The Tales of Twisted Felix Katt (Book 1)

Once More Through the Looking Glass (NaNoWriMo)

They say that the best defense is offense, and I intend to start offending right now – Captain James

There’s a small problem with choosing to turn off your instincts and giving yourself permission to relax. I don’t just act paranoid because it projects a bad ass aura, but because people really are out to get me. In this case I heard the footsteps coming towards my private quarters and then I figured they continued on passed, probably just Van or Rorick just doing a night time ship check. I do them too, on no set schedule so I’m used to it from the three of us.

But this time I was wrong in assuming that all was well in Nottingham. I’d been having a dream that was making me twitch and fuss in my sleep. It was probably the dream where I can hear someone calling my name, begging for help but I can’t find them in a blizzard, and there’s something bad coming after me at the same time.  Those are fairly typical for me to have, the more stressed I get, the more tripped out my dreams are. As I was waking myself up, still in that mostly asleep state, I felt a hand smooth through my hair and a deep rumbling voice soothing me back to sleep. The animal part of my brain recognized the voice and since I knew he’d be watching my back, I settled back down to sleep. Don’t ask me how it didn’t wake me up, Rorick being in my room, but I blame the lack of sleeping that has been giving me so much spare time lately. I even embarrassed the hell out of myself because I think I mumbled, “Hmmm I like this dream better.” Yes I talk in my sleep. I don’t know what I can blame for the fact that I didn’t even wake up when Rorick settled into my rather compact bed next to me, but somehow I woke up later cuddled to his chest.

There’s an exquisite pleasure in waking up with your face pressed to a chest that muscular, hearing the powerful hammer of a heart the size of an infant’s skull. Asleep, his face was softer than I expected, not used to seeing him in actual repose. But somehow Rorick looked relaxed and peaceful, not the hard lined and dangerous edge I’m used to seeing on his rough face. And when he opened his dark as secret eyes, I realized that we were less than an inch apart, his arms loosely around my shoulders, my face to his chest and a leg hooked up over his. I had a moment to realize that this was a very bad thing and then he was kissing me.

A woman with strong moral fortitude would end this immediately and command him to leave the room. A woman with moral ground would end the kiss and tell him this could never happen. Since I was a woman with neither moral fortitude nor high ground, I moaned into the kiss and pressed myself closer to him. I’d already been half lying on him, so it’s no surprise I ended up straddling his waist, pressing myself against his torso and kissing him like someone might pull us apart any second now.

Rorick seemed to be just as determined as I was to take advantage of this momentary lapse in good judgment. One of his huge hands was against the back of my skull, my hair a silken tangle in his grip. His other hand was sliding under the back of my shirt, the scars and calluses on his palm tickling and catching at my own marked back and I shivered. My own hands swept down the planes and ridges of his chest, caressing his abdomen and finally realizing that he wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. I could feel his arousal press against my thigh like a heavy weight and it was driving me to distraction. There was all kinds of mental alarms going off, reminding me that maybe I should put a stop to this before it got too far. I had a reason to avoid this kind of thing, I was just having a really hard time thinking of it right now for some reason. Rorick’s hand left my hair and the shirt was swiftly pulled off me, leaving my bare chest to press against his and we both shivered at the contact. His hand sunk into may hair again and he pulled my neck to the side and bit roughly just below my ear, jaw locking in a toe curling exquisite bite as his other hand left my back to cup one of my breasts.

My hands clutched at his shoulders for a moment and he sat us up, mouth tearing away from my neck to suck at my nipple. I cried out at the sensation, trying to ignore the entire body throb it induced. I scratched my nails down his shoulders, grabbed the bundle that was my shirt and jumped off the blood slave. I stumbled as Rorick called after me but I scrambled into my shirt and out of the room before he even got out of the bed. I’m guessing that by the time Rorick made it to the door to come after me, I’d already climbed barefoot up to the next platform and ducked down a different direction. What have I done? I fretted, trying to ignore the way my body screamed at me to go back and finish what we started.

I probably just ruined everything and I couldn’t even explain to him why. Push him away, reject him to keep him safe. The long standing rule I’ve obeyed for five years had kept us both alive, if silently miserable. The cold metal grating that made up the walkways of my ship burned and stung the bottoms of my bare feet. A nipping tattoo of movement that mocked me as much as I insulted myself. Without thinking about it, I found myself back in the crew area of the ship and stopped myself at Van’s room before my traitor feet could take me back to Rorick. I wouldn’t escape twice, not now that the hunt was on.

I didn’t even knock on Van’s door, knowing that it didn’t matter what she was up to, I’ve walked in on her doing something far worse. You don’t even want to know how many things I had to see before I got to this level of desensitization. As it was, I woke Van up but thankfully the man and woman in bed with her stayed asleep. I didn’t say anything, just walked back out knowing that she would follow. I can hate this woman sometimes, but she’s also my best friend when it counts. This was one of those times. I think other women in this situation would drink hot teas, eat rich foods and talk it out. Van and I taped up out hands and started to beat the daylights out of each other while I stayed silent. When we got sick of whacking each other like carnival moles, we alternated holding the punching bag so that the other could wear out some more.

“One question.” Van grunted, doing a beautiful right hook left upper cut combination. I waited, knowing that the pause wasn’t intentional, but she was breathing to work out not talk. “Is that a hickey?”

I slapped my hand to my neck before I could even voice a denial. Feeling red flood to my face at the knowing look in her eyes, I bit my lip to keep a comment to myself. This air of impulse lately is a bad sign, I needed to refocus my control. I knew what it was. Being on a planet that was this liberal, right in time for Mardi Gras, the idiot that is my romantic self still had hope that I could actually be with Rorick. I needed to kill that hope before it hurt either of us worse than it already has. It wasn’t fair to lead him on like this, and it was destroying my happy in ways I wasn’t sure I’d recover from.

Van gave me this disgusted look. “I can see it on your face. You’re not going to sleep with him are you?” she sounded a little angry and offended at the prospect. I opened my mouth to protest her attitude but she shut me up by continuing her diatribe. “Goddess needs to kick you up the back of your ass Felix!” she cussed at me and my short second in command came around the boxing bag to grab the front of my shirt. “He is in love with you Felix. It’s not a sense of duty making him stick to you as if you needed a big, bald shadow!” then, I guess to make sure she had my complete attention, she slapped me across the face. “I don’t care whatever it is you think is standing in your way, you belong with that man and he belongs with you. I love you like a baby sister, but if I have to, I will tie you to a bed and lock him in the room with you. We all know you want him just as badly.”

I stared at her for a second, and then to my complete and utter dismay, I snuffled as my eyes started to sting, probably from all the sweat. Yeah, that had to be the reason I decided as I quickly wiped at my whole face, dabbing my eyes too.  Unfortunately, even though I got a hold of

myself, Van had seen that moment and stared at me in shock. I think in the years I have known her, she’s seen me cry twice. Once when I was having a really bad bout of PMS, and the other time was when I was getting stitched up after being stabbed in the arm. Don’t ask me why, but I hadn’t gotten any scars on my right arm yet. My face has a small one, my left side everywhere, the right side almost everywhere and we all know how pretty my back side has been for years now. But somehow I’d kept a scar free arm, until I got stabbed straight through by a harpoon. That had made my day suck, and it had been an accident! You would have cried too.

Before I could suffer through an awkward and really ineffective pep talk from Van, everything around us flickered and suddenly we were hit with a Shuffle.