"Oh, hi! Marcus and Lise are both asleep, so I'll go ahead and field this one. I hope you don't mind if I keep it to a whisper.

"The short answer is: yes, Lise and I are both Marcus' girlfriends. You could argue that we each belong to a different part of him, but effectively, we're all in a single committed relationship. This is the first relationship like this for any of us, so it's been a learning experience from day one.

"You're probably already aware of Marcus' 'psychological oddity.' The lower, 'taur' section of his body sometimes seems to have a mind of its own. It's not like Marcus can't control where he's walking, but he gets signals and thoughts that come from 'below.' These usually come as requests for food: he'll see someone and his lower body will really want that person in his stomach. Marcus can only control his feral side so far, so when those cravings pop up, and if there's no specific reason to stop it, he'll let his feral half take over and indulge himself.

"So, there's this coffee shop that Marcus likes to stop by as part of his morning routine, and Lise works there as a barista. They saw each other almost every day, and their interactions didn't usually go beyond a 'hello' or polite small talk. But Marcus started to realize that he was getting signals from his feral half asking for her -- and not as food.

"This had never happened to him before. I was already dating Marcus at the time, and he believes that communication is the most important part of any relationship, so when he realized what signals he was getting, he told me about it. He was planning on changing his routine and finding a different coffee shop to go to in the mornings; he wanted to cut this off before it evolved into a problem.

"But the more I thought about it, it didn't feel right asking Marcus to do that. I trust him, and I've never been the jealous type. I could see where he was coming from, and I know that he can't really control when those urges pop up. So I decided I would go scout out the situation myself: go to the coffee shop, check out this girl, and then see how I felt about it.

"I told Marcus my plan and we went to the coffee shop together the next morning. Marcus pointed Lise out to me, and I couldn't deny that his lower half had good taste: she was cute. And I realized that I didn't care if Marcus thought so. There was plenty of him to go around, after all, and it's not like him liking someone else made him like me less. So I made a decision.

"When Lise went on break, I flagged her over to our table and asked if we could talk to her. I'm pretty sure Marcus was still expecting to change his morning routine at this point, and maybe he thought I wanted to talk to Lise about the situation and ask her to keep away from Marcus. I can certainly tell you that neither Marcus nor Lise were expecting me to ask her out on a date with the two of us. She was surprised, but she said yes, maybe just out of curiosity.

"One thing led to another, and before we knew it, Marcus and I were asking Lise to move in with us. None of us have ever been in anything but a hetero, monogamous relationship before, so it's been a really new experience for everyone involved. It's not perfect, of course -- nothing ever is -- and we've had our share of problems to work through. But we all know that we're lucky to have the other two, and as long as we keep up the communication, care, and respect, it seems like this is a good thing that's going to last."

("As a side note, did you know that Lise snores? It's adorable! She sounds like a toy train whistle! Don't tell her I said that.")

(Ask me and my characters more questions on my Tumblr!)