That time, it didn’t take a genius to figure out he’d been about to say something dirty. Not after what they told her a few minutes before. Tarun snickered quietly, and Skylar turned to her with a smile.
“Good to see you again, Tarun—” with a loud gasp, he backed up quickly, almost bumping into another table. “Is that chicken? Tell me you’re not eating chicken!”
Lily’s eyebrows twitched as she glanced at Noah and Tarun. Skylar looked horrified, but she wasn’t sure why. Even if the guy was a vegetarian, his reaction seemed a little extreme.
Noah exhaled as he repositioned his ballcap. “Skylar—”
“I thought you guys were friends. But friends don’t eat other friends. Not like that, anyway.”
What the hell? She glanced at Noah and Tarun but neither seemed as lost as she felt. Tarun caught her glance and leaned in.
“Skylar’s a chicken shifter.”
She felt her eyes pop open wide, sure Tarun was joking. But no one laughed, and Skylar began pacing, his movements agitated.
“Yes, I’m a chicken shifter, and my so-called friends were eating my family.”
Noah rolled his eyes when Skylar’s back was to him. “They were just chickens and nothing but chickens. They weren’t shifters, and they’re not really related to you.”
“Would you say the same if I was eating a lion?” he challenged, spinning around with a glare.
Noah rubbed the back of his neck, his expression pained. “No, but there’s a difference—”
“Oh, of course you’d think so. Top of the food chain and all that. But chickens aren’t cocky enough to think we’re the kings of the animal world.”
Tarun rolled her eyes, and Lily glanced over at her. Dick reference number one, Tarun mouthed.
She furrowed her brow, trying to piece it all together. Dick and cocky were too different words, with different meanings—ohhh. She thought she understood. Roosters. Cocks. Cocky. It all tied together. She put her hand over her mouth, trying to cover her amusement.
Skylar was worked up, and it wasn’t that part that was funny to her. It was the thought of the cocky references when he was literally a rooster. Lord.
Honestly, she was fascinated by all this, but she thought maybe it was a conversation best had without her shamelessly listening in. Standing, she paused and smiled hesitantly as everyone looked at her.
“I have some work to get done,” she said softly, pointing to her laptop. “I’d better get started on it.”
Tarun stood as well, grabbing the discarded plates. “I’ll just, uh, get these out of here and do the dishes.”
They both turned to walk away, and Lily stopped at the bar to pick up the other devices. She looked over at Noah, smiling as he winked at her while Skylar’s back was turned. Unable to resist, she mouthed, Have fun with the cock, smiling even wider as she walked to the archway.
She got where Skylar was coming from now. Cock jokes as a double entendre were fun.
Noah silently snorted with amusement over Lily’s parting comment as he watched her disappear from sight, and then suppressed a sigh as he turned back to Skylar. The Enforcers all kind of tolerated the chicken shifter. It wasn’t that he was a bad guy. He wasn’t—although they could all do without the cock jokes.
It was just that he wanted to be an Enforcer, and none of them thought he was cut out for it. But nothing they said could dissuade him, and he constantly tried to get them to let him into the crew.
“Is the work your mate’s doing Enforcer related?” Skylar asked, his eyes narrowed on the archway.
Fuck. He couldn’t lie, because Skylar would know immediately, but damned if he wanted to admit the truth. “Come have a drink with me, Skylar. Tequila’s your drink of choice, right?”
Skylar regarded him suspiciously but followed him to the bar, where Noah started pouring them shots. Shifters couldn’t get drunk, unless they drank a shit ton of alcohol—like seven or eight bottles within minutes—but, for the most part, they enjoyed the taste.
And Noah wasn’t sure how it was for other shifters because he’d never asked, but the burn of liquor always seemed to calm him in a weird way. Maybe it was a placebo affect or whatever. He didn’t know, but he hoped it did the same for Skylar.
They clinked their glasses together and downed their shots. Noah shuddered—tequila wasn’t his favorite by far, and he wasn’t used to it—and then looked at Skylar.
“The truth is, Lily showed up out of nowhere last week. I hadn’t seen or talked to her in years, not since I left the Marines. She was the wife of one of my friends who died on my last deployment. She came to check on me and got suspicious, and she followed us down to the meeting room and listened in.
“When she was caught, she volunteered to do some hacking for us. She heard us discussing how we needed someone with that skill. Blake agreed to let her do it, and he sent her with me to try to get some intel on the group we’re trying to take down.”