Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Gryff
I spread the pizza boxes across the coffee table and stretch myself out on the floor opposite rather than sit beside Honey on the tiny sofa—the only piece of furniture I’ve bothered to place inside my living room.
I can’t stop myself from watching her mouth as she eats, though. She’s mesmerizing just performing that simple act. She opens her small mouth as far as she can to stuff an enormous bite of pepperoni pizza in, and I have to stop myself from imagining other reasons why she’d need to open wide.
Fuck, I’m some kind of degenerate now, imagining my friend’s daughter like that—on her knees in front of me, looking up at me through long dark lashes.
I take a bite of my own piece hoping to distract myself. As if that’s going to work.
“So you didn’t grow up in Mosswood, did you?”
I grunt. “No, I didn’t.”
“Where is your family from?”
I’d really rather not talk about my family, but it’s better than other topics she might have raised, so I suppress my sigh and answer. “Little place in the Northwest. Hilly. Lots of trees and animals. Not many people.”
She laughs. “Sounds perfect for you.”
It’s funny. It does. But that’s the guy I am now, not who I was. “I hated it growing up. It was really only the pack who lived out there. I wanted to explore the world. Meet other monsters and humans. That’s why I enlisted.”
I’m not sure why I brought up the army. I don’t really want to talk about it, but her soft smile feels like a reward for raising it.
Which is stupid. She’s just being polite.
She doesn’t want to hear me bitch about my past. “What about you? You seem like the type who wants to travel. I bet you’ve got big plans, don’t you? ”
She shrugs, looking down at the half-eaten pizza in her hands rather than at me. “I dunno. I would if I thought it was possible, but I’m just not sure that’s a reality for me. Seems like I’m better off in a quiet little town keeping to myself.”
That makes me sad. This beautiful girl hiding herself away from everyone and everything. She deserves a future full of options, full of promise. She should see the world if she wants to. She should be free to do whatever makes her happy.
Sadness is starting to leach into her cotton candy scent, staining it with acrid bitterness. “You’re not missing much,” I say, wishing I had something better to offer.
“Did you get to see much of the world in the army? Or would you rather not talk about it?”
I shrug. “I didn’t get to see much beyond sand and explosions.”
“Oh right.” She sounds so disappointed.
I force myself to continue. “I’m a poor source of information about the world.
I’m sure there are pretty places, and I know there are good people and monsters out there.
It just gets hard telling the difference between them and the not so good ones.
” My wolf is pacing, on the alert in case I walk myself into trouble, but for some reason it feels OK to be talking about it for once.
“How do you mean?”
I hesitate, but I see nothing but frank openness in her eyes. “We went there to fight against an external enemy. Wasn’t always the case.” I break off, realizing what I’m saying. “Sorry. Are you sure you want to hear this?”
She nods. “Of course.”
I grimace. “I started to get the feeling something wasn’t right when people started going missing.
Soldiers who had been injured but they never returned to active duty even though their injuries weren’t that bad.
It was covered up. I’m sure of it. Reports lost, letters from family still arriving even though they were no longer posted with us.
It was only later I found out about the worst of it. ”
I sink into my own thoughts for a moment where the whizz of flying shrapnel and pounding artillery fire thunders in my ears and reality fades out around me.
And slinking in the shadows of my imagination is the face I can never unsee.
The cursed patched-together face of the monster they made out of Collins.
Honey rests her small hand on my arm, bringing me back. I blink. “Sorry. What was I saying?”
She smiles sadly. “It must have been hard.”
I nod, relieved the flashback wasn’t worse. Something about her presence feels like a protective factor. I can’t afford to let myself think about that, though, so I just shrug. “Yeah.”
We finish eating in silence, and I know I’ve spoiled the mood. This is the other reason I keep to myself so much. I’m poor company these days.
I wrack my brain for something to lighten the atmosphere. “Do you play cards?” Cards are always good when you don’t feel like talking but the silences are getting awkward. Another thing I learned while I was overseas.
“Oh I love cards.”
Of course she does. She’s Bill’s daughter after all. “What do you want to play?”
I shuffle and dealing out two hands of cards. My body goes through the motions easily on muscle memory. The beat-up old cards land in two neat piles on the table between us.
Honey wrinkles her nose as she picks up her hand, and I laugh. “You have the worst poker face I’ve ever seen, Honey.”
Her eyes widen. “Um, technically we’re not playing poker. Also, it’s not my hand. I don’t remember the cards all having weird faces.”
Oh right. I forgot this is my army-issue deck with the top fifty-two most wanted on them. I chuckle. “You got the ace of spades, huh? He’s an ugly mofo. But I don’t feel too bad for you. You’re a lucky girl getting an ace.”
