“What do you want for breakfast?”

It was a silly question. Heaven always enjoyed toying with me, asking me pointless little things when she could read me like an open book, and always had. I trembled as I shuffled in bed, scrambling my back up against the headboard to cradle my weight against sore elbows. This woman had drained everything I had out of me as easily as wringing a sponge. Jokingly, I think it’s funny I’m even alive after my precious Tessrian Bear’s done with me in bed. I’m a big man and I’m powerful, but by god—she’s an insatiable creature of unfathomable lust. I think I may have sealed the final nail in my coffin by marrying her; she’ll surely be the death of me.

“Bacon,” I shout back. Even though the kitchen is a room apart from where I lay, Tessrian Bears are a lot like my kind—a hybrid of sorts. In every much as I am a lizard that looks the part of a hare, Heaven—in all her glorious tan fur and chocolate spots—is some sort of feline masquerading as a bear. If not for her lengthy tail with its stunted blunt tip, you’d scarcely know there was any cat in her at all. Of course, as she passes through my narrow view of the hallway, there’s not much left to imagination. She’s wearing a ‘kiss the chef’ apron—and nothing else. Her curves are short of breathtaking and despite her stature being so diminutive, there’s a supple elegance about my wife that I can only say is bewitching. In our assassin days, I’d have let her cleave my throat a million times over if only to savor a glimpse at true perfection. 

She giggles and I’m reminded of bells, the orchestral kind you hear around the holidays. It’s enough to make me smile, so I do just that. And it feels awkward, but true. I rarely ever considered learning how to smile in my younger years; I was too busy mastering a rifle, marching in cadence, and things I’d rather forget when the scent of sizzling bacon draws near.

“And does the mighty conquer prefer anything else with his meat?” She was always so sassy, even when speaking earnestly. It made me want to get up, pin her to something, and test that smarmy attitude with something hotter than she’d find on the stove. But, I digress. My crotch is still sore. It’s no stretch of imagination to think I may never walk without a prominent limp again, I muse to myself.

“More bacon,” I reply.

I can hear her scoff, although my hearing is nowhere near as good as someone trained in traditional assassination. She stalked her targets up close, often using whatever method or wiles she had available. I shot them in the head from several meters afar. We’re nothing alike, she and I. As different as heaven from hell.

“Right, so…bacon stacked on top of bacon,” she mused dryly, clearly having her patience tested. I couldn’t help but taunt it further.

“Yeah, and if you could add a little more bacon, that’d be great…’preciate it.”

“Keep that shit up, Marl, and I’ll add a sausage.” It took me a minute to understand that remark. I’m not a smart man. Manual labor was all I was ever good at—that and killing to make my pay. My first thought was that I knew the contents of the fridge like the back of my hand. We didn’t have any sausage. Of course, as every man comes to realize seconds after the fact, there was always at least ONE sausage nearby. I cringed and covered my dick instinctively. Somehow, she must’ve felt my discomfort. She started to laugh in that low, husky voice of hers. Deep and guttural. I don’t know why, but it always got me aroused. I slid out of bed and found my boxers nearby, slipped them on, and made my way to the kitchen.

“Coffee’s up,” Heaven chimed. As said before, this woman read me. It was mortifying sometimes, but I’d come to cherish it. She wasn’t the type to be domesticated, ever feline to a fault, but she often told me that I brought the ‘housewife’ out of her. I have no idea how I accomplished this. I’m as brutish as they come, dense, awkward, and entirely socially inept whenever I open my mouth to speak. Yet, somehow, this gorgeous creature had come to love me. What sense did it make to question it after a year of marriage? Instead of deep philosophical meanderings regarding love and the like, I prepared two cups of coffee and handed her one the moment she set down the spatula. She’d made eggs sunny-side, some pancakes, and what looked like French toast in addition to a mountain of bacon. To say that I was pleased by this was a vast understatement.

“Is it our anniversary already?” I inquired. She shot a cross look at me. Oops. First fuck-up of the morning. I don’t know our anniversary. I didn’t imagine, as contract killers, either of us would live long enough for it to matter. “Happy Birthday?” I really shouldn’t have tried to cover my slip-up. She made an attempt to swat my dick, but I’d already buckled my knees and turned to the side. She may have been some sort of super-ninja, but we men had a sixth sense for protecting our balls. Better than any ancient shinobi arts.

