Page 79 of Reaper's Pack

A thought that made me giddy.

A thought that, tomorrow, I would blame on the liquor.

Relishing the buoyancy, just for now, I spun in place to Knox, unable to picture him gliding as effortlessly as Gunnar through the foxtrot—but eager to see him give it a go all the same. “Your turn, alpha.”

He held up those huge hands, declining my offer with a slight shake of his head and a quirk of his lips. “I’m afraid the foxtrot requires skill that I don’t possess.”

I let out a bark of a laugh. “Bullshit.”

Right on cue, we fell into one of our usual stare-offs, only this one wasn’t riddled with an undercurrent of tension and strife, both of us struggling for dominance. It was still a standoff with one winner, one loser, but the stakes weren’t all that high. In fact, his black eyes almost glinted with a mischief I expected from Declan, and I nibbled my lower lip, peering up at him through my lashes with a playfulness of my own.

Knox refused to fold, his great burly arms crossed, and no amount of coaxing would change that.

But for the first time in our relationship, I had an inkling that maybe, just maybe, I could get him to bend, just a little.

And that was progress.

A hand suddenly smoothed up my back, tracing the ramrod line of my spine to the nape of my neck. Heat blossomed everywhere as Gunnar closed in, his body looming behind mine, his mouth teasing my ear as he whispered, “So… Am I ready for something more challenging?”

I swallowed hard, my throat bobbing beneath his elegant fingers, and found Knox’s mirth dead in the water. Instead, he watched us intently, that black gaze blazing a path from Gunnar’s hand on my neck up to my lips. The intensity of his complete focus and the wall of muscle barring any escape at my back…

It made me want to run.

And it made me want to melt.

“We… We have the records at home,” I stammered, breath catching when Gunnar’s fingertip whispered across my chin, scorching a path like a wildfire cutting through a field. Any second now, it would bring down the whole damn forest. I rolled my shoulder back, nudging him away as best I could, and while he retreated, he didn’t let go. Instead, he dragged his parted lips up to my temple, and out of some sense of skewed morality, I railed against him, twisting out of his grasp, my heart thundering. “I-I can teach you how to really swing there… with the right music.”

His tongue flicked out to wet his smirking lips. “Ah. Were you a swinger, reaper?”

Too late. Even with the added distance between us, the wildfire was off, ripping through me unchecked, unhindered, setting every inch of me ablaze.

“I… It means something different these days,” I stammered, relieved to finally spot a returning Declan, arms overloaded with drinks, out of the corner of my eye. “To swing… It—”

“I know what it means,” Gunnar purred, slouching against the bar to let Declan pass, his mouth positively sinful, his eyes twinkling like he really did enjoy my fumbling now. And why wouldn’t he? Gunnar had me—because, by the modern definition, I was a swinger. I’d slept with him and Declan…

And I’d loved every second with them both.

“Come along, reaper,” Gunnar urged, pushing off the bar as Declan set out the drinks on the counter. He caught my hand before I could slip away, then yanked me flush against him. Chest to chest, the hellhound maneuvered me with ease, a hand on my lower back while the other steered mine to his shoulder. He fell into the steps I’d showed him, which left me no choice but to let him lead, and the hellhound steered me around in an easy waltz, his royal blues locked on mine. “Teach me how to swing…”

24

Knox

They kicked us out at two in the morning.

By four, we had finished an enormous platter of waffles and fried chicken at an all-night diner.

At four thirty, we returned to our territory, and as soon as the three drunk fools under my charge stumbled through the ward, the sky split open with a vengeance.

Having witnessed the changing of the seasons, summer bleeding into autumn, August and September trailing ever further behind us, I had categorized all the usual storms. There was the light misting that drizzled all day, bringing with it humidity and an ever-present damp. Then there were the days where it rained on and off in great heaving bursts; just when you thought it was over, crack, there went the sky, pissing down fat droplets that hammered the windows and threatened Declan’s rooftop patchwork.

There were storms that built over hours, the sky slowly darkening, the winds reaching a howl only after a creeping escalation.

This was a tempest, a sudden and violent downpour. Hazel shrieked at the first explosion of rainwater, the droplets small but plentiful, relentless and cruel. Thunder crashed somewhere far off, possibly over the distant mountain range. Bright white light lashed against a pitch-black sky, the skittering bolts powerful but fleeting. The cedars did what they could to shelter us from the assault, some of the taller ones bowing to the wind, their piney branches dancing.

After a night full of humanity, from their smells to their noises, their drunken slurs to their clumsy stumbling on the streets of downtown Lunadell, the storm was a welcome reprieve. I would take damp earth and sodden brushwood over Sampson’s Corner any day.

Gunnar and Declan agreed, apparently. Glee blasted through our pack bond from both as soon as we set foot on our territory again, and the alcohol was fuel to the fucking fire. One moment they were drunkenly heckling each other with words—and then words turned to fists, the pair scuffling and shoving each other through the forest. At the next flash of lightning, Gunnar ripped his meticulously cared-for shirt clean down the middle, then hurled the torn fabric into the awaiting boughs of a cedar. Declan followed suit, and before I could reprimand either, they shifted, shredding their trousers in the process.

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