Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
“All fae are born with innate abilities. Most have wings or claws they can summon on command, along with various other inherited traits from the beasts of the forest. But one ability all fae share is the gift of glamour—fae can make themselves appear as anything they like.”
— ELISE KOVA, A DANCE WITH THE FAE PRINCE
T o say I enjoyed kissing Suzette was like saying a hurricane was just a bit of rain.
Or maybe it was that she was a hurricane herself. Her hands slid up my chest to my head, and she pulled me close and kissed the heck out of me. She did not hold back one bit.
A heavy pulse beat in my body, needy and hungry. A tide of red-hot hunger flooded through my body, and I knew my wolf wasn’t far enough beneath my skin. He wanted out, and we both wanted Suzette. She kissed me, I kissed her back, and all I could think was, You DO know when you’ve found your one and only.
We are lucky bastards , my wolf agreed.
She tasted so good. Sweet, although she was more sass and bite when we weren’t kissing. Not like strawberries or peaches. More like wild honeysuckle or the huckleberries we found in the mountains in the summer—but also her own flavor, a taste I had no name for but would never forget. Her kiss held heat and need, but also an urgency that I had never felt before.
Or maybe that urgency was all me. Maybe I was hot and hungry, impatient to get under her skin, to slip inside her and share whatever room she’d make for me. I wanted everything with this woman. She’d fallen into my life, and it was the happiest accident ever.
At first, I kept my hands on her waist so I wouldn’t send them exploring elsewhere as I wanted to. Lord have mercy, but I wanted to.
Kiss the girl. Give her something to like us for.
Later, I flattened my hands on my truck because I would not thread my fingers through her hair. Would not pull her close and slide a hand up underneath her skirt with its ribbons and lace. It was too soon. I was a gentleman.
And a FOOL.
...But I sure did want to do all those things and more.
The strength of my response to her wasn’t necessarily a surprise, but it made me rethink my relationship plan.
Should I confess that I’d sworn off casual sex? That I’d made a promise to myself to wait until marriage before I engaged in any intimacies? That I would not be putting out after tonight’s date because I needed that boundary after making choices that had been wrong for me in my younger days?
Or we could just elope. Get back in the truck. Drive like hell. Have a two-thousand-mile engagement and then BOOM. Honeymoon time.
Quite a few people who cared about me would say it was too fast.
But I felt oddly certain about this woman. Yet I also knew that it was far too soon to be sharing these thoughts with her. I’d asked her out on a date, and she deserved courting.
Was I still the charmer who only knew how to flirt and kiss the girl? Was I truly a himbo, cute but relationship clueless? Had I learned anything from my indiscriminate and prolific dating past?
Hot damn, I know how to kiss a girl in the first act. Isn’t that awesome? I’ll just ad-lib the rest of the play! What could go wrong?
I had no idea when was the right time to discuss this stuff. When did I share my feelings and my hopes for us? When would it be too late, and the relationship boat would have sailed without me?
I forced myself to step all the way away from her. I took myself back to the driver’s seat, got in, and waited until she was buckled up before I got us on the road.
We need a new plan. A faster plan. You can practice sweet-talking her when you’re naked.
As we drove to Biscuits they’d brought out more than one red velvet cupcake with a diamond engagement ring stuck in the frosting.
I sure hoped Sonnet would like it, and that the night would live up to my hopes and expectations.
Honestly, holding her hand was almost as good as I imagined having sex with her would be ( Not really , my wolf interjected) but mostly I just enjoyed the closeness of it. We were two people out and about, sharing some time together, and I was proud she’d chosen me.
As irritating as Ranger was with his interference in my social life, I’d have to give him a pass. His obnoxious matchmaking had gotten me here on a date with Sonnet.
“So is this place?—”
“Biscuits & Blessings.”
“Yeah. Will it be crowded?”
I shrugged. “Should be fine. It’s the middle of the week, and most people have work. I made a reservation.”
“So, it’s a local spot? And you know everyone?”
“I can’t guarantee an introduction to everyone .” I couldn’t stop the smile that tugged the corners of my mouth upward. “There could be people in Moonlight Valley that I haven’t met. Or that I’d prefer to forget. We even get the occasional tourist or two. Is this okay, or do you want to go somewhere else?”
Vegas , my wolf prompted. One of those monster buffets and then a trip to the wedding chapel. It’ll be great.
Sonnet gave me a big smile and nodded. “This is great.”
We went inside hand in hand, and that’s when the night made a right-hand turn into Disasterville.
