through and cement your position in the unit. I’ve done all the things T. Laine and JoJo said a cat needed to do to let you be comfortable with me.”
My eyes went wide. Lainie and Jo had done what?
“But I’m done huntin’. Done stalking. Done being patient. I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again. I want to take you to dinner, Nell, sugar. I want to date you.”
My hand was still holding the donut, paused halfway to my mouth, which hung open. Slowly, I closed my mouth and set the ring of uneaten fried dough on the table. Jezzie bounded across the tops of the furniture to the table and batted the donut to the floor. Pea jumped after it, a neon green flash. I didn’t even care.
“What?” My voice croaked and I cleared my throat, but I didn’t repeat the word.
“I want. To take. You. To dinner,” he repeated, separating the words just enough to make sure that I understood them. “On a date. Casual, easy, something simple but tasty. I was thinking maybe the French Market Crêperie or Chesapeake’s. Tonight. It’s a weeknight so we should be able to get in without reservations on your way to work.”
“I—um. I thought you had changed your mind,” I said, my voice sounding odd as I remembered the two of us, lying on the concrete in the dark, between the planters. He hadn’t said anything then and that would have been a good time to renew a discussion of dating. Or maybe not, with bullets flying. It had been weeks since he’d asked for that date. Was I supposed to bring it up next? Was there a date protocol I didn’t know about?
I remembered his eyes on me from time to time in the office. “Ummm,” I said, my thoughts flashing. What was I supposed to do? “I’m a widd—” I stopped. Remembering my family’s house, the boisterous happiness of domestic clatter. And Benjamin. Suddenly oxygen deprived, I took another breath and this one quaked slightly as it went down. Occam tilted his head, watching me, analyzing me, one hand still soothing Torquil, standing in front of me, otherwise motionless, waiting.
His expression made me analyze myself, my own feelings. I was feeling something. Unfamiliar somethings. Curious. Interested. Resistant. Stubborn. Vulnerable. And suddenly thinking about Benjamin, the man Mama surely wanted me with. And how he would know and understand my odd quirks of reticence, my lack of sophistication. How he would be patient and kind and funny and fit into the old life I had left behind with such ease. How he would never push me. Would keep me sheltered. Protected. In a home on church lands. That wasn’t what I wanted. Benjamin wasn’t what I wanted. But . . . I was aware of who he was and what he represented in terms of safety and effortlessness, of who he was as the man introduced to me by my family. Sam’s friend. Someone I had met from the past. Someone who represented familiarity and simplicity. Someone easy. Someone safe.
Occam represented something totally different. A date. A future that was absolutely unknown. And he had taken advice from T. Laine and JoJo to back off and give me time. Time I thought meant he wasn’t interested anymore. That had probably been the wrong advice.
“Nell, sugar?”
I blinked and my eyes burned. I’d been staring so long they had dried out. Beside Occam on the reading table was a library book that had been there over a week. There was a thin layer of dust on top. It had been suggested to me by Kristy, a librarian and my friend. It was a book by a psychologist and it dealt with victims of polygamy, incest, child marriage, sexual slavery, and rape. It was hard reading. I hadn’t gotten very far in it. But I had learned that abuse victims often formed negative patterns of thinking and feeling and living, and could sometimes be lured back to what the author called “unhealthy lifestyles and situations.” I blinked again. That was why I was thinking about Benjamin.
“Ohhh,” I said. From a strictly intellectual standpoint, I understood that my own confusion and reticence to fully enter the nonchurch world was pattern based, but that didn’t make the patterns go away.
“Ohhh,” I said again. “Ummm.” This time I cleared my voice. “A date? You sure? Like normal people?”
“Nell, sugar, you and me, we ain’t normal. We’re paranormal. Übernormal.”
“You and me? What’s Pea say?”
He pointed. “She’s right there. Ask her.”
I looked at the grindylow, who had finished off the donut. She leaped to the tabletop and bounded to the Krispy Kreme box. Her five-fingered hands, vaguely raccoon-shaped but with opposable thumbs, struggled to open the box top. “Donuts are bad for you,” I said.
