The special of the day was a cat? Edie burst into tears, alarming the girl behind the counter.
“Is . . . is she okay?”
“She just needs a moment,” Gretchen said, grabbing a wad of napkins on the counter and shoving them at Edie. “Can we get two cappuccinos?”
“Of course! Coming right up.”
Gretchen thumped money on the counter and looked over at Edie as she mopped her face. “Are you all right?”
“I think so,” Edie said, then spotted a sign in the corner. Are you a senior citizen? Our coffee—and our companions—are free for you! Ask about our senior program. And she burst into tears again. “He—he—he’s going to lose so mu-much money on these places.”
“Number one,” Gretchen said, ticking off a finger. “He probably doesn’t care because he has boatloads. And number two, it’s probably a tax write-off and he could probably use a good one. And number three, it has you all weepy and probably ready to shuck your panties, am I right?”
She sure wasn’t wrong. As Edie looked around, she saw an elderly couple cuddling a cat that looked just like her Tripod. And the tears started again.
“Two cappuccinos,” the barista announced, and Gretchen snagged the tray. She pushed Edie toward an empty table—the only empty table in the place—in the back.
As they sat down, Gretchen exclaimed, “Oh, look, there’s a cat-treat dispenser at the table!” She hit the tab and a little bell chimed as the treats popped out. Immediately, a fat white cat showed up, meowing. Gretchen laughed. “This greedy gus already has the treat system figured out, don’t you?” She hauled the cat into her lap and snuggled it. “Mmm, I wonder if Igor needs a friend.”
Edie wiped her face again, smiling at the sight of Gretchen holding the cat. She took one of the cups from the tray and sipped it, noticing that even the mug and saucer were covered in cats. On a large TV monitor in the back of the café, the game was displayed, running on a loop.
It was all incredible. When had Magnus managed to do all this? She was amazed. It was . . . beyond anything she’d hoped. She’d asked him to prove that he loved her.
He had. He totally had. He’d found her weak spot and pried her open. She felt totally vulnerable . . . and yet so completely, utterly happy.
Magnus loved her enough to do all this. To take her crusade to the next level for her. This place was clever and trendy and he’d managed to work his own spin to get people to come in and check things out, all with the goal of saving shelter cats.
It was simply incredible.
And he’d done this . . . for her. She was going to start weeping again in a moment.
Gretchen fed the fat white cat his treats and reached for her coffee. As she did, her phone buzzed with an incoming message. “Let me get that,” Gretchen said, and set down the cat. He looked over at Edie, and she automatically picked him up, burying her face in the soft white fur and scratching him under his chin, the way her cats liked it. She might have sobbed into his fur a little, too. Just a little.
As she looked up, Gretchen had a smug smile on her face as she put away her phone. “Want to go see the transition room, Miss Cat Behaviorist?”
Edie’s heart thumped. Did this have anything to do with the text Gretchen had just received? God, she hoped so. “Of course I do.” She was hoping that when they opened the doors, there would be a green-eyed hero waiting on the other side.
And Edie might just fling her panties at him after all.
They put down their drinks, gave the cat one last cuddle before setting him down, and Gretchen flagged down an employee and explained they were looking for the cat transition room. Gretchen whispered something Edie couldn’t hear, and the employee nodded and waved them forward. “Follow me.”
They followed the employee through a door marked Staff Only and down a hall. “We have two transition rooms,” the girl was saying. “Because cats are territorial, we try to give them familiar smells and sounds before introducing them to the others. We pipe in café sounds twenty-four-seven so the cats aren’t freaked out by the noise, and they’re prepared when they go into the main room. We encourage employees to come and spend their breaks in the transition rooms in order to acclimate the cats to people. In addition, our managers tend to work in the transition rooms, too, so again, there’s always someone around.”
“What about cats that don’t acclimate to the café surroundings?” Edie had to know.
“We have six so far that we call our ‘shy’ guys.” The girl beamed. “The employees are fostering them at their personal residences and if we can manage to get them to integrate into the café, we get a bonus. I’m keeping my little Tucker though. He takes his asthma meds like a champ, and the café pays for the prescription, so it’s no cost to me.”
Edie’s heart clenched again. She had two asthmatic cats and knew how expensive inhalers could get. “That’s wonderful.” He’d truly thought of everything to ensure the cats would find a home. She’d never felt so utterly elated. “Do you guys have a vet on staff?”
“We do,” the employee agreed, pausing in front of a door at the end of the hall. It had a plaque marked Cat Inside! Watch the Door. “All of the cats are checked out and are spayed or neutered, as well as have all shots before we allow them to go into the main café.” She knocked on the door.
“Come in,” called a deep, too-familiar voice that made Edie’s toes curl. “It’s safe.”
The employee opened the door for them, gesturing they should enter. They did, Gretchen’s arm clutching at Edie’s so tightly that she couldn’t possibly run away. The room was a simple one, the size of a small office, with a few cat trees, a box for hiding in, a litter box, and a few motivational posters on the walls. Off to one side was a desk covered in paperwork. In the center of the room sat a man on a rolling desk chair.
