“Nope.”
“Can you at least say when that contract will be up?”
“Less than a year.”
“And then what?”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
I wanted to pry more, but I sensed him shutting down to avoid me questioning him. I’d already gotten enough out of him to satisfy my curiosity for now. It was hard, though, not giving in to the temptation and asking him how a man who’d killed for years didn’t think about what he would do when he didn’t have to anymore?
I frowned and looked out the window. Who was to say he would stop? This contract wasn’t the only thing he had going in this business of taking lives.
I shifted my hand away from his thigh, but Sully snagged my hand and placed it back.
“Don’t.” He returned his hand to the steering wheel. “Last night, you said you wanted to play. Talk to me about it.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything. I read up on kitten play this morning before I came over.”
“Oh, and?”
“Seems interesting, but I’m more interested in you and how you got started and why you like it so much.”
“Hmm. Where to begin?” I tapped my mouth with my index finger. “My mom was a veterinarian, so I grew up around animals, but I realized I had a connection with cats. They’re so adorable, carefree, feisty, and yet so sweet. I got my own cat, Purrsy, when I was nine, and I had him for a long time.”
“This is the first time you’ve ever talked about your background.”
I snorted. “Well, I don’t see you volunteering any information about yours either.”
“Keep going.”
Case in point.
“My mom died when I was seventeen.” I curled my hand into a tight fist on his thigh. His came down and covered mine.
“That must have been tough.”
“It was, especially since my father killed her.”
“Shit. Now I understand why you said you never visited him.”
“It happened close to my eighteenth birthday, so they didn’t place me in foster care. I lived with a friend of my mom’s. He taught me about pet play, but he wanted me to be a puppy, and I wanted to be a kitten.”
“Any fool can see that you’re a kitten.”
I beamed a smile at him. “Right? He just never got it. I love how carefree, determined, and silly cats are. When I’m a cat, I feel that way, like the world is my ball of string that I get to pull apart and make sense of. Is that crazy?”
“Of course not. It makes perfect sense.”
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I wasn’t overly fond of school, so I didn’t even think about college or anything like that, but it was okay because Lennie took care of me—as long as I was an obedient puppy.”
“What happened?”
“I stayed with him for almost two years. I played kitty when he wasn’t home, and then I tried to get him to do kitten scenes with me, but he wasn’t interested. The last straw was when Purrsy died. Lennie said it was an accident, but I wasn’t sure, so I left and never looked back.”
“Is that how you ended up on the streets?”