Lion And The Falcon (Furry United Coalition) by Eve Langlais

making kissy noises.
    “ A condo with many amenities. Any preferences for food? Actually, I’m famished this morning. I’ll just get two of everything and you can choose what you want.”
    “Sounds good,” Clarice said as she bounced up on his couch and then flipped over it to avoid his mother’s lunge.
    The chick had some moves, he’d give her that. And if he kept watching, he’d probably show some definite movement in a fashion that might prove embarrassing. Turning away from the action, h e sauntered across the room, forgetting for a moment he only wore his underwear, but he remembered real quick at her sucked in breath. Turning his head, he caught Clarice’s glazed expression, parted lips, and the tightening of her nipples through spandex fabric. He also saw his mother coil herself to spring while Clarice was distracted.
    “Shit.” Leaping across the room, he made it in time to knock his mother aside before she disemboweled his temporary ASS partner. Needless to say, that didn’t go over well.
    Changing shapes in the blink of an eye, his very naked mother — Ack! I’m blind! —hands planted on her hips, hollered at him, “Nolan Fitzgerald Benjamin Manners, you did not just attack me in defense of a bird.”
    “Benjamin?” Clarice snickered behind his back.
    “Shut up, Tweety.” He didn’t flinch at the punch Clarice aimed at his kidneys, but he did at the narrowed lips and deadly expression in his mother’s eyes. Uh-oh. Trouble. And before breakfast, too. He could already predict this would cut into his morning nap, or judging by the position of daylight across his floor, afternoon one.
    “ Is someone going to explain what is going on here?” his mother asked in a low voice.
    He didn’t immediately answer . Instead, grabbing an afghan from the top of his couch and tossing it his mother’s way, said, “Mom. Please. I have a guest.”
    “You have a bird in your condo.” How she made the word sound dirty, he couldn’t have said, but he could feel Clarice bristling behind him, ready to begin round two of the taunting.
    “Can this not wait until after breakfast? I’m hungry.” He put on his best pout. Lower lip jutting, big eyes batting, and his mother, tying the blanket sarong style, not falling for it, at least clamped her mouth shut. Now if only he could duct tape Clarice’s.
    “ You have got to be the biggest, laziest pussy I’ve ever met, Sylvester.”
    “Sylvester?” asked his mother in a choked voice.
    Whirling, Nolan shook his finger at his ASS partner. “Stop that right now.”
    “Or you’ll do what?”
    He blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Kiss you.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “You heard me. If you say one more thing to drive my mother mental, I will kiss you.”
    “You wouldn’t dare.”
    “I would, with tongue too.”
    “In front of your mother?” Clarice moistened her lips.
    “Yup.”
    “That’s not fair. You know I don’t like you.”
    “ I think you protest too much. Is this your way of trying to force me to do it? You know, you could just ask. No need to play these games. I’m more than willing to kiss you.”
    “You’re sick.”
    “So you keep saying.”
    Ignoring his mother’s piqued interest, he held Clarice’s gaze, hands on the back of the couch, leaning against it to hide the stirring interest from a certain body part. To his relief—and major disappointment—Clarice backed away, lips pressed tight as she grabbed her clothes, heading to the bathroom. One sniff, though, and Nolan could smell the interest she pretended didn’t exist. He also scented the filth of the previous days excursions on the clothes she planned to wear.
    Stepping in her path, h e pulled the fabric from her hands. “Oh no you don’t.”
    She tugged back. “I need to get dressed.”
    “Not in that you’re not.”
    “ Oh yes I am.”
    “Nope.” He danced out of reach, Clarice hot on his heels. He dove into his room, hit the patio doors, and slid them open in one