Page 44 of Twilight Sins
I shove the cat again, but he flops onto his side with a thud. Then he rolls onto my hand. The purring continues.
“He never purrs for anyone. He hardly even purrs for me.” Luna’s smile fades. She narrows her eyes at her cat. “Did you give him some treats or something when I wasn’t looking?”
I snort. “Don’t ask stupid questions.”
“It just doesn’t make sense that he’s doing this. He only does this for food, so you must have given him something.”
“The only thing I’m giving him is a boot in the ass.”
Luna huffs in annoyance and leans across the table. Her hair falls over her shoulder and a floral scent follows her. “Go on, Gregory.” She shoos the cat away. “He doesn’t want you here like I do. He doesn’t appreciate your company. Go on and I’ll find you later.”
Gregory gives her a scathing look before he lightly jumps off the end of the table and saunters into the kitchen.
“Well, now, you’ve met Gregory,” Luna mutters, dropping back into her seat. “Like every other creature on planet Earth, he was into you immediately. Go figure.”
“The feeling is far from mutual.”
“What’s your deal?” she asks. “I thought villains were really into cats. In movies, they’re always stroking them and hatching evil schemes.”
I arch a brow. “I thought you trusted me now.”
“I trust you, but that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. Whatever you’ve got going on here—”She circles her finger in my face.“—is definitely villainous somehow. So I thought you’d be into Gregory. What’s the matter? Did your dad run over your childhood dog or something?”
“No, but he would have. My father hated pets more than I do. My mom always wanted to get a cat, but he refused.”
“So you never had a pet? Not even a gerbil or something?”
“Mariya had a pet for a few days.”
“That’s your sister?” she asks.
I nod. “She begged our parents for a pet for years. They refused, so she took matters into her own hands. She snuck a baby squirrel into her room and kept it in a box under her bed.”
Luna gasps. “A squirrel? A wild squirrel? How did she take care of it?”
“Who knows? Mariya is determined. No one can tell her no. Even when our parents found the squirrel and released it outside, Mariya caught it again later that night and brought it back into her room. They finally had to take it to a wildlife refuge to get it away from her.”
“Is ‘wildlife refuge’ the same as a dog ‘going upstate to live on a farm?’” She winces like she already knows the answer.
“My father wanted to kill it. He almost did, actually. But my mother stopped him. She is too soft-hearted to watch any creature suffer.”
I didn’t take after her in that regard.
Luna smiles and sighs. “Your family sounds nice. Will I ever meet them?”
She has no clue she’s already met Nikandr. It’s no secret that my brother works in the family business; everyone in our world knows who he is. But letting Luna into how things operate in my life… That is a slippery slope. It’s easier to never go down that road.
“Why would you want to meet my family?”
“Um… I don’t know. Because they seem important to you.”
“Exactly. They’re important to me. You don’t even know them.”
“Meeting them would fix that, wise guy.” She puts down her fork and rests her chin on her fist, watching me. “I may be bad at dates, but you’re bad at friends. Did you know that? This is the kind of stuff friends do. They share information about their lives with each other.”
“I’m not your friend, Luna.”
Friend might as well be a four-letter word. Where Luna is concerned, it’s the absolute last thing I want to be.