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He comes out of the trees carrying a metal box that looks like a friggin’ safe. Hell, knowing his shifter strength? It might be a safe. Steering clear of the wolf’s bane, he puts it on the ground and opens it to lift a cedar chest carved with sigils from inside.
My heart leaps to my throat, and my wings shoot out from my shoulder blades to carry me to him in seconds. “Is that…?” I don’t dare hope. The last time I saw that chest was in my family’s attic next to the altar.
“Your family’s grimoire.”
He brought it. It’s here.
Relief, happiness, and an overwhelming fear launch a war in my belly. My breaths come too fast, and my eyes burn. I don’t know if I want to throw open the lid or tell him to put it back in that damn safe. But he’s given me the chance to decide. Before I can let good sense get in the way of staggering sensibilities, I grab him by his scruffy cheeks and kiss him.
9
NOLAN
Sadie’s lips on mine brand me as if she’s twisting the mating call’s knife deeper into my chest. Her simple peck of a kiss lights me up like an inferno rages through me, and then she licks the tip of her tongue against my mouth. I almost drop the box with her family’s grimoire inside to wrap my arms around her, but she pulls away, leaving me standing there like a starstruck dummy.
Gods, she’s so pretty with a little streak of dirt across perfect skin that doesn’t need the makeup she sells. She bites her bottom lip, and I swear she does it on purpose to make me want to grab her for another kiss while she flies just out of reach.
“What was that for?” I ask, my voice rumbling over the sudden gravel in my throat.
“A thank you for bringing the grimoire back to me.” Those gorgeous wings of hers rustle as she floats eye-level to me.
“That’s a hell of a thanks. Tell me what else I can bring to earn another.”
She flies back another few feet, but the corners of her mouth curve upward. “I think we’ve had more than enough kissing.”
“Nah, can’t happen. So a thanks will get me one? Anything else?”
She glances at the box as I ease it onto a nearby flat stone, wiping dirt away first. “I don’t know. You seemed worried.”
How the hell did she know I stressed over her reaction to returning her family’s grimoire? Unless… “You haven’t been seeing anything odd today, have you?”
“Other than you showing up in my garden?”
I don’t rise to the challenge in her tone. “Like strange colors?” The same as I can’t stop seeing since I kissed her last night and opened the mating call as wide as a barn door on a hot summer day. The same as I followed here to a friggin’ spelled secret garden. Thank the gods I saw her butterfly-winged sister shoot into the sky earlier, or I wouldn’t have had the plausible deniability.
“What kind of colors?” She eyes me as if I’m talking crazy. Good, it’ll keep her from asking questions about how I got past her protection wards.
“The kind that look like auras around people?” Specifically around me.
“And here I thought I was the witchier of the two of us.”
My heart falls. I’d hoped she felt something for me, but if she’s not seeing the signs, maybe I’m wrong. Or she’s stubborn and needs more kisses to push the mating bond through that hard head of hers. Or she’s lying. With Sadie from before her murder, I wouldn’t have suspected that. Now? I’m not so sure. She isn’t the same gullible, shy girl. Instead, she’s the brave woman who flies up to me and lays a kiss on me.
“Why’d you bring the grimoire to me?” she asks, tracing her fingers over the symbols carved on the wooden box.
“It’s yours.”
“That’s not the deal you wanted to make yesterday.”
“I was wrong.”
She stops and stares. “Say that again.”
“Nope. I’m not falling for that. I admitted it once. That’s all you’ll get from me.”
“More than I believed was possible.” There’s that taunting, almost playful tone from her again.
“Sadie Tucker, are you flirting with me?”
