Chapter Nineteen
Darius…
There’s one thing everyone should know about embracing change. Everyone wants you to do it until you actually do.
Then they’re all “let’s think this over” and “you’re acting so different.”
I get it.
I do.
However, letting my wolf be in the driver’s seat of the what, when, and how of my decisions and actions is all about throwing the slow and deliberate out the window.
It’s acting on instinct. It’s going left when the trail goes right.
It’s going full speed in the dark without your headlights on.
It’s all about doing exactly what you want at the exact moment you want it.
That can be a lot for some folks.
Case in point? Effie the chaos witch, who I’m realizing isn’t as impulsive as she is mind-breakingly fast at brain processing. She’s looking at me like I’m a few cards short of a full deck.
“What in the fuck are you doing, Darius?” she asks, stopping a few steps short of where the rushing river drops off into nothingness and becomes a waterfall.
I shoot her an adrenaline-fueled grin that I know will get completely under her suddenly tight skin. “Exactly what you told me to do.”
I can’t see the spray carried up behind me by the fall breeze from the waterfall, but I can feel it, and I love how even though she’s farther back from the edge than I am, it’s turning Effie’s lush waves into tight curls.
She has the pinched look around her mouth of someone fighting not to call someone else a dumbass, and her nose is all scrunched up with worried frustration.
“I said you should let your wolf loose and use your instincts freely to get back to Arcadia,” she tells me, her gaze on me, but her attention still seemingly on the long drop between us and the river’s surface. “I never said anything about cliff diving.”
“And my wolf is exactly who I’m listening to,” I say.
“About damn time,” my wolf grumbles inside my head.
“Yeah, can it, furball,” I shoot back. “You’re simply out on parole, that’s all. This isn’t permanent.”
He lets out a growly harrumph. Whatever. This is a test run, a pilot program, not a permanent change, no matter what I’m letting Effie believe right now.
“The woods will let us out when they decide to,” I say to Effie before taking another step closer to the edge. “And anyway, we aren’t exactly seventy feet up in the air here. It’s what, thirty feet? Maybe thirty-five? So, about the height of an Olympic diving platform.”
“Yeah,” she scoffs as she crosses her arms. “There’s just one problem with that logic.”
There are a million problems with what we’re doing. The woods have a well-worn path that we should be sticking to, and yet here we are on a side quest that’s about nothing except the thrill of it. But I’ve committed to this, and I’m not turning back now.
“What’s the problem?”
“I,” she says, doing a whole ta-da motion with her hands over her body, “am not an Olympian.”
I slowly take her in, my gaze going over every wave in her hair, every curve of her body, every inch of her it’ll take years and years to memorize.
“No, you’re not. You’re Effie Fucking Sherwood.” I hold out my hand and give her a wink. “Now, let’s jump.”
She doesn’t move, and for a second, I think I’ve overplayed my hand, but then she smiles and shakes her head.
“No magic?” she asks as she walks toward me.
“No magic. Just instinct.”
“This is unhinged,” she says with a chuckle before stopping next to me and looking over the edge at all the open air beneath us.
I shrug. “Probably, but you have to admit it’s fun.”
She gives me a look that says she can’t decide whether to laugh or yell at me, but she takes my hand. I don’t give either of us the opportunity to have second thoughts. I just follow my wolf’s instinct right over the waterfall’s edge.
For a second, all I can feel is Effie’s hand in mine and an electric blast of pure what-the-fuck-have-I-done.
My heart is going faster than my motorcycle on a straightaway. Adrenaline is blasting through my veins like a geyser with no off valve. And then I realize I’m sailing through the air, almost flying but more falling, and it feels fucking great.
By the time Effie and I go toes-first into the deep pool at the base of the waterfall, I’m already wanting to go again. I hit the river bottom and shoot back up toward the surface, pulling Effie with me. I break through to the air half a second before she does.
Standing with my feet in the underwater muck, I shake the extra water out of my hair and watch as Effie smooths her hair back. It’s so heavy with water that her waves have gone straight.
“You”—she points a finger at me, but there’s no heat in her tone—“are gonna get us killed before we get back to Arcadia.”
She’s kidding, I know, but my gut clenches at the idea. “I’d never let anything happen to you.”
“What about something happening to you?” she asks with a huff. “You can’t just make instant decisions without weighing the consequences.”
