Chapter 13 Leo
LEO
Was it possible to fall in love with someone in less than a month? More importantly, was it possible for me to fall in love at all?
I didn’t know, but the question had begun to bleed through my mind the more time I spent with Ven.
Everything about her was so… lovely. Enticing. Perfect. Kindness radiated from her, and her dark eyes sparkled with delight whenever I asked her something about the garden. I adored her silliness when she played with her cats. Her figure. Her smile. Everything.
I was so conscious of her when she was around me that there was little room for anything else. And strangely, I didn’t mind.
Which made absolutely no sense.
“Ven, what are you doing?”
She was standing on her kitchen table, the cover to the overhead light in her hand while she reached down for a box of lightbulbs at her feet.
“The light went out,” she said, eyes wide like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t. “Don’t worry, I’m going to clean the table.”
That wasn’t what worried me. Ven was entirely human, and although I was viscerally attracted to how soft she was, if she fell, she could get really hurt.
“Here, let me do that,” I said, closing the distance between us.
Her little laugh was like bells in my head. “I’m already up here, silly. Makes no sense to climb down just for you to climb up.”
“Can I at least give you some stability?”
She shrugged. “Sure, don’t suppose I’d mind. This table is sturdy, but up here it does feel like it wobbles.”
“All right, then.”
I settled my hands on either side of her soft, lovely waist, applying just enough pressure to keep her stable. Almost instantly, my wolf reared his head as if he were summoned by the visceral reaction of my body.
It wasn’t my fault that Ven’s body was the perfect combination of contradictions.
She was so strong. I could see it in her frame, how she held herself, and feel it underneath her soft skin.
But she was also so incredibly fragile. She wouldn’t heal like I would if she fell.
And she was just so perfectly plush. I wanted to sink into her and be surrounded by the luxury of it all, even if it wasn’t something I deserved.
I was so lost in the feel of her, my mind filled with images of bending her over and finding out exactly what it would feel like to have her wrapped around my cock, what kind of dulcet sounds she would make with my lips against her neck, that I almost didn’t hear her speak at all.
“Okay, it’s in. You can let me go.”
I swallowed hard, trying to get my mind and body to veer off the dangerous road it was on. “Right. Of course.”
I was remiss to let her go, my hands desperate to rove over her gorgeous, generous form, but somehow, I restrained myself. Maybe I was more human than I gave myself credit for.
“Thanks,” Ven said, clambering down and giving me an appreciative pat on the shoulder. I knew it was a simple, friendly gesture, but ripples of sensation spread out at her touch. Did she really have no idea what she did to me?
She traipsed off to go be a work of art in another room, leaving me locked in my thoughts once again.
As the days passed, more and more memories came back to me. I had a deep love and loyalty for my pack, even if I couldn’t entirely remember them. I wanted to—oh, how desperately I wanted to—and every day I tried to grasp the ghosts in my memory. They still eluded me.
What I did know, however, was that for the longest time my pack took up all the space in my heart.
I had a duty to them, and I spent my whole life protecting them, providing for them, fighting for them.
There was so much responsibility tied up in things, I didn’t even know if I was capable of something like romance.
Especially with my loved ones lost to the recesses of my own mind.
“Hey, would you mind switching the laundry from the washer to the dryer? My direct deposit just hit, so I’m going to grab another shirt and pants from the thrift store, and some more food.”
“Of course,” I answered, putting my book aside as Ven rushed through the living room/my bedroom.
She was in a hurry, as she often was whenever she was about to leave the house.
I rather enjoyed watching her hop around on one foot while trying to put a sock on.
She could sit down to make the task a lot easier, but I found no reason to tell her that.
Ven did things the way Ven wanted to do things, and who was I to tell her otherwise?
It wasn’t like I was an expert on humanity anyway.
“Is there anything else you need?”
A large part of me hoped there was, if only to make her life easier.
I would be lying if I denied being completely enamored with Ven in every single aspect.
Not just her physical stature, because while I loved that she was tall and muscled, yet still soft (and had belatedly remembered I was very much a thigh and ass man), but her personality, too.
