Page 8 of Hexy Beast

“Ow,” she says, seemingly not the least bit disturbed by the fact that we’re doing 110 through the twists and turns of the Oros Hills. “If I had feelings you could hurt, my mascara would be ruined by all the tears I’d be crying.”

The urge to wrap my arm around her to cradle her close—the witch doesn’t even have a helmet on and doesn’t have a shifter’s regenerative powers—is getting hard to resist, so I buy time to get my shit together by asking, “No feelings, huh?”

“Not ones you can fuck with,” she says with a piss-off-asshole grin. “Now, be a good little pup and hand over The Liber Umbrarum.”

“The what?” I’m not dumb, but I’ve found most witches assume every shifter is, so I might as well use it to my advantage.

“Don’t make me tap that been-broken-a-time-or-twelve nose of yours with a rolled-up newspaper for being a naughty doggy,” she says with a teasing lilt before her tone goes harder than a lead-lined vault. “The spell book. Now.”

I flick my gaze from the road to her. It’s a mistake. The wind is tossing her long, wavy, light auburn hair all over the place, and some of it is sticking to her lips, drawing my attention to her mouth, where it most definitely should not be.

“Not happening,” I say to myself as much as to her.

She purses her lips together and stares at me for a second. I swear I can see the gears turning as she works me out like I’m a puzzle. Then a turn in the road shifts her, and she goes from close to plastered against me from crotch to tits. The metal of my handlebars bends in my grip before I loosen it.

“Such a tough guy,” Effie says, using my biceps to brace herself as she puts a sliver of space between us. “Seriously, do you guys have, like, MMA fights under the full moon?” She glances down at my chest and lower. “Are you naked when you do it, like it’s ancient times again?” She lets out a little mmh-mmh-mmh sound as if she’s picturing it. “Do you sell tickets?” She leans forward, pressing her full breasts against my chest again, before she asks, “Can I sell tickets?”

This is what it was like when she approached me outside the pixies’ forest prior to stealing my bike. She went into a flirty, outrageous shock-and-awe campaign to distract and disorient me before taking my motorcycle and speeding into the forest.

It worked once. It isn’t going to work again.

She might have spells that make her appear out of thin air, but I’ve got shifter reflexes. I reach back and grab her wrist before she gets her hand inside my saddlebag, no doubt to snatch the spell book and pull a disappearing act with it while I’m distracted because her tits are pressed against my chest.

“Bag’s shielded against spells,” I say before she gets other ideas to magic it out of my possession.

Her huff of annoyance is almost cute. “You’re no fun.”

She’s not the first to have that opinion. She won’t be the last. And I don’t give a shit.

I keep my eyes on the road and not the deep V of Effie’s navy sweater when her tits sway as we round the bend—well, mostly, but it would take being made of stone not to look—and I’m hard right now, but not because I’m made of granite.

As we clear the turn in the road, I spot the five motorcycles parked in the middle of the highway. Nikos is standing cross-armed in front of his bike, wearing aviators and a smug expression like he’s about to bust me for running moonshine. This is not the rendezvous point. It’s not even close to Arcadia. It’s just out here in the middle of nowhere, in what my wolf calls perfect ambush territory.

I’m going through scenarios in my mind before I even start to slow down. None of them are good. But I’ll die before I’ll let Nikos usurp me. So I work out a plan of what to do. I’ll get off my bike as soon as I stop in front of Nikos and the rest of the squad and deal with whatever is about to happen, in the way I have to. However, all that goes sideways when Little Miss Fuck with You doesn’t move off my lap when we come to a halt. Her soft, brown-eyed gaze stays locked on mine.

A challenge? A promise? Who the fuck knows or cares.

Not me.

Not even a little.

Fine, maybe a little, but I have other shit to deal with right now.

I hook my arm around her waist, noting against my will the easy, soft give of her and the way her eyes darken with attraction when I do. Her mouth rounds with a little gasp when I get up from my bike, holding her tight against me. For reasons I can’t explain, I stand next to my bike for a second with her still in my arms. She’s at least half a foot off the ground with all those bountiful curves of hers tucked against me. Suddenly, putting her down so she’s standing on her own two feet is the last thing on my mind.

The full moon isn’t for a few days, but the wolf inside wants to snarl at anyone who dares to look at her. He’s desperate with the need to make her want, to claim her, to be the last man to ever touch her. The feeling rushes through my veins like fire and ice at the same time. In a heartbeat I can hear every bird in the forest, every tree leaf in the wind, and every beat of her heart in sync with my own.

Something dark and hungry swirls in her eyes as she watches me, neither pushing away nor pulling closer. I smell it again, the honeysuckle that makes me think of dusk in the hills when the flowers let everyone know the night’s coming. But it’s nowhere close to twilight, and whatever is about to happen is more permanent than the moon coming out for its turn in the sky.

But that’s something I’ll have to deal with later, because, unfortunately, Nikos’s bullshit isn’t about to wait.

Tearing my gaze away from Effie, I put her down and step in front of her as I focus my attention on the man who’d love to take my place as pack alpha.

“Nikos,” I say, since “what the fuck are you doing here instead of waiting at the rendezvous point like you’re supposed to be” is too many words.

“What the fuck is she doing here?” he snarls.

“Oh, Rover,” Effie says as she steps up next to me, not a hint of worry coming off her. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you weren’t happy to see me.”