All First Chapter Samples

“Did you need to work tonight?” Micha’s words were casual but there was a hint of don’t bullshit me in his tone.

Fuck.

“Um, no.” Clearly, pretending to have to work late on nights it was supposed to be my turn to pick hadn’t been as subtle as I’d hoped. “I’m done for the weekend.”

I was pretty sure he was throwing marshmallows at me.

Maybe.

Marshmallows generally didn’t fall from the sky, even in the grocery store.

But people didn’t just throw food in the grocery store…no matter what species that person happened to be.

And there was another one.

Picking up the flying marshmallow, I stuck it in my pocket with the rest of them and did my best to look boring as I grabbed a box of cereal off the shelf. Cameron would have known what to do, but then again, he had George and a lot more firsthand experience with the fascinating new species that was now sharing our neighborhoods.

The closest thing that I’d had to personal experience was saying hello to some of my neighbors and a few awkward conversations through drainpipes.

It was finally time. Maybe…hopefully… No, it was time. Coming home after work today, he’d known that today was the day. They’d been under the bed for the last week. And while Tim knew that hiding them was stupid—he lived alone, for god’s sake—he couldn’t help it.

When the package had arrived in the mail, he just hadn’t been able to deal with it. So in typical fashion, when he’d gotten stressed and freaked out, he’d pulled an ostrich and buried his head in the sand—or in this case, he’d buried the diapers under the bed.

Tim knew most people wouldn’t understand, but it’d taken all his courage just to finally order the single package of diapers. He hadn’t been sure he would even order them, much less do anything with them. He also knew it was stupid that at twenty-six he had never actually said the word out loud, either. That was one of the next steps.

He had a list of goals and steps. His goals were probably a stretch, but he’d designed his steps to be manageable—stressful, but manageable. The first step had been searching online and just looking around. That had taken weeks to work up to, even though he knew no one would see what he was doing on his own computer.

Every time I looked at him, it was like he was a puzzle with a crucial piece lost. You could still see what it was supposed to be, and you could see it was a fabulous picture, but the empty spots made it feel like you could be missing out on something important. Some part of the puzzle that would make it even better. It was completely maddening.

It had been that way since the first time I met him.

I’d filled in some of the blank spaces, but there was a huge chunk that was gone. I think in the beginning that was part of what drew me to him, but now I was here because I couldn’t be anywhere else. Being with him was where I was supposed to be.

Sounds totally like a teenage soap opera, I know, but there isn’t any other way to describe it. I needed the confusing little bugger around just to be able to breathe. I wasn’t even sure when he’d become so important…and the biggest problem? He had no idea.

How could he have no idea?

“I’m not…are you sure this is a good idea?” Smart people could talk people into stupid shit and I was afraid I’d ended up in one of those situations.

Nicholas snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

He was so helpful.

His partner on the other hand tried to be helpful and patted my head with one of his smaller tentacles, even though it made him feel weird to touch someone else because of the mating bond. “You are a submissive human with a preference for tentacles instead of arms. You will be highly sought after for conversation or pleasure.”

I’d worked with him long enough to know what that translated into…

“I’m not sure this is what Dad meant when he said to split up the chores.” God. Two geniuses should never be allowed to procreate.

To say his parenting methods were questionable would’ve been an understatement because no matter what Dad thought, gambling was not an interesting development in human culture.

It was just fucking gambling.

TC shrugged, smirking from where he was leaning back against the couch, arms stretched out like he was posing for some kind of modeling shoot. “He’s the one who gave me the dice, so I call bullshit.”

I wasn’t sure which parent had given him the gene that required him to always pose and look sexy, but it was fucking distracting.

“Fine.” Picking up the thousand-sided die that seemed to come from a board game or some kind of role-playing game, I tried to decide how we should work it as I rolled it around in my hand. “Okay, twenty sides, so eleven or more you do dinner and dishes. Ten or less and it’s my turn.”