Her compassion. Her intelligence. Even down to the way she talked about her cats and her plants.
I was besotted, yet I was comfortable being that way from afar.
While Ven was endlessly kind to me, I saw it for what it was—her being the sweet soul she was.
Someone like me had no chance with someone like her.
That didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate what time we did have together, even if I didn’t know how long that would last. While I still had so much to remember, enough had come back to me that I could recall things like rent and bills.
Really depressing stuff. Every day I lingered here, I was costing Ven money, hence my desire to try to make up for that in any way possible.
The last thing I wanted to do was to be a burden when she had saved my life.
“Uhm, could you put the dishes away? If that’s not too much trouble?”
It saddened me that she was so reticent to ask for anything. Putting the dishes away was a nothing task, yet she acted as if she were selfish for even daring to request it.
“It’s not too much trouble at all. I’m happy to. Anything else?”
“Uh, no, I think that’s it. I gotta go. Be safe.”
She gave me a little salute, then hurried out. My heart clenched as I watched her go, and I wondered about her life outside of these four walls. Perhaps it was my misconceptions from being a wolf, but she seemed as lonely as I was. Maybe her life in human society wasn’t that fulfilling?
Once I was a bit more caught up with everything it meant to be human again, maybe I’d ask her about it. I still felt like I had a laundry list of questions a million miles long that my brain was still meticulously going through.
I stood there for a long while, completely lost in thought. It wasn’t a rare occurrence lately—I definitely had a lot of thoughts to work through. However, my contemplation was cut off by claws slipping on something a little too smooth, followed by a sharp yowl.
“Hello?” I asked, heading toward the noise. “Are there kitties in here getting into trouble?”
Another yowl answered me as I rounded the corner into the kitchen to see the orange cat, Fork, hanging from the fridge with the leader of their cat colony, Mudpie, sitting atop it, her paw raised as she was about to step down onto Fork’s own paws.
His singular eye was opened wide like he was truly in the climax of a great Shakespearian tragedy.
It reminded me of a movie, but I couldn’t place which one, and Goober’s anxious meow below prompted me to move instead of getting stuck in another recollection loop.
He was pacing back and forth, occasionally standing on his hind legs like he wanted to give Fork a boost back to safety.
But while the gray cat was large, he wasn’t that large, and couldn’t quite reach Fork’s dangling feet.
“Would your mother approve of this?” I asked, looking straight into Mudpie’s bright, yellow eyes. “I’m sure she raised you to have better manners.”
Even though I was a shifter, it wasn’t like I had a special way to communicate with most animals. It didn’t work like that. But Ven spoke to her cats like they understood so often that I assumed they would do the same for me.
And for a moment, Mud Pie did look at me as if she were considering my words. But that lasted only a few seconds before she reared her paw back and skibbity-bapped Fork in the head until he let go and tumbled to the floor.
For some reason, wildebeest came to my mind.
I had no idea why. Probably the root of another phantom memory.
But I knew Ven would be horrified if one of her cats ended up hurt on my watch, so I scooped Fork up to make sure that he was okay.
After a couple of treats, exactly two kisses, and five minutes of being cradled upside down, the orange menace was perfectly fine and raced up the cat tree to give himself a bath.
It was funny. I had almost no memory of interacting with domestic cats before, but I was slowly growing to like the trio of chaotic creatures.
They all had their own distinct personalities, and the hijinks they got into were low stakes but endlessly entertaining.
After everything I’d been through, low stakes was more than welcome.
Also, a regular steak would be welcome. I’d been having more and more memories of cooking red meat on an outdoor fire for some reason, and my body craved it something fierce. However, I got the impression that red meat was expensive, and Ven didn’t have much money as it was, so I wouldn’t ask.
Hmm, maybe there was a way I could get money myself to purchase some? It would be a nice way to thank the woman who had literally changed everything for me.
That seemed like something a book could help me with, so once I was sure the cats were settled, I returned to the living room and dived into some of the nonfiction pages.