A Fox's Love (American Kitsune Book 1) (13 page)

"What's that noise?"

"Oh! The food is ready!"

Lilian reluctantly got off him and hurriedly made her way to the stove, where she shut off the timer and opened the oven. Steam billowed out as the red haired beauty put on a pair of black cooking mitts and pulled the tray of whatever she had baked out of the oven and set it on the stove top.

Meanwhile, Kevin managed to work his pants back on and stood warily to his feet.

"Beloved," Lilian caught his attention. Kevin blushed. He wondered if he would ever get used to her calling him such an intimate name. Probably not, but you never know. "Why don't you sit down at the table while I set out the food?"

Kevin almost did exactly what she told him, but caught himself at the last second. With a small shake of his head and a deep breath to gather what meager amount of courage he possessed when faced with circumstances such as this, he moved further into the kitchen and stopped Lilian from grabbing the tray of food.

"Beloved?" Lilian's tone was questioning as she spoke.

"Why..." Kevin's voice cracked, but he quickly cleared his throat with a cough and tried again. "Why don't you sit down while I set the table." Lilian blinked and actually looked like she was about to protest when he spoke again. "I mean... it looks like you worked really hard to make this and, uh, well, I guess I just don't feel right making you do all the work so... um... uh... what I mean is... you've already made dinner, so it would only be right if I... you know..."

Those who knew the problems Kevin had when in the presence of the fairer sex would have been surprised by just how much he had been able to get out before he started stumbling over his words. Eric would have needed a quadruple bypass if he had been here to see this.

Even Kevin was surprised by his own boldness, such as it was. Though, his came more from the fact that he was being polite to the girl who had barged into his life without any regard to his thoughts and feelings than because he was actually capable of speaking to her. Seriously, this girl had practically destroyed any sense of normality his life possessed, yet here he was, treating her kindly and offering to do things for her. Anyone else would have kicked the girl out by now.

It must have been because of all the lessons his mom had instilled in him about how it was important to always be a gentleman. That was what happened when you were raised by a single mother. With no father figure in his life, the only person he had to listen to was her. Thus, everything she said was taken as the gospel truth and applied to his life without hesitation. Her words and lessons were pretty much ingrained into his psyche.

Or it could just be because he was the Hero of this story and Hero's always have an innate kindness and nobility. Sometimes. Occasionally. You know, if they weren't the main protagonist to some kind of harem anime or something.

Lilian stared at Kevin with The Look. It was a look that he had never quite seen before, but some other males may have when they did something surprisingly sweet for their girlfriend/lover/spouse/significant other. Kevin, who had never had a girlfriend before and thus never been subject to The Look found himself struck speechless... and red. He had never felt so flustered in his life.

No. Wait. He did. Whenever he was in Lilian's presence, he felt this way. Never mind.

He should just be thankful it wasn't THE LOOK™, which was frightening enough to send any man running for the hills.

Speechlessness turned into a burning sense of self-consciousness when Lilian smiled at him, leaned up, and gave him a lingering kiss on the cheek.

While his face felt like it was being burnt by a flame thrower, she gave him an adoring look and said a soft, "thank you," in his ear before moving towards the table and sitting down.

Kevin found himself standing there, his face burning as if someone had stuck it in the very oven that had just been used by Lilian to cook dinner. It felt so hot he would not be surprised if someone told him he had steam pouring out of his ears.

He really needed to work on this blushing problem of his. It wouldn't do if he blushed every time Lilian did something like this, especially since it was going to be happening quite a lot in this story.

Trying to shake himself from his stupor, Kevin quickly made to grab the tray of what looked like some kind of chicken dish with potatoes and various vegetables. While he didn't know the name of the dish, he did recognize it from his cookbook. It was one of the meals he had never made before, mostly because it took too much time to cook for his tastes.

He picked it up and walked over to the table where Lilian was waiting with a small smile, her tail curled around the chair with surprising dexterity. After setting the food down and serving a plate for both himself and Lilian, the high school sophomore sat down opposite the fox girl.

For the first several minutes neither of them spoke. Lilian seemed to be waiting for him to say something and Kevin simply didn't know what to say. This was not a position he had ever been in before. It felt almost like he and Lilian were on a date.

Not that it was! A date that is. It was just him and the gorgeous girl he had taken home with him having dinner together.

That... sounded a lot worse than it really was, didn't it?

Anyways, his lack of experience in these kinds of situations, combined with his general inability to form coherent sentences around members of the female persuasion most of the time made it impossible for him to actually start a conversation.

Good thing he was the only one who had that problem.

"I hope you like the food," Kevin was startled when Lilian spoke up. He looked up to see the girl staring at him with the same look she always gave him. It was a look that would have made him blush... except he was already blushing so it didn't do much at the moment. “I found it in that cook book of yours so it's new for me. I don't know how good it is.”

Not sure how to respond to the girl, Kevin cut a slice of the chicken, stuck it in his mouth and began to chew. So long as he was eating, he wouldn't have to talk, right?

"So how is it?"

So much for that thought.

Swallowing, Kevin said, "It's pretty good." And it was, the chicken was a tad over cooked, but the only reason he could tell was because Kevin was a Master when it came to cooking meat. It was really the only talent he had when it came to cooking. He had at least a +32 skill set when it came to cooking meat (at least it would be +32 if this were one of those MMO video games like WOW or something). The rest of his cooking was okay at best, but certainly nothing to brag over.

