Chapter Three #2
“Home.” He rolled the word around in his mouth.
“That’s right. Home. I realize you have one over the pub, too, but that place is missing a key component of your life—me.”
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes, and it should have. He usually liked it when I said things like that. I knew for a fact that his wolf loved it.
We went inside and faced each other on the sofa. Ronan sipped his tea. I scooped up Autry and set the black ball of floof on my lap, running a finger up the path of her shiny nose and between her tiny triangle ears. Her copper eyes drooped and finally closed.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Same bullshit as before. The pack and other assorted assholes. I spent some time calling around, checking on people this morning. No new attacks, but we all know they’re coming.”
He’d lost someone recently—an older wolf shifter who’d helped us track Ronan after he was attacked by the former coven—and it was eating at him.
Charlie Hannigan had been a pain in Ronan’s backside since he opened the pub, but he’d been the sort of pain you grew accustomed to.
I imagined he’d felt the same way about that old wolf as I did about Senora Cervantes.
It hurt that he was gone. It hurt worse to know his murder was likely because he’d helped Ronan—helped us.
Two members of the local rat pack had discovered the elder wolf’s ravaged body by the dumpster behind his apartment. It had been a terrible way to die, and one Charlie hadn’t deserved.
Ronan was seething with fury over it. He was tracking down the alphas who’d perpetrated it, but that wasn’t easy now that he was persona non grata with the pack. He’d been foresworn, which was a fancy way of saying he’d been booted out by the alpha leader.
However, according to Ronan, his wolf wasn’t letting go so easily.
“Have you heard from Rory?” Aurora—or Rory, as he called her—was Ronan’s little sister. He’d told me more than once that she was the only nice thing Floyd had ever given him.
He shrugged. “A little. She’s got a bunch of finals coming up, so she’s fixated on that. She’s not giving her security any headaches, for which we’re all grateful.”
“You’re exhausted.”
“I’m okay.” He sipped his tea. Manzanilla with a hint of lemon balm and lavender. He often added a tiny amount of honey, though I didn’t smell any today.
“The bags under your eyes suggest otherwise.”
“Since you brought it up, I feel it’s acceptable for me to point out that you have eye luggage of your own.”
Autry stirred, and I stroked her tiny head until she went back to sleep.
“I had a long night. Not as long as yours, but possibly more eventful.”
“The Bloody Mary situation with Senora Cervantes’s niece, right? How’d it go? Was it really her? Is she a real thing?”
“Yes. Weird. No, and also yes. And she’s definitely real.” I gave him a quick overview of the night.
“So, you took care of the imposter and banished Bloody Mary. I’m with Ida. I think you should’ve smote—smited? Smitted?—him, but I get that witches trade in favors.”
“Not all of us, but yeah, most do.” I’d decided not to tell him that I’d wanted the favor to protect him. Somehow, I didn’t think it would go over well.
“Bloody freaking Mary is real.” He glanced behind him at the bathroom door. “Starting to think I’m saying that name way too much this close to a mirror.”
“You’re perfectly safe. She goes after kids—mostly preteens and teens—and only those credulous enough to still believe in her.”
“Kids? That’s pretty damn evil.” He made a face.
“Yeah.”
I knelt and laid Autry on a folded wool sarape beside my fireplace. She’d claimed the thick, colorful Mexican blanket a few days ago, and I’d taken to setting it out for her to nap on. In the garden room, she had a cute little bed next to Fennel’s.
“Is something wrong?”
“Lots of things are wrong.” I rose, walked into the kitchen. “You know that better than most.”
Ronan followed with his now-empty cup. “True, but it seems like something specific is bothering you. What happened last night that you haven’t told me?”
My reason for going into the kitchen in the first place forgotten, I leaned against the counter and watched Ronan wash his mug and set it in the dish drainer. There was something so right about his presence. He belonged here.
With me.
“I didn’t give you the whole story,” I said.
To his credit, he didn’t make a smart-ass retort, like “obviously.”
I’d half expected it, though that was more because it was something I would’ve said rather than something he would. I should probably work on my attitude, but I’m thirty-five and entrenched in my ways. Plus, I don’t want to.
“I’m listening, if you want to tell me,” he said. “No pressure.”
His word choice was interesting, because I felt like I was going to burst with anxiety and fear. “I didn’t banish Bloody Mary with a spell. I banished her with my presence. Ronan, she was afraid of me. Of me.”
His drooping eyelids opened wide. “Whoa.”
