What’s New Pussycat(20)
Max nudged him with a shoulder. “So, your cat?”
“Her name is Martine. Martine Brooks.”
Max shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and raised an eyebrow. “Really now? So she finally shifted, huh?”
Among other things. “Yes.” His return response was tight.
Max’s eyes scanned his, probing. “So how did the first meeting go? What’s she like? Do you find her attractive?”
“We had sex.”
Boom. There it was. Why bother walking on eggshells? Martine didn’t want anything to do with him other than the mate. He wanted the same, so getting to know his family was a moot point.
Hector pulled his goggles and let them drop around his neck, his hair springing up in wild patches. “Wow, Slick. Did you even get her name first?”
Derrick frowned, not in the mood for a good ribbing. “It had nothing to do with me.”
Max cocked his head, resting an arm on top of the hutch. “Say again?”
“I said I wasn’t the one who made the first move. She was. Came right into my bedroom in the middle of the night and bam. But won’t even acknowledge it today…forget it. I don’t want to disrespect her by talking about it with you two.”
“Ahhhh,” Max said with a grin and another thump on his back.
“Ah, what?”
“Life-mate dream,” both Max and Hector replied in unison before cackling.
“Which means you didn’t really have sex,” Max reminded him with a grin.
Shit. He’d forgotten all about the legend of the life-mate dream. If your life mate were true, she would come to you in a dream.
A dirty one.
He felt less unmemorable now, and that was easing his bruised ego. Still, he called bullshit on the translation. “You two don’t believe that crap, do you?”
Max nodded his head. “I do after JC. I had the life-mate dream the first night I met her.”
Hector pulled one of his bunnies out of the hutch and rubbed its soft fur against his cheek. “You doubt, Neanderthal?”
Yeah. Yeah, he did. He’d had a hot dream about an attractive woman. Happened all the time. “I doubt.”
“Do you doubt that I was at death’s door just before JC came and saved my ass?” Max asked.
Fear washed over him. No. He didn’t doubt that. Not even a little. He’d been there the night of Max’s full-moon mate. To say he’d been worried he was going to lose his big brother was putting it lightly. JC had shown up just in the nick of time.
“Nope. I don’t doubt that. But I’ve got that part of this fucked-up curse all figured out.”
Max crossed his arms over his wide chest and made a face. “Oh, do you now? Share with the class, why don’t you? How did you come upon the answer to the curse? One no one else has ever been able to figure out?”
“To be fair, I didn’t. Martine did. What she said makes sense. She brought up some valid questions. Who says just because we mate, we have to live together? Or even stay in the same vicinity? That’s what we all believe a life mate means, right? Marriage, or our packs variation on the theme. But is that what it means?”
Hector’s mouth fell wide open and he snapped it shut. “I can’t wait to hear the kooky reasoning behind this.”
Derrick shook his head, stroking the ears of the bunny Hector held. “It’s not so kooky, Hector. Look, Martine and I mate on the full moon, right? I live. She goes back to her life. I go back to mine. We never have to see each other again. There’s nothing in the curse that says we do, is there? I’ve never heard a thing about having to play house just because we mated.”
Max pursed his lips, his brow furrowing. “In theory, that makes sense. But I can’t help but wonder if there’s a hitch somewhere. A loophole bigger than any of us has ever seen. I don’t know what it could be, but I bet it damn well exists, and I won’t have you taking risks with your life. I need you as my right-hand man, Derrick. Not gonna lose you.”
Hector pushed his goggles up on top of his nodding head. “Isn’t that always the way with this curse? Something comes back to bite you in the ass. For Max, it was convincing a human he was a werewolf. He was damn close to dying that night because of it, Derrick. Or are you forgetting that the curse was designed to make it nearly impossible for you to mate?”
Derrick felt just a little smug about that. He also felt strangely proud that Martine had found a very plausible solution. “Well, I guess we outsmarted it, didn’t we?”
Hector’s head shook hard in time with his finger. “Naw. Nope-nope. I don’t believe that for a second, Derrick. Not a second. There’s more, and you’re just tempting fate by treating this cavalierly, man. The curse was made to make things hard on you and Max. To take you bitches out and make the Adams clan extinct. Period. Mark my words, there’s more.”