Page 51 of Hexy Beast

By the time Effie and I go toes-first into the deep pool at the base of the waterfall, I’m already wanting to go again. I hit the river bottom and shoot back up toward the surface, pulling Effie with me. I break through to the air half a second before she does.

Standing with my feet in the underwater muck, I shake the extra water out of my hair and watch as Effie smooths her hair back. It’s so heavy with water that her waves have gone straight.

“You”—she points a finger at me, but there’s no heat in her tone—“are gonna get us killed before we get back to Arcadia.”

She’s kidding, I know, but my gut clenches at the idea. “I’d never let anything happen to you.”

“What about something happening to you?” she asks with a huff. “You can’t just make instant decisions without weighing the consequences.”

“Oh, you mean like stealing an alpha werewolf’s motorcycle and driving it straight into the Killjoy Forest, a domain where ninety-nine percent of folks who wander in never make it back out?” I snap.

Her cheeks turn pink. “That’s different. There wasn’t time to consider alternative plans. My sister needed me.”

And Effie had gone. No doubt she’d processed the situation, weighed her options, and come to a lightning-fast decision that before I knew her better had seemed like impulse, but now I was beginning to see it as her own kind of witchy instinct.

I reach over and draw my thumb across her forehead, wiping away a fat drop of water coming down from her hair before it can get in her eyes. “Uh-huh, and magicking your way from that forest onto my lap as I was doing close to a hundred on the open highway?”

“I thought you had The Liber Umbrarum spell book, and I couldn’t let the Council get it,” she says, her tone going breathy as she looks up at me as she treads water. “All of Witchingdom will pay the price if they ever did.”

If that meant someone would harm even a single light auburn hair on her head, I’d burn the world before I let that happen. My wolf snarls his agreement.

Effie narrows her eyes at me, cocking her head in question as if she’d heard that sound, which is ridiculous. No one can hear an alpha’s wolf except them. Unless—well, now isn’t the time to deal with unless.

So I push my wolf farther back, because I want her all to myself as I glide my knuckles down her cheek, unable for some reason to stop from touching her—on land or in the water like now, it doesn’t matter. The urge to feel her, caress her, take comfort in her presence, it’s beginning to get overwhelming, and I can’t seem to work myself up to care.

“Always so noble,” I tease. “And that first night in the cave when you looked over your shoulder and all but dared me to fuck you so good you’d see stars, who were you saving then?”

She braces a hand on my chest and lifts herself up on her tiptoes, getting as close to looking me straight in the eye as she can. “You, from being wound so tight you couldn’t think straight.”

“Is that right?” I lift an eyebrow in question. “It was a pity fuck.”

She shrugs one shoulder. “Maybe.”

I drop my hand underwater to her waist, hooking a finger around one of her belt loops and yanking her hard up against me. “Do I have to prove you wrong right here, witch?”

For a second, I think she’s going to say yes, but then she lets out a disappointed sigh. “We’re kind of under a tight deadline, and we need to get moving.”

Normally when my wolf is leashed, I’d shove my own wants and needs to the back and agree.

But now?

My wolf and I are both in agreement that there’s always time for a little fun—and judging by the look in Effie’s eyes, we aren’t the only ones who’d like to spare a few minutes for more than a few orgasms.

“Witch,” I say, letting go of her belt loop so she knows what’s coming next is a request. “Make our clothes disappear.”

One side of her mouth kicks up in a sexy half smile and her gaze drops to the water swirling around us.

There’s a trio of naiads swimming close to the shore watching us, but there’s no quiet voice in my head or any attempt to reach out. Either they’ve had their fill of werewolves already or they want to see what happens next. Welcome to the party, ladies.

Effie turns her attention back to me, this time hooking her finger in my belt loop and using it as an anchor point to pull herself up against me. The second her lush body is against mine, my dick goes hard. She’s just so soft and curvy and everything a tactile kinda guy like me could want. She bites down on her lower lip and traces a finger down the middle of my T-shirt clinging to my chest, and I nearly come in my pants just from that.

Glancing up at me through her wet eyelashes, she asks, “What’s the magic word?”

Unable to help myself, I say the first thing that comes to mind. “Abracadabra?”

She rolls her eyes.

Another day I’ll drag this out with shazam and bibbidi-bobbidi-boo and all the other fairy-tale phrases, but I’m too fucking greedy right now.