Kate Hoffmann - Declan

“Baby, as long as we’re in the same room together, sleep is always going to be the last thing on my mind.”

Rachel shook her head. “You’re incorrigible.”

No, Dec thought to himself. He was in love. And though he wasn’t ready to say the words out loud, there was a certain satisfaction in knowing they were true and that someday, very soon, he would say them to Rachel.

“I VOTE WE LET HIM STAY.”

Rachel smiled at Debbie. “All right. Are you sure about that?”

“No,” she said. “Kyle told me to vote that way.”

Rachel turned to Kyle. He held a fake fur blanket and stroked it as he glanced nervously around the room. “Did you tell Debbie how to vote?” she asked.

He shook his head. “She can never make up her mind. We’ll be here all afternoon if we have to wait for her.”

Rachel turned back to Debbie. “Why do you think Kyle feels that way, Debbie? Do you-”

“Can I interrupt here?”

The group turned to look at Dec, some of the members a bit taken aback by his commanding tone. Rachel sent him a warning glance. “I don’t think you should,” she said.

“No, I think you should let him talk,” Debbie said.

Evan raised his hand, then stood up. “He’s not allowed to talk until we vote for him to stay. Then he can talk.”

“Will you just all get a grip!” The group turned to Daryl, who sat in his chair wearing a pair of rabbit slippers. “We have an hour. If we spend half the time talking about voting and the other half voting, then the vote is a moot point.”

“My point exactly,” Dec said. “Thank you. Now, rather than discuss this, I thought we might have a show of hands. How many people want me to stay?”

“Can we have a secret vote?” Debbie asked.

“You already voted,” Kyle said.

“All right,” Dec interrupted. “Everyone, close your eyes. Who thinks it’s all right for me to stay?”

Rachel watched as everyone slowly put their hand up. Dec nodded, then clapped his hands. “Great. Then it’s settled.”

“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Kyle asked.

“He’s telling the truth,” Rachel said. “Everyone had their hand up.” This was not going well, she thought to herself. Though Dec had been invited to stay and watch her first two groups, she found him a distraction, as did many of her clients. The gamers had questioned him thoroughly and once they learned he was in naval intelligence, they wanted to hear all about it. The sex addicts were interested in hearing about his sexual conquests as a single guy. And now, her furries and plushies, the most fractured of her groups, had suddenly all voted the same. She’d never been able to get them to agree on anything before.

Rachel cleared her throat. “Now that we’ve got that settled, why don’t we pick up from where we left off last week.”

“You would be a really good tiger,” Evan said, pointing to Declan.

Dec blinked in surprise. “A tiger?”

“Yeah,” Debbie said. “I met a tiger once and he was so hot. He let me touch his tail. It was very erotic.”

Dec frowned and Rachel could see he wasn’t quite sure how to respond. “I actually think Declan would make a good bear,” Rachel suggested. “He’s got the dark hair and the strong jaw. And he does like to growl a lot.”

“If you could dress up as any animal, what would it be?” The group turned to Janice Krandall, who’d been sitting silently to the right of Rachel. She sent Dec a hesitant smile and it was clear to Rachel that Janice had been immediately smitten with the new member of the group.

“Declan, what kind of furry would you want to be?” Rachel asked.

Dec considered the question for a long moment. “I guess I’d have to go with a horse. A stallion. A black stallion.” The group stared at him and Dec glanced over at Rachel. “What? Too obvious?”

“I don’t see a lot of horses as furries,” Evan said. “First of all, they can’t walk on two feet.”

“Yes, they can,” Janice said. “Those Lippizanner stallions do. And I met a horse once.”

“Mr. Ed was kind of nice,” Kyle piped up. “And Trigger. They’d make good furries.”

The rest of the session didn’t go much better. Rachel spent most of the time mediating arguments about whether certain animals could or could not be considered furries. Then, there was a very heated side discussion on the current confusion in the news media between furries and plushies. In the end, Rachel didn’t accomplish anything beyond providing Dec with absolute proof that Janice Krandall couldn’t possibly be capable of stalking her.

When the group finally left, Rachel sat back in her chair and watched Dec with a smug smile. “Are you satisfied?”

“I really wanted to be a stallion,” he teased.

Rachel growled, then stood up. “I’m talking about Janice Krandall. You must know she couldn’t be the one doing this.”

Dec nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Besides, she told me she was out of town last weekend at a furry convention in Atlantic City. She couldn’t have trashed your office.”

“Good. So we’ve ruled out my clients. What’s next?”

Dec frowned. “Explain to me this furry thing. They dress up in animal costumes and they mess around?”

“It’s like a disguise they wear,” Rachel said. “A way to hide their fears about relationships and the opposite sex. It’s no different than what you might do when you meet a woman you’re attracted to. You might tell a few stories, exaggerate a little, try to impress her. We all have our fears of rejection. The furries hide theirs behind a costume.”

“That’s a little sad,” Dec said.

“It’s just the way it is,” Rachel replied. “Everyone has their oddities and foibles. You’d probably get turned on if I wore a French maid’s outfit, right?”

Dec chuckled. “Are you saying you’d wear a French maid’s outfit for me?”

“I’m saying that you relate a French maid with something sexy. These people relate a person in an animal costume with something sexy. It’s not that wide a leap between the two.”

Rachel stood up and walked to her desk, then put her legal pad into her briefcase. “I just think that so many people are out there trying to make a connection,” she continued. “To find someone who might want to love them. And sometimes we have to make that happen however we can, even if it means dressing up in an animal suit. I don’t judge any of my clients, or anyone for that matter. As long as they don’t hurt someone else or themselves, then I think it’s all right.”

“So then why are you trying to convince them to put their suits away?” Dec asked.

“That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to give them a way to see what affection and attraction can be like outside the suit. And maybe they’ll find out that they can function pretty well without all that fake fur.”

Dec walked to the door, then stopped Rachel before she opened it. He ran a finger along her jawline then gave her a gentle kiss. “I don’t know how you do it,” he murmured.

“Do what?”

“You don’t make judgments,” he said.

“I don’t see the point,” she said. “When it comes to sex and love, sometimes the journey is as important as the destination.”

Rachel looked up into his eyes, losing herself for a few moments in the deep blue depths. Was he falling in love with her? Or was that just her imagination playing tricks on her? Or was it wishful thinking? He seemed genuinely fond of her, that much she could say. But Rachel still couldn’t separate the man from the job. How much of what he said and did was part of his protecting her?

“I think I’d like to go home,” Rachel said.

“All right. Let’s go. I’ve got some things in the fridge we can make for lunch.”