The grindy chittered at me, sounding as if she was telling me to mind my own business. She pushed the top up. With one hand-paw, she scratched the sugar from the edge of the box and lifted it to her mouth, where she licked it off. Her tongue wasn’t red. It was an odd shade of green. Had it been that color before?
“Is it okay for me to date Occam?” I asked her. At the words a hot blush shot through me. “Would I get the were-taint if we . . .” I swallowed, not able to say the sex word. “. . . dated?”
Pea looked me straight in the eyes and chittered. She abandoned the donut box and trotted to me, where she stood on her hind legs and stretched up with her front hands. I took her up in my arms and she sniffed my mouth, around under my ears on both sides, and up under my hair, where the leaves grew when I read the land. Her fur tickled; her nose was damp and cold. She made odd, high-pitched mewls and moans that might have been some kind of language. She spun in my arms and leaped across to Occam, covering far more distance than her limbs and build suggested she could. She scampered up Occam’s chest, shoving Torquil off her perch, and sat on the werecat’s arm, nose to nose. She chittered again, and then leaped back to the table, giving her total concentration to the donut box and its sweet contents. She extended a single steel claw and speared a donut, pulling it out onto the tabletop, where she bit into the sugary dough, leaving a narrow, V-shaped, toothy bite. Ignoring us. Leaving us to . . . what?
When I looked up from the table, Occam had moved. Silent. Predatory. He stood in front of me, far enough away for me not to feel like prey. But close enough to feel the heat of his body. Far too close. I raised my eyes from his chest, slowly, to his face. His lips were laughing and challenging, a hint of cat-gold in the depths of his eyes. His voice a purr of sound, Occam said, “Pea says you can’t get were-taint if we . . . dated,” Occam said.
A funny feeling sat on my chest, like an electric elephant, charged and heavy. The feeling began to spread out and up. And raced to my fingertips in a tingling uncertainty.
Occam moved closer. “Nell, sugar. I aim to kiss you now.” He leaned in, slowly. One hand came up, even more slowly, as if he thought I might break and run. He placed the hand on my cheek, the body heat of the werecat warm. His hand was smooth, skin over bone with strong knuckles. His fingers caressed from the corner of my eye down. Across my jaw.
His eyes held mine. So close I could see the specks of gold and brown in his amber eyes. His breath feathered across my face, smelling of the sweetness of donuts. He moved closer. Closer still. His lips were almost touching mine. Almost. Not quite. He smiled slightly. “Nell, you act like you never been kissed before.”
“I ain’t—I haven’t. Not like . . . Not like this.”
Occam’s pupils widened a little. Shock traveled through his body and hand to me.
I said, “John pretty much took what he wanted. He wasn’t mean. He jist—just—wasn’t kind or gentle.”
“Hell, Nell.” Occam’s eyes darkened. “You never been romanced?”
I thought about the other books I had read. Romance novels. Books filled with passion. With need. With sex that both partners wanted. And I thought about Yummy and her interest in Occam. “No.”
“Ohhh. Sugar.” His hand slid around my head, to my nape. His palm cupped my head. Carefully, he stood so his body didn’t touch me. His lips lowered the fraction of an inch. Touched mine. Warm, gentle. They slid across my mouth. Heated. Not chapped. Not demanding. Not hard.
I smiled against his mouth. And leaned in to the kiss. Something like electricity leaped from Occam to me. Electric heat spun through me. Down my limbs to my toes and my fingertips. Like a flurry of snow caught in a whirlwind, if snow were made of sparks. Back up to my belly, where the warmth and charged flurries pooled, low down.
I breathed out a sound I didn’t know I was going to make, half moan, half surprised pleasure. Occam’s other hand caught my face, holding me tenderly between his cupped palms. His thumbs caressed both cheeks. I closed my eyes. His tongue licked across my lips. My mouth opened and his tongue slid along and inside my lips, across my teeth.