“She said my full name.” I ducked my head, letting my brown-black hair fall over my face like a curtain. “She also referred to me as ‘Kin to the grave demon, child of dot-dot-dot,’ and then she apologized a few times and was wrenched back into the computer, which then melted.”
“Wrenched by whom? Or what?”
“No clue.” I shook my hair aside, peered at him.
Ronan didn’t look sickened, afraid, or disgusted—the three emotions I’d anticipated, along with a hearty, “Well, it’s been fun, Betty, but this is a little too much demon stuff for me.”
He looked interested. Perplexed, even. “What do you think she was going to say—the dot-dot-dot part? Child of whom?”
“Don’t know.” I cleared my throat. “You’re not weirded out by this?”
“No,” he said, following it with a quick, “I bet it’s about your father. It could also be about your mother, though. She was a powerful elemental witch, after all.”
“Yeah.” I stared at him as if he were a handful of stars that had spontaneously configured into a heart-shaped constellation in the sky. “I love you, you know.”
“I know. I love you, too.” He reached for me, drew me against his strong, warm body. “What? Did you think this would be a dealbreaker for me?”
“I’m a part-demon witch apparently scary enough to freak out Bloody Mary. Yeah. I thought you might take issue with that.”
“At least your birth father didn’t try to murder you.”
“The day is young.”
He squeezed me tight and planted a kiss on my head. “I already knew you were fierce, Betty. That’s not news. Nothing you’ve told me changes who you are. Not in any way that counts.”
I burrowed into him. Breathed in his scent, which was a mix of the pub, the outdoors, and my house. “Did you go for a run today? You smell like sunshine.”
“What does sunshine smell like?”
“Like growing things, good health, warmth.”
“That answered nothing, bonita.”
“I know, but it’s the best I can do.”
He smoothed his hand up my spine to my nape then squeezed a handful of hair, tipping my head gently back. It walked the edge of pain—a distracting sort of sting I needed right now.
That he’d known I’d needed it told me he was paying attention, and there were few things sexier than a man who paid attention to a woman’s needs—in bed and out of it.
“You smell like mine.” He softly growled the words into my ear. His wolf was close. This was the outdoor scent I’d detected.
“What does that smell like?” I asked.
“Let’s just say, I nose it when I smells it,” he said, burying his face into my neck.
“Goddess, that was a terrible pun. Just awful.” I ran my fingers down his chest to the hem of his T-shirt, grabbed a fistful of fabric, and raked it up so I could start working on the top button of his jeans.
“How dare you? That was a great pun.”
“I mean, I can handle the stuff with your murderous father—let’s face it, he wants me dead, too—but the corny jokes?” I clenched my teeth, wrinkled my nose. “That’s going to be hard to overcome.”
“Too bad. You’re locked in, Lennox. No backing out now. You’ve got me, puns and all.” He released my hair and swooped down, gripped the backs of my thighs, and hoisted me high up in his arms.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and kissed a trail from his jaw to his collarbone as he carried me into the bathroom. We broke apart briefly and undressed ourselves because it was faster, then ducked under the warm spray of the shower together.
I shook the water out off my face and opened my eyes.
Ronan was watching me. His eyes flashed gold, and a sexy grin tilted his mouth. “We’re going to make the first one hot and fast, because I want it that way and so do you.”
“You seem very sure of that,” I said, not at all embarrassed by the need in my voice.
“Oh, I am.”
Whoa. The heat in his gaze competed with the heat from the shower. Tiny dots of sweat beaded on my upper lip. “And the second one?”
“Slower. The third one slower yet. See, you need to understand that I’m not going anywhere. That I love every inch of you, inside and out. This is one way I can show you. There are others.” His voice dropped into a husky whisper. “You’ll see.”
My skin prickled with goosebumps.
“You like that idea?” He raked the fingers of one hand down my chest, skimming my breasts, stopping at my abdomen, the heel of his hand inching lower at an agonizingly slow pace.
I tried to speak, but it was as if my breath had been swept away. The best I could do was, “Uh-huh.”
“Good, because I’m going to do it over and over.
I’m going to imprint my body onto yours, and whenever you start to doubt how I feel about you, you’re going to remember this on a visceral level.
Whenever you feel warm, shivery, and wet, you’ll recall this moment and call out my name. And I’ll come, Betty. Oh, I’ll come.”
“Holy hellebore, you’ve definitely got the hot part down.”
His grin widened.
