Bite Me (9 page)

“What? It’s too girly?”

“No. Not at all. It’s big and comfortable and damn sturdy. But it was carefully purchased and placed, and I don’t see you doing that with furniture. You’re a ‘whatever is lying around is what I’ll use’ kind of guy.”

“And you know this because . . . ?”

“I’m the same way. If I ever invest in a house, Toni will probably design it for me.” Livy thought a moment and added, “Or Kyle. He’s very choosy about home decoration. Pretty much redesigned his parents’ place when he was ten. He did a fabulous job.”

“He’s just a
kid.
”

“He’s brilliant. And a little evil. But I think that’s what I like about him.”

“So what’s going on?” Vic asked when she went silent again. “You seem moodier than normal. Is it your father?”

“No.”

“Your cousin?”

Livy rolled her eyes and gave a snort of disgust, but she didn’t say anything else and Vic had a feeling that wasn’t it either.

“Work?”

And that’s when Livy gave a long—rather dramatic, for Livy—sigh, and looked back up at the sky.

Vic noticed that Livy didn’t have her camera. She always had some camera on her, from a small, silent Leica to her big, digital, SLR Nikon rig that made her look like a hardcore photojournalist. But lately, Livy didn’t seem to have anything but the camera on her phone—which she never used for photography for “very specific moral reasons.”

Vic didn’t know what that meant, but what he did know was that the work he’d seen from her was amazing. And disturbing. And kind of freaky. Then again, so was Mapplethorpe . . . but honestly, Vic was more an Ansel Adams man. Shots of beautiful vistas in dramatic black-and-white were more his speed. Odd things done with whips . . . not so much.

Still, Vic knew how much Livy’s work meant to her.

“Don’t you have a show coming up?” he asked.

Livy, her legs pulled up on the bench, used her arms to turn her body toward him. “How do you know about my show?”

“You sent me an invitation.”

“I did?” Livy looked off, then nodded. “Toni. She probably sent out the invitations.” Suddenly, Livy shook her head. “I’ve got nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean . . . I’ve got nothin’. I am creatively drained. I’m dead inside.”

“You always seem dead inside.”

“I’m not. I’m just quiet.”

“Maybe you need to do something different. Get away from everything. Do you get a paid vacation from the team?”

“I never needed a break before. Creativity just poured from me like sweat from a long-distance runner. But now there’s nothing. It’s over.”

“Or,” Vic reasoned, “you can stop being a drama queen and just take a break to see if that helps.”

“Yeah. That’s an option, too.”

“See?”

“Then again . . .”

Vic sighed. “Then again what?”

“When will I have the time? Now that I’m doing a goddamn wedding.”

“You’re doing a wedding?”

“Looks like it.”

“Why, if you don’t want to? Unless it’s family.”

“Not family. Just a pathetic weakness for cash.”

“What
are
you talking about?”

“Blayne asked me to shoot her wedding. To get her off my back, I texted her an outrageous sum that no one in their right mind would pay.”

“I don’t think Blayne’s been in her right mind since birth.”

“I didn’t even include a price breakdown
and
I demanded half in advance.”

“And she still said yes.”

“Of course she said yes!” an exasperated Livy exploded. “Because she’s Blayne and is marrying a man who clearly has no control over her.”

“You could still say no.”

“And then you know what will happen?”

“She’ll make you sad with her tears of pain?”

“More like I’ll rip her face off because of her goddamn tears of pain.”

“That will cause awkward times on your derby team.”

“Don’t care. But Toni
will
care because the Smith Pack
loves
Blayne. And that matters now that Toni is with Ricky Lee.”

“Your life is very complex.”

Livy burrowed deeper into Vic’s jacket, looking way more adorable than she had a right to. “I know.”

“So you’re feeling like a sellout?” Vic asked.

Livy briefly wondered if she could permanently live in this jacket. It smelled good and made her feel surprisingly warm in the bracing East Coast cold. “Yes. Besides, what idiot would turn down that kind of cash?” She peeked over the collar of the jacket to look directly at Vic. “It’s an
ungodly
amount of money. Un. God. Ly.”

“But didn’t Da Vinci work for royals? And the Church?”

“Huh?”

“Renaissance painters, the good ones, were commissioned to paint royals all the time. Bach and Mozart wrote music for royals.”

“Your point?”

“You do what you have to during the day, so you can do what you love at night. Money, sadly, gives you freedom. Unless of course you plan to go off the grid, set up house in the middle of nowhere, and live off the land completely. I call that the Full Ted Kaczynski.”

“Because I love being compared to a paranoid schizophrenic.”

“We both know you’re not a schizophrenic.”

Livy smirked. “Thanks for that.”

“All I’m saying is if you can get top dollar doing work that’ll take you a few hours, thereby freeing you up to work on your real stuff . . . who cares? Unless, of course, you believe this is as good as you’ll ever be—a wedding photographer for rich shifters who aren’t intimidated by honey badgers.”

When Livy scrunched herself deeper into Vic’s coat, the hybrid smiled.

“You’ve gotta know that’s not the case here.”

“Do I? I’ve got nothing new to show for my gallery opening—”

“Then do limited prints of your early work.”

Livy let the silence stretch for a bit before she asked, “May I finish?”

“Sure. But you know I’m right.”

Livy sighed. “Yes. I know you’re right. I guess I just wanted to—”

“Prove you haven’t lost your creative genius?”

“Would you stop doing that?”
Livy snarled, annoyed and surprised Vic understood her so well. Even Toni hadn’t been fully grasping Livy’s concerns lately, but the jackal also had a billion more things to worry about these days than just her family’s performance schedules.

“Sorry. Feel free to go on.”

But Livy had nothing else to say.

“Livy?”

“What?”

