She’d made a wolf repellent from an online recipe.
I held up a finger. “Wolfsbane will not affect me that much unless ingested. Even if it worked, this is lavender and dirt. Not wolfsbane.”
Mira pumped the trigger three more times in rapid succession, hitting my chest, my jaw, and the reports I’d been reading.
“At least I can spray your stupid face.”
I took the bottle from her hand.
My fingers closed around hers on the trigger, and the contact froze both of us. Her knuckles were warm beneath my grip. Small bones, stubborn grip, skin soft enough that I became aware of every callus on my own palm.
She didn’t pull away. I held on a beat longer than necessary.
Then she broke the contact by hastily stepping away and running from the kitchen.
I stood there biting my own tongue from holding back.
Attempt two happened an hour later.
I returned to my study after a perimeter check and stopped in the doorway.
My bookshelf was wrong.
The collection I’d curated, organized by era, language, then subject, had been completely rearranged. Wedged between two volumes of Veyndral legislation, positioned with deliberate precision, was one of her romance novels.
The one with the shirtless man and the title“Captured by the Beast.”
I pulled it from the shelf and stared at the cover. The illustrated man bore a passing resemblance to me, if I squinted and ignored the scandalous pose.
“Creative,” I called toward the hallway.
Her voice drifted back from somewhere near the kitchen. “I thought you needed better taste in literature.”
“You moved every book I own.”
“Consider it motivation. Let me go to the dance and I’ll put them all back.”
“You don’t know my system.”
“Then I guess your shelf stays chaotic. Must be terrible for a control freak.”
I stared at the ruined shelf. She’d taken the time to reverse every single spine. She’d spent an hour handling my personal collection with the specific intent of making my eye twitch.
Instead of pissing me off, I was actually turned on by her challenge.
For attempt three, she tried being sweet again.
Mira brought me a mug while I was reading on the sofa. “Chocolate milk for you.”
I looked at her over the page. Then at the mug. Then back at her face, where a smile sat.
“I hate sweets,” I said just to annoy her more.
Her smile curdled into a sarcastic grin. She stepped closer, trying to shove the mug against my chest. “I say you let me out while I’m still making you chocolate drink and not poison.”
I stood from the sofa. She held her ground, the mug pressed between her palm and my sternum, and I could feel the warmth of the ceramic through my shirt. I wrapped my hand around the rim above her fingers, leaned down until my face was level with hers, and held her gaze.
Then I drank from it slowly. The sudden proximity made her breath hitch and her fingers trembled from her hand that was still on the mug, my mouth on the rim inches from it.