“So what happened to fast?” I teased, as warm water rained on my head and sluiced over the muscled planes of his back.
“I’m getting there. I just wanted to prepare you first. You know, so you can’t say you weren’t warned.”
There were a series of pithy remarks on the back of my tongue, snarky observations about men who thought their penises were imbued with some sort of mystical healing power, but then he pressed me against the tile wall with that hand splayed over my belly, went to his knees in front of me, and I forgot all about it.
He grinned up at me. “Give me two minutes.”
“Only two, wolf?”
“Possibly less. We’ll just have to wait and see, Betty bonita.”
An hour later, I was tucked against his warm, naked body under the sheets of my bed. I’d waited, I’d seen, and it had been glorious. He’d been right about my needing him. Beautifully, deliciously right.
However, as much as I liked his penis, it wasn’t magical and it hadn’t solved my problems. My doubts about myself remained.
A shaft of sunlight broke through an opening in the room-darkening curtains I’d bought with his schedule in mind, creating a golden glow over my side of the bed. I lay there, body satiated, mind racing.
Why in the world would a creature like Bloody Mary be afraid of me?
The answers I came up with were disturbing. What’s more, I doubted they’d end up being as upsetting as the truth.
Ronan snuffled in his sleep. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, the man was exhausted. His ex-alpha—and birth father—was gunning for him, the wolf pack was in the midst of what amounted to a civil war, and worst of all, Floyd had been MIA for the last two weeks.
Out of sight, out of mind wasn’t a solution with someone like Floyd. Dangerous people needed to be monitored, not ignored. I had a terrible feeling he was lying in wait, ready to hurt Ronan or someone he cared about.
I pressed a kiss to his mouth and slid out of bed. My mind was overflowing with unanswered questions, and sleep, even next to the deliciousness that was Ronan, wasn’t happening.
I adjusted the curtains to fully darken the room then padded out of the bedroom and into the bathroom to dress. My Blondie concert T-shirt and jeans from earlier were clean. I’d taken a shower this morning, so I hadn’t actually needed another one.
And yet, I most definitely had.
One glance into the empty shower, and Ronan’s strong hands were slip-sliding up and down my damp inner thighs all over again. I sighed, picturing the way he’d lifted my limp body into his arms, thrust into me, and rocked us from one orgasm straight into the next.
Damn it, the man truly had imprinted his body onto mine. I could only hope I’d done the same sort of beautiful damage to him. When I thought about how much time I’d wasted dancing around my attraction for him when we could’ve been doing this, I felt a little dumb.
“I love every inch of you, inside and out.”
His words kept me company as I combed the tangles out of my damp hair. I applied makeup in the bathroom mirror, shaping my dark brows, layering on more mascara than the winner of a teen beauty contest, and lining my lips with a red pencil.
It was the sixties hour on KLXX, and “Bad Moon Rising” by Credence Clearwater Revival played softly, so as not to disturb the sleeping wolf.
I hummed the chorus as I selected a bold shade of lipstick, Gucci’s Goldie Red, and smoothed the color over my lips.
It had been a gift from Ida on our most recent trip to the mall, a luxury purchase I hadn’t been able to justify.
I peered closer in the mirror to ensure the lip line wasn’t visible and that I didn’t have any on my teeth.
The mirror steamed up, which wasn’t possible, since I hadn’t been running any water and the room had long aired out from my steamy shower with Ronan. There was only one explanation.
I awaited the chill signifying my grandfather’s presence. Whenever I missed his calls, he had a habit of showing up at the most inconvenient times in the most intrusive ways.
I capped the lipstick, tossed it into the drawer with the rest of my makeup, and fluffed out my hair.
“Look, I’m not avoiding you. My ringer is off because I was on a case last night and—”
A face appeared in the mirror.
It wasn’t Sexton’s.
The visage was flat gray, the shade of the walls of a psychiatric hospital in an old movie.
Black hair hung in loose waves around the face, the lips were like charcoal after a barbecue, and the eyes were heavy-lidded, slightly almond shaped, the irises a shade of black so bottomless it hurt my eyes.
It was me.
But also not.
“Kin to the grave demon, child of the wretched one.” Its voice was like a serpent’s tongue prodding my ear. “Your time is here.”
“Who are you?” I asked, but she—I—was gone.
When I stopped shaking, I stepped into my boots with the heels and went to look for the guys.
I needed answers, and there was only one place I could think of that had them.
Whispering Willow Cemetery in La Paloma.
Grandpa Sexton’s graveyard.