I look up, finding Zeke grinning at me. Caught staring, great.
“Nothing. Umm, what are you making?”
“Your blush tells me everything I need to know,” Zeke says, shaking his head in amusement. “I’m gonna make some mac n cheese with hotdogs. Does that sound okay? It’s one of my comfort meals.”
“Absolutely! Do you need any help?”
“Nah, just stay here looking adorable and keep me company?”
“You think I’m adorable?”
Zeke grabs a pot and fills it with water, setting it down on the stove. “Is that even a real question? Of course I do.” He says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“Whatever,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I want to get to know more about you. Before the temptation to take you back to bed grows too hard to resist.”
“Gods,” Zeke breathes out, taking a step over me and wrapping a possessive hand around my hip. “You’re insatiable, aren’t you?”
“I’m only getting started. I feel like I’ve been waiting forever to experience these types of feelings. Now that I have you, I can’t seem to get enough,” I confess softly, ignoring the way my cheeks are heating up despite having already fucked so much. Will I ever get used to how hot and bothered my mate makes me?
Zeke leans down, kissing my lips gently. He’s careful to pull away before things can move into a more heated territory. He steps back over to the stove, popping a few hotdogs into a pan so they can warm up while he’s boiling the pasta.
“Tell me about your family. Are you all familiars?”
I nod my head. “My grandparents are both familiars and so are my parents and all of my aunts and uncles. It’s kind of amazing how we’re all familiars, a lot of other families are at least a bit more mixed.”
“What are your parents like?”
“They’re fine,” I say with a shrug. “They moved around a lot, always jumping into different projects or finding random jobs to do. Whenever they were gone I stayed with one of my cousins or with my grandma. We all kinda shifted households frequently.”
“That must have been hard growing up, not having a stable place that was yours.”
I look away, doing my best not to show how he’s somehow hit the nail on the head without even trying. “It wasn’t horrible. I had my grandma. And my parents loved me, they were just always busy, you know?”
Zeke hums, stirring the pasta. “Still. That doesn’t sound like the most pleasant childhood. I’m really glad you had your cousins and your grandma though.”
“Me too. It feels so strange not to have them here,” I tell Zeke, running my fingers through my shaggy hair and pushing it behind my ear. “I’m so used to being glued to their sides. We spent five years in that RV together tracking down Willow’s spark.”
“That RV must have been so fucking stinky,” Zeke says with a hearty laugh. “That many dudes all stuck together in an enclosed space? No, thank you!”
“Hey! We regularly stopped to shower! We were not stinky, how dare you!” We both laugh, me from the absolute audacity of the comment and Zeke from my reaction. I step over to him, wrapping my arms around his middle and lean my face against his back.
Oh. This is lovely. This is wonderful. I love being near Zeke. I love being able to touch him so freely. I love smelling him.
“What about your family? Are you an only child?”
“I am,” Zeke says, running his fingers over my forearm, making me shiver. “It was just me, my dad, and my mom growing up. They’re wonderful and before you ask, yes, they’re both banshees just like me.”
“One good thing about that is everyone knows each other’s habits and quirks, I suppose. Although with familiars you never know your animal skin until later on.”
Zeke tenses at my words before he’s letting out a long breath, forcing himself to relax. “What do you mean by that?”
Instead of questioning what that was about, I answer his question. “Familiars can shift into an animal skin in addition to the other things they’re capable of. When familiars are little, they can try out different animal skins to see which feels the best or the form that resonates with them the most.”
“That’s really interesting,” Zeke says as he pulls my hands away from his middle. Putting space between us, he walks to the fridge, pulling out some milk and butter. “Did you always feel best as a lion?”
I shake my head. “I was all over the place. It took until I hit about 14 to find my lion form.”
“I loved seeing you in your lion form. You were so fucking cuddly.”
“Oh my gods, don’t remind me. That was so embarrassing.”
“Nah, it was adorable. Just like your human form,” he says, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek before going back to cooking.
I want to argue but I don’t, letting my mate’s teasing compliments in as best as I can. I want to believe him, I really do. So for once, I don’t make a joke and just accept it. “Do you have a job?”
“I do! I’m an internet ghost hunter,” Zeke says, laughing at himself. “I hunt them for real and then record it as best as I can before editing out anything that proves it’s real. Page and I dub over some of the sounds, making it spooky in all the right places before posting them online.”
“And you make money from that? Really?”
“Don’t sound so skeptical! I really do make money from that. The sight we post on puts ads on our videos and we make revenue from that. Page also has a trust fund from one of her grandparents, so she lives off that while I live off the videos.”
“What about Ray?”
“Oh, she’s got a normal job,” Zeke explains with a smile, pulling two bowls from the cabinet and piling two heaping portions of mac n cheese into them. “She’s a receptionist at a local paper factory. She absolutely doesn’t look like the receptionist type but she loves it. Mostly because she holds all the power when directing calls and making sure her bosses schedules aren’t completely fucked.”
“I can see it,” I say, taking one of the bowls from Zeke and stepping over to the table. “That makes me happy, that she’s got a job she enjoys.” I let out a long sigh. “I should probably look around for a job. I don’t want to be a freeloader or overstay my welcome.”
Zeke sets his bowl down before kneeling on the ground beside me. He takes my face between his palms. “You’re not a freeloader, Casper. You are my mate. I want you here. You can get a job if you’d like, but you don’t have to. I can support the both of us just fine, okay?”
