Page 18 of My Blind Date is a Werewolf

Adrian was walking me toward my car when I stopped mid-stride to look up at the clear sky. The stars were out in full force, winking down at us like diamonds on a midnight blue tapestry, shining brighter even than the waning full moon that hung from the sky. I squinted my eyes at the celestial sphere, trying to see if I could make out the bunny moon everyone was always talking about, but seeing only dark patches of craters.

“Olivia?” Adrian walked back to where I’d stopped once he realized that I wasn’t walking next to him anymore. A balmy, earthy breeze blew past, bringing with it his scent and lifting the coppery strands of his hair up to the air. I’d never wanted to run my fingers through someone’s hair more than I did right then.

“Is it true that werewolves involuntarily shift during a full moon?” I asked him, taking in the angular planes of his face. The hollows and dips of his sculpted cheekbones that cast shadows and highlights on his face. The strong, square jaw that was mostly hidden by his beard. The prominent brow bone and high nose bridge. I wanted to trace those contours with my fingers, to touch my lips to his and find out what he’d taste like. The moussaka we’d just had? Or maybe the chocolate piato? Would he taste of cinnamon like his scent? Or something earthier?

Goosebumps pebbled across my skin, my body shivering in the slightly chilly weather. One curse of living in a seaside town, when the wind blows in from the coast during the cooler months the temperatures drop.

“You’ve seen wolves around town where there hasn’t been a full moon before,” Adrian answered. “We can shift any time of the month from eighteen to twenty-four months after birth. The full moon, though, is when we are at our peak. Even a vampire of Grayson’s age would think twice before picking a fight with an adult wolf under a full moon,” he explained, naming the oldest vampire who lived in Mystic Cove.

“Why the full moon?” I asked, not caring that we were standing in the middle of a fairly empty parking lot or that my teeth were chattering and the tip of my nose was starting to freeze.

“There are two stories among my kind that try to explain our existence,” Adrian said, taking off his jacket and holding it out for me. A stronger woman would have declined. I mean, my car was right there. But I wanted to be engulfed in his scent and feel his warmth wrapped around me, so I held out my arms and threaded them through the sleeves of his jacket. “You’re a tiny one, aren’t you?” he teased, gathering the strands of my hair and untucking them from the confines of his jacket and arranging it around my shoulders. His fingers grazed my neck, barely even a touch, but I felt it all the way in my bones, in the fluttering of my heart, and in the frantic pulse throbbing in my throat.

I shot him a dirty glare, wrapped the coat around my frame, and buried my nose in it. “No, you’re just a frigging giant. I’m starting to get a crick in my neck from looking up at you this long. What’s the air like up there? I bet it’s less polluted than the air we regular-sized plebeians breathe in on the daily.”

He threw his head back and let out a deep, rumbling laugh. The sound was wild and carefree and oh so sexy. Adrian made a growly sound when he laughed that was hard to describe except to say it resonated from deep in his chest. Two women who’d just got out of their car and were headed to the restaurant paused to stare at him in appreciation.

“Oh mama. Now that’s the type of man to knock you up with a single glance,” one of the women said, her friend murmuring in agreement.

“Come on, I’ll tell you about the legends on the way to your car. We can’t have the best baker in Mystic Cove come down with a cold. Then where would we be without our daily dose of happiness?” He held out his hand for me. Instead of taking it, I snaked my arm through his and snuggled up close. Even with his coat wrapped around me, Adrian exuded warmth like my very own personal heater.

“I’m not ready for this night to end yet,” I confessed quietly, keeping my eyes downcast and my fingers digging into the corded muscles of his biceps. I waited for his answer. This night had gone better than I had expected it to, and I was scared that the magic spell would wear off once we made it back to Mystic Cove. The moment everyone smelled the proverbial blood in the water of a new Beverley Barnes-approved relationship, we would become the town spectacle. I wanted to keep this between the two of us for as long as I possibly could.

“Me neither. Fancy taking a walk and seeing what else Beckford has to offer by way of entertainment?”

“Why not?” I replied, my toes curling inside my heels, at least as much as they could in that cramped space. I could probably walk a couple of miles in them before my feet started aching, and I doubted Adrian minded me leaning into him for support. We crossed the street, walking past other eating establishments and stores and offices that were closed for the night.

“The first story that explains our existence says that we are cursed. More specifically, our forefathers were cursed, and that curse had passed down from parent to child through the generations,” Adrian started to tell me. The cadence of his voice was perfect for storytelling, low and smooth and quite mesmerizing.

