Linc nodded.“I’m aware.Do you think you can trust me to know what I’m doing though?”
Ell rubbed my arm.“He’s not going to do anything stupid.I wouldn’t let him keep the guns in the house if I thought he would either.”He glanced over my head.“Dom’s more likely to hit himself with a hammer than Linc is to drop his gun.”
Dom gasped.“Hey!Don’t believe him, Little Red.I’m excellent with my hammer, and Linc’s good with his gun, okay?”
I’d flirted with people before, or at least I’d tried flirting with people before, so I knew this wasn’t my forte, but I still tried hard to stare Dom down.“You’re about one innuendo away from me trying out how these shoes feel when I kick your butt.”Yes, I was better at writing about flirting than I was at the flirting itself.
Dom pressed his lips together and wiggled around next to me before saying, “You’d be owing me a chai latte then, right?”
Ell hummed.“What’s that about lattes?”
Dom was still looking at me.“You have to buy him one when you slap his ass.He says that’s a rule, and I didn’t want to argue the rules.I like rules.”
Linc gasped.“Excuse me?That’swhat you two did in town?”
I felt the heat rise all the way to the tip of my nose.“No, he just—it was just—it’s the flannel!”
Dom’s eyelids went to half-mast.“Finally you’re admitting flannel is sexy.”
Dom was too close, entirely too close.I could’ve kissed him and… The worst part was that maybe I wanted to.He’d hold me, and there was a part of me that was screaming to fall forward into this werewolf polycule, let them catch me and hold me.Was I that desperate for people to be nice to me?Probably.That couldn’t be saying anything good about my self-worth at all, and that in turn probably meant I should work on myself before getting into any kind of relationship.
The thing was, I could reason all of that out in my head, but unfortunately, I also really wanted to kiss Dom.Come to think of it, he smelled really nice.
With a considerable effort of will, I turned to Linc.“Can you make him stop?”
Linc sighed and put a hand on his hip.“I can try.So you’re okay with me bringing the gun?”
I shrugged.“Nope, but I guess I’m trying out trusting you.”
He nodded.“Thank you.I appreciate that, truly.Come on, walk with me.”
Dom groaned.“Again, you’re hogging him.”
He still hung back though, and Linc walked me out onto their deck.I wasn’t used to going out of the house and not hearing any noise—no city noise, at least.There was a lot of quiet here, but also birdsong.They were probably telling the entire bird neighborhood about the amazing feeder up by the attic window.
I turned once we were down the stairs, and sure enough, now that I knew what to look for, I could see that the roof had one flatter part and then the taller triangular section that held the attic.
“You like the house?”Linc asked.
I tore my eyes away from the roof before I could find the little window with its bird feeder.“Oh.I mean…it’s unusual, right?Like a little witch’s cabin if the witch was really rich.”
Linc’s arm brushed against mine.Probably just an unintentional touch, but for some reason, it made butterflies flutter like mad in my belly.An actual butterfly flew by right in front of my face toward a little garden with rows of…I was gonna say homegrown food, not that I knew plants.Someone, probably Dom, had paved a winding path from the back stairs to the vegetables.The lawn around it was tall enough to reach my ankles; a mix of grass and flowers, dandelions, and other things that were usually driven to extinction in the suburban greenery.Not here.
“Three incomes will do that for you,” Linc said.“Dom’s really behind most of it though.There are very few parts of the house he hasn’t touched and improved.”
I looked over my shoulder at Dom and Ellis walking behind us.Dom had the audacity to look kind of bashful and shrug.“It’s not that big a deal.I’ll make sure we have plenty of lights outside next.So you don’t get lost in that dark, Little Red.”
There was that cluster of butterflies in my belly again, making me feel all soft and gooey on the inside.I turned back around so I could watch where we were going.There wasn’t a path that led into the woods, not really, but someone had at least piled up a few big stones where the yard ended and the wilderness began.My heart was beating out of my chest, and I wasn’t so sure it was only because I was going into the woods again.
“Marcus, did you have a chance to think about my offer?”
I looked up at Linc.His face was dappled with the sunlight that filtered through the foliage, and his green eyes shimmered.
“The writing gig, you mean?”
He nodded.“Yes.If you were concerned that it would come with strings, that won’t be the case.You’d get a contract, benefits, PTO, all the good stuff.”
I nodded.“You said I’d be working with Naja?Where’s your main office, anyway?”