“Oh, you mean like stealing an alpha werewolf’s motorcycle and driving it straight into the Killjoy Forest, a domain where ninety-nine percent of folks who wander in never make it back out?” I snap.
Her cheeks turn pink. “That’s different. There wasn’t time to consider alternative plans. My sister needed me.”
And Effie had gone. No doubt she’d processed the situation, weighed her options, and come to a lightning-fast decision that before I knew her better had seemed like impulse, but now I was beginning to see it as her own kind of witchy instinct.
I reach over and draw my thumb across her forehead, wiping away a fat drop of water coming down from her hair before it can get in her eyes. “Uh-huh, and magicking your way from that forest onto my lap as I was doing close to a hundred on the open highway?”
“I thought you had The Liber Umbrarum spell book, and I couldn’t let the Council get it,” she says, her tone going breathy as she looks up at me as she treads water. “All of Witchingdom will pay the price if they ever did.”
If that meant someone would harm even a single light auburn hair on her head, I’d burn the world before I let that happen. My wolf snarls his agreement.
Effie narrows her eyes at me, cocking her head in question as if she’d heard that sound, which is ridiculous. No one can hear an alpha’s wolf except them. Unless—well, now isn’t the time to deal with unless.
So I push my wolf farther back, because I want her all to myself as I glide my knuckles down her cheek, unable for some reason to stop from touching her—on land or in the water like now, it doesn’t matter.
The urge to feel her, caress her, take comfort in her presence, it’s beginning to get overwhelming, and I can’t seem to work myself up to care.
“Always so noble,” I tease. “And that first night in the cave when you looked over your shoulder and all but dared me to fuck you so good you’d see stars, who were you saving then?”
She braces a hand on my chest and lifts herself up on her tiptoes, getting as close to looking me straight in the eye as she can. “You, from being wound so tight you couldn’t think straight.”
“Is that right?” I lift an eyebrow in question. “It was a pity fuck.”
She shrugs one shoulder. “Maybe.”
I drop my hand underwater to her waist, hooking a finger around one of her belt loops and yanking her hard up against me. “Do I have to prove you wrong right here, witch?”
For a second, I think she’s going to say yes, but then she lets out a disappointed sigh. “We’re kind of under a tight deadline, and we need to get moving.”
Normally when my wolf is leashed, I’d shove my own wants and needs to the back and agree.
But now?
My wolf and I are both in agreement that there’s always time for a little fun—and judging by the look in Effie’s eyes, we aren’t the only ones who’d like to spare a few minutes for more than a few orgasms.
“Witch,” I say, letting go of her belt loop so she knows what’s coming next is a request. “Make our clothes disappear.”
One side of her mouth kicks up in a sexy half smile and her gaze drops to the water swirling around us.
There’s a trio of naiads swimming close to the shore watching us, but there’s no quiet voice in my head or any attempt to reach out. Either they’ve had their fill of werewolves already or they want to see what happens next. Welcome to the party, ladies.
Effie turns her attention back to me, this time hooking her finger in my belt loop and using it as an anchor point to pull herself up against me.
The second her lush body is against mine, my dick goes hard.
She’s just so soft and curvy and everything a tactile kinda guy like me could want.
She bites down on her lower lip and traces a finger down the middle of my T-shirt clinging to my chest, and I nearly come in my pants just from that.
Glancing up at me through her wet eyelashes, she asks, “What’s the magic word?”
Unable to help myself, I say the first thing that comes to mind. “Abracadabra?”
She rolls her eyes.
Another day I’ll drag this out with shazam and bibbidi-bobbidi-boo and all the other fairy-tale phrases, but I’m too fucking greedy right now.
“Please, witch,” I say as I cup her phenomenal ass and lift her onto the boulder sticking up from the surface in the middle of the water, “magick our clothes over to that tree branch to dry out, otherwise I’m going to rip them off us both, and the shredded remains will float down the river never to be seen again. ”
She cups her heavy tits through the soaking blue knit and lets out a wanton sigh that would make anyone break their vow of chastity. “But I like this sweater.”
Hands on her thighs covered in wet denim, I push her legs apart and stand in the V. “Then I guess you know what you should do.”
“Your wolf is just as bossy as the rest of you,” she says as she wiggles her fingers.