Chapter 29
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
With the lightning crackling in the air, Delainey was humming with energy. It always made her feel a little off balance, but in the best way possible.
Add in the walk and the attack and Reece, and she was about to burst at the seams. She had resented him hanging out outside in his wolf form for the past several days, but now he was inside and she couldn’t ignore him.
He was there in the space, taking up all the air.
Now the cottage felt tiny. It had always been small, but with a six-foot-and-change, red-headed giant sitting on the couch, his linebacker shoulders taking up more than half the space, it became clear how much of a favor he had been doing by staying outside.
Delainey couldn’t stop looking at him.
She tried to find other things to do.
She had a work project she was supposed to be getting done, but she had been successfully putting it off for the past week.
She could go into the bedroom and scroll through videos on her phone, but lying on the bed made her hyperaware of the fact that she and Reece hadn’t discussed sleeping arrangements for the night.
The couch was more than sufficient to lounge around and watch TV, but for sleeping it became clear it was really more of a love seat. Neither she nor Reece would fit comfortably, especially when there was a gigantic king bed taking up most of the square footage of the bedroom.
A part of her, a very small part she would never admit to anyone, wished she could transform into a wolf and start pacing back and forth.
She was beginning to feel like a caged animal, but she wasn’t a wolf. She thought she was more of a jaguar type. All sleek black fur and deadly elegance.
Human pacing wasn’t as satisfying.
Delainey needed to sit down and work. Her client had emailed twice, and she’d read both messages and closed them without responding, which wouldn’t win her any repeat business.
She was usually the responsible one. The one who answered emails within the hour, who kept the calendar, who remembered to stock the pantry before they ran out of coffee rather than after.
She had been that person since she was old enough to reach the kitchen counter.
Her dad had been in Peru or Portugal or wherever his latest research had taken him, and her mom had been on the couch watching reality TV with the vacant expression of a woman who had checked out of her own life and couldn't figure out how to check back in.
So Delainey had learned to cook. She had learned to pay bills online using her mother's laptop and a sticky note with the bank password on it.
She had learned that if she didn't do it, it wouldn't get done, and that was fine. She'd been good at it.
The problem was that she didn't know how to stop.
Even here, in a borrowed cottage with nothing to protect and no one depending on her, she couldn't sit still.
She heard the bray of a laugh track from some old sitcom Reece was watching and tried to put it out of her mind.
She would have taken him for a sports guy, or maybe a World War II documentaries type, but he had been sitting there watching that sitcom for about two hours now.
He’d even laughed at two or three of the jokes.
Not that Delainey had been counting or cataloging his smiles.
God damn it.
She should have let the motherfucker get soaked by the rain if he wanted to stay out there. It wasn’t her job to save him. But this wasn’t her house, and she couldn’t exactly kick him out. They were both guests.
The pressure and the proximity was getting to her.
She remembered that night at the bar and bit her lip to keep from making a sound.
She remembered the texture of the bricks behind her back as Reece backed her up against the wall, the even harder feel of his body against hers, and the pure want in his kiss as they stole a moment they should never have.
She tried to put it out of her mind, but all that succeeded in doing was summoning that night in the woods.
The feel of his hands against her, of his fingers inside her.
How had she ever been okay with that? But she couldn’t pretend she wanted to take it back, or that she didn’t want it to happen again.
Distantly, she heard Reece make a rumbling, growly sort of sound. She glanced at the TV, but there was nothing that would have caused it.
Maybe a dog had run across the screen and his wolf had thoughts about it.
She remembered what it felt like to wake up in his arms, her whole body soft and pliant, and how it had taken every ounce of willpower not to paste on a dopey smile and say something absolutely ridiculous.
Fuck, she had it bad.
The memories hit her in quick flashes. Delainey put her hand against the wall, fingers curling and scraping into the drywall. Heat suffused her.
If Reece had been anyone else, but he wasn’t.
The want didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. They were stuck together. He was a werewolf. She was a witch. That might have felt like it mattered less and less every day, but eventually they would have to go back to reality.
