Chapter 41
M arcus
I glare at the cat on the bed, and he responds with a contemptuous look, the tip of his tail swishing back and forth in a silent threat.
“That’s right,” my eyes tell him. “I fucked her all night long, and I will do it again and again. You better get used to it. She’s mine now.”
“I will destroy you,” the slitted green gaze replies. “You’re going to die a slow and painful death under my paws, just like a mouse. Not that I’ve ever seen a real mouse, but still. If I ever get my paws on one, it’s fucked—and so are you.”
“Puffs, get off the clean laundry,” Emma says, reappearing from the bathroom, and I watch with grim satisfaction as she shoos the furry creature off the clothes she’s folding on the bed—a task I’m helping her with.
She was surprised when I offered, but she shouldn’t have been.
There’s no way I would pass up a chance to get my hands on her panties.
Speaking of which, she needs new ones. Along with new clothes in general.
Almost everything she owns is worn out or of poor quality.
My hands practically itch to pick up my phone and place an order at Saks, but I resist the urge.
She won’t accept clothes from me yet, and I have bigger battles to fight.
Like getting her to come back to my place tonight.
“Here, I got this,” she says, grabbing a stack of folded T-shirts from me. She hurries over to the closet and stuffs the clothes inside, then comes back to grab a pile of socks. I let her put away all the folded things while I sort her bras, and before long, we’re done with all the laundry.
“Wow, that was quick,” Emma says, looking around like she expects a stray sock to jump out at her. “I can’t believe we got it done so fast. When I do it alone, it takes me hours .”
“What can I say? I’m good with my hands,” I say with a straight face, and she gives me a dimpled grin.
“You are. Thank you for helping.”
“It was my pleasure.” I mean it too—and not just because I got to handle her underwear without looking like a pervert.
She doesn’t have a washer and dryer in her studio, and the laundromat she uses is three long blocks away.
I have no idea how she’s always dragged her stuff there on her own, but I’m glad I was here to carry the heavy sack for her today.
I’ll have to make sure I’m always with her when she does laundry going forward, or better yet, have Geoffrey do it for her.
At my place.
Where I want her to be all the time.
I’m not quite ready to put a label on that desire yet, but it’s definitely there, and the more I look around her cramped studio, the stronger it gets.
I don’t want her here.
She belongs at home with me.
“Are you hungry?” I ask when she picks up a cat—the mid-sized one, Cottonball—and sits down on the bed to stroke him. “We could grab dinner around here before heading back, or go someplace in Manhattan. Alternatively, if you’re not in the mood to eat out, I can ask Geoffrey to prep us something.”
She blinks up at me as the smallest cat, Queen Elizabeth, jumps up on the bed and joins her purring brother on Emma’s lap. “Heading back? As in, to your place? The two of us?”
“Of course. This bed is too small for us both, don’t you think?
” Not to mention, overrun with cats—the third of which joins her as I speak.
“You can bring an overnight bag if you’d like, so you don’t need to wait for Geoffrey to do laundry in the morning.
Maybe also leave the cats extra food, so we don’t have to come back here tomorrow at all.
You can go to work straight from my place on Monday; I’ll have Wilson drive you there. ”
Her eyes widen more with every word coming out of my mouth, and I know—I fucking know—I’m giving away my hand, but it’s too late to try to be smooth and subtle.
Not that I’ve ever been able to achieve that with her.
When it comes to Emma, my instincts are as primitive as it gets, my need to claim her too powerful to deny.
I want her in my home, at my side, and I can’t pretend otherwise.
“I don’t think I can…” She swallows. “I can’t leave my cats alone for that long.” She’s petting the furry beasts as she says this, and I again feel a strange stab of jealousy.
I want her touching me .
Worrying about me .
“Fine,” I say tightly, pushing down the irrational desire. “Then you’ll come back here tomorrow. I’m sure they’ll be fine until then. You’ve fed them, changed their litter, played with them… What more do they need?”
Three pairs of green eyes narrow at me, as if the cats know what I’m saying, and Emma looks down at them, stroking each one in turn.
“Come here,” she says softly, looking up. “Sit next to me.”
I frown in confusion but approach the bed.
“Sit.” She glances at the spot to the right of her.
I comply gingerly, not wanting to squash a tail or a paw. I may not like her pets, but I don’t want to hurt them.
“Here.” She picks up Cottonball and places him on my lap. “Stroke him like this.” She demonstrates with her own hand, her short, neatly trimmed nails lightly scratching at the fur as she runs her palm from the top of his head to the start of his tail.
I stare at the cat, unable to believe he hasn’t jumped away or scratched me. Instead, he’s staring up at me, as if waiting to see what I’ll do.
Cautiously, I touch him like Emma showed me, running my hand over his back. The fur is ridiculously soft, and I can feel his animal warmth underneath. It’s like having a heating pad on my lap, only an extremely fluffy one.
I try to recall if I’ve ever held a cat like this, but I’m drawing a blank.
Certainly, there were no pets in my childhood—unless I count the stray cats that raided the garbage bins at the apartment complex where we lived when I was six.
For a couple of months, I gave them whatever scraps I could find in our kitchen, but then we got evicted, and I never saw the cats again.
In any case, they’d been feral, too frightened of people to let me pet them.
Afterward, there was a neighbor’s dog—a little one, some kind of mutt.
He was friendly, and I’d definitely petted him and played with him a bunch of times.
In fact, I liked him so much I asked my mother to get a puppy for my seventh birthday.
She laughed and promptly puked into the half-cooked pasta that was supposed to be our dinner, and that was that.
I realized soon after what a huge responsibility a puppy would be, requiring food and money we couldn’t afford to spare, and I stopped wanting one. I also stopped feeding stray cats.
“He likes you.” Emma’s dimples appear as she beams at me, and to my shock, I realize the creature on my lap is purring.
Loudly.
His entire body is vibrating with it, his eyes shut in apparent bliss.
Okay, then. I guess I have not held a cat before, because this is definitely a memorable experience. I must’ve petted at least one cat before this—I vaguely recall a skittish Siamese at a friend’s house in college—but this is something else entirely.
This animal is trusting me.
According to Emma, he likes me.
Carefully, I intensify the pressure, stroking him more firmly, and the purr gets louder, the vibration increasing until I feel like I’m holding a miniature chainsaw.
The cat is clearly enjoying what I’m doing, and I can’t deny that it feels good to run my palm over his soft fur.
Between the purr and the warmth, the sensation is strangely soothing…
almost hypnotic. My phone buzzes in my pocket, but I ignore it, strangely reluctant to let work intrude.
“Love.”
My head snaps up, my entire body locking up as I stare at Emma. “What did you just say?”
“You asked what more they need,” she says quietly, her gray eyes on my face as she continues stroking the two pets on her lap. “And I’m telling you that they need love. Attention. Caring. Same as people.”
Right. Of course.
She’s talking about the cats, not us.
“So I take it you’re not coming home with me,” I say with forced lightness, and she shakes her head.
“I want to, but I can’t. I’m sorry, Marcus.
I can’t leave them alone two nights in a row, especially since I’m going to Florida on Wednesday.
My landlady is going to look after them, but they’ll still be traumatized by my absence.
” She pauses, then adds hesitantly, “Maybe you can stay here with me?”
“All right.” The words escape my mouth before I consciously make the decision. “In that case, I will.”
And as the cat on my lap purrs louder, I take my phone from my pocket and text Geoffrey that I won’t be home for breakfast.