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CHAPTER TWO: HUNGER MOON - PART ONE
Russ worried that Dawn would avoid him now. He’d been rude. And coarse. Shame and disgust filled him every time he remembered it. But, like with her panic, she simply ignored it. Preferring to pretend it’d never happened.
Instead, she kept coming back, always greeting him politely, sitting under her tree with her phone, as a steely determination mixed intriguingly with her scent and stiffened her spine a bit. Her tail, he noticed, swished with a deliberate, steady rhythm. It was a point of pride for her, coming back there day in and day out, defying the awkwardness between them, he could tell. So he’d held his tongue and would continue to do so, pretending along with her that everything was fine as he futzed about with his plants. For as long as she liked. It was the least he could do.
He looked out over the parking lot, toward his garden, as he listened to Tucker bitch and moan about some tenant or other, and wondered if she was there now. It was the weekend, so she might be. With her ebooks and humming. He closed his eyes, trying to hear her, to sense her. He inhaled and smelled her. But not in his garden. He looked around.
“You listening to me?” the other man asked irritatedly.
No, not particularly. Russ didn’t not like the man, per se; he also couldn’t say he much liked him either. As far as Russ could see, the man was lazy, entitled, and not very good at his job. Which tended to make him an irritant in Russ’s life, not offensive but often inconvenient. Like right now, when he could scent Dawn — soft and fresh with a slight bitterness of her own frustration — but not see her. Distractedly, he followed his nose to Tucker’s building. Dawn’s building.
“What are you doing?” Tucker frowned and hurried to keep up with Russ. “I thought we were going to look at those trees out front. Thought you were worried the next storm would topple them or something.”
Russ shook his head and continued on before looking down at the walkway and the small body crouched in the bushes flanking the entrance. “Dawn?”
She looked up, her head popping out of the bushes with her eyes wide and surprised. “Oh!” Her legs tensed, tucking further beneath her body, as she sat on the soft grass. She brushed her hair out of her face and behind the bright, colorful scarf wrapped around her head. “Hi.”
Tucker leaned over Russ’s shoulder, bringing the man closer to him than he’d like. “What are you doing there, neighbor?”
Wringing her hands, she stood up. “Nothing, really.” She shrugged, clearly embarrassed. “I’ve just noticed some things missing, while unpacking.” She gestured toward Tucker, making Russ’s gaze flick with irritation at the man still hanging over his shoulder. “And I thought maybe, when I’d dropped my things, I’d missed some somehow.”
Tucker straightened. “Oh? What are you missing?”
She shook her head. “Nothing major. Just little things. Lipstick. A comb. One of my cardigans.” She shrugged. “Things like that.” Her hooves tapped at the ground as she wrinkled her nose. “I probably just left them back home, but I’d hoped maybe they might be here. You know, hidden in the bushes or something.”
Russ frowned. “Careful around those. Birds like to nest in there and I doubt they’d appreciate you coming too close to their eggs.”
She gave a small chuckle as she bent her front legs low to peek between the bushes’ leaves. “Yeah, I’ve been trying to be cautious. I mean, I’d hate for someone to come poking around my home too, so…”
Tucker coughed and skipped around Russ to thrust a hand into the bush, pushing the leaves aside to give her a better view. “We’ll help you look.”
Russ’s eyes narrowed at the man’s eagerness, his nose twitching at the nervous interest he could smell on him as he passed. Russ fought the frown tugging his lips at the hand Tucker laid on Dawn’s shoulder as the man bent down to search.
She blushed and sat back on the lawn. “Oh, I don’t want to trouble you.” Russ noticed the way her back tensed under her tank top as his skin touched hers and wondered what that meant.
Tucker just smiled, letting his hand trail down her back, making her spine arch and push her breasts out on a surprised gasp, as her tail flicked up stiff. Tucker let out a friendly sounding chuckle, even as his eyes took her in slowly. “No trouble. Helping residents is part of the job, after all.”
Not liking any of it, Russ inhaled, trying to see if his nose could tell him more. But all he smelled was her — her softness and her nerves — which didn’t tell him much.
Still.
Frowning, he jerked his head in a gruff nod. “Tucker, check the other bush. I’ll check closer to the stairs.”
The two jumped away from each other at his tone, making him feel like a jerk. A heated flush burned his cheeks as he crouched low near the stairs, where he knew a bird had built her nest, and began to gingerly look. What had Dawn said she’d lost? Lipstick, a comb, and something.