There he was. His back was to them, but even from this angle, her mouth started watering in anticipation of his kiss. His touch. Her Magnus. Her sweet, thoughtful, clever Magnus. His broad shoulders were covered in a waffle-weave gray shirt, and as she watched, a tabby cat nose burrowed against his neck. He chuckled, and his hand brushed the long, silky fur of what looked like a Maine Coon cat. “This one’s a snuggler,” he said to no one in particular, his focus on the cat. “One day out of her cage and she’s already desperate for my attention.”
“I know what that’s like,” Edie said softly.
As she watched, his shoulders tensed, his entire form becoming aware of her.
“You know, I think that’s my cue to leave,” Gretchen announced, releasing her death grip on Edie’s arm. “I think I’m going to go chug some coffee and pet some cats. Let me know when you’re ready to leave, Eeeds.”
Edie nodded, her gaze still on Magnus. A moment later, the door shut, and then she was alone with him.
“I’d get up to greet you,” Magnus said, “but it’s taken me an hour to get this lady in my arms.”
“You’re patient,” she commented quietly. “That’s sweet.”
“Not really. I just have a plan of conquest.”
That made her smile. “Is that so?”
“Yup. I bathed in tuna before I got here. All part of the strategy.”
She giggled. “You did not.”
“I didn’t. I was kind of hoping you’d show up at some point.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “Oh?”
Very slowly, he turned in his chair until he was facing her. The man was blatantly gorgeous, even in jeans and a casual shirt. Her gaze moved over him hungrily, noting his hair had grown out from its traditional short stubble. He had a few days’ growth of beard along his jaw, and circles under his eyes.
He’d never looked more gorgeous to Edie.
“Hi, stranger,” he said, smiling at her. His movements were stiff, his hands holding the cat as if he were burping a baby. “This one likes my neck, I thin
k.”
“I see that.” Edie gave him a hesitant smile. “I got the app.”
“About time. I’ve been going mad over the last few days wondering if you’d seen it. I finally had Gretchen install it on your phone to ensure you’d get it.”
“She’s sneaky, that Gretchen,” Edie said. She stared at him awkwardly for a moment, full of longing and not sure how to confess it all. “You’ve been busy.”
“Incredibly busy,” he agreed, a smile in those green-gold eyes. “Putting all this together has been a madhouse since its inception. I’ve had two guys working on the app, sixteen managing the creation of the cat cafés, and god knows how many other people pulled in.” He gave a small shake of his head. “It’s turned into its own little industry.”
Tears blurred her eyes again. “And you did . . . all of this for me?”
“Of course I did,” Magnus said. He gently set the cat down on the floor and got to his feet. He moved toward her, and then she was enveloped by his cologne, the scent of his skin, the heat of him. He leaned in and brushed the backs of his fingers over her cheek. “Don’t you think you’re worth it?”
“No one else does,” she said softly.
“No one else matters but me.”
She leaned into his touch. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed the hell out of you,” he admitted, cupping her cheeks and tilting her head back until she was looking up at him. Tears slipped out of the corners of her eyes. “Why are you crying?”
“A million reasons,” she admitted wryly, dashing her hands at her eyes, her fingers brushing against his.
“Give me a few of them.”
“I’m so incredibly . . . touched at all of this.” Edie gestured at the walls. “The café, the app, everything. I’m humbled at how much good you can do for these cats when all I can do is take them into a tiny townhouse—”
“Be fair to yourself,” Magnus butted in. “There’s a lot you can do with money, and you’ve done just fucking fine on your own. Don’t denigrate your efforts simply because I had extra cash to throw around.”
“—and I’m a little terrified,” she continued. “Okay, a lot terrified. I’m afraid of getting hurt, and afraid of letting you in again, and I’m even more afraid of what happens if I don’t. So here I am, scared out of my wits and desperately hoping that you’ve got a kiss or two left in there for me—”
His mouth swooped down on hers. His lips pressed to her own, and then Edie began to cry again, even as she kissed him with aching, needy little flicks of her tongue against his.
“I love you,” he murmured between frantic kisses. “Love you. Miss the hell out of you. Want you back. Please come back.”
“I miss you, too,” she told him, nuzzling her nose against his and closing her eyes. She leaned against him and wrapped her arms around him, soaking in his warmth, his big form, his everything. Her Magnus. Her fingers curled against his shirt. “How . . . how are you doing?” It felt weird to say, but she wanted to know how he’d been coping since she’d left. It felt like lifetimes.
“Fucking awful,” he told her, squeezing her smaller form against him. She wanted to die of happiness at the feel of those big hands on her. “Can’t sleep at night, and I’ve got seven cats roaming around—”
“Wait, seven?”
A massive grin flashed across his face. “Lady Cujo had her kittens. Five of them, right under my damn bed. She pulled the blankets off while I was working and by the time I came back, boom, kittens everywhere.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
He shrugged. “Find them homes when they get old enough. Get her fixed. Maybe keep one.” He gave her a sheepish look. “I’m becoming addicted to cats.”
And because that was the perfect thing to say, she stood on her tiptoes, ignoring the flare of her knee, and pressed her mouth to his. “I love you.”
