“You must grant us all our special quirks,” Arthur said with a small laugh.
Beatrix's expression looked a little uncomfortable. “My sister thinks she can use tarot to communicate with dead people, so yeah, I’m familiar with quirks.”
“There’s a litter of two-day old puppies at the rescue!” Titan blurted, desperate to change the subject.
It worked.
“Puppies!” Beatrix squealed.
“You can meet them,” Titan said, excited to share the cuteness.
“Tomorrow,” Arthur said firmly, and Titan felt a pulse of magic flow over his aura and raise the hair on his arms. “Tonight is for the three of us. As Titan said, we don’t have to have sex, but I insist we all spend the night together at my place.”
“Sex is not off the table,” Beatrix murmured.
Arthur gave her a wicked grin that made blood flow to Titan’s dick. “Excellent.”
Knowing that most vampires didn’t bother with cars because they trained themselves to shift into birds, Titan pointed to his van parked at the mouth of the alley. “I can drive us.”
“You’re a good wolf, Titan,” Arthur cooed as he let Titan lead them to the van. He rattled off an address that Titan immediately forgot, but Beatrix seemed to easily remember.
“That’s not too far from here,” she said.
“I need to speak to Zander, Rissa, and Anatoly,” Arthur said, letting go of the two of them. “I’ll meet you there.”
Titan nodded and opened the passenger door for Beatrix to get in. After shutting the door, Arthur grabbed him again by the back of the neck.
“Drive carefully,”" he ordered. “You’re both precious to me, but Beatrix will be especially fragile until we soul bond.”
“I won’t let anything happen,” Titan promised. “I’d die before I let her get hurt.”
“Neither of you is to die,” Arthur warned, gave him a last, brief kiss, then stalked off.
It was hard to sit down with his erection painfully confined in his pants, but Titan managed to get himself in the passenger seat and buckled in.
He started up the old van and looked at her. “Which way?”
She had a map opened on her phone. At his question, she pointed. “We need to get on the 163.”
He nodded and put the vehicle in drive.
“Why does Arthur call you wolf?” she asked, making him jerk the wheel a little.
“Um, maybe because I'm big?” he offered.
“I guess, but I’d think calling you bear would be more fitting,” she said, then reached across the open space between them to rest a hand on his leg. “Is this okay?”
Touch was his love language. “Very much!”
His enthusiasm made her chuckle. “Is it hard to be as tall as you are?”
He grimaced. “Yes, but mostly it’s just inconvenient. It’s hard to find clothes that fit, and showers are almost never tall enough.And hum—uh, people are always trying to pick fights with me.” He paused, then confessed something that made his parents deeply ashamed of him. “I hate violence and fighting.”
“I can understand that,” she said without a hint of censure or condemnation.
Her kind words gave him the courage to tell her his deepest secret. “I’m a vegetarian. The thought of something having to die to feed me makes me feel horrible. I know dogs and cats need protein in their diets so I don’t deny them, but I can’t bring myself to eat meat.”
Far from looking disgusted, her expression brightened. “I’m a vegetarian too! Same reason. Well that, and it’s also a good excuse to never eat seafood because that stuff is simply disgusting!”
