I sat down at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, my modest heels swinging slightly. I wasn’t short by any means, but stools always had a way of making me feel like I was. Too much torso and not enough leg, I guessed.
Ben put my leftovers in the fridge, then got me a plate for the berries and honey. I watched him with rapt attention, trying to figure out how the man in front of me had become a wild animal.
Was I crazy to say I could kind of see it now? Ben moved like he was holding back, as if he was in a glass shop and trying not to break anything. He held his shoulders like he was indeed an apex predator masquerading as a silly, piddly human.
Or maybe my fractured mind was trying to make sense of a senseless situation.
“Here you are,” he said, setting the plate in front of me and regarding me with those intensely blue eyes of his. Eyes I saw in a completely different way now.
Or did I?
I didn’t know. But who could blame me for being mixed up?
“Thanks,” I said, and that was all I said. I still needed to order my thoughts, so I focused on the fruits first, then the honey, slowly and methodically licking the spoon clean.
Once or twice, I felt eyes on me, but whenever I glanced up, Ben was doing something else and not even looking in my direction. I was probably just being paranoid.
Or he was a magical being who could move faster than I could perceive.
It was both, of course.
To his credit, Ben didn’t rush me. He let me sit there and stare at him and his surroundings while I chewed. Eventually, however, my plate was clear, my head wasn’t spinning anymore, and it only felt like I’d run a marathon rather than grabbed onto a live wire knocked loose in a storm.
“So, a werewolf, huh?” I asked. Even though I was talking quietly, mindful that there were two sleeping children upstairs, my voice seemed obnoxiously loud in the quiet.
There was that tiny sliver of a laugh again. Somehow, despite the situation, I could still make Ben smile. “You could call us that. We don’t, though.”
“Oh?” I asked. I had been slightly worried that he would be cagey, or even defensive, but no. Mostly, he just seemed exhausted.
“We refer to ourselves as shifters. Wolf shifters, specifically.”
I sat there, digesting that. We were only at question one, and already a dozen different branches were springing to life in my head, leading me down unique lines of interrogation.
“The way you said that would lead me to infer there areothertypes of shifters”
There went the corner of his lip, quirking upward ever so slightly. “You would be inferring right.”
Holy hell.
“Howmanytypes?”
“Hard to say exactly. It’s impossible to know everything, after all. But as far as I’ve seen, there are us wolves, bears, horses, seals—you guys call them selkies. Uh, snakes, which you’ll know as naga, yetis, cougars, tigers, and lions. Oh my.”
If I was drinking anything, I might have done a spit-take right then and there. And not because of the well-timed reference toTheWizard of Oz. “That many?”
“Again, that I know of. But there’s mostly only wolves, bears, horses, and Big Foot here in America. I’ve heard that Europe has fairies, though.” A strange expression crossed his face as he regarded me. “I thought that was what you were originally.”
“Me?A fairy?”
There was that smile again. Softer. Sweeter. Still barely there, but I could see it. “The shoe seemed to fit.”
I was blushing. I was talking to a werewolf in his kitchen after being kidnapped during our date, and I wasblushing.
God, what a weird night.
“So, you’re a wolf shifter.” In my opinion, the term werewolf was way cooler. “Does that mean Benny is too?”
“Technically yes, but no.”
