Page 29 of All for the Beast

“Oh, it’s this game with bingo balls that have numbers on them. Wait, I’ll show you.” She wiped her hands on a wet towelette and looked around the table. “Um, well, I guess I can’t. Hang on.”

She pulled a dry napkin toward her and dipped one finger in the sauce from the embers. “It’s like this.” She drew a grid table on the napkin with the sauce, five squares by five, with numbers in the squares. Some were crossed out, seemingly at random … except for a line of them.

“This is bingo. Someone holds the microphone like an MC and calls out numbers … but in a fun way. And then when someone crosses off all the numbers in a straight line, they call bingo.”

“What do you get for calling bingo?”

“Well, it depends. We could make it something like a gift basket or a personal meal made by the chef. Something like that.”

She pushed the napkin toward Vharlk. He wasn’t looking at the napkin, though. He was looking at her sucking the sauce off her finger.

He shook his head. He could not be so caught up in her that he made her uncomfortable. Fortunately, she did not notice that he stared at her and continued eating her dishes. The staff brought out another round as the ones on the table were almost done.

“So this is the kind of treatment you get, huh?” Katy bit into a cube of garlic bugbear steak.

“Of course. I will ascend to pack leader soon, and it’s only fitting that people treat me with respect.”

“Huh. I wish I had gotten this kind of treatment at home. Really makes you wonder.”

She continued eating with relish. Vharlk was impressed. When she came to his parents’ house for dinner, she had been reserved, almost fearful of the food. Now she tore into it with a hunger worthy of the greatest shifters.

She looked up, catching him staring. “Oh, no. You probably think I’m a pig, eating like this.”

“Pig?” he asked. “Is that a type of person?”

She smiled awkwardly. “You know, messy and gross.”

“I don’t think that at all,” he said to reassure her. “I would never think that. You have a healthy appetite.”

Katy's gaze turned soft, and it seemed like she was reassured. “Thank you. The food is so good. I really should’ve tried it when I met your parents. Sorry for being such an idiot.”

He waved his hand. “You never have to apologize to me.”

Her smile grew more assured. “I have some more things we could do together. For the cruise, I mean.”

Vharlk’s hope that she meant just the two of them dwindled at her correction. “Of course. What are they?”

“Well, we could play more games. Bingo is only one. On Earth, we have board games, things that are played on a collapsible board, often with small tokens and dice.”

Katy moved her hands as she spoke in an animated way, and Vharlk was mesmerized by how her fingers danced through the air. It seemed she was finally coming out of her shell and expressing herself more now that she was sure of herself. Vharlk hoped he helped to make that happen.

“We have this game called Monopoly where you play as little characters like a top hat and a boot. Each person takes turns rolling the die and moving the characters across the board. The whole point is to make enough money to pay rent on each square you land on and outlast the other characters. There’s even a money pot and a jail when you’re unlucky.”

Vharlk laughed. “I love it already.”

“It’s a lot of fun, trust me.”

“I trust you implicitly.”

She blushed at that and lowered her gaze.

“We have something similar: a game called ‘Haircut’ where each person chops off locks of their hair and adds it to a pile. We then battle each other with dice, and the loser has to stick the pile of hair to their face for the rest of the day. It’s a fun, drunk kind of game.”

Katy laughed so hard that she snorted and started choking. Vharlk stood and rushed to her, clasping her hand as she coughed, his heart beating fast and hard in his chest.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she said, reaching for her water. Her coughing subsided after a few seconds but left her looking even redder.

“Do you need anything?”

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