People didn’t just look at us. They gawped. Unashamedly.
Alessandro Aymes, the local wildlife control officer, stared. The hostess, Jenny Ford, downright gawked. Her eyes went so wide that she could’ve been that surprise emoticon. She was all open eyes, raised eyebrows, and agape mouth.
Even though I hadn’t dated in five years and people loved to gossip about us Boone brothers, the reaction seemed excessive.
I knew that most likely people had expected me and Sanye to get married someday. We’d spent a lot of time together after losing Evan, but marriage had never been part of the picture for us. We were friends and friends only.
Everyone was looking at us instead of at their steaks and shrimp. They appeared stunned, shocked, startled, and every other S-word I could think of. Were my blue jeans unbuttoned and was my banana hanging out?
I checked discreetly, but I hadn’t suffered a produce mishap. Everything was where it should be.
I frown-glared at the closest table: Bennie Georgison, the local dentist, and Mike Smith, owner of Mike’s Microscope Shop. They both knew better than to gawk at other people in public (in Moonlight Valley, we did our gawking discreetly from our trucks or on Instagram). I was fixing to apologize to Sonnet for their rudeness when a shriek interrupted me.
“It’s you!”
Sonnet and I turned to find Evie Summers darting toward us. She was rummaging in her bag with increasing desperation. It was as if there were a kitchen fire or a person-eating dragon that necessitated an immediate 9-1-1 call, and her brain had shut down from the adrenaline surge. Her gaze was fixed on Sonnet, however.
“Oh my God. You’re Sonnet Ruiz!” Evie yanked a dog-eared paperback out of her bag and waved it. “Can I take a picture? Can I have one with you? I can’t believe you’re here. I love all your books!”
I’d known Evie since we were both kids, but she was way too close to Sonnet. I tugged Sonnet slightly behind me.
She goes through us , my wolf agreed.
This turned out to be ambitious, however, because half the restaurant got up in a rush and converged on us. They had no idea how close I was to letting my beast out and snarling at them all, because really? Mobbing my lady? With...
Requests to sign books.
Napkins.
Phone cases.
A hairy, bare forearm?
It was incomprehensible. The more I watched, the stranger it all seemed. The woman I’d walked in with and the woman signing autographs were both the same but subtly different somehow. Her startled smile had transformed into something bigger and brighter.
Excellent teeth , my wolf suggested. Very fang-like.
She certainly flashed them more often than a wolf at full moon, but it was more than that. She seemed somehow larger and brighter, taking up more space than she had before. She quipped, delivering funny one-liners as she signed.
She’s amazing . My wolf growled softly. Sharing is overrated. You know that, right?
My wolf wasn’t wrong, but Sonnet was her own woman. An amazing woman, yes, but there was something about her in this moment, something that I couldn’t quite put a finger or a paw on.
Those books she writes must be even more interesting than Wyatt’s , my wolf mused. Why don’t we own any?
We would be paying a trip to The Pink Parts tomorrow, that was for darn sure. Based on the flash mob forming in the restaurant, her books had to be as amazing and charming as she was.
One of the things I had learned from Ranger, however, was to take a deep breath and let it out. This was supposed to help me control my beast and release all the unnecessary anger and upset in my life. I started breathing like a woman in labor. In, out, in, out, why the heck are all my neighbors rushing us? This has to stop.
Sonnet scrawled her name on the various surfaces that were presented. She’d pulled a pink Sharpie decorated with tiny sparkles out of her bag and signed away. Some people even got little doodles after their names. Mushrooms? A fern?
Our girl’s awesome, but drawing ain’t her forte , my wolf observed. You’ll have to finger paint with the pups.
This was not how I’d anticipated our date night going. People I’d known all my life surrounded us, wolves and humans, waving bits of paper and whatnot. They all wanted her attention and she seemed like she was fine with that. It was probably her Los Angeles life that had prepared her.
Worse than that, everyone had their phones out and were snapping pictures. People yelled for her to look this way and then that. It was chaos.
What in the tarnation is going on?
Finally, I tugged a book out of her hand and replaced it in the hands of its owner. Enough was enough. I leveled a stern frown at the crowd and tucked her against my chest, wrapping my arms around her.
“Enough, y’all. We’re just here to have dinner, and you have no manners. There’s no more napkin signing happening tonight.”
The crowd around us grumbled, as though they had the right to decide how Sonnet spent her evening. There were some lower rumbles that sounded lupine too.
