AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What do you want?” he asked, scrubbing a hand through the close crop of his beard, sending more feathers spiraling. “Why attack me?”
“You attacked me!”
“I attacked you?” He flung a feathered hand out. “All evidence to the contrary.”
She bounded down the stairs.
“Careful,” he said one second after she stepped into the dish soap. She yelped and slid toward him, arms pinwheeling. He reached out and grabbed her. Appreciation warred with disgust as she landed against his sticky chest.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Am Iokay?” she echoed incredulously.
“What happened?”
She looked down at herself and hit him in the solar plexus. “You happened.” She drilled her finger into his pec where she’d just hit him, anger washing over the voice of reason telling her not to taunt the shifter with the scariest wolf she’d ever seen. “This is your fault.”
“Myfault?” He opened and closed his mouth three times. “I come home thinking of peanuts. No, thinking of steak?—”
“Peanuts?”
“And find booby traps and a strange witch in my house. How did you get in here?”
“You put me here. You are the one who kidnapped me.”
“I’ve been in New York until three hours ago. Wait, kidnap?”
She took a step back. “This wasn’t a pack-wide find-yourself-a-mate heist?”
He put a hand to his forehead in a rain of feathers and dropped it quickly. “I told them they were idiots. I told them this would never work.”
“So that’s the problem? It would never work? Not that it’s illegal and terrible, and if you think that we’re gonna live happily ever after…”
He threw up his hands. “Hard pass. We’re not going to war over a hellion witch. I will take you back right now. And then I will knock their heads together so hard they will see double for a month. This was not sanctioned. This was… It’s… I can’t even think of the word.”
She blinked. “Um, unsanctioned?”
“No. Yes. Worse than that.”
He really hadn’t done it? She didn’t recognize his voice, but he looked a little familiar.
“This was just punk kids,” he insisted. “But that’s no excuse. This is still so far from acceptable human behavior, that I… That I…”
“That would sound better if you were human, but I like the part where I’m not here.”
He nodded spastically. “I will get you home, I promise.”
It boded well that he wanted to prevent any more violence, starting with returning the hostage. It rankled that she was the hostage. She stepped back and leaned against the stairwell for support. “You really promise?”
“Yes, because when someone promises to do something, and you don’t think they’re going to keep their word, making them repeat it will definitely help.”
“Why the hell should I trust you to keep your word?”
He deflated. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”
“So repeating an apology is okay?” she asked.
He smiled for the first time, and her breath hitched. “Unlike promises, repeated apologies are always better.”
