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I just couldn’t say no to him.
Chapter 13 - Eric
At a quarter to midnight, I eased into one of the three empty spaces in front of The Smoky Cauldron. Two lanterns glazed the porch with golden light reaching for the four wooden steps between the car and the front door. A wooden sign on the door hung beneath a stained-glass panel with the shop's name in white script.
Regina touched my forearm. “Behave.”
“I swear to the goddess, GG, if you tell me to sit in there—”
“I will do whatever it takes to maintain peace between vampires and wolves.” She dug her nails into my flesh hard enough to make her point. “Please, don’t do anything rash. Can you promise me that?”
Passion sat in her ashen eyes, something I recalled from our rendezvous in the field. Her luscious scent sat on my upper lip even though it had been washed away hours ago. No amount of scrubbing could diminish her delicious nectarine scent from my memory.Not that I wanted her scent to be gone. I just needed to focus for now.
Until I could do something about my desire later.
“Eric?”
I sucked air into my lungs only to sigh it out a split second later. “Fine. But I might complain if you tell me to sit again.”
“Don’t act like a wolf if you can’t handle being treated like one.”
“Funny. That doesn’t seem to be a complaint when I treat you like my prey.”
Lust ravished her cheeks with hints of scarlet as her eyelids weighed heavy and her lower lip disappeared between her teeth. She wanted me. And I wanted her.
But once again, we were faced with the dilemma of it being the wrong place and the wrong time for that sort of thing. Was there a field nearby we could run to once this mission was complete?
I shook away my frisky thoughts as I pulled the key from the ignition. “Let’s get this over with so we can go home.”
“Home.” That word sounded foreign on her lips.
Damn it, Eric. Good job, I thought. You just made her feel like shit.
I grabbed her hand and firmly held it to my stubbled cheek. “Darling, I didn’t mean to imply that—”
“It’s okay. I think it’s important to consider whether or not I consider the Hayden pack my home.”
“Don’t you?”
She quietly withdrew her hand, a horribly cold feeling stabbing me in the gut when I realized she was exiting the car without answering the question.
So much for last night is more than a hookup.
Again, wrong time and place. We could talk about that later. The mission was more important, taking on a new edge of importance as I stepped out of the car and locked it up. On the porch, I felt a weird pull around me like I was stepping through a wall of gelatin.
I rubbed my face. There was nothing there. But it felt like there was something there. “What is that?”
“Wards,” Regina explained as she tapped methodically on the door, “to keep invaders from bringing ill intent.” She glanced at me. “If you’re found harboring ill will, then you’ll be stripped of your powers.”
“Does that only apply to witches?”
She shook her head and then focused on the door, repeating the series of knocks in the same initial pattern: two taps, pause, two more taps, pause, and then one tap. “All paranormal creatures capable of superhuman feats can be stripped of their abilities.”
“But it won’t hurt me, right?”
“As long as you don’t want to hurt her.”
I sighed gruffly. Witches were complicated in so many ways. I was starting to wonder how the hell Blake managed to pull our names from the ether together. That was a rabbit hole I could dig through later assuming Regina didn’t want another round with me.
