Page 50 of Blood and Trouble

“You know, the hotel has amazing chefs,” I said. “You can order whatever you want and charge it to the room.”

He shrugged. “I like cooking.”

“Oh.” I leaned back against the counter and crossed my arms while I waited for my coffee to brew. “I never learned.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” he said, and before I could assume he’d meant it as an insult, he added, “Sol didn’t know, either.”

Oh… Right. He’d been at the cabin with my sister when she’d crashed there and mated the VP of the Royal Bastards.

“But she was a quick study,” he said. “I imagine you are, too. If you want to learn.”

“Sure,” I said, sensing an opportunity to sneak past his defenses. It had been over a week of this awkward living around each other. We’d offered Poe his own suite, which he’d declined. Lycan had his own suite, but once I’d invited him into my bed, he didn’t leave. So now we walked on eggshells, trying not to acknowledge the tension suffocating every space the three of us occupied.

Poe grabbed a knife and held it out to me, handle first. “Cut up that spinach, enough for the three of us.”

I grabbed a handful and placed it on the cutting board, bunching it together while I tried to saw my way through it.

“So, you’re from Baltimore?” I asked, making conversation.

“I am,” he said. “That’s where I got my road name. Poe…like Edgar Allan Poe.”

“Do you write?” I grimaced at the mess I was making, certain I wasn’t doing more than butchering the spinach rather than slicing it into cookable pieces.

“Poetry, mostly,” he said. “But it’s dark. And most of the pack doesn’t like it. Those I let read it, anyway.”

“Why don’t they like it?” On my third failed attempt at doing anything with the spinach, Poe noticed and chuckled, walking around to stand behind me.

“Here, hold it like this.” He extended one arm along my side, wrapping his hand around mine as he adjusted my grip on the knife. His chest pressed up against my back, the heat from his body radiating through my thin robe. I shivered and tried to hide it, but the resulting tremble in his own muscles made me look over my shoulder at him.

An electric current raced through me from where we were connected, something profound and magnetic, and when our gazes met, his irises shifted from brown to amber and glowed.

His wolf.

The animal inside me answered, whimpering for more. She yearned to rub against his body, to bury my head in his neck and lap at his sweat-soaked skin.

“You see?” His voice came out in a deep, gravelly rumble as he lifted the thickest part of the blade, keeping the tip on the cutting board. “That’s better.”

He let go of my hand and took a step back, watching as I did it on my own.

“Good,” he said. “Very good.”

I closed my eyes and inhaled, trying to yank my mind out of the gutter. Did my praise kink know no bounds?

He went back to cracking eggs into a bowl, breaking the shells with a knife before pouring the contents one after another. He had strong, beautiful hands like Lycan. They were callused from years on the ranch, but veiny and elegant, and I would have bet they felt like heaven on tight muscles.

Probably felt like heaven in other places, too.

What? No. Stop it.

“I’m all doom and gloom,” Poe said.

“What?” I’d gotten so lost in my filthy thoughts, I had no idea what he was talking about.

“They don’t like my poetry because I’m all doom and gloom,” he said. “Because Lycan is such a golden retriever, I think they expected me to be…I don’t know…lighter, somehow.”

I giggled at the comparison of Lycan to a happy-go-lucky dog with his tongue hanging out. Sure, he was optimistic and jovial most of the time, but I’d seen the side of him that ached and wallowed and called himself an evil piece of shit. Maybe he’d changed since his breakup with Poe. Maybe the loss had soured him.

Poe whisked the eggs together, adding a little bit of water and a splash of milk before whisking some more. After I finished the spinach, I started on the mushrooms.