Murder Mittens

by R. J. Blain

  I had enough problems finding a single man who could handle my face with grace.

  “Yep, but he was more promiscuous than normal. He was careful about using condoms, and he kept his adventures to pre-shift lycanthropes until he met my mother, who wasn’t infected. She wanted a lion, so she caught one. I haven’t figured out why she picked my father, but I’m grateful for her excellent taste in men. My father considers me the reject of the family, as I’ve opted against following in his footsteps and making use of condoms to get in extra practice with many women. That said, I always carry condoms with me, just in case.”

  I snickered and led the way to the front door, unlocking it and debating if I was ready for someone other than my family to see inside. Considering my virus really wanted me to get to the stripping part of the evening activities, I’d be an idiot to stand on the doorstep debating my options. “My dad tried condoms once with my mother. They destroyed the condoms. Tore them to ribbons, apparently. Condom manufacturers did not anticipate lycanthrope endurance when making their products. The condoms did not prevent the ninth litter from making an appearance. Apparently, my complications were enough that my parents looked into, rather unsuccessfully, methods of limiting the number of kittens until I was a little better off.”

  I unlocked the door, opened it, and gave a cursory glance to make sure all was as I’d left it before gesturing for Sebastian to come inside. My shoes went into the pile near the door, and I hung my purse on the coat rack. “Make yourself at home, but try not to think too poorly of me for living far below my means. My day job can afford this, so I cater to my family’s expectations.”

  Sebastian followed my lead, took off his shoes, and removed his suit jacket, hanging it up on the rack. The jacket had hidden a shirt that clung to his chest.

  According to his chest, someone worked out to keep up with the bounty hunters he handled. In my case, would soon manhandle. “Are you hiding muscles underneath that thin cloth, Mr. Mane?”

  “I absolutely am. Lions look at gym equipment and develop muscles. To add to this, I actually go to the gym because I need to use brute force during sketchy situations at work. When I found out I’d be handling you, I started going to the gym daily, as I expect to need to use a lot of brute force in the field, especially should I successfully complete my plans for this evening. A lion’s strength is a factor in my father’s education for us to be gentle. As a result, none of my brothers have ever broken a condom accidentally. However, it’s a rite of passage for them to break them intentionally to show their new mates how much they were holding back on their quest to be courting gentlemen rather than sex-crazed animals.”

  “Why do I have a feeling meeting your family is going to be equally chaotic to the shitshow you got to watch tonight? Honestly, I’m disappointed I didn’t get to watch them fight you. But I guess my father gave you a good demonstration of how my brothers treat people who are mean to me. Flinching counts as being meant to me.”

  “Yes, I was rather amused and slightly alarmed over how your father managed to goad the entire lot of them into attacking him. Also, I’m now convinced I know where your ability to pick a fight with many at one time and win comes from. That’s how you’ve been tussling with your family since you’ve been little, isn’t it? You’ve been fighting your brothers all at one time, so you’re practiced at dodging attacks from multiple sides. Although, I will admit I’m surprised they would even fight with you.”

  “I gave them a choice. They could put up a good fight or get an even worse beating. And if they fought well enough, I’d purr a little. I can manipulate my entire clan with a single purr.” I rarely did so, as I hated the masquerade, which meant I only purred when I meant it—or Sebastian roared at me.

  “I will never judge them for being manipulated by your purrs. I’ve turned making you purr when I roar into an art. I have you trained now. If I roar, you purr. Under any circumstances. You’ll hear me roar, and because you have been so conditioned to purr at the sound of my roar, you will do so without thinking about it.”

  I raised a brow and regarded him with my coolest expression. “Really, Sebastian?”

  “Really. We can test it. When you least expect it, I will roar at you, and I will see if you purr. If you purr whenever you hear me roar, I have successfully conditioned you to be happy when I roar.”