She looks at me indignantly over her cards. “Do you think I was born yesterday? I’m not telling you what I got!”
“Sweetheart, compared with me you were born yesterday.” Before she can draw me into a conversation about exactly how much older I am, I turn the top card in the deck over. “Alright. So trumps as hearts? Not smiling now, are you, little girl?”
She lifts her brow. “Wouldn’t you like to know, Daddy?”
Fuck me. Massive error.
I spend the next two hands trying to recover from the tightness in my groin and the relentless ache in my balls just from hearing that word on her lips again.
In private, where no one is watching and there’s no reason for it.
Where no one would know if I pushed her back on my sofa, spread her legs, and gave her a reason to call me Daddy.
I lose both hands in a row, and Honey is up six points before I know it. I can’t be mad about it, though, because her pretty smile is back, along with a spark in her eye I’ve not seen there before.
I deal the next hand, turning over the card on top of the deck. The five of spades.
Honey is still looking down at her cards. “He is ugly, isn’t he?”
I narrow my eyes. Is she really admitting to me that she has the ace of spades or is she just trying to play me? But if she has the ace, then I don’t want spades as trumps. It’s my call, though, since I lost the last hand. “Nope. No deal. I’m not calling spades.”
She smiles at me. “I thought you’d say that, but I can be persuasive.”
I had just gotten my cock to subside. I growl a silent instruction to my nether regions to calm the fuck down.
“Oh can you just?” I look down at my cards again.
It’s a decent hand for the right trump suit, queen of hearts, ace of clubs, jack of diamonds.
I’d be better off with hearts, especially if she is heavy on spades.
She bats her eyes, giving me a too innocent smile. “I’ll make another one of Mom’s pot pies for dinner tomorrow if you let me have spades as the trump. Come on, you should be nice to me. I’m probably going to lose.”
My mouth is watering instantly at the thought of another pot pie, but I’ve still got some dignity left. I’m not going to give in to her pleading and let her trounce me. I can’t lose this hand. That’ll be the game. I shake my head. “Sorry, sunshine, not playing. Hearts or nothing.”
She shrugs. “Worth a shot. Hearts it is.”
I frown. That was a little too easy.
I lay down my first card—the ace of diamonds. She primly puts the nine of diamonds on top, pushing the cards toward me. First trick to me. I slowly place the ace of clubs on the table, hoping. Again, Honey follows suit, handing me the trick.
I grin. This time I go in for the kill, the jack of diamonds, the right bower.
Honey smiles. Then she calmly places the jack of hearts right on top and slides the cards toward her.
I stare. She got me. Something tells me she never had any spades at all.
She leads with two more hearts, both higher than mine, and takes the last two tricks. She can’t keep that wicked little grin off her face as she scoops the cards into a pile and looks over at the score card I’ve been keeping. “Oh, three more points to me, what does that give me now?”
A chuckle turns into a laugh as soon as it escapes me, and before I can stop to think about what I’m doing, I grab her foot and pull it into my lap, tickling her sole while I hold it in place despite her squirming.
“I don’t know, sunshine. I’ll write it down as soon as you tell me what you think the score should be. ”
“N-no f-fair.” She’s squealing, the sound making the confined situation in my pants a challenge, but that still doesn’t stop me.
I’m caught up in the moment, enjoying the feel of touching her even in this innocent way.
She wriggles, but she can’t escape and is laughing far too hard to speak.
“S-stop! Gryff! Oh m-my goodness. This is so unfair!”
She sits, attempting to push me away just as I lean in, and for an instant our mouths are close enough I could capture her lips in a kiss if I edged just an inch closer.
I should stop. I should let her go and move back.
Instead I hold her there, captured as surely by her big blue eyes and the soft pink of her lips as she is by the strong grip I have on her leg.
I can feel her heart flutter in her chest as she draws in an unsteady breath. Least that’s what it seems like to my scrambled brain. I’m not tickling her anymore. In fact, we’ve both grown incredibly still as if each is waiting for the other to make a move.
Her scent is everywhere. It floods my senses, growing in strength with every second we stare at each other.
“Gryff?”
Shit. What am I doing? I’m not supposed to be interested in her.
Releasing her hurriedly, I clamber to my feet, spilling the cards onto the floor. “I should go fix that roof of yours.”
“Right now?” She blinks.
“Yeah. Right now.” My words come out more like a growl, and I’m throwing all my concentration into holding my human shape rather than splitting through yet another perfectly good pair of jeans. “Right. The fuck. Now.” I storm from the room and out into the cool of the night air and the dark.
I lift my face to the moon and draw in a breath, but even the sweetness of the cosmos and the black-eyed Susan on the air is thin and watery compared to the luscious smell I left behind inside my home.
A growl rises from my chest as I head for the truck and unload the tiles.