Page 47 of Catnapped
“The last time my parents asked, I inquired if they wanted me to have one out of wedlock, if I could pick up some prostitute to handle the deed, and if they’d like to reevaluate their stance,” I admitted. “This is part of why I don’t have a great relationship with my parents.”
“You don’t have a great relationship with your parents because they tried to drown you as a child.”
“I’m not sure I’d count an unwanted baptism as an attempted drowning.”
“I do. But then again, my fathers and my mother made sure to teach me that I was under no obligation to participate in any religion unless I genuinely wanted to, and they made sure to go over most major religious celebrations each year. I was not required to participate in any of them unless I wanted to. Honestly, I’ve tried telling them it’s pretty hard to deny the existence of things like devils, demons, and angels when I happen to live in the same house with them. I’m not even sure how your parents can deny like they do when the evidence is right there in front of them.”
“Except it isn’t right there in front of them. Neither have seen an angel. They have convinced themselves that the demons running around are people corrupted by the limited magic there is. Lycanthropes they have an easy time with. They’re diseased, and they understand diseases.”
“Except it’s a magical, incurable disease.”
“I tried to lick a lycanthrope once. I was pretty young, she was a tiger, and I would’ve given just about anything to be a tiger, too.”
“How did you get close enough to a tiger to lick her?”
“My parents took their eyes off me for like half a second.” I giggled at the memory. “Maybe that’s why I rescued a cat instead of a dog. That tiger was absolutely magnificent. Mr. Flooferson is obviously an oddly colored miniature tiger.”
“Can I revise my opinion about wanting children? I’m now utterly terrified and no longer convinced I can keep a child alive.” He hesitated. “Or free of disease or injury.”
“I would not have minded becoming a tiger, Darian. I don’t know if she had the hybrid form or not, but she was magnificent. If my mother hadn’t sworn I’d earn a quick trip to hell, I probably would have started licking lycanthropes with frightening frequency.”
“I’m trying to figure out why you thought licking lycanthropes would give you the virus. Also, I’m highly disturbed that your mother used a blatant fear tactic on you as a child.”
“Honestly, the threat didn’t scare me, but it was pretty effective on other kids in the church. I was too fascinated with magic and everything it represented. As for licking lycanthropes, that’s simple. I was homeschooled. My parents opted against education of magical species using a religious exception. Let’s just say high school, where they sent me to public school, was quite the eye opener.”
“How did you rate going into public school?”
“My math was ahead of the curve. My science was so far behind the curve it was laughable at best. I scored well in English. I took foreign languages because they interested me. My history was so-so, but it turns out my parents tried to erase some important facts from my education. Honestly, they’re probably the reason I started researching forbidden lore. Once I learned how much they’d skipped out on because of their religious beliefs, I began doing my best to educate myself. It took me two years to get caught up, but I emerged triumphant by the end. I had a perfect GPA in my senior year.”
“Maybe my uncles are trying to marry me off to you because you’re smart, beautiful, and single. That’s a rare combination, Diana.”
“They’re trying to marry you off to me because triads tend to refuse to have another child until the first one is safely in the custody of some other being. I think it’s something to do with the angels. I mean, triads have zero failure rates for pregnancies and deliveries. The angel takes care of that. So, it could be that your uncles just like you a lot—or hate you with every fiber of their being. That part is rather unclear to me.”
“It’s unclear to me, too.”
“Marriage does include good tax benefits,” I commented, narrowing my eyes and considering the pros and cons of going along with the scheme. “We haven’t tried to kill each other yet, and apparently, we need to go on a date. A divorce is also very easy to acquire, and we could easily sign a document that states that anything we had prior to our marriage remains ours, and anything earned during the marriage is split equally. We could scandalize every single member of our families and make the heavens and hells have a conniption all at once if we don’t like the realities of marriage. I work a lot. You seem to work a lot, too. So, we’d be basically bed buddies who see each other infrequently with tax breaks. And three cats.”
Darian leaned back in his seat and fiddled with the keys before putting them into the ignition and starting the SUV. “I’d still have to ask you on a date after this mess is finished.”
“Do married people not go on dates?”
“I have no idea, honestly.”
“I’d think married people should go on dates, because how else would you go have fun wining and dining? Or going bowling or anything like that? Does signing marriage documents somehow suck out the enjoyment of doing something with their partner? That seems wrong somehow.”
“I never put any thought into this. I’ve always heard dating was for looking for someone to marry.”
“I’m of the opinion that if you aren’t interested in continuing to date the person after marriage, perhaps marriage is not a good idea. The whole point is to find a partner to live with permanently. If you can’t stand doing stuff with the person you’re married to, why get married?”
“I’d say because of the societal expectations on sex,” he admitted. “Out-of-wedlock sex is a big deal to a lot of people.”
“It’s none of their business who I sleep with, unless I’m sleeping with someone in their bedroom,” I countered.
“I feel like I’m in shark-infested waters, and that I happened to have cut my foot open on something. Will the shark toy with me before my inevitable demise?”
Laughing, I shook my head. “It just seems stupid to me. Why do people insist on pushing their personal morality on others? How is it any of their business who I decide to take to bed with me?”
“I don’t have a good answer to that.”
