“One does not make her pregnant mother cry by being anything other than enthusiastic about her fried chicken. I might be a terrible person, but I do try to be a good daughter. I’m the only daughter she has right now. I’m hoping the next litter is girls. I’m outnumbered terribly.” As a ticket would delay me even more, I pulled over before plugging in the address to my first target. “I have a list of targets, and I expect you to follow my lead on this. I like to take the systematic approach, but honestly? Having you and the truck around will make this a little easier. There is a rule about this truck. We leave no trace of my side job in the truck. My daddy can’t find out about my side job. If my daddy finds out about my side job, that means my momma finds out about my side job, and if my momma finds out about my side job, that means all forty-seven of my brothers learn about my side job. We clear?”
“As you have a disgustingly good record regarding your bounty performance, it would not benefit me to have you suddenly develop an unfortunate audience of forty-nine individuals.”
“Don’t forget my uncles.”
“An unfortunate audience of a ridiculous number of individuals invested in your good health.”
“Welcome to my life. It’s very frustrating, really. And they don’t understand why I might want to remove the scars from my face, as they’re deluded and will consider me beautiful even if I had no nose.”
“You would not be beautiful without a nose.”
“See? I can’t even get mad at you for that. It’s absolutely true. This face without a nose? It’s not pretty. This face without scars? It’s actually almost pretty. I got to see a reconstruction at a recent appointment with a surgeon. They did the bone rebuild to see what I should actually look like. It turns out when you’re not missing a chunk of your cheek, your face looks really different. But I’m almost pretty with a proper face. I’m trying to figure out how your offer is too good to be true. It has to be too good to be true.”
“It’s a dangerous job, you’re their kind of target, and you’re a single female lycanthrope. That puts you at a high-risk during a high-risk job, so you’re being paid accordingly. If he’s not taken out, there will be many more people hurt. That’s why I’ll be accompanying you. If it wasn’t illegal without consent, I’d microchip you.”
“I’ll listen to your pitch to microchip me, but it better be a damned good offer and involve your enslavement. I would get to hold your leash. For every day I’m microchipped, I get to hold your leash.”
“It would be a permanent microchipping.”
My virus perked up at the thought of keeping Sebastian permanently, as she could get to hear him roar daily. “Then I would get to permanently hold your leash. You can sign over your freedom to me at your leisure. Otherwise, you don’t get to microchip me.”
“Damn it, Wells!” While his complaint didn’t count as a roar, my virus purred over his display of annoyance.
A few more jabs might do it. “You’re pretty enough I’d take very good care of you, my new pet lion.”
“You are a menace,” he snarled.
“I’m a delight. You just can’t posture and get me to do what you want, so your male lion ego gets terribly bruised. Usually within five minutes of exposure to me. You know you love me because I’m such a delight.”
For the first time in our relationship, I stunned him into silence.
My virus took her time considering his new reaction to my mouth, and maybe with a jab or two, I’d get a two-for-one special, knocking the furry pervert out, right along with the egotistical male lion.
Sometimes, life treated me well, and I wanted nothing to change.
I pressed the button on the navigation panel, which began instructing me on how to reach the seamstress’s shop, a two-hour drive away with traffic.
Stupid traffic.
“It’s simple, Sebastian. If I let egotistical males drag me down, I would be a pampered princess in an ivory tower, safeguarded by a ridiculous number of moody, overprotective male cats. While there are days I wouldn’t mind being a pampered princess, I’d rather not drown in moody, overprotective males. As I’m a lycanthrope, I might be convinced I should tolerate one overprotective male, but he’d have to be spectacular.” I listened