Fox Life

Some ten minutes later, Kyro grew bored and decided to get himself out of the bed. There was no point in wasting time just staring at the ceiling. He might as well check out the news in the meantime.

He carefully took the fennec off himself and laid it on the covers. The little one murmured something but didn't get up. 'Lucky thing can sleep as much as it wants,' Kyro thought while stretching and yawning. What he wouldn't give for being able to be someone's pet and just do nothing all day long. That sounded like a wonderful life.

But he had work to go to. With another yawn, he went to the study and turned on his computer. It wasn't likely that anything major had happened over the weekend, but it wasn't an impossibility. He'd seen weirder things.

Iris was starting to learn the art of faking sleep. It wasn't that hard, just had to keep her eyes closed for most of the time and breathe rhythmically. Animals' heartbeat was faster than a human's anyway, so few people were able to tell when it was too erratic unless they were holding their hand over the pet's heart or saw it panting.

At least Kyro was one of such people. He didn't notice that she had been about to palpitate for the whole ten minutes she was lying on his chest. One that was very nude and very well-toned.

And now she had the marvelous sight of him in his natural habitat, relaxed and thinking himself unobserved. He sat sideways, giving her a full view of himself, as he scrolled through the news articles on the screen in nothing but his briefs.

Conscience told Iris to look away—this was inappropriate—but goddamn did she not wish to. He sat with his legs by the side of the table, crossed over the ankles. But that wasn't where her eyes lingered.

His bare chest was in full view, his muscles flexing when he stopped reading for a moment to stretch and yawn. And he was doing a lot of that. It was obvious he couldn't manage to wake up.

Iris licked her dry lips, then lowered her eyes in horror at herself, then swiftly raised them up again. She was a fox now, it was absolutely normal for her to look at the room of the person feeding her. Or the person himself.

'As if that makes any sense!' she screamed in her head, though her eyes did not stray for one moment. Where she was from, men didn't walk around shirtless, let alone lounged around like that. More due to weather than anything else, though.

In summer, the heat sometimes fell full force on them, but no one would go through the city half-naked like that. It just wasn't done. And having been orphaned at a young age, she didn't have parents to bring her to the sea or lakes to get accustomed to stuff like that. Her aunt couldn't be bothered to do stuff like this, while her friends weren't the kind to invite one another outside. They were all perfectly happy chatting online and meeting up in a cafe once in a while.

Not this good-looking though, she had to admit. Kyro clearly didn't spend too much time on his looks, but he had good genes and took basic care of himself. Those muscles couldn't be from just walking around.

Iris was dying from embarrassment, but she was also tempted by her current reality. She was a fox now, so if she came a little closer… just to move about of course, certainly not to get a better look, he wouldn't mind it, right?

It was good that foxes had fur and didn't blush like humans, else Iris would've feared to look into the mirror to see what color she'd achieved. By now, it must have already reached the level of red so bright and hot you could fry eggs on her face.

"Mhm?" Kyro hummed when he saw her entering the study. "Bored alone?" he asked and picked her up, clearly unaware of what was going on through her head at the moment.

She tried to control her breathing, but it was a lost cause already. He instantly noticed that the speed at which her heart was racing was ten times over the speed limit. He needed to have been blind, deaf, and have no sense of touch to miss it.

"Something wrong? Your heart's beating so fast."

'No!' Iris tried answering calmly, but it came out more like a strangled scream. She jumped away from his hold onto the table and lied down some distance away, where she had the best vantage point.

It was shameful to the extreme, but her mind finally stumbled upon a good excuse. Since this was the universe's way of making her life easier, she couldn't refuse it; no one looks gifted horse in the teeth. She was just accepting what came her way, both the good and the bad.

"Can you sense that I'll be leaving you alone today? Is that why you're so restless?" Kyro suddenly asked, coming to caress her head. "Don't worry, I'll be back. It's just a normal workday."