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“Come on now, the guy is just trying to do his job,” Dante said from behind me. I ignored him.

Or I tried to. The thump of a combat boot against the hardwood floor and the woodsy scent of his aftershave told me he had stepped closer to me.

I thrummed my fingers on the counter. “Four shots of espresso.” I spoke overly slowly to the barista. “A quad espresso. Four shots, nothing else.”

He nodded quickly, tapping on the screen, thrusting it toward me to pay before all but scampering over to the coffee machine.

The roar of the machine and the scent of the beans did not serve to calm me. Or drown out Dante’s presence.

I whirled around, not happy at how close we were standing, but with the counter directedly behind me, I didn’t have much choice. Dante was using his size and our proximity to unnerve me. No way was I going to let the fucker do that.

“Didn’t think that you were the type to come home to Pleasantville, even to hunt a rogue werewolf,” he said conversationally.

My hackles went up. Because he knew that I grew up here. Sure, that information could’ve come from him deducing the facts after overhearing my interaction with Colton, but I didn’t think so. Dante might have been a cocky, annoying asshole, but he was a cocky, annoying asshole who did his research.

And he’d done it.

On me.

My hands fisted at my sides.

“This is my job,” I said through gritted teeth, glaring at the smirking prick.

“You can’t call dibs on jobs.” He grinned happily, reaching back to pull his bun loose just to redo the fucking thing again.

Of course, my eyes went to his long, tattooed hands working deftly through the inky-black strands.

I found his hazelnut eyes once more. “No, I can’t call dibs on jobs.” I put my credit card back in my pocket. “But I can stab you in the gut and watch you die slowly and painfully while I enjoy my coffee.”

My threat was not empty. Not exactly. I was not afraid of killing someone, not even a little. And Dante had definitely done something in his life that was deserving of a knife to the gut. But I couldn’t exactly do it in public, and despite his easy demeanor, he was not someone easily caught off guard. He wasn’t afraid of killing someone either, and he was dangerous in his own right.

“Aw, Hadley, I appreciate the effort.” He stepped even closer to me, his boot jutting up against mine. “But I don’t need that kind of foreplay. Not that I’m adverse to a little knife play.” He reached up to twirl a stray lock of my hair around his finger. “And you strike me as a woman who gets turned-on by blood.”

His breath was warm on my face. Minty. And his fucking eyes were liquid, teasing and hungry all at the same time.

I gritted my teeth. Without thinking it through, I reached under my shirt to where I had a knife strapped to a holster on my torso—I might have gone out in last night’s makeup, but I didn’t walk around unarmed—slipped it out then severed the strand of my hair that Dante was holding.

He was grinning, holding a lock of my hair in his fist. “I’ll keep this.”

“Do whatever the fuck you want with it,” I shrugged. “But the next time you try to touch me, that knife will be cutting off something else entirely.”

“Uh, espresso?” the barista called from behind me.

I bit back a groan, realizing that I had brandished a deadly weapon in a coffee shop at eight in the morning. With witnesses.

Fuck.

I took a deep breath, trying my best to instill all my hatred and fury into one last glare at Dante while ignoring the whispers and wide eyes from the people behind me in line.

Some bimbo was whispering into her phone, most of the patrons filming me. This fucking generation. They would literally film someone getting murdered before stepping in to help. They lived and would die behind those fucking screens.

I flipped off the camera of one of the teenyboppers, instantaneously cursing myself for my outburst. I could only hope the videos would get lost in the noxious soup that was the internet and wouldn’t go viral. That was the last thing I needed. My face was already on more than a few wanted posters in small-town police precincts around the country.

I made a mental note to call my witch friend—though calling her a friend was a stretch. We’d agreed not to kill each other, which was as close to a friend as you’d get with me. Anyway, I needed to ask for the favor of a bit of technological magic. Lucky for me, she excelled in it, making her living off doing things like erasing pesky sex tapes of senators, other high-ranking officials, and celebrities who employed fixers who knew about the supernatural underpinnings of this world.

I whirled to where the trembling barista was holding out my order. I tried my best to paste on a smile, but by the looks of his face, that made things worse. Probably because I was still palming my knife. I tucked it back into my holster before grasping the hot Styrofoam cup in my hands, relishing the burn.

“Thanks,” I told the barista, lifting it up to take a sip. My tongue lost a few tastebuds, but it was good.