Nico and Elise were already facing the stares and censure that came from their relationship. Delainey didn’t want to deal with the consequences.
Besides, if she and Reece tried something, she would probably kill him within a week, though a part of her reminded herself that they’d been living together for a week so far and no one was dead.
Of course, Reece had been in his wolf form most of that time.
Maybe he could transform overnight and sleep on the loveseat like it was a doggie bed. Was there any way she could possibly suggest that without it blowing up in her face? Delainey doubted it.
It was dark outside now, with only the sound of the storm and the occasional flash of lightning illuminating the place up. The lights flickered but stayed on. Wind gusted hard enough to rattle the front window in its frame and send a draft curling under the door across the hardwood.
“Is there a generator or anything out here?” she asked Reece, putting any sexy thoughts out of her mind and trying to focus on the practicalities.
He looked over his shoulder, gold eyes flashing, and a wave of want crashed over Delainey. She didn’t hide it in time.
From the way he sucked in a ragged breath, there was no hiding it now. He swallowed, and she watched it work its way down his throat. “No generator for the cottages,” he said. “There’s one at the big house.”
The power flickered again, and everything went black.
Fear flashed through Delainey for just a moment, then subsided. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, not really, but it was startling, and she hated the little gasp she made. She stayed standing where she was, right near the desk in the corner, and tried to let her eyes adjust.
It was so dark she could barely make out the outline of Reece on the couch.
“There’s a flashlight under the sink in the kitchen,” he said. In the dark, his voice was more intimate. It wrapped around her like a caress.
Because he couldn’t see her, or at least she thought he couldn’t, she let her eyes fall closed, relaxed, and enjoyed the way his smooth voice washed over her.
“There’s a candle on that table, right?” Delainey said.
She took a few steps toward the love seat, or at least where she thought it was, but misjudged and tripped over the arm, splaying herself all over Reece’s lap.
His hand came down on her back like a brand. She stayed in place for several beats, soaking up the heat of it, trying to lie to herself about how much she enjoyed it. Still half-sprawled over his lap, she turned towards the table and held her hand out, feeling for the candle.
“What are you—” Reece started, but she found the wick with her fingertip and sent the tiniest, most infinitesimal little spark of magic at it.
The spark jumped from her index finger with a faint crackle, no bigger than the head of a match, and the wick caught with a tiny hiss and a curl of smoke.
She was thankful when it lit without exploding in anyone’s faces.
Her magic was feeling more stable, but there were still strange flashes of wrongness, like there had been in the woods earlier.
The scent of juniper breeze, whatever a juniper breeze was, wafted up from the candle. The flame was barely enough to light up the outline of the table, let alone reach her and Reece.
“I guess you don’t need the lighter,” Reece said.
Delainey sat up and found herself straddling his lap. The candle from this angle gave a little more light.
His face was half lit and half in darkness, hair looking more black than red.
She felt the solid presence of his thighs beneath her, the flex of muscle as he strained to keep her there.
His hand had gone to her hip on instinct to steady her, not that she needed the help, and she had one hand on the back of the couch, keeping their chests barely a finger-width apart.
Every time she breathed, her breasts brushed against his chest. She couldn’t stop looking at him.
She needed to stand up. Staying here was a terrible idea. The worst possible idea in the world. It would complicate things beyond measure.
But Delainey’s body was already on fire, and she had been fighting this for too long. She was only one woman.
She leaned in and kissed him.
Reece groaned into the kiss and cradled her face, clutching her clothes, fingers brushing into her hair. He devoured her with his mouth, tongue sweeping in like a conquering hero. She swiped hers against his, savoring the taste of him.
She pulled her shirt over her head and threw it back.
Reece’s hands were on her immediately, sliding up the bare skin of her sides, and Delainey decided that thinking was overrated. Thinking had gotten her kidnapped, magically shackled to a werewolf, and stuck in a cottage in the woods.
Thinking could take the night off.