Page 54 of Filthy and the Beast

I suck the back of my teeth. “I don’t know.”

Damian shrugs. “You say that like a man who doesn’t play games, but I know for a fact you play all day with the dogs.”

“Is that the same thing?”

“Not at all,” Nico says with a laugh. “I’m just surprised Damian hasn’t made you play something already.”

“We’ve been busy.” Even though Damian avoids putting a drop of innuendo into his voice, heat flames my face.

I rub the back of my head. I never play games. I just train and compete. But it’s one of Damian’s favorite things, and I want to make a good impression on Nico.

“What kind are we talking about here?”

“Strip poker,” Damian says immediately, and when my jaw drops, Nico laughs.

“He’s teasing,” he says. “We’re playing Wingspan.”

“Wingspan?”

Damian leads us over to the dining room table, where the game is waiting. At first, I think they’re fucking with me. The box is covered in birds. When he opens it, he takes out a birdfeeder, colorful cardboard strips with nature scenes on them, even boxes of tiny eggs.

“Looks fun, right?” Damian asks.

“Sure,” I answer cautiously. “I enjoy birds.”

He knows. He wouldn’t go in my room, but I haven’t left any of my stuff out, so how else could he realize?

Maybe he followed me to the lake. Except Damian wouldn’t. He jokes around and teases me, but he'd never trick me, and he wouldn’t violate my privacy. Somehow, I just know he wouldn’t.

I sit at the table. Damian sits beside me, and Nico across from me.

“What the hell kind of a game is this?” I ask. “There’s not even a board.”

“Think of all the different pieces as the board.” Damian efficiently pulls crap out of the box. “You throw the dice in the birdfeeder. We’ve got our habitats here, our food on these tokens, and of course, the birds themselves.”

He flips cards over from a deck like a Vegas dealer, each one displaying a different species and some icons.

I blink at it all. “What?”

Leaning forward, Nico helps arrange the boxes of tiny eggs. “It will make sense soon. Basically, you spend food to add birds to a habitat. Once there, they lay eggs and find more food and let you draw special cards. We all build our populations, and when the game ends, whoever has the most points wins.”

I rub my forehead. “Sounds complicated.” But my eyes linger on a card with a Mallard.

Such a handsome animal.

Damian pushes my ice cream toward me. “Eat up. We’ll do a practice round and take it slow. And even if you hate the game, I’m going to have so much fun watching you play, the enjoyment will boil over, and you’ll end up liking it, too. Okay?”

I scoop more ice cream into my mouth. “Fine. Show me how to hunt these birds.”

Nico begins to say something, but Damian talks first. He walks me through all the complicated rules with endless patience, doesn’t laugh too much when I get all the pictures confused, and somehow, before I know it, the weird little bird game makes sense.

Kind of.

Several rounds in, I lean forward, still not certain I’m doing it right. “I’m going to put this Pied-billed Grebe on my wetlands,” I say, glancing to Damian to see if that’s right.

“Ohhh,” he hums. “Very good.”

I grunt. “Yes.”

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