  I struggled to find a problem with being conditioned to purr when he roared. “Okay. You can test it. You’ll probably win, because your roars do make me happy, especially if I’m the reason you’re roaring. It’s such a nice roar. Why wouldn’t I purr when I hear it?”

  “I underestimated how much my roar motivates you,” he admitted. “And I’m debating how to handle the problem of your scars.”

  “At least you think they’re a problem. Everyone else thinks I’m the problem for not accepting them. Sorry, but I’m not accepting damned scars that make my baby brothers cry when they see me, not when I can work to get them removed.”

  “Well, they are a problem. You’re unhappy with them. I wasn’t lying to you. What those scars represent is sexy to me. It shows the world you’re strong—and those who flinch because of them are weak. I’m thinking I’ll go with a blindfold. As in I blindfold you. Then I can do whatever I want, which honestly, really appeals to me because I am a lion and wish to rule over all.”

  “I see we’re moving straight into the realm of the kinky on our first adventure. I’m blaming my mother for this one, because she’s probably the reason I am as I am. My brothers would never come up with such a scheme, and my father enjoys trying to goad my mother into killing him. Their foreplay is attempted murder. Or that’s what it sounds like. Lynxes are loud.”

  Sebastian’s sly smile only served to increase my desire to rip him out of his shirt immediately. “Then let’s play a game, Harri.”

  While I loved when he snarled Wells at me, the way he growled my name left me breathless. “What game?”

  “Since you enjoy breaking the mold so much, my goal is to make you make as much noise as possible. Your goal is to purr for my enjoyment. But should you do anything other than purr, I get to gag you.”

  My laughter escaped before I could stop it. “You’ve been waiting years to gag me, haven’t you?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Well, I wasn’t making you roar by simpering and fluttering my lashes at you, that’s for sure. That has something to do with my guess.”

  Sebastian chuckled. “You’re right. You weren’t making me roar through any simpers or lash fluttering. Want to play my game?”

  “Hell yes. I’ll show you where my sewing supplies are, and you’re free to use whatever you need, and the rope is in the closet.” I pointed at the entry closet, which I used for random storage. “And if you’re slow about it, I’ll let my virus off her leash, and she knows exactly what she wants to do with you.”

  “You act like you’re going to be capable of keeping your virus leashed by the time I’m done with you.”

  “I have very good control, thank you very much.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Only a fool challenged a lion.

  The lycanthropy virus often dictated a lot about my life, ranging from who might or might not be an eligible partner, how I needed to behave around the uninfected, and how I behaved around the infected. More often than not, I went through most days battling with my virus over the little things, although we tended to agree on key aspects of life.

  From the start, my virus had fallen for Sebastian. After so much rejection and heartbreak, it took me a lot longer to accept anyone could possibly want me, with or without scars.

  Most learned how to avoid flinching, but Sebastian had never needed to learn.

  They deformed me, but he saw beyond them like others couldn’t.

  With the help of a pair of handcuffs he’d wrapped in fabric, some cord he’d dug out of my closet, and the ruins of his poor shirt, as he decided against damaging my quilting supplies on his ques
t to evict us both from the pool of unmated lycanthropes, he took control and maintained it with a ruthlessness my virus adored.

  It hadn’t taken him long to get me yowling from frustration and need, and I understood my mother a lot better than I had before Sebastian had gotten his hands on me. After I landed my first and last bite, which involved clamping my teeth onto his wrist and holding on tight. I thought I’d done well, lasting over five minutes until he freed himself and lived up to his threat to gag me if I couldn’t keep quiet or behave.

  Once gagged, I purred, and the louder I purred, the harder he worked to make me purr even louder.

  By morning, he reduced me to a limp noodle of a mess, and when I tried to purr, it came out more as a tired groan than anything else. His solution to the problem of my small bed involved him draping me over him, and he enforced his choice by holding me close to him and tightening his grip whenever I attempted to escape.