And it wasn't like having chicken that was overcooked by a minute or two detracted from the meal. Everything else was pretty much perfect. The spices were blended to perfection; the vegetables were steamed just right; the potatoes had been baked flawlessly and had just the right amount of seasoning.

"Really?" Lilian sighed in relief as she began cutting up her own food. "I'm glad to hear that. I was kind of worried. Even though this is supposed to be really easy to make, I wasn't sure how good it would be. It's my first time cooking dinner on my own, you see."

“
Really?”

“
Mhmm." Lilian stuck the slice of chicken she had speared with her fork into her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, then continued where she left off. "I usually had help from Kotohime. This is my first time cooking without her telling me what to do.”

"Well, don't worry too much," Kevin mumbled just before he took another bite of food. "It's good. You're a much better cook than I am." Truthfully, Kevin was kind of jealous. This was technically the first meal she had ever cooked on her own and it was already better than anything he had ever made and he had been cooking for years.

Really, the only consolation he had was that he was better at determining the amount of time needed to grill the chicken, and that wasn't much of a consolation.

"Thank you." Lilian smiled brightly at him, making the boy almost choke on the piece of chicken he had swallowed. He managed to avoid doing so, but it was a close thing.

Feeling bashful, Kevin decided to do his best to ignore Lilian and eat the food on his plate. This didn't seem to bother the redhead, who simply began eating as well.

She was still staring at him though.

It made him feel really awkward.

"So how was school?" she asked after several moments when the only sound was the “chink, chink” of eating utensils clinking against plates.

"Eh? It was alright, I guess," Kevin mumbled after a moment or two. "Nothing really interesting happened."

He decided not to mention Chris. No need to talk about that incident when he wasn't even sure what it was all about.

"What's it like?"

"What? School?"

"Yeah."

"It's... alright, I guess. There's really not much to tell." He shrugged. "It's school, we go there, learn stuff, hang out with friends, then go home. It's kind of boring actually." Kevin looked at the red haired fox girl a bit oddly. "You sound as if you've never been to school before."

"I haven't," Lilian answered. "I was home schooled all my life. In fact, before meeting you, I never really had the chance to meet many humans."

"Seriously?" asked Kevin, forgetting for a moment that the person before him was an attractive female as a look of thoughtful curiosity overcame his features.

Come to think of it, he was pretty sure he remembered her telling him something about her being home schooled earlier today.

She had, actually. Kevin had just spent so much time freaking out that his mind had simply skimmed over

When Lilian nodded her head, Kevin leaned back in his chair. "Wow." Deciding to indulge his curiosity some more and ask a question about something that had been bothering him, he said, "So what are you doing all the way out here, anyways? Were you and your family on vacation or something?"

"Ah!" Lilian gasped, causing Kevin to jerk in surprise. He looked at the girl, who had a light flush of pink on her cheeks that seemed to bring out the softness of her angelic, princess-esque features.

Naturally, Kevin began blushing too.

"Well... you see..." Lilian started to answer his question, only to stop, her face turning an even darker shade of red. The girl quickly shrank in on herself, the lower half of her face becoming hidden within her shirt... his shirt. "It was... well..."

As Lilian continuously failed to answer his question and stumbled over her words, Kevin began to frown. It shouldn't have be that hard to answer, should it? It was a simple question. Had something embarrassing happened for her to end up in this area without her family?

Then again, given how bloody she was, maybe her family had been attacked by some other group of supernatural creatures. It was perfectly possible. If Kitsune existed, then surely there were other mythological beings out there as well.

Or maybe they had been ambushed by a military unit that dealt with the supernatural and wanted to perform inhumane experiments on her and her family in order to make an army of super powered humans and she was just worried about telling him, a human, about what happened in case he decided to betray her trust and reveal to said group of para-military scientists that he knew where she was.

It should be obvious, but this guy, Kevin, had a very over-reactive imagination.

Regardless of Kevin's ridiculous conspiracy theories, neither of those scenarios seemed plausible at the moment, nor would they explain why Lilian was blushing like some kind of anime schoolgirl.

After several seconds of stumbling and stuttering, Lilian attempted to move off the subject of how she had arrived in Arizona without her family by saying, "So have you tried the potatoes?"

It wasn't a very subtle way of changing topics ― it wasn't subtle at all, but Kevin decided that if she didn't want to answer, he wouldn't force her to tell him anything.

He really should have.

After dinner, Kevin decided to wash the dishes. Not necessarily because he wanted to be polite, but more because he simply felt weird about having a girl who was only a temporary (he hoped) resident in his apartment do all the chores.

Lilian tried to tell him she could do it, but he was insistent. In the end, she hadn't been able to out-stubborn him. Strangely enough, the thought of using her sex appeal, which would have worked on him like a charm, didn't occur to her.

When he finished cleaning the table and washing the dishes, Kevin found himself sitting on the couch, watching a soccer game between Brazil and India. No, that wasn't quite true. It would be much more accurate to say he was
trying
to watch the soccer game, but most of his attention was on the girl who had taken to cuddling directly into his side.

When dinner had concluded he had told Lilian to go sit on the couch, which she had. As soon as he joined her and turned on the TV, she scooted over and leaned into him until their forms had practically melded together. Now Kevin was trying to distract himself from the feel of her amazing body as the two of them sat together like a young couple in love.

As you can probably tell, he wasn't having much luck.

Some people would probably wonder why Kevin didn't just tell her to stop if she was making him uncomfortable. It could be because he was very weak willed when it came to denying women anything, or maybe it was because he had been rendered speechless by the girl snuggling with him, as well as the fact that she was snuggling with him in the first place.