Chapter Four
Darius…
Wind in my hair, bike back in my possession, prize in my saddlebag: Everything is in order and going exactly according to plan.
Finally.
After all that tedious work tracking the spell book down, taking it had been comically easy, almost as if the Fates were on my side even with the trouble that sexy little chaos witch had created.
Now the payday for this thing is going to be huge, and the pack will be able to weather the winter and get back on better financial footing.
“Darius.” Nikos’s voice fills the inside of my helmet as I speed away from the scene of my latest crime. “You get it?”
Which answer he’d prefer is a toss-up.
Yes, if I have the spell book, that means our pack has made the score of scores, and everyone will live like kings through the winter instead of scrounging for scraps.
A no means that I, as the alpha, failed the pack, and Nikos would finally have his opportunity to challenge me out in the open rather than by shit-talking me behind my back.
I’d kick his ass in a fair fight, but Nikos isn’t known for playing fair. The last alpha—my father—was bad, but Nikos would be so much worse. He’d fuck the pack over in a heartbeat if it meant he’d personally benefit.
“Affirmative,” I say into the mic in answer to his question.
“Great,” he says, sounding like I just poured a Coke in his gas tank and ruined his ride’s engine. “We’ll see you at the rendezvous point.”
I grunt an acknowledgment before clicking off my comms.
There’s really no point in keeping them on.
Until I get close to our home hidden in the hills, I don’t need to hear my number two’s thoughts.
Fuck. I’d rather never hear them at all, but that’s the downside of being the alpha and what Nikos has never understood about the job—you have to listen because it’s not just about what you want.
It’s about the pack and keeping everything in order and on schedule to keep the chaos of what happened with previous alphas running the pack into the ground from ever happening again.
I climb the Oros Hills, heading toward our home of Arcadia. It’s just me and the peace and quiet of the open road, and it settles something deep in me. I fucking love these mountains.
That sense of peace lasts for about a quarter of a mile, however, before the air shifts around me.
And even though I’m miles and miles from home, the unmistakable warm, rich scent of the honeysuckle flowers that fill the woods around Arcadia hits me like a knockout punch.
But what actually lands against me isn’t a fist. It’s a witch.
And not just any witch, but the madam of mayhem herself, Effie Sherwood.
One second I’m alone on my bike, and the next she’s wrapped around my front, sitting face-to-face with me as if she’s about to give me the best lap dance of my life.
Unfortunately, she’s not about to grind against me in the champagne room. Which, honestly, is too bad, because with a thick, curvy body like hers, I have no doubt she’d rock my world if she decided to give it a try.
My grip tightens on the handlebars, but otherwise I manage to keep an unbothered outward appearance even as she settles against me as if magicking herself onto someone’s lap is a normal, everyday occurrence for her.
Going by what she posts on WitchyGram, it probably is.
But we both know better about why she’s here.
It’s not for fun. She’s here to get the spell book back.
“Miss me, honey?” she asks, curling her full, pale peach lips into a teasing smile.
“No,” I grumble, already planning what my next move should be even as I count the freckles that cover her high cheekbones.
“Ow,” she says, seemingly not the least bit disturbed by the fact that we’re doing 110 through the twists and turns of the Oros Hills. “If I had feelings you could hurt, my mascara would be ruined by all the tears I’d be crying.”
The urge to wrap my arm around her to cradle her close—the witch doesn’t even have a helmet on and doesn’t have a shifter’s regenerative powers—is getting hard to resist, so I buy time to get my shit together by asking, “No feelings, huh?”
“Not ones you can fuck with,” she says with a piss-off-asshole grin. “Now, be a good little pup and hand over The Liber Umbrarum.”
“The what?” I’m not dumb, but I’ve found most witches assume every shifter is, so I might as well use it to my advantage.
“Don’t make me tap that been-broken-a-time-or-twelve nose of yours with a rolled-up newspaper for being a naughty doggy,” she says with a teasing lilt before her tone goes harder than a lead-lined vault. “The spell book. Now.”
