Page 18 of Tiger Born

He got this cocky smirk and winked at her. “Why thank you.”

“You know this is really weird seeing you up and walking and winking at me when I was literally wrist deep in your body like eight hours ago. I wish everyone could heal like that. Take this savage humongous scar,” she joked, pulling up her sleeve again. “That I got from a tiger mauling. Guess how long it took me to heal up?”

Dame straightened his spine and studied it with narrowed eyes. “Two weeks?”

Misty scoffed. “Two weeks? The stitches had just started itching after two weeks. Try six weeks just to get the stitches out, then this big one ripped, they had to use the glue, and butterfly bandages, and then it got infected and I had to do a round of antibiotics, and then when I was finally allowed to use the scar patches, it took another full year of those just to get them to look like your scars on your stomach that you got yesterday.”

He was grinning through that entire dramatic story.

“It’s not funny. I feel fragile around you.”

“You stapled my entire torso back together and you aren’t rocking in a corner from a mental breakdown right now. There isn’t anything fragile about you.”

The smile fell from her lips at the unexpected compliment. “I wish I could tell if you were lying or not.”

“You’ll have to trust me. I’m not. I don’t have a reason to lie. I can’t get in your pants, remember? No use lying. There’s no endgame.”

“Is that really all boys do? Lie for sex?”

He shrugged and poked around on his phone screen. “I have.”

“Ew! And you’re complaining about Chris’s? And also that doesn’t make sense because you just said there is no point in lying because you don’t have sex with humans.”

“Oh, I didn’t say I don’t have sex with humans. I do. I just won’t have sex with you.”

“What? Why not? What’s wrong with me?”

“Mmm, too deep.” He was still looking at his phone and poking around, but this was too interesting not to advance on.

“I’m serious. I want to know what’s wrong with me.”

“There is nothing wrong with you,” he said, his gold eyes darting to her and back down. “There’s too much right with you. That’s the problem.”

This made no sense. Not a lick of sense at all.

“Hold up, I need explanations.”

“Too deep.”

“Daaaame,” she drawled out. “Come on, we are newfound best friends. We’ve saved each other!”

“Are you always like this if you don’t get the answer you want?”

“Well, not with people I don’t care about. If I was standing in a bank line right now and some guy was trying to be mysterious, chances are I’m going to let him stay mysterious.”

“Well, why can’t you let me stay mysterious?”

“Because you have a six pack and you change into a tiger at the full moon!”

“It has nothing to do with the moon.”

“On Fridays and Tuesdays!”

“My Changes aren’t scheduled.”

“And you have bicep veins.”

He frowned and looked at one of his biceps. “Oh, lookey there. I do. I’ve literally never noticed that.”