“Good.”
For a moment, we just stood there breathing each other’s breath. I wrapped one of his curls around my finger just because I could and relished in our closeness.
“Can’t believe I fucked ya up against the religious texts,” King finally said.
“What?” I pulled back and whipped around to see the poorly arranged books in the case.
They were, in fact, religious texts.
“We are so going to hell.” I groaned and thumped my hand against my forehead.
The sound of King’s deep belly laugh prompted me to spin around again so I could watch him tip that glorious mane of blond waves and curls back, corded throat exposed, face tipped to the sky as he offered his humour to the heavens.
Before he was even done laughing, he looped a long arm around my waist and tugged me into him so that I could feel it vibrate through me.
When he was finished, he looked down at me again, tears of mirth caught in his thick lashes and a lopsided grin in his cheek.
“Hate to break it to you, babe, but I’m thinkin’ that ship sailed when you agreed to fuck your student.”
“King!” I shouted as I shoved at him.
“No denyin’ it.”
“Well…no, but still,” I said primly. “You didn’t have to say it.”
“Love sayin’ it. Love that you came over to the dark side for me. Says a lot about my powers of corruption.”
“It says a lot about my lack of control and your overinflated ego,” I corrected.
“Potato, po-tah-to,” he said with another low laugh. “Point is, you’re mine.”
I sighed as if the idea didn’t delight me. “If I write it on my body, will you stop saying it so much?”
He brightened. “No, but like the idea of that. We’ll go see Nova at Street Ink and get you a nice little tatt right here.” He hooked a finger under my jeans and brushed at the skin near my hip.
A shiver rushed through me before I could curb it.
“It can be your present to me,” King went on as he used that finger to pull me forward and around the corner to the back lounge where a few leather chairs were set up for reading.
“Present?”
“Happy four-year anniversary, babe,” he said with a wink before taking me by the shoulders and swivelling me to face one of the chairs.
In it lay a box filled with a fluffy blue blanket and in the folds of that blanket lay an even fluffier tuft of grey.
“I forgot?” I gasped, momentarily distracted from the box of fluff. “Oh my gosh, King, I’m the worst girlfriend ever.”
He laughed, hands in his pockets as he rocked back onto the heels of his motorcycle boots as he did when he was uncharacteristically shy. “Nah, you got lots goin’ on here at the moment. Honestly, considered not even bringing it up, but then I did that run down to Vancouver the other day and saw this guy…and I knew he was yours the second I saw him at the SPCA. Can’t have a real literary bookshop without one.”
King moved forward to kneel by the chair and burrowed his hands in the blanket to reveal an absolutely tiny like ball of fur.
It was grey with darker striations rippling out from between its big yellow eyes like waves in a pond. The moment it wrapped a little white paw around King’s wrist and looked up at him to meow this little, rusty mewl, I was a goner.
“Oh.” My hands flew to my cheeks to bracket my smiling mouth. “Oh my gosh, King. You got us a cat.”
“Half cat, half shadow,” he grumbled good-naturedly as it meowed at him again and rubbed its little cheek over his knuckles. “Cries for me whenever I leave him alone and followed me around the house this mornin’ like my shadow.”
I bent over to put my nose near his face so he could sniff it delicately and then uncurl a paw to place it on my cheek and kind of pat at me gently.
My eyes were shining when I turned them up to look at King through my lashes. “Shadow seems like a good name then.”
“Welcome to the Garro clan, little Shadow,” I told the cat. “It’s the best freaking family there is.”
Cressida
* * *
I peered at Ares as we waited at the one traffic light leading out of town on Main Street, trying to discern from his usual quiet state how he was feeling after school that day. He was an absolutely beautiful boy, rich brown eyes thickly lashed, a generous mouth, strong jaw, and this tangle of fabulous black hair that spiralled into thick curls and waves. But his beauty didn’t seem to have much bearing on his fellow nine-year-old schoolmates. Instead, they noticed the thickness of his Spanish accent and the unusual, adult-like reserve of his personality. At first, they’d peppered him with questions; where was he from, who were his parents, did he like living with the infamous Garro family? But when he never answered, their curiosity calcified into bitterness, and the bullying began in earnest.