One second, Trevor was standing there in front of her, his expression doubtful, and the next, his face was changing, jaw widening, fang tips appearing over his lower lip, eyes glowing yellow gold. He wasn’t nearly as wolflike as he’d looked during the fight with her brother, but it was enough to remind her that he was indeed more unique than anyone she’d ever known.
“Are you sure about that?” he asked softly.
Jenna didn’t even pause to think but went up on her toes and threw her arms around Trevor’s neck, then pulled his head down for a kiss. She quickly discovered that it was…different…kissing a man with fangs.
Not bad.
Definitelynot bad.
Just different.
Wanting to make sure he understood she was completely comfortable with this part of him, Jenna took her time exploring his extra-long fangs, tracing them with the tip of her tongue, feeling their texture, the sharpness of their tips.
Trevor stood statue still for several long moments before finally giving in with a groan and sliding his arms around her and tugging her in close. Then those fangs started nibbling at her lips, and Jenna couldn’t help but moan herself. That felt so good! It shouldn’t have, but somehow it did.
She wasn’t sure when it happened, but at some point, Jenna found her hands cupping his widened jaw, feeling the muscles moving under her fingertips as he kissed her. And then, just like that, she felt the muscles twitching under her touch as his fangs began to retract and his jawline shifted back to its familiar form.
Trevor was smiling when Jenna finally broke the kiss and dropped back down off her toes. For a moment, they stood there, gazing at each other warmly. Jenna probably would have stayed there like that for the rest of the day, but after a minute, he turned and motioned toward the sculpture she’d been working on.
“I can’t believe you captured this much detail,” he said, his eyes locked on the work in progress. “You barely had a chance to look at me for more than a few seconds before you left the club.”
She almost laughed at the way he studied the piece, his tongue subconsciously sliding across his teeth as if he was wondering if that was really the way his fangs made him look.
“I have a good memory, I guess,” she murmured, not really wanting to think about the fact that the image of Trevor’s werewolf appearance was trapped in her head now right alongside the ghoul that took Hannah. But he and the ghoul weren’t the same at all. She wasn’t frightened of Trevor. “Speaking of the club, what did I miss after I left?” she asked, wanting to move the conversation toward any way that didn’t have to do with the scenes in her head. “You stayed for a while, so I assume something good came up.”
Jenna couldn’t miss the way Trevor’s shoulders tensed up almost immediately, and she suddenly knew that her brother must have done something even dumber than usual. Or maybe it was one of the HOPD peeps? Had Owen gone running to the internet with his newfound knowledge of werewolves?
“Davina found a series of tunnels she thinks might lead us back down into the caverns we saw before everything collapsed,” Trevor said, his words coming out a bit more positive than she’d expected. “We’re going to head down there as soon as I get back to sniff around a bit.”
Jenna definitely didn’t like the sound of that, but something in his face had her even more concerned.“Why do I think there’s something else that you’re not telling me?” she asked, immediately starting to worry even more when Trevor reached out to take her hands, squeezing them gently and getting that look on his face. The one people get right before they give someone crappy news. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s no easy way to put this, so I’ll just come out and say it,” he said with a long sigh. “The ghouls showed up in the Skid Row district late last night. A lot of them apparently. They grabbed five people, including your friends, Ada and Nicole.”
CHAPTER 18
“So Jenna knows we’re all werewolves?” Connor asked as he looked down a well-lit side tunnel before sticking his head in there to take a long, deep sniff. He mustn’t have smelled anything interesting, because he immediately pulled back and continued down the main corridor with Trevor. “How’d she take it?”
Trevor glanced at his pack mate, surprised at how calm Connor seemed right then. At least compared to earlier when his friend had tried to kill him for sleeping with his sister. A peek out of the corner of his eye revealed that Hale and Mike—walking along the far side of the very broad section of tunnel with Owen and Maya—were clearly eavesdropping on the conversation and seemed as surprised as Trevor was by Connor’s behavior.
“Way better than I thought she would,” Trevor said. “I told her how I’d become a werewolf after what happened in Afghanistan. She was upset I hadn’t told her before this but seemed to understand why I hadn’t mentioned it earlier.”
Trevor took a sniff down another side passage, not surprised when all he smelled was old cardboard and stale paper. It turned out that many ofthe spaces down in these old tunnels had been turned into long-term storage for the city, becoming a final resting place for decades of paperwork that no one would ever set eyes on again.
The directions Davina had provided led them to the entrance of the old Prohibition tunnels easily enough. It was an old service elevator on the back side of the Hall of Records. Unfortunately, their plan of going down into the tunnels right away had been shot to hell when they realized the public space had been crawling with people. As a result, they’d been forced to wait until dark for the hordes of nine-to-five office workers to thin out enough for them to slip into the elevator and down into the tunnels without being seen.
The tunnels—at least the section near the elevator—were nothing like Trevor had envisioned. Instead of the dank, nasty sewer lines he’d expected, they’d found a series of large, brightly lit, clean passages. Like those utilidors under Disney World. The idea that ghouls could be wandering around down here seemed ludicrous. But they’d only been down here for a few minutes. Maybe the tunnels would look different once they’d traveled a bit farther.
“And Jenna wasn’t freaked out with the whole…monster…thing?” Connor asked, his whispered words echoing in the large expanse of tunnel.
Trevor shook his head. “Once again, I think youunderestimate your sister. Jenna is stronger than you want to give her credit for. She’s not the type to be freaked by some fangs and claws. She didn’t run out of the club because she was scared. She ran out because she was furious that someone was keeping yet another secret from her.”
Connor winced. “I guess I never thought about it that way. She was furious enough when she figured out that we knew about the existence of monsters and never told her. But I’m never going to be able to live down the fact that I called her crazy for claiming there were monsters in the world when it turns out that I happen to be one. At least in some respects.”
“I’m pretty sure your sister doesn’t think you’re a monster,” Trevor said. “A complete and utter dumbass, but not a monster.”
“How can you be sure?” Connor replied. “Not about the dumbass part—I’m sure you’re right about that. I mean, how can you know she doesn’t see us both as monsters?”
Trevor was tempted to tell him about Jenna kissing his fangs as she nibbled on his lips but at the last moment thought better of it. Connor wasn’t trying to tear him to shreds at the moment, but there was no reason to tempt fate.