I flick my gaze from the road to her. It’s a mistake. The wind is tossing her long, wavy, light auburn hair all over the place, and some of it is sticking to her lips, drawing my attention to her mouth, where it most definitely should not be.
“Not happening,” I say to myself as much as to her.
She purses her lips together and stares at me for a second.
I swear I can see the gears turning as she works me out like I’m a puzzle.
Then a turn in the road shifts her, and she goes from close to plastered against me from crotch to tits.
The metal of my handlebars bends in my grip before I loosen it.
“Such a tough guy,” Effie says, using my biceps to brace herself as she puts a sliver of space between us.
“Seriously, do you guys have, like, MMA fights under the full moon?” She glances down at my chest and lower.
“Are you naked when you do it, like it’s ancient times again?
” She lets out a little mmh-mmh-mmh sound as if she’s picturing it.
“Do you sell tickets?” She leans forward, pressing her full breasts against my chest again, before she asks, “Can I sell tickets?”
This is what it was like when she approached me outside the pixies’ forest prior to stealing my bike. She went into a flirty, outrageous shock-and-awe campaign to distract and disorient me before taking my motorcycle and speeding into the forest.
It worked once. It isn’t going to work again.
She might have spells that make her appear out of thin air, but I’ve got shifter reflexes.
I reach back and grab her wrist before she gets her hand inside my saddlebag, no doubt to snatch the spell book and pull a disappearing act with it while I’m distracted because her tits are pressed against my chest.
“Bag’s shielded against spells,” I say before she gets other ideas to magic it out of my possession.
Her huff of annoyance is almost cute. “You’re no fun.”
She’s not the first to have that opinion. She won’t be the last. And I don’t give a shit.
I keep my eyes on the road and not the deep V of Effie’s navy sweater when her tits sway as we round the bend—well, mostly, but it would take being made of stone not to look—and I’m hard right now, but not because I’m made of granite.
As we clear the turn in the road, I spot the five motorcycles parked in the middle of the highway.
Nikos is standing cross-armed in front of his bike, wearing aviators and a smug expression like he’s about to bust me for running moonshine.
This is not the rendezvous point. It’s not even close to Arcadia.
It’s just out here in the middle of nowhere, in what my wolf calls perfect ambush territory.
I’m going through scenarios in my mind before I even start to slow down.
None of them are good. But I’ll die before I’ll let Nikos usurp me.
So I work out a plan of what to do. I’ll get off my bike as soon as I stop in front of Nikos and the rest of the squad and deal with whatever is about to happen, in the way I have to.
However, all that goes sideways when Little Miss Fuck with You doesn’t move off my lap when we come to a halt.
Her soft, brown-eyed gaze stays locked on mine.
A challenge? A promise? Who the fuck knows or cares.
Not me.
Not even a little.
Fine, maybe a little, but I have other shit to deal with right now.
I hook my arm around her waist, noting against my will the easy, soft give of her and the way her eyes darken with attraction when I do.
Her mouth rounds with a little gasp when I get up from my bike, holding her tight against me.
For reasons I can’t explain, I stand next to my bike for a second with her still in my arms. She’s at least half a foot off the ground with all those bountiful curves of hers tucked against me.
Suddenly, putting her down so she’s standing on her own two feet is the last thing on my mind.
The full moon isn’t for a few days, but the wolf inside wants to snarl at anyone who dares to look at her.
He’s desperate with the need to make her want, to claim her, to be the last man to ever touch her.
The feeling rushes through my veins like fire and ice at the same time.
In a heartbeat I can hear every bird in the forest, every tree leaf in the wind, and every beat of her heart in sync with my own.
Something dark and hungry swirls in her eyes as she watches me, neither pushing away nor pulling closer.
I smell it again, the honeysuckle that makes me think of dusk in the hills when the flowers let everyone know the night’s coming.
But it’s nowhere close to twilight, and whatever is about to happen is more permanent than the moon coming out for its turn in the sky.
But that’s something I’ll have to deal with later, because, unfortunately, Nikos’s bullshit isn’t about to wait.
