Page 14 of Star-Crossed
But alas, the camping crew planned to be far enough out there to be off grid. No social media. No emails. No phone calls.
No thank you.
They’d invited Lyra along, but she’d not only declined to be the fifth wheel, but also refused to break her personal creed of never having to squat to pee where any old night creature could bite her on the ass.
Now she had regrets.
Maybe she could get a broom or something? Poke the cat until it got irritated enough to climb down?
But the danger remained: what if the dumb, furry fucker fell?
Didn’t cats land on their feet, like, 98.5 percent of the time? Or was that a myth? At this point, all her cat knowledge came from clickbait articles she hadn’t meant to read.
Climbing the tree was out of the question—she had no idea how to do that without ending up stuck herself.
“Come on, man,” she called to Larry, hands out in supplication. “If you can just shimmy back down the trunk, we’ll get you inside, and I promise I won’t even be mad. I’ll feed you until you look like Jabba the Hut. I swear.” She fanned her hand over the tuna just in case he’d gotten hungrier over the past couple of minutes.
Larry stared at her, his round body quivering as he dug his claws into the branch.
“Clearly, you’re not the negotiating type,” Lyra muttered, rubbing her temples in frustration. The absurdity of the situation threatened to push her over the edge, but her desperation to see all four of Larry’s paws on safe ground had her thinking crazy thoughts.
“Fuck you, Larry,” she finally said, sizing up the tree and wondering what twisted fate had led her to this bizarre moment in life. “Fuck you for making me do this.”
She stared at her phone for a couple of seconds before she jabbed the call button and pressed the phone to her ear, waiting.
On the third ring, a sleepy voice answered. “Lyra? What’s wrong?”
She took a deep breath, actively hating that she was past the point of no return. “I need your help.”
* * *
Cy Forrester arrivedin his work truck within minutes looking thoroughly disheveled. He moved with an odd paradox of grace, though his steps against the stairs were uneven. His movements were clean and powerful, not unlike that of a cat, his muscles flexing in a tight shirt.
Lyra noticed something she’d pretended not to see earlier. After seven years Cy was handsome as ever, but there was something in the set of his jaw, a tightness in his eyes, that didn’t exist before.
He’d always been a tall and fit athlete, but now his body was even more defined. Thick bones, weathered hands, deep chest…
Every flex beneath his ochre skin was like an electric pulse to Lyra’s senses. She bit her lip, averting her gaze as he crested the stairs.
“All right, where’s the troublemaker?” he asked, strolling into the apartment as if he’d been there before.
Maybe he had. Gemma was friends with everyone and anyone in Townsend Harbor, and the Forresters were obviously as local as a family could get.
As in…pre-colonialization local.
Lyra pointed up at the tree branch. “I tried everything, but…” She trailed off, cheeks suddenly heating when they both noticed she was wearing little more than cheeky boy shorts and no bra beneath her sleep tank. In the middle of the night in a chilly windstorm.
Turning away so her high beams were pointed in another direction, she cursed the pleasant tightening of her nipples that triggered a similar response south of her bellybutton.
When she glanced back guiltily, Cy flashed her a lopsided grin that turned her lady parts liquid. “Not much of a tree climber, huh?”
“Obviously. Could you please just get him down?” Lyra grumbled. “Don’t you have some kind of tool for this?”
Fuck. She didn’t want to think about his tool. Er, him using tools.
Also, his scent was warm and woodsy, with the lingering odor of summer rainstorms and fresh cedar. His skin emanated a gentle warmth that made her almost reach out to rest her chilly hands on his forearms.
He needed to leave ASA-F-P.
