Dear Protective,
Life hurts. What hurts worse is a parent who tries to hold you back because of their own fears.
Also, Auntie’s not an animal expert by any means, but a quick google shows that Chihuahuas and wolves share 99.9% of their DNA, so if she tells you she’s fierce, believe her.
Best of luck,
Auntie H.
I was having that dream—you know, the one where you’re in the middle of the Roman Colosseum in a fight to the death, except the fight is more of a RuPaul’s Drag Race Lip-sync for Your Life, and you arrive like Britney Spears doing “Slave 4U” at the VMAs, with the tiger in the cage and a giant snake around your neck, but you’ve somehow, impossibly, forgotten the words to the chorus? Yeah, that one—and I was so disoriented that when I woke up to a weight on my stomach and bright yellow eyes glinting at me through the darkness, I had a moment where I said to myself, “Oh, it’s just the tiger,” and closed my eyes again.
A second later, my entire body locked down and my heart raced. Holy shit. A tiger?
I was no stranger to waking up bewildered in strange beds, and I was pretty good at getting calm, assessing my surroundings, and then extricating myself silently, but I had to admit, the possibility of being mauled added a whole new level of danger to the proceedings, not least because I was lying on my back, buck naked except for a sheet, and the animal was perched directly on top of my cock and balls.
I looked left, and in the very dim moonlight filtering through some wooden blinds, I saw a nightstand but no phone.
I looked right and saw nothing but pillows and blankets.
I looked up and saw a ceiling fan… and that’s when I remembered: Whispering Key, Mason, the Zamboni that ate my phone, Littlejohn Jennings “getting me sorted.”
Damn it all.
“Dear Lord, I’m being murdered by a tiger,” I whisper-prayed, squeezing my eyes shut. “While I appreciate the Carole Baskin homage and the inherent drama of the scene, honestly haven’t I been through enough?”
The feline on my crotch did not think so, if the multiple needle-sharp jabs into my hips were anything to go by.
“Hey,” I hissed, pissed off. “Enough. This is unacceptable.”
I opened my eyes and stared down the animal, who was still watching me without blinking. It was not a tiger, it was a cat. A tiny, domesticated animal that was more scared of me than I was of it.
I mean, probably. It didn’t look particularly afraid.
“Shoo!” I hissed, but it did not shoo.
“Go away!” I insisted, waving a hand, but it did not go, and in fact, it looked at my hand the way I looked at muffins—like something forbidden and delicious.
Aunt Hagatha would probably tell me to befriend the beast, but Aunt Hagatha had never been the innocent victim of a nocturnal feline home invasion.
Until now.
“Get off.” I attempted to move my leg, but at my first twitch, the creature emitted a long, high-pitched growl like a chainsaw revving, and my hindbrain curled up in the fetal position.
I hid my hand under the sheet and mentally riffled through everything I ever knew about cats, which took one second, since I’d never had one. Were you supposed to make eye contact or avoid it? Should I show my dominance by just pushing him off me? How bad could it be?
The cat sank its claws deeper into the flesh on my hips and thighs like it could read my mind.
I fucking hated Florida.
“Unacceptabllllle!” I screeched.
I hated Florida even more when a loud crash on the other side of the room shook the bed and a giant human shape materialized in the shadows at my feet.
“Go away! I have no money! I have no credit cards! I don’t even have a phone!”
A second later, a flashlight beam pierced the darkness and illuminated my crotch and the enormous ginger floof perched there with murder in her eyes.
“Gah!” I shouted as the cat hissed and swiped just below my belly button, and my dick shrank in on itself like a turtle—like a very large, virile, but startled turtle. “Get away!”
“Marjorie!” a deep, bewildered voice said. The light swung to my face. “Wait, who’re you?”
“I’m not Marjorie! Don’t kill me!”
“I’m not gonna kill you,” he said, which was exactly what he would say if he were going to kill me. And holy shit, how had I avoided being murdered at the hand of Littlejohn Jennings—a man who might make a mean can of SpaghettiOs but was irredeemably hopeless at Wheel of Fortune, judging by the letters he kept screaming at Pat Sajak—only to be slaughtered by Paul Bunyan hours later?
“Marjorie is the cat,” the giant continued in a deep, soothing voice. “My cat.”
But his voice seemed to upset the creature, who was kneading her claws into my abs like they were dough—by which I mean rock-hard, muscular dough, obviously—and that reminded me I had no reason to trust this intruder and every reason not to.
“Do you always bring your cat when you break in to murder people? Is she trained for this? Have you trained a murder cat? Oh my God, Florida, why?”
The giant snorted—fucking snorted, like this was at all, in any way, amusing. “Murder cat,” he repeated. “Rafe will appreciate that.”
“Oh, goody. Glad I could amuse someone as I shuffle off my mortal coil. I won’t have died in vain.” I huffed. “Get it off me! Get it off, get it off!”
The cat made a noise like a cross between a hiss and a smoker’s cough. It was bizarrely terrifying, and I shut my eyes again.
“Oh, God. When they talk about my murder on the true crime podcasts, they’ll mention that I haven’t had a really good fuck in months. Everyone will pity me. Unacceptable.”
“Hush! You’re agitating her,” the giant chided.
My eyes popped open, and I glared through the darkness. “She is agitating me! Do penis wounds bleed out quickly? I’d think they would. Lots of blood flow.”
“Thank the Universe, I wouldn’t know.” Gigantor shuddered. “You’re being really dramatic. Would you like my help or not?”
I wanted very badly to say not, and tell this intruder, whoever the hell he was, to fuck off with his help, but I owed it to myself and the single gay male population of New York to remain dick-us intactus even more. Still, relying on someone else made me tetchy, as my grandma used to say.
“Is not an option to you? Really? You’d just walk back out the door and pretend your cat’s not devouring my naked flesh?” I could sense him watching me steadily, and it pissed me off that he could see me, but all I could see of him was a huge shape in the darkness. I finally blew out a breath. “Fine. Yes. I would appreciate your assistance in getting your murder cat off my dick.”
“Still not a murder cat,” he said easily, which was not the point at all.
He moved around the foot of the bed to stand near my hip, blocking out even the weak light from the window, and focused the flashlight on the cat.
“Can you turn the light on?” My voice sounded quavery, and I hated it. Hated just waiting to be rescued. I cleared my throat. “Please. I can’t see anything.”
“She hates when I turn the light on. She really would be a murder cat, then.” The giant hesitated, then held out the hand with the flashlight—which turned out to be his cell phone. “Just hold this so I can see what I’m doing, ’kay? And don’t shine it in her eyes.”