Dirty Kiss (23 page)

My chest smarted where her claws dug into me during her examination, and my thumb throbbed under a thick bandage the vet assured me could come off in an hour or so. I was planning on leaving it as a type of gauze armor in case she decided she wanted another piece of me for a snack. I didn’t believe them when they told me cats sometimes got aggressive when they were stressed and was rather insulted when they laughed at my request for kitty Prozac.

She bounced out of the carrier, a gleeful bundle of furred and clawed vengeance looking for my jugular. Stretching, Neko took her time in exacting her justice, sniffing at the couch and then heading over to the bag of food I’d not opened yet. I did her bidding and filled a dish with kibble, then poured water into another one and watched her inhale a good portion of both.

“Okay, I’m going to head out.” Bobby stopped at the archway leading into the living room. I finished picking up the last of the papers we’d left on the floor, stacking them as neatly as I could considering I couldn’t see more than a few inches in front of me. “Get some sleep, Cole. We’ll do this again tomorrow.”

“You want to crash here?” I offered, but he shook his head. Grunting a goodnight, I walked him to the door and locked it shut after he left. Turning around, I found Neko in the middle of the foyer, offering me a view of her foot as she cleaned her leg. “You’re a very classy broad there, cat. I’m going to bed. Well, right after I leave a message for your daddy telling him I found your scrawny ass.”

The water on my skin made the cat scratches itch. I cursed the fluffball under my breath as I dried off, stepping over her sprawled body when I got out of the bathroom.

“You.” I nudged her with my foot, a gentle tap that caused her to roll over and offer me her belly. “You are in the way, little girl.”

The sheets were cold against my skin, and I luxuriated in the comfort of my bed for a moment. A second later, I felt a weight against my legs and then a heaviness settling on my hip. Opening my eyes, I was treated to the inscrutable view of the back end of a cat. Tentatively scratching her back lightly with my fingers, I used my free hand to dial Scarlet’s cell phone, hoping to leave a message.

I was shocked when Jae answered, breathless and worried.

“Hey, what are you doing up?” It was stupid to ask him that. The reason he was awake was currently kneading her pointy little claws into my hip. The blankets seemed not to be a deterrent at all. Shifting, I hoped to distract her, but she mewed in contentment and continued to aerate my skin.

“Did you find her?” His already strained voice was too tight for my liking. “Was she….”

“She’s okay.” His sigh of relief made me glad I’d spent a good chunk of change for the vet to tell me she was perfectly fine and would probably be terrorizing generations of humans to come. “She’s here now.”

“You sure it’s her? I mean,” Jae stammered a bit. “Did she have her collar on?”

“Yep. Trust me, baby,” I replied, moving my attention from her spine to her chin. She set up a faint rumble of a purr, puffing her white-starred chest out in approval. “It’s your cat. Satan’s mistress is perfectly safe.”

“Agi,” he reminded me. “And don’t call her that. She’s a good cat.”

“She tore me to ribbons.” I felt a little bit guilty for lying to him, but I was going to milk my injuries for as long as he would let me. Compared to the dual concussion, being shot at, and then having a building blow in on him, I was far behind on the sympathy list. “You should be asleep.”

“Couldn’t sleep. I was worried.”

“Yeah, I should have called you sooner to tell you we’d found her,” I said. “We went to an emergency vet to make sure she was okay. He said she checks out fine. She’s already eaten, and I think I’m going to be learning how to clean a litter box in the morning.”

Jae’s whisper was so soft I nearly missed it. “I was worried about you.”

“Hey, I’m okay, ba… agi.” It was like being fifteen all over again and having one of the football players palm my ass in the middle of gym class. I wasn’t going to be able to sit down comfortably for about a week if he purred at me again. “What are you doing using Scarlet’s cell phone? You’re in a hospital room.”

“Aish, your Korean is horrible. Never mind. Stick with English,” he teased, a soft laugh turning into a short bout of coughing. “Nuna is asleep on the chair, and no one knows I answered it. She had it on vibrate.”

“Scarlet tell you we decided you were coming here?” I ventured carefully. We’d not talked more than a few seconds, but she’d agreed with me that Jae needed looking after. She even partially forgave me for getting him blown up, although I was disinclined to take full responsibility for the matter.

“Nuna said you decided and that she had nothing to do with it.” While he sounded stronger and I was glad for it, the wisdom of having a fully sentient Jae roaming through my house was beginning to terrify me. Neko meowed her opinion, hooking her claws into my sheets one last time before tucking her chin in to sleep.

“Nuna lies,” I laughed, startling the cat. She opened her eyes, slits of malevolent gold in her petite black head, then went back to sleep. “Hide the phone before the nurses come in and beat you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Cole?”

My stomach clenched at the sound of his voice trembling. The teasing flirt disappeared, and in its place was the battered young man I saw on the hospital bed.

“Yeah, Jae?” I wished Scarlet awake or for the ability to crawl through the phone. He ached. I heard it clearly in his splintered, whispering sobs. “I’m here, baby.”