  I tested him a few times because I could, but I stayed because he was warm and comfortable. Being too tired to move also factored in my decision to stay put.

  Clever, tricky man.

  To add insult to the situation, he wore me out so badly I failed to notice being moved to my daddy’s truck, which Sebastian drove. Apparently, my daddy’s truck had heated seats, and the lion had stolen my blanket off my bed, which smelled strongly of him.

  I snuggled into the blanket, breathed deeply, and purred.

  “Are you actually awake this time?” Sebastian asked.

  “How are you awake? It’s not awake time. It’s time to cuddle with me in bed,” I mumbled, checking the clock, which informed me it was two in the afternoon. “Definitely go back to bed with me time. Or cuddle on you in bed time? Whatever. This isn’t my bed.”

  For a rare change, my virus had nothing to contribute, and I could only assume she was pleased with the situation. I suspected the presence of his scent on my blanket had a lot to do with her general contentment.

  “You are correct. This isn’t your bed. This is your father’s truck, and I carried you to the truck around noon, after I spent an hour coaxing you into eating breakfast. I was gifted with great endurance from birth, and I work out often. I slept for a while, woke up, got bored, made breakfast, fed you breakfast, and decided to resume our trip. Since I knew you wanted to go to a spa in Cincinnati, I started driving there, although I’m not sure which spa you have a reservation for. There are four that claim they’re lycanthrope friendly. And as I’m not completely evil, I checked into your registered bounties to make sure none of your targets were on the way. There’s one near Cincinnati, but he’s a small fry. I underestimated your desperation to get surgery, as he’s only worth a thousand and is wanted alive.”

  “Ah, that guy. He’ll be easy. I’ll just smack him around and tell him I’ll cut his dick off if he resists. That usually gets them to cooperate. It’s the one time being scarred is actually useful for something. When I start snarling those threats while I’m not wearing makeup, for some reason, people believe I’ll follow through. And the ones that don’t think I’ll do it get the snot beaten out of them and dragged to the CDC, where I get paid a thousand dollars for some sport. He’s just a stupid idiot who thinks he can get away with repeat failures to have his virus level checked.”

  Sebastian winced. “That’s a very potent threat, and I’d be worried about that one under any circumstance.”

  “I wouldn’t actually do that. I’m just very convincing about my willingness to do such a thing to somebody.”

  “Well, if some asshole threatens you, I have no problems with you taking names or cutting off important parts of their anatomy. That’s the price they pay for threatening you.”

  “I like bagging bounties, Sebastian. Not dicks. Bounties. Bounties give me money. Dicks do not give me money.”

  Sebastian made a thoughtful noise in his throat, and he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “There are plenty of dicks who would absolutely give you money.”

  “With this face?”

  “I’d definitely give you money.”

  Somehow, I resisted the urge to laugh at the lion. Somehow. I needed to reward myself with a treat for lunch for my good behavior. “Be sensible, Sebastian. Why would you pay me for what you can get for free? But any money you do give me is going into the fix my face fund, and since that big job we’re starting after I get my spa time is going to be my main fix my face fund, I’ll have to figure out a new plan for all those dollars and cents.” I made a thoughtful noise in my throat. “I’ve actually gotten a decent amount saved up, honestly. I had to open new savings accounts at different banks to store the money for the deposit. They only insure up to so much at each financial institution, did you know that?”

  “I was actually aware of that, yes.”

  “I actually hit the insurance limit. When I did, I had a panic attack over it, Sebastian. I had that much money, and it wasn’t enough for the deposit for the procedure—for the cheap procedure. They wanted a quarter of the price tag as a deposit. I’m almost there.”

  “You have squirreled away more than half a million dollars from your bounties, most of which don’t go over twenty thousand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Obviously, I did not go over your file sufficiently. Honestly, I didn’t tally your earnings. That wasn’t the private information I was particularly interested in.”

  “My mated status?” I guessed. “The number of times I’ve almost gotten myself killed on my quest to fix my face?”

