'Nother Sip of Gin - Rhys Ford Page 0,15
quickly and as erratically as possible so it couldn’t find me again, but… I am not a cat.
Besides, he’d brought more bacon with him.
“The family’s going to be making ye as fat as a cow if they keep feeding ye the way they are.” He helped a bit with the cow transformation by snipping a piece of bacon off and holding it up for me to nibble. I licked his hand in thanks. Also, to encourage him to cough up the rest of it. He obliged, a little bit at a time.
“Yer Miki’s looked a little shell-shocked, but no worries, we’ll be taking care of him too.” Another bacon nibble and he scratched at the spot between my back and neck I could only reach when I rubbed up against the stiff chair in Miki’s den.
The bacon was too much. I’d already had the meat from a bone—a lot of meat too—as well as those cabbage things Miki dropped, more smaller cabbage things, a fluffy biscuit or maybe three from the plate Kane made for himself but forgot on the table long enough for me to get something off of it, and a few ham slices from the first belly scratcher I’d met. The bacon definitely was way too much for my stomach to handle and I belched, tasting the fried yumminess on my breath.
The thump Donal gave me on the side of my ribs didn’t help either, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t hold it back. One of the snootier cats pawed at me from her perch on a table, and I turned my head her way, not wanting to foul my relationship with a man who clearly knew well enough to bring me bacon when he had some.
The cat said something—probably about my mother, because cats aren’t inventive in their insults—and slashed at me again. This time, however, she connected and scraped my nose with her claw. Her smug look lasted nearly as long as the bacon did, because I cocked my head up—and threw up all over her.
Seven
“WHAT TIME is it?” Kane fumbled to reach his phone. It was going off—an alarm of some kind. Musical but soft. “Fucking Connor probably changed my ringer again. What the hell is that?”
The bed smelled—familiar. Good familiar, but the sheets were cold. So were his toes. And his shoulders. His ass wasn’t much warmer, and there was a significant breeze hitting said ass and other bared parts of his body. One appendage he was quite fond of complained mightily of the chilly San Francisco air hitting it, and it curled up in on itself, refusing to bear the cold evening outside of the warm hollow between his thighs.
“Yer a coward, ye are,” Kane informed his dick as he grabbed a pair of sweatpants from a nearby chair. Thankfully, they were his and not Miki’s, snugging up against his relieved cock. “Happy now? Shit, why the hell is it so cold in here? And—fuck, wind?”
He swallowed the panic choking his throat. Blinking, Kane snapped his mind around to where they’d spent the night. Miki’d been driven out of the warehouse like a sheep being led to the slaughter, and Kane’s own mother was the border collie nipping at his heels until he went through the gate.
“God, he’s going to kill me if she doesn’t let him go.” Kane threw his eyes up to the heavens to beseech any listening guardian angel without anything to do. “If yer listening, God, please let me mother understand he’s not one to be cuddled. I don’t want to be pulling him off the ceiling whenever she comes near him, because that’s surely what I’ll be doing if she doesn’t stop.”
“You talk like your dad when you’re sleepy.” The music stopped as Miki’s voice rasped out of a shadowy corner of the room. “More… Irish. Like you’re selling me soap or cereal.”
“Hey, there ye are.” He rubbed at his eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the soft ambient light coming from the street. The loft-style apartment his father’d built behind the garage was a good enough size to hold the odd piece of furniture, and definitely large enough for shadows to cluster in its corners. Miki’d found one of those darker spots and peered out from its safety, cradling a now silent acoustic guitar. “Door open for a reason? Yer too hot?”
“Nah, dog had to piss. Then he came in, but I lost track of time. Fuck, it’s freezing in here.” Miki set