“I’m scared,” he confessed softly. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Me too, baby.” The ache in my chest grew. In the front of my mind, I suspected I’d brought this trouble to Jae’s doorstep. The last twenty-four hours blew apart any normal that his life might have had. “I don’t know if that makes you feel better, but I’m scared shitless.”

“You don’t act like it,” Jae accused with a sniff.

“That’s my tough-guy exterior. You should see me right now.” I teased at him, hoping to draw him out of his melancholy. “I’m lying in bed on sheets with big roses on them with a cat on my hip. Very macho.”

“You’re lying.”

“About the sheets, but not about the cat,” I said. “She’s like a lead weight. How can something so small weigh so much?”

“She eats a lot.” There was a smile in his words, lightening his mood. It darkened as quickly as when clouds moved over the sun. “Are you going to protect me, hyung?”

“I didn’t do such a good job at protecting my last boyfriend, baby.” Thoughts of Rick surfaced. His laughter when I blew raspberries on his belly after sex, the horrible omelets that he insisted on making every Sunday morning, the deadness in his eyes as he slid down in my arms. I shut those memories away, concentrating on the memory of Jae’s bright brown eyes. “But I want to try. More than anything, baby, I want to protect you from all this shit.”

We lay on either side of the call, listening to one another breathe. It was a glorious thing, the in and out of his breath against the phone. I didn’t want it to end, but sleep tugged hard on my eyelids, and I suspected that Jae wasn’t long for consciousness if he’d been up waiting for me to call.

“Go to bed, Jae. I’ll be there in the morning.” Shushing his protests, I listened to his grumbling assent. “I promise.”

“Pfah.” He dismissed me with a harsh explosion of sound. “Fine, sleep. But Cole?”

“Yeah?” It was like putting a three-year-old to bed. There was always something else a kid wanted: a story or a glass of water.

“I like it when you call me baby,” Jae growled through the phone. “But not in Korean. Really, you stink.”

The
cat kneaded at my skin, piercing through the sheets and the pajama bottoms I wore. I was nothing more than a prone scratching post, and she mewed her disgust at me when I moved her off me. She was back before I could turn over, tenderizing my body for what I was certain would be her midmorning snack. Being evil took a lot of energy, and something as small as she was probably had to keep up her strength.

It was raining outside, a sound that was drowned out by my doorbell ringing. The bells echoed, deep and booming, through the empty house. It hadn’t fully faded when it rang again, and the cat dislodged herself, jumping off the bed in a bounding prance.

“Okay! I’m coming!” I nearly tripped on Jae’s cat, goose-stepping around her as I made my way down to the first floor, pulling on a T-shirt. The hall clock chimed at me as I passed, marking off the morning. Rounding the landing, I glanced through the glass window in the door, and my heart skipped its beat when I flung open the door.

An unknown man held Jae tight in a paw of a hand, his thick fingers closing over Jae’s upper arm. He was bundled up against the cold, while Jae shivered in what looked like clothes he’d borrowed from a giant. The jut of his jaw angrily challenged me to do something about his firm grip, dark stubble darkening his wind-pinked skin.

I rose to the occasion. Easy enough to do. The sight of Jae’s pale face alarmed me. His weaving shoulders downright scared me.

“Let him go.” I grabbed at Jae, holding him up. The man tugged, pulling back. I wasn’t being menacing enough, so I pushed at the man’s shoulder with my free hand, shoving him back down the first step of the stoop. “You’re going to lose your fucking hand if you don’t let go right now.”

“He owes me money for a cab ride.” A thick Slavic accent made him almost impossible to understand, and his eyebrows knitted down into a single line over his broad nose, suspicion curling his mouth. “I let go and he goes inside without me getting paid.”

“I don’t have any money.” Jae’s breath was cold on my neck, and he shivered when the warmth of the house hit him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t….”

“No, it’s okay,” I said, hoping it sounded reassuring. Turning to the cab driver, I told him to wait a second while I got my wallet from the table in the hallway. Pulling out a few twenties, I shoved them into his hand and closed the door in his face, grabbing at Jae before he slid down the wall in a jumble of bones and bruised meat.

He squeaked, trying to hold himself up with the flats of his hands, but his legs gave out under him. Pitching forward, he made an inelegant tumble into my arms, his knees splayed apart. Breathing hard, he mumbled an apology and tried righting himself, only to fall forward again. Slipping off the pair of oversized flip-flops he wore almost sent him to the floor, and I clutched at him again, catching him.

“Did you tell Scarlet you were leaving? Shit, Jae. What the hell were you thinking?” His hands slapped at mine, warning me off. He was determined to stand on his own two feet, and I was just as determined to help him.

“Nuna knows I’d come here,” Jae grumbled, trying to shove my hands away. “And no, I didn’t tell her.”

“Stop before you hurt yourself.” Muttering at him did no good, so I tried scolding. “God, you’ve got as much sense as your cat.”