Page 16 of Hexy Beast

My mom is as tough as nails, but she isn’t all cold and guarded about it. She’s warm, personable, engaging. Darius is like a wall made out of ice blocks.

He takes me through a set of doors at the end of the hall, and I jolt to a stop the second I spot the iron-gated cell. That doubt doing the chicken dance up my back goes into double time mode.

Fuuuuuuuuuck.

“Kinda dramatic, don’t you think?” I ask, keeping my body language loose as if I’m not rolling through a million scenarios right now.

“That’s me, just a theater kid at heart,” he shoots back as he moves with the practiced ease of a pickpocket and snags my cell phone from my back pocket.

Then he holds open the door to the cell for me. I brazenly make my way through, too much of a Sherwood to show even a smidge of weakness. The windows are high up, yeah, but it’s not like I can’t call up a quick bounce spell. The only question is: Would that get me out of Arcadia or send me right back to my grumpy host?

I’m barely through the door when it clanks shut behind me.

“Don’t bother with your magic,” he says. “The charms have held more powerful witches than you.”

Turning around, I spot them. They aren’t charms, not really. They’re runes carved out of bone—probably witches’ bones—and they’re really old, judging by the wear and tear on the twine holding them in place above the cell door. Crude but effective, for a while, at least.

Determined not to let him see I’m really starting to freak out, I lift an eyebrow in challenge and step up to the bars. “You really think that will hold me?”

He doesn’t give an inch, sticking to his spot on the other side of the bars, his hands resting loosely on the iron. “We both know you aren’t going anywhere outside of this cell charmed to keep you inside until I say you can.”

My pulse is racing, and it has nothing to do with my situation so much as it has to do with Darius. Fuck me. I’ve been attracted to a lot of guys, girls, and everything in between before, but this is different. The lack of control is more than a little intoxicating. I should be thinking about all the ways he could have hidden a charm on me—including a strand of clip-in hair, a transfer tattoo, a single cursed thread wrapped around a button—but all I can focus on is all the ways I can get into Darius’s pants.

“Is this when you want me to beg?” I manage—barely—to keep the “because I will” to my own damn self.

He lowers his head so his face presses against the bars, as if he feels this tug too, as if he is having trouble ignoring it. “Is making you beg one of your turn-ons?”

“As if you could handle me,” I say, which would have been a great line if it weren’t for the fact that it comes out all breathy and wanty.

“Sounds to me like you’ve been thinking about all the ways I could get you to do just that.” He winks at me and steps back, flexing his fingers and doing a little shake as if to get rid of the scent of me. “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to imagine all sorts of things until I get back.”

He walks out of the jail, leaving me alone and worked up. That is just rude. I do not need to add incredibly horny on top of everything else that’s going on right now. Pacing back and forth, I start to plot and to plan, which is so very not me. I’m a doer, a go-getter, a forget-dipping-a-toe-just-jump-in-already kinda gal. This series of events, however, has put the kibosh on that.

It’s just not—

I’m pacing my cell on the inhale, and on the exhalation I’m back in the jumbly-wumbly wormhole thing with just enough time to register an “oh fuck” before I pop back into Arcadia. More specifically, I poof out of midair onto Darius’s lap as he sits in the gazebo surrounded by his aunt Artemis, Nikos the sneering werewolf from the highway, and a handful of others who look like they’ve been up to no good.

Everyone is staring open-mouthed at me—except Darius’s aunt. She’s practically floating with excitement. Well, at least someone is happy with this development, because I’m sure not and neither is Darius.

Wait a minute.

Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong.

Mr. Alpha Grumps is not happy.

At all.

Isn’t that just fucking delightful?

Leaning into the opportunity to really ruffle his currently metaphorical fur, I shoot him a saucy grin and ask, “Miss me?”

Chapter Seven

Darius…

There are times in a werewolf’s life when having a hot woman drop into your lap is a good thing—a great thing, even. Now, however, is not that time.

It is the worst time.