“You really don’t have to do this.”
He felt more than saw Dawn’s shadow settle over him as she hung over the stair’s railing, looking down at him. He grunted without looking up. “Don’t mind.”
“I’m messing with more of your plants, aren’t I?”
He blinked up at her questioningly.
“The bushes,” she said, wincing a bit. “You take care of them too, don’t you? And the lawn, I suppose. I shouldn’t have messed with them.” She bit her lip, her tail lowering slightly. “Sorry.”
He didn’t know what to say. No one had ever cared before. He lifted a shoulder. “Don’t mind.”
“Oh!” She perked up.
He jerked back, but didn’t see anything to cause such a reaction.
“Is that…” She hurried down the stairs to stand behind him. He felt her hover over his back and felt his muscles tense, even though it didn’t bother him nearly as much as it had with Tucker. She reached out and carefully slid her hand down over the dirt, only to pull back a candy bar wrapper. “Oh.” She pouted. “I thought it might be my scarf.”
He frowned and looked at her head and the cloth already wrapped around it.
“Another one,” she said, touching the knot atop her head. “I have too many of them. My mom says I have one for every day of the year.” She shook her head. “More like one for every day of the month, but…” She shook her head before pocketing the wrapper. “Clearly, this isn’t one of them.”
He liked that she didn’t just drop it on the ground again. “Why so many?” He hadn’t meant to ask. Normally, it’d be just another one of those things that he’d just wonder about. Quietly. To himself. But the words had just come out.
Garrett was right; he needed to get a better handle on his control.
She blushed. “Oh, you know, they’re pretty and they hold my hair back and…” She lifted that cloud of curls back a bit, causing her intoxicating scent to waft toward and around him and his thoughts to stutter.
Russ raised an eyebrow as he saw her wiggle a pointed, furred, deer-like ear beneath the thin fabric. “You use them to hide your ears?” His brow furrowed, confused. Not that she couldn’t do what she liked, but it seemed an odd choice. It wasn’t as if she needed to; hiding them couldn’t exactly hide what she was. Maybe she just didn’t like them, though he couldn’t see why. Even under the cloth, they looked soft and delicate. Like the rest of her.
She let her hair fall back in place and shook her curls out a bit. “It helps me focus a bit. Too much sound, especially here in the city…” She shrugged. “It can get overwhelming. Like my head doesn’t know what to focus on.”
Yeah, he got that. It’d been like that for him, after he’d turned. Suddenly, every creak and tick, every overheard conversation or annoying ringtone, every step and twitch from people half-a-room away from him, all filled his head, and filtering it out had taken a lot of time and a helluva lot of work. He opened his mouth to tell her how he’d learned to cope.
“Find anything.”
They both looked up to see Tucker, frowning as he hung over the railing where Dawn had been. Dawn stood straight and Russ hunched down, feeling oddly guilty. Like they’d been caught… Doing what? Talking? With a cough, he stood up too, brushing his hands on his thighs. “Nope. You?”
“Nada,” Tucker said with a satisfied shrug. He smiled at Dawn. “But I’ll keep my eye out. You never know what will turn up.”
She tilted her head. “That you tried at all is enough. I don’t know how to thank you.”
Tucker wriggled his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t say no to more of those lemon bars you made me.”
Russ turned to frown at him then at Dawn. She’d baked for him? Had he read the situation wrong? He saw her gaze flutter down as a blush crept up her neck and her tail flicked up. His nose wrinkled. Did she like Tucker?
He halted that thought with a firm shake of his head. None of his business.
She shrugged. “Next time it’s my turn to bring treats for the teachers’ lounge, I’ll be sure to bring you some.” She looked at Russ. “Both of you.”
He grunted noncommittally. “Give us a list of what you’re missing; if anyone brings it to the lost and found, we’ll let you know.” He nodded to Tucker. “C’mon, we still need to check on those trees.”
The chipper man gave him a mock salute as he shot Dawn a laughing look. “Aye, aye, boss.” Even though Tucker knew that, while Russ had seniority and was unquestionably better at the job, Russ wasn’t technically Tucker’s superior. And the way the man said it — with biting humor — seemed to throw that fact in Russ’s face.
Russ walked away, feeling left out of the joke. Or, worse, the butt of it. Shoving his hands in his pocket, he fought the urge to pull the man along. Pull him away. “Let’s go.”
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