I narrowed my eyes, getting ready to step in, when Sonnet raised her voice and took over. “I appreciate you all reading my books and being such fans, but I do need to eat something before I sign anything else. It’s been a long day on set, and I’ve heard so much about Biscuits & Blessings.”
This was not strictly true. She hadn’t known where we were headed, or so I had inferred from her asking about the name of the place.
When I looked down, she was all twinkling charm, beaming at the Moonlight Valley folks crowding around her the same way she’d beamed at me in the truck.
Weirdly enough, I could practically see an aura or halo around her now. It was like she’d turned a flashlight on inside her. People were smiling back at her and nodding, their bizarre desire for her autograph transformed just like that into an equally bizarre desire to please her.
I tucked that away to think on later. Right now, I had my girl to woo.
“I’m in town for ages.” She winked at Mike, making him blush. “So y’all can hit me up later for an autograph. Right now, I want to have some of that Southern cooking I’ve heard so much about.”
She had them all under some kind of spell. She chatted away, tugging me after her as she asked if they could just make up a picnic basket for us because she didn’t want to be any trouble and she was worried that things might get out of hand and mess up business for the restaurant.
We followed the hostess from the front of the house back into the kitchen, while the diners buzzed and their phones made notification sounds. Great, we were front-page news. Maybe she was okay with that. Or used to it. Inured?
We can’t ever take her hunting , my wolf groused. There’d be no sneaking up on our prey, not with her around.
I forbore pointing out that we were vegetarians. Soybeans did not have ears.
“Let’s go somewhere where we won’t be interrupted,” she whispered to me as we waited for the picnic basket. Even standing on tiptoe, she had to tug my head down to breathe the words into my ear.
The kitchen staff kept sneaking peeks at Sonnet. I had a whole new sympathy for goldfish, seeing as how we were basically treading water in a fishbowl.
Eventually, the cook handed me an honest-to-God picnic basket. It had been his momma’s, and he was sure she would just love to see it in Ms. Ruiz’s hands . He itemized the many, many delicious things he’d crammed into Sonnet’s basket. At length. He made other suggestions. He was real nice about having to pack up our meal, but the one thing he did not do was let go of the basket. He held on to it, Sonnet had the other end, and he just kept talking and talking.
Eventually, he remembered that I was standing in the kitchen too. He looked at me. “Didn’t know you were dating again, Maverick. Haven’t seen you out since we were in high school, although Wyatt’s book was an eye-opener, let me tell you.”
ASSHOLE .
My wolf wasn’t wrong.
Ignoring the unsolicited comment on my personal life, I paid for our dinner. Angry thought bees buzzed around in my head.
My date was a stranger.
She looked up at me as we trudged back to my truck. The halo was gone. “How are you doing?” she asked, as if I’d been the one who’d been mobbed by my fellow diners.
“I’m real sorry our night did not turn out so well.” I tipped my head back toward the restaurant. There were people coming out the front door now and a suspicious number of staff taking a smoke break. I could scoop her up and put her in the truck, and then we could make a run for it. Eat dinner at a nice, isolated overlook. Figure this out. “I would never have expected them to?—”
“No worries. Usually, I can sort of head it off at the pass, make them go away. But I’m used to it. It happens all the time.”
“It happens ALL THE TIME?”
She gave me a cautious look. “Um. Sure? I mean, not all the time. Only when I’m in public.”
“That’s awful.” I opened the truck door and boosted her up, even managing to smile. Is that normal? Do you LIKE that? I mean, who could? It was downright horrifying.
We need to kick some ass. We can sleep outside her door and beat them off with a stick.
“But you don’t do it,” she said hopefully, once I’d come around the truck and gotten in. She held out her hand to me.
Before I could take it, someone tapped on her window. The chef was back. Before I could stop her, Sonnet rolled the window down.
“I told myself I’d be cool and not bug you?—”
“Which was only good manners,” I grumbled.
He ignored me, continuing, “But I love your books. And your TV show. And you are an amazing, talented writer and a gifted actress. And you look even more beautiful in person.”
Sonnet leaned away from the window, and I watched the same golden aura sort of surround her and him. She gave him a sweet smile and thanked him for his lovely words. He ate it up.
He loved her.
Too bad.
While she did her act, all I could think about was letting my wolf out so I could tear him a new one. He was rude. And an asshole. I gritted my teeth, recognizing that I was losing control.
I hadn’t seen this coming.
Here we were, on a dinner date, like two regular everyday people ( and a wolf ). I’d walked in there making forever plans, thinking about marriage and a home together.
And now . . .
Now she was someone I didn’t recognize at all.