Page 3 of I Hate Myself for Loving You
He looked at Bud and chuckled. “You know, I feel lucky here, Bud. I think this just might be it.”
“Ititit!” Bud chirped back, fluttering his multi colored wings from his perch.
“Yeah,” Lassiter said out loud, more to reassure himself than anything else, “it. We’d better hope this is it. We’re running out of options.” His stomach grumbled, making him momentarily forget the shitload of work ahead of him. It was feeding time.
Pausing for a moment, he wondered what Avery would taste like. The creamy arch of her neck against his lips when he…
Rolling his head on his neck to relieve the tension Avery never failed to create, Lassiter ignored the flare up from all points tropical just thinking of her evoked and went to his fridge for nourishment, planning the next day’s dig.
And how to, yet again, outwit, outlast, outrun Avery Palmer.
Chapter Two
Avery cooed at baby Quinn, shoveling another spoonful of goop into his mouth. His gummy smile gave Avery a reason to smile, too, rather than hang onto her anger.
“He’s a messy one, huh?” Derrick Adams remarked while grabbing a roll of paper towels to clean the floor surrounding Quinn’s high chair.
“He’s definitely a team player when it comes to messy,” she giggled, taking some of the paper towels and wiping at her jeans.
Derrick ran a hand over Quinn’s head with fatherly affection. “He gets that from his mother. Have you seen her eat?” he joked.
“I heard that, Derrick Adams, and I’ll have you know, cats are the cleanest creatures on earth. You dogs are another story altogether.” Martine sat on the chair opposite Avery and grinned at Quinn. Tucking her long, graceful legs under her, she folded her hands and placed them on the wooden table. “And even if his eating habits were from me, it’s very obvious, wolf man, his looks are, too.”
Derrick put an arm around his wife’s shoulder and kissed the top of her sleek black head. “Yeah, I guess I have to credit you with those.”
They made a great couple, Derrick and Martine. They were another example of how accepting the Adams pack could be. Baby Quinn was proof that the Adamses were good people. He was, after all, half domestic cat and half werewolf.
Cat-dog, as Martine had explained with a laugh. Little Quinn was the apple of everyone’s eye and certainly would grow up with a healthy attitude toward diversity.
“You’re good at this, Avery. You really ought to have one of your own,” Martine said, taking Quinn from his high chair, bringing him to the sink for a wipe-down.
Hah! At this stage in the game, Immaculate Conception was her only alternative.
Unless her vibrator could father children, Avery was SOL. A twinge of motherly dreams gone astray hit her, but she shrugged it off in favor of being a pseudo aunt and caretaker of stray animals.
“Avery? How did the rumble for wee animals in the jungle slash potential Netflix special go with you and Lassiter today?” JC asked, stirring something that smelled delicious on the stove.
Avery’s snort was derisive. “It went like it always does. He digs. I hurl epithets at him for being an animal killer while he does it. He doesn’t budge, he doesn’t flinch, he just keeps on going. Nothing ruffles that man?—”
“And it’s starting to piss you off, eh?” Max interrupted, kissing JC’s cheek as he cupped her burgeoning belly. “How’s Max junior in there today?”
JC smiled warmly, but reminded him, “We don’t know if it’s a junior or a juniorette, farm boy, and the baby is just fine.”
Though it looked as if JC were due at any moment, her pregnancy wasn’t quite what the alpha Adams, Max, had expected.
In a human pregnancy, JC was but three months along. However, seeing as the sire of this particular offspring was a werewolf and the mother a human, no one knew what to expect. Apparently, each half human, half werewolf pregnancy was different.
“I can tell you this, snookums. It might be a while before I let you knock me up again. I have human friends who were pregnant and they don’t look like this—” she pointed to her belly and snorted, “—when they’re only three months along. What I don’t get is how I feel like I’ve been pregnant forever. It’s the damned pregnancy of the millennium, for gravy’s sake,” she complained.
“It’s sturdy seed I planted, eh, wench?” Max nudged Derrick and snickered like a school boy.
Turning, both hands on her wide hips, JC narrowed her eyes and pointed the spoon she had in her hands at them. “Sturdy my eye, Don Juan. It’s demon seed, buddy, and don’t you forget it. It keeps me up at night. It makes me puke all day long and worse still, it’s given me split ends.” With that, JC trudged off to the freezer, waddling as she went.
“So, Avery? Make any headway with Lassiter today? Or are we still where we were three months ago?” Max asked again.
Sadly, Max’s defeated look made Avery’s daily report even bleaker. “Well, I did call him some new names today, if that means anything.”
“Look, Avery. You’re not getting anywhere here. I feel like we’re just wasting your time, not to mention the time of your organization. I don’t want to give up but Lassiter is shredding our land acre by acre, and neither you nor I appear to deter him.”