“It’s okay to be afraid sometimes.”

“I’m a honey badger. I’m fearless.”

“In a fight? Yeah. Around snakes? Definitely. But this isn’t a fight or snakes. It’s something intensely personal that the average person would never understand.”

“Then how come you do?”

Vic looked at her, his painfully bright gold eyes glinting in the darkness from the light seeping out of the kitchen windows.

“So you’re calling me average?” he asked.

Startled, Livy said, “No. I’m not calling you average.”

“So you think I’m astounding?”

“Astounding? How did we get to astounding? You didn’t even
pause
at above average. Just leapt to astounding.”

Vic stood, grinned. “I notice you didn’t actually dispute astounding, though.”

“Well—”

“No, no,” he said quickly, reaching down and lifting her, then carrying her toward the back door. “Let’s not ruin the moment.”

After dinner and a few hours of TV watching, Ira went out to the backyard so she could inform her husband of “why I’m not coming home tonight, you bonehead,” and Vic carried his sleeping nephew up to bed. He changed him into his favorite Captain America pajamas and tucked him in for the night. Then he went to his room and closed the door behind him.

Vic took off his clothes, pulled on a pair of black sweatpants, and crawled into bed. This time
under
the covers.

Happy to be home—even if there was a giant panda sleeping on his couch—Vic let out a relieved breath and settled in for the night.

As Vic began to drift off, he thought about dinner. The food had been delicious and the company more than tolerable, which for Vic was a big thing. He might put up with a lot on any given day, but that didn’t mean he found those things tolerable. And yet, he’d truly enjoyed Livy’s company. She wasn’t painfully chatty, so when she did speak, her words had meaning and were often direct. He also discovered she was extremely well-read, but not a snob about it, and she had a vast amount of knowledge about really bad TV. It turned out she would flip on a channel and just leave it for the night while she worked—no matter what came on. She told them it was background noise that helped her focus, but she seemed to be fully aware of every storyline of every show she’d seen, from bad romantic comedies to bad biographies about the latest “story of survival” headline to the names and history of common reality TV superstars. Yet she retold those overblown shows with such a jaundiced eye that Vic knew he’d gladly have her over for dinner again. Because nothing had as high a meaning to someone with his Russian heritage as excellent dinner company.

Vic was nearly asleep when he realized that thinking about Livy made him feel surrounded by her scent. He was surprised how much he liked it, and how well it mingled with his own.

Vic’s eyes popped open and he used his elbow to prop himself up. He sniffed the air, letting his nose lead him until he was halfway off his mattress so he could look under his bed. And that’s where he found Livy.

“Olivia?”

“Yeah?”

“Was there a problem with your room?”

“No.”

“Then why are you under my bed?”

“It’s higher than the other beds.”

“It’s . . . what?”

“The other beds are lower to the floor and harder for me to get under. This one had more room. It’s almost a little
too
roomy.”

“And being in an actual bed—on the bed, I mean—just doesn’t work for you?”

“Do you have an issue with me being under your bed?”

“Yeah. Kinda. It makes me feel like a bad host.”

“You shouldn’t. It’s nice under here. And whoever cleans your house while you’re away does a great job. It’s clean as hell. I get under some beds and come out the next morning covered in dust bunnies.”

“And you’re sure you’re comfortable?”

“Very.”

“Well . . . okay then.”

Vic stretched back out on his bed and stared up at his ceiling. It was really strange having someone
under
his bed who wasn’t lying in wait to kill him. Something he had to be more wary of when he worked for the government. Now, though, he just had to tolerate a honey badger under his bed . . . snoring.

Vic blinked. She was asleep? Already?

“Lucky her,” he muttered, because Vic didn’t see himself going to sleep anytime soon while he had a woman asleep under his bed. Especially a woman with such smooth skin, dark eyes, and hair that always smelled like honey . . .

Wait. What was he doing? This was Livy he was thinking about. Livy. Honey badger and occasionally whiny artist. Livy. Who was like a sister to him? No. He never thought about Ira’s smooth skin. Did she even have smooth skin? He didn’t know, but Livy sure did. Really pretty, smooth skin . . .

Confusing himself even more with this internal dialogue, Vic turned on his side and covered his head with his pillow. If nothing else, maybe the pillow would block out the honey scent coming from Livy’s hair. What did she do? Bathe in honey?

Wait. Did she bathe in honey?

Vic growled.
What the hell am I doing?

C
HAPTER
7

L
ivy woke up the next morning still under Vic’s bed, but now with a six-year-old cub staring at her.

“Yes?” she asked, keeping her voice low so as not to wake up Vic.

“Why are you under my uncle’s bed?”

“It’s comfortable.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

Livy and Igor continued to stare at each other for a few more minutes before Livy asked, “Hungry?”

“Yes.”

“Pancakes work?”

“Is there honey?”

“I think I left at least ajar or two in the cabinets.”

“African?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

“Okay.”

Livy followed the little boy out from under the bed and out of the room, carefully closing the door behind her so she didn’t wake up Vic.

Together, the pair moved through the house full of sleeping hybrids and a panda until they reached the kitchen.

Livy split the work with Igor, letting him carry things from the refrigerator and pour things she’d measured out into the bowl. Once Livy added the eggs herself—she couldn’t risk shells getting into the batter—she placed Igor on the kitchen table and put the bowl in his lap. She gave him a wooden spoon and taught him how to stir the batter without getting it all over himself and her.

She didn’t really think much about what she was doing because she’d seen Toni’s mom do it with her own kids so often over the years. At the time, it had just seemed logical to get the kids to help because it cut down on their fighting. But now, as Livy looked into Igor’s glowing face, she realized it had more to do with letting the kids feel involved and less with creating baby slave labor.