“…why did I marry you again?” she muttered darkly, but after a sip of the coffee I’d given her, she found her way to a smile. Two creams. Enough sugar to give an elephant diabetes. I may not have remembered all the important details, but when it came to the small things that made my woman’s smile brighter than sunlight—nobody did it better. “Oh, right. Cause you’re a walking poster-child for Starbucks.”

I wouldn’t respond to that. I loved coffee. There was no shame in that. The shameful thing was how Heaven bastardized her coffee with cream and sugar. I liked mine black, bitter, and resentful. In a way, it was almost a reflection of our souls. That’s how I saw it, anyway. Of course, reading my mind in that utterly annoying way she did, she dumped a little of her adulterated coffee into my cup and ruined my acrimonious soliloquy. If she wasn’t so damned pretty, I’d have gotten upset. But her face, soft, free of blemish, perfectly smoothed fur, and those waffle-shaped ears—I couldn’t frown at any of it for more than a few seconds before her infectious grin stole a way into my heart. I hated that she could do that. I loved exactly HOW she did it.

I reached down to fondle those ears of hers seated within shimmering platinum hair before it made more aware of how very tall I am. At six feet and eleven inches, we had to have our home specifically modified so that I didn’t knock down all of the ceiling fans when ambling about in the middle of the night, too lazy to flip a light switch. Heaven? She was about five feet, maybe eight or nine inches. Only slightly taller than the average woman. I made her seem like a doll with little rosette spots. The odd stares in public seemed to speak for those casting them: ‘pedophile’ they’d wordlessly say at a glance. It’s funny, though. Heaven was actually a few months older than me.

She plated the food and took it to the living-room table. She’d demanded we spend good money on a formal dining room set, yet we always buckled down in front of the eighty-inch wall-mounted flat screen, opened the sliding glass door to the balcony, and relaxed there every morning, noon, and night we had together. I’d have considered it wasteful, but, yet again, she smiled at it every time she walked by. I don’t know how I got to be so pussy-whipped, or why I seem to love it. My old military brothers would never let me live this down, if any of them were still alive out there. Still, this huge wooden table was worth over a thousand dollars. Why did we even need this eyesore? Nobody even uses wood anymore.

“Don’t even,” Heaven growled lowly as she noticed me scowling at the dining room table. She flushed red whenever she got annoyed at me.

“I-I wasn’t! I was just…looking…at it. It’s a very…nice piece. Very classical…err…rustic…and…”

“Uh-huh. Sit your gargantuan ass down and eat breakfast before I come over there ‘rustic’ you,” she demanded. I felt a surge of masculine pride rise up from someplace primal and I just wouldn’t stand for any more of her backtalk today.

“Eyup,” I replied and quickly seated myself so that she could stretch her legs across my lap comfortably, always a cat in everything her bear-like body did. It’s alright. I was only pretending to let her have her way. I could shut her down any time I wanted. Yep. I’m the man of this house. Fuck. Who was I kidding? I’m pathetic. What’s more, I’m delusional. But, when I thought about it, I didn’t mind the constant masculinity check. Just watching her lazily munch on a strip of bacon as she flipped through the television channels—this was my personal nirvana. I’d protect it. I’d never let it slip from my fingers. Never. “Hey, babe?”

“Mmnyah?” Her bright blue eyes trapped me where I sat and I felt my heart melt into mush between beats. Even when talking with her mouth full, she managed to be utterly adorable. It was hard to imagine that she’d almost taken my life the day we met…or that I’d turned around and tried to take hers the day after. Even if she’d ultimately be the end of me, I’d hold onto her and never let go.

I stroked her cute little toes as I always did when lounging together. “I love you.”

She gave a puzzled look for a moment before suddenly ducking her head and shoving a plate of breakfast at me. “Eat your eggs before they get cold, dummy,” she hissed softly, but I could feel the underlying hint of embarrassment bubbling behind her voice. She avoided eye contact. Assassins like Heaven never blushed, so I never expected it or saw it often, but the discomfort she felt wasn’t a bad thing. She, like myself, had never been cherished much in life. We had been tools of war. Tools of death. But now that we’d found each other, we were anything but—

“I…love you to, big dumb rabbit.”

When Heaven said things like this, I found myself never being more thankful that I’d been born a simple man.