“I think that has a lot to do with Tabby, to be honest,” he admitted. “Yeah, he tended to respond more to his name before that when it was a woman, but he still introduced himself as DB initially. With Tabby, he changed it, so even if a man calls him by his name now, he responds.”
“Cody came home and told us once that he wanted to be called Codalicious because one of the girls had called him it at school.”
Alex burst out laughing. “And did you?”
“Well, seeing as how I call him Cody, what do you think?” I replied drily. “It’s cute for the girls at school to call him—even though I want to turn a fire hose on them for looking at him like that—but for a parent?” I shuddered.
“Fair point.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then I came up with an idea. “I know, tell me something not many people know.”
That would be a good bonding experience, right?
The hand Alex had been trailing up and down my side stilled for a moment while he thought about it.
“In the Texas Penal Code, there’s a section called the Texas Obscenity Statute. It’s against the law to own more than six sex toys or to ‘wholesale promote’ or intend to ‘wholesale promote’ any obscene devices like that.”
I blinked as I stared unseeingly across his chest, trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about.
“In fact, it’s considered a Class C misdemeanor if someone sees your sex toys and is offended or alarmed by them. In 2007, a shop selling some items considered illegal under the Code were confiscated. The clerk on duty at the time was arrested and may have ended up having to register as a sex offender because of it. Fortunately, a District Judge said in 2008 that it was technically unenforceable and unconstitutional, so it’s a gray area now.”
My mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but eventually, I choked out, “I meant something about yourself.”
A bark of laughter burst out of him that almost knocked me away from the position I was in on his chest. “Oh, now that makes more sense. But it’s not a lie—you probably didn’t know about the Statute.”
“No shit,” I wheezed, turning my head to laugh into him.
After we stopped, he turned the tables on me. “Tell me something not many people know about you.”
I liked the way he made it specific when he asked it.
“I’ve got six sex toys in a display on my window sill,” I deadpanned, doing my best not to laugh as I said it.
This time when he laughed, he rolled onto his side and adjusted us so that we were lying front-to-front now. “If you add a seventh to it, I’ll have to arrest you.”
I hummed. “Maybe tomorrow’s Amazon delivery will get lost.”
Shifting my hair away from my face, he tucked it behind my ear. “What’s a secret nobody knows about you, baby?”
I had to think long and hard about it, even though I’d technically been the first one to come up with the question. “I’m kind of boring, to be honest. I was never a wild child, and I never snuck out of the house at night. I never even stole a candy bar from the store.”
“There’s no way you’ve never been embarrassed or done something wrong. No one’s that angelic.”
“I’m not saying I was angelic, but I just don’t have anything huge in my history that’d be interesting.” Then a memory hit me. “Okay, when I was nine, we had a cat called Dunkin because the patches on her fur looked like donuts.”
“Of course they did,” he said sarcastically, grinning down at me. “It wasn’t because you initially thought it was a boy and called it Duncan?”
“No, we legit thought she looked like she had donuts on her fur. Anyway, Dunkin got pregnant and had four kittens, but when I went out to get my bike the next day, I found another three kittens with no mom around next to them.
“I didn’t want them to starve or get eaten by something, and I’d seen one of those animal protection programs the week before where a litter of them had to be euthanized because they were anemic and sick because of fleas and not being fed properly.”
Alex closed his eyes, like he just knew what I’d done.
“So, I picked them up and took them inside for Dunkin to look after, and when my parents asked how there were more kittens, I told them…” God, I was such a loser.
“You told them they’d miscounted, didn’t you?”
“No,” I mumbled. “I told them the extra three had popped out when I’d scratched her stomach to congratulate her.”
“Did your parents fall for it?”
Looking to the side, I ran through it in my mind—i.e., the mind of an adult, versus the gullible kid I’d been back then.