Tearing my gaze away from Effie, I put her down and step in front of her as I focus my attention on the man who’d love to take my place as pack alpha.
“Nikos,” I say, since “what the fuck are you doing here instead of waiting at the rendezvous point like you’re supposed to be” is too many words.
“What the fuck is she doing here?” he snarls.
“Oh, Rover,” Effie says as she steps up next to me, not a hint of worry coming off her. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you weren’t happy to see me.”
He moves to take a step toward her, and my growl comes out before his foot fully lifts off the ground.
He doesn’t come any closer but sneers at her, “The name’s Nikos.”
She makes a dismissive tsk-tsk. “Really? You look more like a Rover—maybe a Spot.”
“Darius,” my second-in-command growls—literally. “Why was there a witch—especially that fuckin’ witch—on your bike?”
And my day had been going so well. Every line item on my agenda had been checked off.
The mental files for this job were alphabetized and color-coded before I’d slid them into the filing cabinet marked “Shit Done Right.” I’d already tallied the sums for what the pack’s take would be when we fenced the spell book.
It would be more than enough to right our accounts after my father had screwed the pack over by running it like his own little medieval fiefdom.
Now the wolf gunning for my job—and my throat—is about to lose his shit because of the witch who appeared out of nowhere onto my lap.
What is she doing here? Besides busting my balls and making my cock rock hard?
I have no fucking clue, but I sure as shit am not about to admit that or the status of my dick to Nikos.
“Kidnapped her,” I say, the words coming out in total surprise to myself.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
This is why I plan out every syllable of anything I say. Spontaneity is everyone’s privilege except the alpha.
Effie turns her head to me and lifts one eyebrow but doesn’t call me out on my lie in front of the pack.
“We can ransom her.” In for a penny, in for a pain-in-my-ass witch.
That shuts Nikos up, but it does not have the same effect on the sexy witch standing next to me, so close that she’s pressed up against my side.
Effie raises herself up on her tiptoes and whispers against my throat (as high as she can get, which somehow makes the effort even hotter).
“Role-playing as the big bad wolf, Darius?” she asks.
“Does that make me Little Red Riding Hood? Are you going to nip at me with those teeth of yours? Be careful, I might like that.”
The mental image of Effie Sherwood in a dark red velvet cape and nothing else running through the woods jolts me enough that I stop breathing.
The idea of biting that sensitive spot where her shoulder meets her neck as I sink deep inside her nearly makes my brain go into buffering mode.
I’m stock-still and every muscle is tensed to make sure I don’t give anything away, but that doesn’t slow my heart, which is going faster than the odometer on my bike can go up to.
But Effie? She looks like she’s about to throw up her arms as if she’s cresting the highest peak on a roller coaster and having the time of her life.
Of course, I would end up accidentally kidnapping a thrill seeker—just the type of person I avoid even more than witches.
Nothing good is going to come from this woman appearing out of thin air onto my lap.
I already have too much pack shit to deal with—including keeping my place in it—to take on ransoming a troublesome witch, no matter what my aunt Artemis predicted about my future.
The witch standing next to me is not the witch Aunt Artemis has been talking about as my fated mate since I was a teenager.
Even if I believed in fate, I’d know that isn’t the case.
Witches and werewolves don’t go together.
And fate can suck my dick. Effie Sherwood is nothing but trouble, and she means absolutely nothing to me beyond a means to fatten my pack’s bottom line.
The frustrated growl rumbles out of my chest before I can stop it. I know the wolf inside me wants to fuck Effie and smack Nikos into next Friday (not necessarily in that order), but he’s not gonna get it.
In response, Effie lets out a thin, half-assed witch growl of her own before lapsing into giggles.
“Is this when I’m supposed to be scared of the oh-so-dangerous werewolf alpha?” she asks when she finally can get words out.
If it is, she’s failing miserably at it. She doesn’t sound like she is even the least bit spooked. In fact, Effie sounds like she’s planning to be the one to eat me up—and fuck me, I like the way this curvy little witch thinks.