Chapter 12 #2
She picked up the tome from the dust bunnies that hopped back under the bookshelf. Except for one. It stayed, rearing on its hind paws, asking for a pat, which Avery complied with, using her pinky finger to give the small being a scratch on the head.
Avery blew off the remaining dust from the book before putting it on the table in front of them. She opened the first page, the leather creaking and cracking. It had been a while since it had been opened.
“Well?” Felix said, leaning in as she flicked through the pages.
She shook her head. Each one was blank, except for one verse in the center.
A smile formed on her lips. Regardless of what it meant and why the dust bunnies had given it to her, one riddle was enough to excite the inner child in her.
A riddle was a problem she could solve. Unlike the rest of whatever clusterfuck her life was going on.
Her fingers traced the words. Did the goddess want her to solve it? The very idea seemed preposterous. But a bunch of bunnies had just marched it to her—it had to mean something.
“Why are you smiling like that?” Felix asked.
“Because I love riddles.”
“Oh, yeah?” He had the same grin as a Cheshire cat plastered on his face. “I have a head but no face. I have no legs, yet I stand tall. I can be hard, but I have no bones. I am often hidden beneath a hood. What am I?”
Avery couldn’t help herself.
“PENIS!” she said it loud enough that the whole library could have heard before she slapped a hand over her mouth, her cheeks warming at the outburst.
“You’re disgusting,” she said through muffled fingers.
A dark chuckle made her blush for a whole different kind of reason. His fangs glinted in the witch lights. How would you kiss with those swords in your mouth?
Avery’s blush deepened as the thought of Felix kissing her played out like a lewd movie in her mind.
A dappling of heat spread through her core as she pressed her thighs together to stop it from spreading further.
She refused to be turned on by a shifter; there were plenty of fine witches who would indulge her once this was over.
Perhaps she should take Callum, the sweet enforcer, up on the date.
She needed a release that her own hands couldn’t satisfy any longer.
She ignored the shifter who was still chuckling to himself about his terrible riddle.
She turned to the book to concentrate on something other than him.
Was this the goddess’s will? But why? Why would the goddess want her to be bound to her enemy?
Or maybe the dust bunnies just knew she liked a riddle.
The enemy cut through the noise of her thoughts. “How will a book of riddles help us?”
“I don’t know how it will help.” She only knew that her gut was pulling her toward it. And not just because she wanted to solve the riddle.
“Fantastic,” Felix said sarcastically.
“I think the goddess wants us to solve it.”
He narrowed his eyes at Avery. “Are you well, like, mentally?”
“Not when you’re around,” she bit back.
Felix smirked. “I tend to have that effect on people. Or they drop their panties for me, it’s one or the other, really.”
Dropping the book on the table, she flipped him off, only for his smirk to twist into a devilish grin. She ignored him and tried to translate the first line of the riddle.
“To be freed is what you seek,” she said in the old language.
Her breath caught in her throat; Felix’s eyes widened as they locked on hers.
“I think you might be onto something, little witch,” he said in the old language. It sounded otherworldly coming off his tongue; he spoke it so fluently. Even better than her, and she had had countless classes dedicated to just the language.
She was always taught that shifters couldn’t understand their language. She tried racking her brain for anything else she remembered being taught about shifters. They were dangerous, incomprehensibly powerful magical beings that could shift into animals. Involuntarily, she laughed.
Felix gave her a look. “What’s so funny, witch?”
That pushed her over the edge into full-blown hysterics.
For the first time in a while, she laughed.
Really, truly, laughed. The shifter looked at her like she was a woman possessed.
He probably thought she was, and that only made her laugh harder.
This whole situation was absurd. It was like the start of a bad joke.
Shadows slithered out from him, wrapping themselves around her chest and squeezing.
Not enough to take her breath away, but enough to stop her from laughing and focus on breathing instead.
“I’ll ask you one more time. What is so funny?” he said, punctuating each word.
A small giggle escaped. She couldn’t help it. “It’s just, when you think of a shifter, you think of a dragon razing a city, or a griffin terrorizing a village. You don’t think of a tiny cat.”
“I’m not tiny,” he retorted, crossing his arms.
“You kind of are.”
He rolled his eyes. “My tiny form could kill you.”
“Death by a thousand surface-level scratches. Sounds like a horrible way to go.”
A shadow slipped around her neck and yanked her forward, close enough to him that she felt his warm breath against her, the heat in her core returning like a catching wildfire. The shadow tightened against her neck, cutting off her air supply. “Does this feel surface-level to you?”
She didn’t know what stupid part of her possessed her to taunt him further, but she did. “Doesn’t...” She breathed in a strangled breath. “Count.”
Felix rose slowly, not taking his eyes off her as the shadows continued to writhe across her.
His eyes darkened as he leaned on the table, claws lengthening and digging into the wood.
A shadow forced its way through the small gap between buttons, tickling the fine hairs on the skin of her stomach.
What she should have felt was fear. Maybe it was the lack of oxygen, but the shadows started to feel good.
A small involuntary moan left her mouth as one made its way to her breast, lightly grazing the hardened buds of her nipple. She shouldn’t be enjoying this. Yet the wetness pooled between her thighs anyway.
Splinters started to pop up from the wood as Felix dug further into her favorite table.
He looked as if he wasn’t even breathing, his eyes transfixed on hers as they met in a feverish dance of predator and prey.
His nostrils flared. As if the moan hadn’t been enough to signal to him that she was reveling in the touch she had been starved of for so long, he could smell her too.
His shadows faltered, no longer as strong as they were a few minutes ago. Another moment passed, and they fell. He slumped back in the chair, his hands shaking as Avery’s ragged breathing filled the space.
He looked crazed and starved as he said, “I need food.”