Page 23 of Hexy Beast

Something in the way he’s looking at me shifts as if he knows exactly what he’s doing to me just by breathing, and one side of his mouth curls upward. Then he reaches out and rests his hand on the small of my back as he turns his attention to the still-ranting Nikos.

He says something.

Nikos says something.

I can’t hear any of it because of the blood rushing in my ears as lust-inspired adrenaline blasts through me. The weight of his hand isn’t much, but it still manages to feel like everything. His fingers flex and the tip of his pinkie brushes my bare skin in the gap between the hem of my sweater and the waistband of my jeans. It’s all I can do not to twist around and climb him like a tree while ripping all our clothes off.

I’ve been horny before, but this is ridiculous. I have got to find that charm he hid on me to glitch out my powers before I do something really stupid.

“Make one more dumb comment, Nikos,” Darius says, jerking my attention back to the disaster unfolding in front of me rather than the one in my head, “and I will end you.”

Nikos goes silent for a second—which seems like a record for the whole three hours I’ve known he existed—and then straightens his spine so he’s at his full height (which is still a good two inches shorter than Darius).

“She’s just a witch,” Nikos says, his tone hot and angry. “We’re your pack.”

“She’s more than that,” Artemis says as she steps between the two men. “She’s his fated mate, and together they’ll break the pack’s jinx.”

Nikos snorts dismissively, his gaze still locked on Darius. “That’s made-up bullshit just like all your prophecies.”

Okay, I may have agreed with the asshole about the fated mates thing, but he is not going to get away with insulting a nice—if eccentric—old lady like Artemis. So I do what I always do. I act.

Just as Darius starts to take a swing at his second-in-command, I whisper a little fuck-you spell, and poof, Nikos turns into a life-sized macaroni salad sculpture of himself. I have a whole half a second to admire my work before Darius’s fist connects with pasta-and-mayo-Nikos’s jaw and sends globs of it flying.

Darius looks down at his knuckles covered in goop and lets out an annoyed groan. “Why are you always doing that?”

“I have never turned someone into macaroni salad before,” I tell him.

Am I being obnoxiously literal? Yes.

There’s nothing that says I can’t exact revenge on Artemis’s behalf and annoy Darius at the same time. I’m a multitasker. “It just seemed an appropriate punishment for being a jerk to Artemis.”

“And like I said before, it’s my job to correct that,” he says, grinding out each word from between clenched teeth. “Not yours. I am the alpha.”

“Well, then, do it, alpha,” I say with a shrug.

And he does, glaring down Nikos’s fellow shitheads in the pack until they back off. “I am not asking for anyone’s permission to marry the witch tonight. It’s happening because I’m the alpha and I say so.”

My brain jerks to a shuttering stop, which pretty much never happens, but this—this—seems an appropriate time to have a moment of What the fuck?

Marry?

Tonight?

What. The. Fuck.

“Maybe you should ask my permission,” I say, squashing down the giddy feeling that I tell myself is not excitement or anticipation about a naked wedding night with one particular alpha werewolf. “No, you definitely should ask my permission, but I’ll save you the time: The answer is no.”

Darius hooks his finger into my belt loop again (I’m beginning to think this guy has a thing for belt loops and that I can work with that), but this time he tugs me so close that I’m plastered against him front to front and it’s fucking delicious. I mean, everything just fits together or makes me wonder how much fun it will be to make it fit.

He dips his head so his mouth is only inches from mine and says, “Turn him back.”

I give myself a mental shake because somewhere between three seconds ago and now, I lost my ability to form a single solitary thought. “What?”

“Nikos,” Darius says, lifting his head even as his gaze flicks to my mouth for a second. “Turn him back.”

Driven by the desperation not to give in to the pheromones and rise up on my tiptoes as if I really am his fated mate, I manage to call up the not-worried-about-a-damn-thing Effie the rest of the world knows. “Then you’ll take back whatever charm you’ve hidden on me?”

One side of his mouth quirks up because the sexy jerk knows he’s got me. “Then we’ll go talk. In private.”