53. Riley
Riley
Isucked in a shaky breath as Bree and Raquel tugged me forward. We pushed through the already rowdy crowd, the thump of bass pulsing through my body. Anxiety skittered over my skin as I sweated bullets inside the unforgiving latex dress.
Why the fuck was Simba here? I hadn’t seen him since the dodgeball incident. The way he’d stared at me when we walked into the ballroom made me question my plan.
The felines assured me I bore no resemblance to Riley Scott, my alter ego, but the lion was way more intuitive than most males. If my looks made him suspicious, the other three alphas might also second-guess who I was.
I stuck close to Kasia as the crowd parted in her wake. I’d always known my tiger shifter friend was strong, but seeing how others reacted to her display of dominance made me smile.
A hand groped my ass as I brushed past a pair of male hawk shifters. One of them said something derogatory, so I grabbed his wrist and twisted it. He squawked loud enough to be heard over the pounding music.
Kasia stopped dead and then turned on the two shifters. They puffed out their chests, certain they were more powerful than my female friends. Only they failed to realize Bree and Raquel had moved behind them, effectively blocking the assholes in. Haley stood back, content to just watch.
I didn’t blame her. She still bore the psychological wounds of the honey badger shifter’s attempted assault.
“You dare touch my friend?” Kasia hissed at the taller hawk shifter. Like many avian shifters, he had a prominent nose and angular features, with his feathered hair sticking up in spikes.
“If she wears a slutty dress, she ought to expect some attention,” the asshole smirked while his friend laughed.
“She dresses to suit herself, not creeps like you,” Kasia hissed.
“Ignore them,” I said with a sigh, aware we were attracting attention. “They’re not worth it.”
“No, we’re worth ten of you fuckheads,” my tiger shifter friend said to the hawk shifters, growling menacingly at them before kneeing the taller hawk in the balls.
He dropped to his knees, wheezing and sobbing.
Bree snatched a glass of red liquor from a passing female and poured it over his head, staining his white shirt pink.
The hawk’s alarmed friend shrieked like a banshee when Raquel ground her heel into his foot, but a booming rock riff music drowned out his pained cries. A few people glanced our way, but the rest carried on drinking.
I grinned with satisfaction. Violence was always the answer when males disrespected females.
“Come, my lovelies,” Kasia beamed. “Let’s drink!”
After two large glasses of fae wine, I’d decided coming here tonight wasn’t such a terrible idea after all. The music sucked but the company definitely didn’t. My feline friends had dragged me onto the makeshift dance floor and were instructing me on the art of twerking.
“Humans do it,” Haley assured me, shaking her ass like a demented chicken.
“Really?” I failed to see how sticking one’s ass out like a baboon shifter in heat was sexy.
“You’re not doing it right,” she huffed. “See? Do it like Bree!”
Bree gyrated her bubble butt and pouted while swinging her cat tail around. It hit a male wolf shifter in the face, and he growled before his eyes popped out of his head.
“Eyes down, asshole,” Kasia snarled. “We don’t do wolves!”
“Hey! That’s discriminatory!”
“No, it’s sensible. Male wolves are dickheads.” I snorted into my drink at the wolf shifter’s furious glare.
“I’d make an exception for him,” Raquel whisper-shouted in my ear.
We all turned to see who she was looking at, and I nearly dropped my glass.
Tobias stood leaning against a pillar, his shaggy hair curling over the collar of his dark-gray shirt.
Unlike most of the students here, he hadn’t bothered with a costume, but I spotted a pair of devil horns peeking out from his hair.
The half-unbuttoned shirt, combined with his cheeky smile, meant he could easily have passed as a sexy demon.
I watched as he scanned the room before his gaze fell on me. His entire demeanor changed from relaxed to predatory as his gaze traced a heated path down from my face, lingering on my breasts, which were plumped up like two ripe peaches, before skating over my belly.
My tongue flicked out to moisten my dry lips while Raquel and Bree murmured to each other about slutty wolves.
Did Tobias recognize me? I hoped not. Deciding to front it out, I flicked my fake hair and turned my back on the wolf to resume dancing, which involved swaying my hips salaciously.
The more I tried to ignore the wolf, the more his eyes burned into my ass. Or so it felt.
After two more hours of drinking fae wine cocktails dispensed from under the counter at the bar, my kitty cats had achieved a happily inebriated state, while I was ready for bed. Only I couldn’t leave yet because I still needed to track down and interrogate—sorry, talk to—my suspects.
Tobias had long since vanished, but I knew Tate would be around here somewhere. Tank too. Those three were rarely apart.
“I need a drink of water,” I yelled in Haley’s ear as she twirled her hips to a human pop song. Kasia was busy chatting up a panther shifter nearby, and both Bree and Raquel had sloped off claiming to need the bathroom.
I’d caught them giving a pair of cheetah shifters heart eyes, so I assumed needing the bathroom was girl code for having sex in a cupboard.
Haley nodded and continued dancing seductively for a jaguar shifter wearing a Purge mask. I caught Kasia’s eye as I passed and pointed to Haley, so she could keep a close eye on our friend. None of us wanted a repeat of the last full moon party.
Thank the goddess that the honey badger shifter was dead. Maybe Tate Montes wasn’t the villain in Lorna’s story after all.
Ignoring the many lecherous looks that followed me, thanks to my obscenely tight dress, I made my way to a set of double doors at the back of the ballroom.
There was no sign of Simba. I wasn’t sure why he had even come here, as there seemed little in the way of adult supervision from what I’d observed.
I’d spotted Miss Raven dirty dancing with a bear shifter earlier, so she was definitely here to get laid.
Once outside, I huffed a lungful of cold air and exhaled slowly, releasing some of the tension in my body.
The pendant rested between my breasts, a reminder that all I had to do was tear it off and I’d be a male again.
Not that I planned to do that; a male wearing a skin-tight latex dress would attract far too much attention, and my male clothes were still in the felines’ apartment.
Just as I was about to go back into the ballroom, the air shifted around me and my inner beast perked up.
“Not enjoying the party?” drawled a familiar voice. I spun around to find Tobias leaning against the wall, his devil horns askew and shirt now fully unbuttoned. Forcing myself not to ogle his muscular chest, I shrugged.
“The party’s fine.” It was dangerous being this close to Tobias. Sure, I looked female, but to his wolf, I’d smell the same. “I should get back to my friends,” I said, pasting a polite smile on my face.
“No need to rush away.” He stepped closer, blocking my exit, and then frowned. “That scent,” he murmured. “You remind me of someone.”
“Perfume,” I blurted. “Super expensive Dior perfume.”
“Perfume?” Tobias squinted at me in confusion. “No, human perfume is fake as fuck. This…your scent…is…”
I didn’t give him a chance to finish the sentence. He jolted in surprise when I shoved past him, but before I could escape, he’d hooked me around the waist.
“Fuck, you smell delicious,” he groaned, pressing his nose against my neck.
All I had to do was drive my elbow back and stamp on his foot with my spiked heel. The wolf wouldn’t expect a much smaller female to attack him.
But I couldn’t do it. Not with my inner beast pushing me closer, demanding we let this stupid wolf claim us.
He edged me into a deep pocket of purple shadow behind a potted palm, and to my shame, I did nothing to stop him. Instead of struggling, demanding he release me immediately or kneeing him in the balls, I yanked his head down, closed the gap between us, and kissed him.