Page 56 of Fight Or Flight

“So . . .” she said, unsure where she was going with it. Part of her wanted to tell him to leave. Part of her wanted to pull him back into bed for more sex and snuggles. She’d never been so conflicted after a one-night stand, and it made her realize she was completely out of her element.

There had been something almost decadent about the sex she’d had with Ethan. As if all the sex she’d had before was waxy dollar store chocolate. Then she finally tasted a creamy, ganache-filled, melt-in-your-mouth gourmet delicacy. Her mouth watered just looking at his long body and calm eyes, and a fresh wave of need flooded her veins. She shook her head and reached for a T shirt in her suitcase but changed her mind and took a tank instead.

Get it together, dammit.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to use the dresser?” Ethan asked.

Natalie cleared her throat and shrugged one shoulder. “I like my suitcase.”

“I see. Uh, would you like to—” Ethan stopped midsentence, tipped his ear toward her door. “Did you hear that?”

Natalie pulled the shirt down over her head, stuck her arms through. “Hear what?”

“I think it was . . . meowing,” he said.

She gasped. “I finally got ’em?!” She dashed out of the room, leaving Ethan standing alone in his boxers.

She’d set the cat traps in the kitchen again before leaving for dinner the night before and filled them with piles of treats and open cans of tuna. She’d even put a blanket over them, convinced they were smart enough to recognize a trap by sight alone. She hadn’t even thought to check them, with all the sex.

Happy to have a distraction from all the dishevelled sexiness, she made her way down the stairs, around the corner, and into the kitchen, then pulled up short.

An orange marmalade cat sat in the middle of the floor in front of one cage, screech-meowing at its door.

Ethan came into the room behind her. “He’s not in the cage.”

Natalie stepped around the cat, grabbed the blanket that stretched over the cages, and pulled it off. One of them was empty, but inside the other was a cat that looked almost identical to the one on the outside, but something was slightly off. She squatted to inspect it. Where the cat’s eyes were supposed to be were two empty slits.

Her mouth fell open.

Ethan crouched down next to her. “Oh. He’s blind.”

The cat outside the cage started hissing at her, then carried on its incessant meowing. She stood and backed away while continuing to stare at the blind cat.

When she’d contacted the humane society and told them about donating the cats, they’d told her it would be difficult to find them families, but they’d try. Now, seeing they were nearly feral and one was blind, she knew they wouldn’t be able to find people to adopt them.

They would almost certainly be euthanized.

There was something about trapping and murdering a blind cat that seemed too horrific for her to do.

Ethan cleared his throat. “I think he’s worried about his brother.”

Natalie looked up at Ethan, who was staring at her with his brows raised.

“Brother?” she asked, guilt flooding her heart.

She had no clue what to do, but she knew she couldn’t kill the damn things. She took a deep breath, trying to summon some bravado to act like she didn’t care, then gave up. Her shoulders slumped forward. “Fuck.”

She unlatched the cage door and watched as the blind cat followed the meowing of his brother and left the cage. They reunited, then scurried off down the hall and disappeared.

She walked to a chair and fell into it, rubbing her pounding temples with her fingers. “What am I going to do now? Abandon them? Sell them with the house as a package deal? Find a barn somewhere to sneak them into and leave them to fend for themselves?”

Ethan’s soft chuckle came through. He moved behind her, slipped his big warm hands under her hair onto her shoulders, and began massaging her. “For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing, letting him go.”

Natalie moaned. She wanted to say something snarky to him, but his hands just felt so good. Comforting.

“Do you want to go get some breakfast?”

She tensed. “What?”

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