Page 62 of Prey It By Ear

“Good point, Chester.” He winks as he continues getting his food ready for preparation.

I hear the door one more time, and the twins come stomping in. Fitz is moving with the velocity of a missile and almost collides with me. He’s wearing the same hoodie, crop-top, and bunny socks as this morning, but he’s thankfully added pants. “I’m surprised the library isn’t on fire, Spicy Salamander. Last I checked, the password reset queue was up to two-hundred-and-forty. I get it, though, because the server room backup just hiccuped again, and Midori texted me. I’m gonna fix it, but she can bend over and fuck herself if she thinks I’m doing it after six.”

“Admirable stance, Fitzgerald. I approve.”

Chester opens a drawer and starts slicing bread, every movement precise and controlled. It’s a weirdly calming sight—his hands are always steady, even when everything else is chaos. “You shouldn’t work at night unless it’s a genuine emergency, Fitz. They overloaded us on purpose, and the best response is to ignore any non-disaster related items until the next workday. It’s what I plan to do.”

Felix finally comes in, his jacket slung over one arm, and a t-shirt with the school logo stretched tight across his chest. He scans the room, frowning. “Where’s the Princess?”

“Taking a shower. Trust me, she needed it after her day.”

“Dinner in twenty minutes. Everyone else should follow my angel’s lead and get clean and comfy before I’m done.” The cheetah gives us all a firm look as he points a knife in our direction. “No one is sitting down to eat and relax smelling like gardens or locker rooms or stinky shit.”

Fitz grins, bopping over to kiss the cheetah before he says, “Chessie doesn’t lay down the law much, assholes. You heard my mate—get thee to a shower stall and meet up when we’re done!”

For the first time today, my jaw unclenches. This is how our family behaves, and even though I hate being told what to do, Chester and Fitz are right.

Ra forbid I ever tell the crazy tiger that, but I’m going to do it anyway.

* My fiery companion

Around The World

Delores

After our very comfortable and tasty family dinner, I stand at the sink with Chess, my hands buried to the wrist in suds that are determined to out bubble the rest of my life’s problems. He’s whistling—always off-key, always cheerful—while drying plates at a breakneck pace. I have a wet bowl in one hand and a dishtowel in the other, but every muscle in my body is screaming for the couch, or better yet, a coma.

My feet throb in the familiar post-pirouette rhythm of a long rehearsal after a summer without practicing, but I force myself to stay upright, anyway. It is an oft-repeated rule in our house that if you help make the mess; you help erase the evidence. Chess is adamant about it, mostly because if he wasn’t, we’d accidentally dump it on him.

Old habits, I suppose, from before I came into their lives, but I support my cheetah standing up for himself.

“Do you ever just… half-ass anything?” I ask playfully, flicking soap at him. “Everyone I’ve ever met does, except you, Chessie. You always strive for perfection, even in the littlest stuff, like the dishes. And you do it quietly, not for attention, so it feels like it’s important to you.”

He looks at me over his wire rims, smiling wide as the arch of the moon. “No, Angel, I do not. If I had to guess, I’d say that it’s because of where I grew up. I was sort of forced on them by the twins, and I wanted to earn my keep so they wouldn’t throw me to the jungle.”

I snort and pass him the bowl. “And now? Why do you still push yourself so hard?”

He shrugs, stacking the bowl with the others, while not missing a beat of his off-key hum. After a moment, he sighs as he wrinkles his nose. “I don’t know. It’s part of who I am now, I suppose. Mastering things gives me a sense of accomplishment—even internally—that makes me happy.”

The hallway reverberates with the slap-slap-slap of chicken socks—he changed them after his shower—and the dramatic whoosh of a huge, borrowed dress shirt trailing behind. Fitz is like an incoming missile as he rushes towards us with his arms outstretched, hair doing its own weird version of jazz hands, and his mouth already open mid-yell.

Aubrey’s not happy about him stealing that shirt, by the way, but he let it go.

“Incoming,” he shouts, and before I have a chance to brace or otherwise defend my dignity, I am hoisted from behind in a blur of powerful arms. Suddenly, the floor is a lot closer than it should be as my legs are in the air and my face is hanging by my mate’s ass.

“Fitz!” I yelp, grabbing for the back of his hips to anchor myself in the suddenly upended world. “Put me down, you maniac—I’m exhausted and my feet are destroyed, and I have at least four more legitimate medical complaints. It’s not the time to play ‘eagle’, babe.”

He ignores every word, one arm balancing my ass with the kind of casual strength that would be menacing if it wasn’t one of my boyfriends. That’s when I’m carried out of the kitchen like a rolled-up carpet, only with more cursing and kicking.

Behind us, Chessie calls, “Be gentle with her, Fitzy. She’s sore, and we don’t want to make it worse.”

“She’ll be better than ever when we’re done,” Fitz yells back, and to me, he adds, “You smell delicious, Baby Girl. A little dish soap, a lot of sass, and a pinch of bunny panic. I’m excited as fuck.”

I protest, but my brain is short-circuiting on a mixture of adrenaline and lust. “I am not a sack of potatoes, you know. I am a… delicate flower, and you are going to bruise me and then Felix will murder you and use your bones for protein shakes.”

Not true in the slightest, but I’m trying to play on his squishy spots.

Fitz cackles as he takes the corner to the hall at speed, barely slowing even as my fists beat at his back in a mock threat. “Felix knows what I planned, and you are not delicate—you’re the toughest snack in the whole fucking vending machine, according to the big guy.”