“Someone piss a witch off?” I giggled, remembering all the unfortunate instances when someone in Mystic Cove messed with the wrong witch. Like when Riley Mathers put his foot in his mouth spouting off nonsense about the food one of the witches had brought for a block party last year. He spent the entire event as a pig in a pen for the kids to play with.

“A faerie queen, actually.” Adrian chuckled. My jaw dropped open, eyes bugging out as I gaped at him.

“You’re joking with me. Faeries exist, as in pointy-eared and glittery wings? Tinkerbell-looking creatures? They exist?”

“They’re more vicious than what Disney would have you believe, and they are actually taller than the average human—or so I have been told. The story goes that some thousand, probably more, years ago, humans and the fair folk could traverse between worlds easily, and the relationship between the two races was fairly amicable. Since the fae were so long-lived, they had amassed a wealth of knowledge and tech that we humans did not possess at the time, and the fair ones did not mind relinquishing some of that knowledge to us lowly mortals.” We rounded a corner down the block. This street was not as lifeless, with bars on either side of the street.

Adrian stopped in front of a red-brick-faced, retro-style speakeasy bar. Warm air blasted out of the wide-open doors and Kings of Leon’s “Sex on Fire” was blaring out into the streets, mingling with cheers from patrons and muffled conversations. Adrian cocked his head, gesturing at the bar, the silent question brimming in his eyes. I nodded and we both stepped in, immediately snagging a table nearest to the exit when a group of guys vacated it.

I took a seat across of Adrian, draping the jacket over the back of the chair. “So, fairies and humans lived together in peace, but I’m guessing that it didn’t last long if the story ended up with someone getting cursed,” I prompted, picking up where he’d left off. Adrian caught the attention of a passing waitress.

“Evening, folks, what can I get ya?” she asked, chewing her gum obnoxiously loud before blowing and popping it in our faces. Her platinum blonde hair was blown up in a beehive style and likely being held up with enough hair spray to punch a hole through the ozone layer. I guessed that she was an Amy Winehouse fan, given that she had the whole winged eyeliner thing going for her. Her neon pink bra peeked out from the skin-tight white shirt she wore.

Adrian and I exchanged bemused looks as I bit down on my lip to keep from bursting out laughing. “I’ll have a bottle of Heineken and the lady will have…” He raised his brows in question.

“A coke, please.” I’d already had two glasses of wine at Hestia’s and had a forty-minute drive back home ahead of me. Best not to take any chances.

“Where was I? The curse, right.” Adrian snapped his fingers. “Like you said, the fair folk and humans coexisted in peace for a number of years, traveling freely from this world into the land of Faerie. But then we humans did what we do best—we got greedy and jealous of the fae’s power and immortality and tried to steal it for ourselves. The stories say that humans found the one thing that could kill the godlike fae, and a number of the fair folk were slaughtered, angering the three fae queens. The queens then declared that all entrances into Faerie would forever be shut and recalled their people. Any humans found in Faerie after the gates were shut would be enslaved. And in retaliation for the genocide against their subjects, the clan leaders who led such atrocities were cursed to live their lives as half beast and half human so that we could also know the horrors of being hunted like prey.”

“Wow! That’s… Wow! I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that faeries exist somewhere out there.” I sounded a little star-struck, but who could blame me? The world Adrian lived in sounded so magical and fantastical. Deadly, too. But as an avid romance reader, I sometimes saw such things through rose-colored glasses.

And this is why you need to tread carefully, girl. You can’t see all the red flags through rose-colored glasses, a voice that sounded suspiciously like my dad’s chimed in my head.

“Yeah, I had the same look in my eyes when I first heard that story. But I believe it a hell of a lot more than the one that says some sap fell in love with a moon goddess and she blessed him with the power to shift into a wolf. Not only does that sound like a dumb reason as to why we are the way we are, but it completely ignores the existence of other shifters out there.” He scoffed. Our drinks came and we sipped on them. I asked Adrian more questions, like what other shifters were out there—wolves, bears, predatory felines, eagles, hawks, snakes, and deer were ones he could confirm he’d seen with his own eyes.

“There have been rumors of sea shifters, and those with their heads in the clouds have thrown around suggestions like dragons and phoenix shifters—it’s complete bunk, I assure you,” he rushed to add when I went all sparkly-eyed, about to inundate him with a barrage of questions.

“Really, now? Faeries are a real thing, but the existence of dragons and phoenixes…phonexi? Whatever the plural is. Their existence is complete crock? Make it make sense, Mr. Cooper.” I slumped back in my chair, arms crossed.

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