Magnus groaned, pressing kisses to her mouth. “I love you, too. Come back to me. We’ll fill the apartment with cats and frighten everyone we know with our pet hoarding.”
She giggled. “That’s too many cats for one apartment.”
“I’ll buy them an apartment,” he said, kissing along her jaw, to her ear. “Whatever. Just come back to me.”
She sobered. “Promise you’ll never hurt me again?”
His hands fisted in her hair, holding her close. “I can’t promise you that,” he murmured. “Because I’ll always do something boneheaded, I imagine. But I won’t hold something like that from you again.” When she hesitated, he licked her earlobe, sending shivers down her spine. “I can’t make it better for you, baby. I can’t change the past. But . . . I can show you the kind of future we can have together, if you’ll let me.”
He was asking her to trust. To take a chance on him. Edie looked up into Magnus’s face, at the blunt features that didn’t seem special until he smiled, and his whole face lit up. At the beautiful eyes framed by thick lashes. She thought of his humor, his cleverness, his determination. The way he held her at night. The way he thought of her knee without ever making her feel like an invalid . . . like Bianca did.
He was nothing like Bianca, she realized.
She put her hand in his. “Take me home?”
“Only if you promise to stay there.”
Edie chuckled. “I’m going to have to go pick up my cats from Gretchen’s in time for their meds.”
“You’ll be mine until then?” His arm went around her waist, pressing her body against his.
“Until then,” she agreed. “And then the hours after that. And the days after that. And the months . . .”
“Sounds like I’m going to be getting a lot of pussy.”
She smacked his arm.
He just grinned at her. “And I think this means we need a bigger place if we’re going to have that many cats. Something in the city okay, so you can help me manage my chain of cat cafés?”
“City’s fine.” Her fingers trailed down his shirt. “Anywhere I’m with you, I’m fine.”
He pulled her in for another intense kiss, his tongue tracing along her lips until she was breathless with need. “I wish we were home right now, so I could bend you over this desk and make you mine again.”
Edie shivered, titillated at the visual. “Can you leave? Or do you have to stay?”
“I think I can manage to escape for a few hours,” he said, his hand sliding up to cup her breast.
“Only a few hours?” She mock pouted.
“Have mercy on a man’s penis, woman,” Magnus teased. “I’m only human.”
“Not according to your game proportions. You forget, I’ve seen your Warrior Shop alter ego.”
“It’s made you quite the lusty wench, has it?”
“First, never say the words ‘lusty wench’ again. Second, the only thing I want is you. Just you. Regular, old Big Magnus.” Her hand slid down to fondle the bulge in his pants. “With his impressive, magnificent Little Magnus.”
He groaned. “Please tell me we’re going home right now for some lusty make-up sex.”
“There’s that ‘lusty’ word again.”
“Tawdry, filthy, nasty make-up sex.”
She nibbled on his jaw. “Better.”
Chapter Nineteen
They managed to escape from the cat café without attracting too much attention. Then, laughing like naughty schoolchildren, they linked hands and took a taxi back to Brooklyn. Edie felt light with happiness, giddy with joy. The way Magnus looked at her took her breath away—a mixture of hunger, desire, and affection. As they sat in the back of the taxi, he took her hand in his and began to play with her fingers, lightly stroking the pads of them.
She felt every movement as if he were dragging his fingertips over her skin. By the time they got to the Park Slope apartment, her breasts were aching, her nipples were erect, and her pu
lse was thrumming steadily between her thighs. Her entire body was alive with joy and with Magnus’s presence. For the first time in weeks, Edie felt completely, utterly happy.
As soon as they got out of the cab and into the apartment, Magnus cupped her face and began to kiss her mouth again. “I’ve missed you. So much.” His mouth stroked over hers, lips pressing to her own in firm, quick kisses that only whetted the appetite for more. “Feels like it’s been forever since I’ve tasted these pretty lips.”
Edie trembled at his words. She knew just how he felt. Her fingers rubbed along his jaw, feeling the bristle of his unshaven face. “I missed you, too.”
“You sure you’re not here just to peek at my cats and leave?” His thumbs stroked over her cheeks, his tongue flicking over her lips in a sensual kiss. “Because I don’t think I could stand that.”
“Oh, I want to see your cats,” she told him breathlessly. But she didn’t pull away from him. She couldn’t. She wanted to stay in his arms forever.
“I’ll show them to you, on one condition,” he said, then caught her lower lip between his teeth and tugged at it.
Edie had to stifle a moan. “Condition?”
“I get to play with your breasts while you look at them.”
“Seems fair,” she said, dazed at his touch.
“Then follow me,” he said, nipping at her lip. He gave her a mischievous grin and gestured at the apartment.
In a breathless haze, Edie realized they were still in the entryway of the flat, and the entire apartment was different than the last time she’d seen it. New, comfortable, normal furniture decorated the room. There was a comfy couch in front of a TV, a dining room table with four plain chairs, and end tables that were not shaped like objets d’art but like end tables. Framed Warrior Shop posters hung on the walls, and in several corners of the cozy living room, she spotted cat furniture. “You redecorated.”
“I went for livable this time instead of ‘weird but impressive,’” he agreed. “I think I actually prefer it. Go figure.”