“Luckily for you, I do have such a desk, and I am pleased to help you shop for the appropriate clothes for this endeavor. However, you will have to accept being dressed in at least one outfit suitable for a high-classed secretary, but when I take advantage of you over lunch will be dependent on how cleanly you pull this job off. The scale will be as ruthless as how I plan on taking advantage of you, so you want to be living perfection when you take your target—or targets—out. A single bruise will be punished harshly.”
“What if I bruised myself during the job? Like if I smack my hard head into his and knock him out that way?”
“Self-inflicted bruises will not result in punishment, just like you testing the scissors didn’t result in you being penalized. If he hurts you, that’s what I care about. If you hurt yourself giving him the beating of his life? Just be honest about it, and you’ll be appropriately rewarded. I’ll be upset if you break your hand on his face, but I will respect the amount of force you needed to use to do that, and that falls into the reward territory. Fair?”
“That’s fair.”
Sebastian leaned forward to play with the car’s navigation system, scrolling through the upcoming roads to see where they went. “We have two hours longer than I thought we would have when I made the reservation and told the hotel when we’d arrive. If you don’t want to be ravished by a lion, keep driving as normal. Otherwise, take me to a secluded location. I wish to hunt a lynx and ravish her.”
“Oh no! I’m going to be ravished. Whatever shall I do?”
“Run, and when I catch you, enjoy yourself. I know I will.”
While I wasn’t a slacker in the size department, Sebastian took the whole majestic lion thing to extremes. While he kept his hair neatly trimmed in a fruitless attempt to dodge the mane jokes, his actual mane demanded my immediate attention, and with rumbling purrs, I snuggled into the thick fur.
I needed many hours snuggled in front of a fireplace with him and his mane.
He gave me a few minutes to indulge, before he nipped at my neck hard enough I hissed at him. He roared and swatted me with his paw with sufficient force to knock me over. I screamed at him, unleashing the full potential of my voice, which earned me another roar.
While torn between shrieking at him and purring, I’d settle for purring after he lived up to his promises.
Okay. If he wanted to play, I’d play. I inhaled, and let loose my shrillest call, extending it for as long as I could.
In the wild, female lynxes used such a call to notify the possibly deaf males it was time to be useful.
Sebastian stared at me, one ear twisted back.
Poor Sebastian. He was about to learn the only way he’d get me to shut up was if he shut me up. To make it clear he needed to get his game on and start his hunt for an evening treat of amorous lynx, I swatted his muzzle, although I kept my claws retracted. I backed out of his reach and kept on screaming, pausing only to breathe.
There was an art to minimizing breathing while maximizing the ruckus, and I meant to master it. Practice would make perfect, and who wouldn’t want to practice on such a nice lion? I would have to guard my territory, which annoyed me enough I swatted at my lion’s muzzle.
He roared at me. I yowled at him, hopping back a few steps and waiting for him to take chase.
He stood still.
I spit feline curses at him for daring to resist my advances. If he wanted to be the hunted, so be it. I went for the bushy tuft of his tail and chomped on it. While Sebastian didn’t quite roar, he snarled, spun around, and batted at me with a paw. I rolled, scrambled back to my paws, and lunged for him, mock biting at his mane.
That earned me a proper roar, and as always, I purred, prancing in place. I swatted his nose, careful to keep my claws in, and ran for the woods, issuing a challenging scream. He answered me with an equally challenging roar.
Game on.
The next time Sebastian threatened me with a ravishing, I would understand he meant serious business. I thought he’d given me a full show of his prowess at the spa, but he’d generally left me somewhat coherent and capable of functioning.
Lions on the hunt lacked consideration. Once he finished with me, which had removed my base ability to even walk, I discovered lions could drag their prey long distances without tiring, and that the scruff of my neck made an excellent place for him to grab hold of me with his teeth.
If we hadn’t been lycanthropes hopped up on the virus, I might have minded the rough treatment. Rather than complain, I discovered it was possible to catch a nap while being relocated at my lion’s whim.
I questioned how Sebastian had the energy to shift, whistle and strut, and goad me into shifting back to human, but he did. As I lacked the energy to do anything, he helped me into my clothes. I scraped together the motivation to crawl into my car of my own volition, although the seatbelt proved to be more than I could handle, so Sebastian took care of the details while chuckling over my state.
“I like this. Not only did I get to enjoy my lynx, I get to drive the car now. This is great. This is how we’re changing drivers every time we go on a road trip now.”
How would I survive if driver changes involved being relentlessly ravaged? Whatever. Life would be good until my lion did me in. “I now understand my mother a little too well, and this makes me feel somewhat dirty.”
“I’m just doing my part to make sure you have an endless supply of lion roaring. I have been advised you get very sad at the end of the mating season, because you are just like your mother, and you are not happy without little ones underfoot. And your father was disturbingly forthcoming about the general requirements for that to happen. This was a test drive of my prowess. I’m feeling fairly confident in my abilities right now. Unfortunately, your father also warned me you may be like your mother, and your mating season may start early or end late depending on my prowess. Their second litter was several weeks early, and several litters were after it appeared when she was out of season, so lynxes may actually be in season longer than the expected two months. Your parents take precautions to keep the litter numbers low.”
“Precautions? They do? What precautions? Condoms don’t work on them. They break them. Every time.”
“Your dad confessed he now hires an incubus to make sure all litters are planned appropriately, and he indicated unless we always want litters underfoot, I would be wise to do the same. The CDC provides the incubus free of charge to them because of their situation. They also get supplementary payments to help care for the litters. He gave me the complete rundown on the situation, because he thinks you are your mother’s daughter, which you absolutely are.”
“With my bounty hunting and your handling, will we need CDC assistance?”
“I know how much it costs to feed an entire litter now. I don’t know if we’re going to need it, but we are going to accept it. What doesn’t get eaten away will go to schooling costs. We’ll ultimately have to confess what your real job is, though. We’re going to need babysitters when we’re on a job.”
“We can do that when we drop off the first litter and have bad people to kill. This is not talk about work time. This is the time to talk about how I will never be able to move again.”
“Did I tire my lynx out? How sad for you. You’ll just have to take a nap and be forced into a bubble bath with me before being tucked into bed. I might even ravish you again if you’re lucky.”