  “Your status as mated to me is very important, yes. I have to change that in the system today and register us. My boss will be happy with me. So many of his problems, magically solved. He had been expecting it to take weeks for me to convince you to give me a chance. I’m a really crabby lion when I don’t get your purrs, by the way. I’ve been that way for about a year now, and my boss was really getting tired of it, as I was not getting sufficient purring from someone known to be a pain in my ass. He could only give me so much work involving you, as you are an efficient bounty huntress, so you rarely needed my special brand of attention.”

  It made me unreasonably happy I wasn’t the only one incapable of handling life as adults claimed it should be handled. “Are you an idiot, Sebastian?”

  “Wells,” he growled. “Wanting to hear you purr doesn’t make me an idiot.”

  “No, but your failure to call me and concoct reasons to make me make you roar does make you an idiot. You have my phone number. You enjoy using it. And you could have easily concocted a hundred and one different reasons to abuse your possession of my phone number.”

  “Okay. That is a fair statement. I am an idiot. I could have called you.”

  “I often had to ignore my virus’s insistence I call you and piss you off enough to roar. I did this because calling you specifically to make you roar seemed rude, and while I’m a lot of things, I try to be obnoxious and frustrating, not rude. Did you get enough purring last night?”

  “No. I need more purring today. But first, I need to feed you properly. Our viruses are busy adapting, and you ladies tend to get the short straw on that.”

  “Why is that, anyway?”

  “I suspect it’s because of the blood type and compatibility issues. Since I’m male, your virus is hard at work making sure you’re compatible with me. My virus just wants to expose you more, and that’s a lot faster to regenerate. I had not expected you to play vampire with me last night, but I am absolutely not complaining about the results. The virus concentration in the blood tends to be higher.”

  “Women have to work a lot harder to sufficiently expose men,” I complained.

  “I solved that problem using my teeth. I bit you several times hard enough to draw blood. And I enjoyed myself. But I was thoroughly distracting you in other ways.”

  Damn it. Fucking scar tissue. “You probably bit me in one of the dead zones.”

  “Dead zones?”

  “The scarring is so bad in places I just don’t have fu
nctioning nerves. So a lot of the wounds I take? I don’t feel it much. So you probably bit me in one of those spots. If the cuts are shallow, I don’t feel it. And if you were distracting me, I wouldn’t have even noticed.”

  “Your skin isn’t sensitive?”

  “It’s a chunk of scarred mess, Sebastian. I mean, making the kittens cry because I’m that ugly is only part of my problems. I just don’t complain or worry about the rest of it because I never thought there was anything I could do about it. I’m changing what I can. I just didn’t think I could afford to fix the rest, and the creams don’t work. Nobody cares if I don’t have good skin sensitivity.”

  “I very much care if you don’t have good skin sensitivity!” He drew in a deep breath, and to my delight, he roared his frustration.

  Nice. Lions could roar and drive at the same time. “I don’t know why this is so upsetting, but that roar.” My purr came out raspier than normal, and I checked the cup holders to discover an unopened bottle of water, which I claimed for myself. “You broke my purr. My purr is broken. I didn’t know it was possible to break my purr.”

  “I’m not sorry I made you purr so much you lost the ability to purr. I’m very upset you can’t enjoy when I nibble on you. I am now extra motivated to get your scar removal done, because you should get to enjoy me worshipping your body as much as I do.”

  My face warmed. “You nibbled on me?”

  “I enjoyed it very much. I also did many other things, but now that I understand there are more problems at play than merely your self-esteem, I’m more motivated to get this serial killer bagged. When I’ve worn you out enough you can’t complain about working, we’ll go over the intel the CDC and FBI has on this guy so we can make a plan. Since we’re fairly certain he’s not a lycanthrope, if you’re game to try the new perfume, we can do so after our viruses have settled. Mine’s probably spiking, and yours is probably tapped.”