Page 15 of Hate To Love You

“Mushroom House Manager, turn on the lights!” The house is really good at following my commands, and all the lights in the whole place go on at once. I like that it doesn’t ask me if I just meant the hall light or what. Even my AI house software knows this is an emergency.

“Ahh!” Patience shoves away from me. Her face is all twisted up, and her eyes are huge and exceptionally green. They look like they’re going to pop out of her head. She could probably use them as weapons against the animal invader.

God, what a thought. I don’t think they’d be very effective weapons. Also…gruesome.

The screams go silent. The house is silent. Maybe the lights going on scared the creature. But there’s still a wild animal in here. Patience is here, and I can keep her safe by putting myself between her and whatever is in here with us, but where’s Bitty Kitty? I have to find her and make sure she’s okay.

“Where the hell are your clothes?”

Shit. Oh, shit. All the shit.

I have this thing where I just can’t sleep in clothes, especially not in the summer. I don’t know what it is. I just find it so restricting. Gotch in the summer becomes sweaty easily, and they make the balls itch. Ball itch isn’t fun. Going commando between the sheets is a nice relief, especially since no one wants itchy, rashy, sweaty junk.

But it would have been great if I’d thought to throw on some underwear before I went racing out of my room.

I quickly throw my hands over my package.

Patience is a fast thinker too. She rips off her pajama pants, leaving herself in a long T-shirt that goes almost all the way to her knees—it has a dancing corn on the cob on the front—and a pair of panties. I saw them. They’re pink and flowery.

Her pants whip me across the face like a bitch slap that tells me to get my shit together. I forget myself completely, being so darn flustered now that I’m out of control, and try and put her pants on. They don’t fit. But I don’t realize they really don’t fit, so I keep going. Suddenly, there’s a ripping sound nearly as loud as the beast that’s in the house.

I meet Patience’s eyes, and she stares at me blankly like she can’t believe I’m so dense for trying to fit in her clothes.

My brain catches up fast, and while my face goes scarlet, and her eyes rake over my body, including my junk, and quickly dart away like it was just an involuntary reflex, I fashioned the scraps of her pants around my waist like a pair of um…improvised gotch. Good enough. I tie them to one side. They’ll hold together, and they’ll hold everything in.

Now I’m free to hunt the panther down.

“I think we should call the cops,” Patience hisses. “Whatever it is, it sounds dangerous. And it’s not okay that it’s inside. It could kill us.”

Yeah, that’s probably a better plan than me trying to shoo it out the front door. If not the cops, then some conservation something or other. But now, right now, where the heck did I put my phone?

I throw both hands on Patience’s shoulders and wheel her around toward my room. I’m going to barricade her in the closet. That’s probably the safest option. Then, I’ll shut the door behind me after. She’ll be okay in my room. She’s shocked, so she stumbles, but I catch her, and her bottom bumps up against my very thinly clad crotch.

She gasps. I gasp.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!

A black whirr goes flying past our faces. Patience screams, throws her hands over her head, and hits the floor. I duck but whirl around since I have pretty good reflexes. I still work out. Hard. I still train like I’m competing for something, even though I’m not. Old habits die hard, and these always made me feel really good physically. I do it now because I like it, not because I have to. I still swim in the morning and evening. And sometimes the afternoon, too, if I’m into it. The pool here is salt water, so it doesn’t bother my skin the same way some chemicals would.

The black thing bumps into the wall at the end of the hallway and wheels around, flapping hard.

It’s not a bat but a bird. A blackbird. Screaming its head off about being trapped inside.

“It’s just a bird,” I yelp, so relieved that I could pee my pants. Or rather, Patience’s pants?

“Get it awayyyyyyyy!” she wails back. She’s still on the ground with her hands covering her head.

“I will. I’ll get it out of the house. Poor thing.”

“Why does it sound like it’s got the devil in it?”

“I’m not sure. Probably most birds sound that way in a confined space. They usually caw or cackle anyway.”

“Please, get it out! It makes my blood run cold hearing it,” Patience pleads.

It’s ten hot shades of terrible, that’s for sure.

I take one step, and Patience screams, “Look out!” She dives at me. I don’t know if she’s trying to save me or the bird. I just see a blur, and then there’s the hard smack of Patience making contact—her body against mine, soft, warm skin, the press of her breasts, her arms thrown around me. I think she was trying to take me down to the floor in a tackle. Except she’s small while I’m not. She presses up against me for a hot second, and then there’s an instant of rebound. It’s like she’s running straight into a concrete pillar. I put my arm out, grasp her around the shoulder as she’s floundering, and keep her upright. My hand grazes along her arm, where I feel more soft skin, and a few wisps of the softest hair brush down the side of my bare arm. I’m still holding my makeshift bottoms with one hand while the other tingles from the graze of the only woman I’ve ever longed for.

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