What’s New Pussycat(4)

Nothing. Cool as a cucumber.

“Are we still on board? Or do you want me to stop?” he asked her, trying to keep his wealth of indelicate to himself.

Her gaze was solemn, unblinking, maybe even snooty. So be it.

“Anyway, JC is a human. So you can imagine the kind of trouble Max, a werewolf, would have convincing her that werewolves really exist. You being a shifter, you obviously understand we have to hide and be very careful who we reveal ourselves to, right?”

She began to groom her paw, running her tongue over the shiny fur, utterly unaffected by his words.

“So that was the impossible part. And let me make something clear. I’m not sure who put you in the Dumpster at the 7-Eleven or where you came from before this. That wasn’t me. After Eva gave me the clue about where you were, instinct told me to look inside the bin. I can’t explain it. I just knew you’d be there.”

She rolled on her back, arching her spine, pushing her belly upward toward the sun streaming into the living room from the massive windows.

Derrick took another deep breath, fighting to stay unruffled. “Like I said, the curse was designed to set us up to fail, as was the case with Max and JC.” He still had major admiration that his brother had pulled that off.

Max had not only managed to find his life mate, but she’d actually fallen in love with him and come to terms with him being a werewolf all in one fell swoop.

It had to be the pretty words Max was so good at, which could mean Derrick was already on the road to failure.

“But!” JC chimed in, squeezing Max’s hand. “Max didn’t fail. Sure, I was probably more freaked out than I’ve ever been in my life. When he told me he was a werewolf, that topped even Pennywise in a Stephen King novel on the fear-factor scale. But you’re one up on me anyway. You already know all this paranormal stuff exists. Plus, it did all work out in the end. We’re together and in the process of getting to know each other better.” She smiled adoringly up at Max, snuggling against him.

“You’re forgetting the mating part of this,” Derrick reminded her. How could she possibly gloss over the worst part of it all?

JC’s sigh was ragged as she rolled up the sleeves of her bathrobe. “I was going for easy entry, not a crash landing. I wanted her to have a glass half full before you sucked it dry.”

Max chuckled, pulling JC closer, but he remained unhelpful, meaning this was Derrick’s to handle.

Derrick clenched his jaw. This was ridiculous. He was sitting in the middle of his brother’s living room, talking to a cat, gearing up to tell her she had to mate with him or he’d die. “Is there a delicate way to tell her the rest, JC?”

Max looked at JC and winced. “That’s a fair question.”

He took another deep breath and fixed his eyes on the cat’s—so green and round like colored glass, they were mesmerizing. “Let me preface this by saying, I still don’t know the impossible part of this prophecy, because as JC said, you’re a shifter, too. So you won’t find that information out of the ordinary. And I don’t think when you hear the rest of this you’ll find the idea so unappealing you’d rather be skinned alive.”

Smooth, Adams.

“Derrick!” JC warned, glancing down at the cat, now busy rubbing her cheek on her paw without missing a beat. “Skinned alive? Could you be any more insensitive? Save the analogies, Cyrano.”

Max nodded, trying to keep his face serious but for the twitch of his lower lip. “Wow. You really suck on every level at this, brother.”

He did suck. He wasn’t into sweet words or beating around the bush. He was very unlike Max. Max was patient and a good listener, always had sage advice, making him the perfect alpha for their crazy pack. Derrick, on the other hand, was impatient, struggled with flowery words, and was direct as all hell.

But he was trying.

So Derrick nodded his agreement. “Max is right. I do suck at this, and I’m leaving a blanket apology on the table from this point on for any foolish mistakes I make that offend your sensibilities. So, I’m just going to give it to you straight because I’m not any good at pretty speeches. Here’s the clincher to the curse. You, according to my aunt’s prophecy, are my life mate. As my life mate, you have to mate with me on the next full moon or I die.”

There it was in all its un-pretty-ness.

Boom. Life-mate speech complete.

* * *

Martine fell forward, losing her balance on the coffee table and cracking her kitty skull on the hard surface.

Mate? As in, do the do? Make the woot-woot?

Or die?

That couldn’t mean the kind of mating they meant. Could it? Martine tried to remember what she knew about werewolves and their mating rituals. When you mated, you mated for life with a werewolf, didn’t you? Very unlike the feline family.