Page 21 of A Dagger of Twisted Starlight

Moth. Flame.

Want.

I wasn’t sure how it happened. Maybe I blacked out for the few seconds it took my mouth to reach Xavier’s, but the lights flashed back on the second we kissed.

Bright lights. Blinding ones. Like staring directly at the sun and loving it.

Flames tickled my spine. My toes curled in my shiny black wingtips, the papers fluttering down to the ground. Xavier’s firm hand gripped the back of my neck, the kiss growing, the room spinning, my heart turning to complete mush even though it beat at about four hundred beats per second. It was like I had shifted into a hummingbird, not a wolf.

I surrendered to the moment, forgetting about the complications that kissing my bodyguard would bring. It was against every rule in the book, and yet I didn’t really give a fuck. In this moment, I didn’t want to be a good boy. I wanted to be bad.

A small moan escaped from my throat. It was like throwing a match into a gas leak. The kiss exploded. Xavier’s grip tightened as his tongue probed deeper, his other hand grabbing mine. Our fingers threaded together. His strong hand gripped mine, something that shouldn’t have been very intimate but somehow felt like he was taking my virginity then and there.

Another moan. More flickering flames. I climbed onto Xavier’s lap. My body had become its own controller. My brain solely focused on the drumbeat of need that pounded inside me. Xavier looked up at me, light brown eyes searing through me. “Is this wrong?” I asked him, desperately hoping he’d say no.

“Hooking up with the vice president’s son inside his own office while I’ve been contracted to protect him? Yeah, it might get us in some hot water.”

Damn. He was right. I moved to get off him.

His hands gripped my hips and held me down. “But I never cared about getting in a little bit of trouble.”

I rested my weight on him, my dress pants bunching up and showing how badly I didn’t mind getting in trouble either. He throbbed underneath me. He was as into being bad as I was.

“Maybe we should lock the door?” I said, looking over my shoulder.

“Good idea.”

I stood up and tried to readjust myself so the bulge wasn’t as apparent. Xavier moved my hand to my side. “I like this view,” he said, eyes pinned on the shape of my hard dick.

“Oh,” I said. Warmth flushed across my cheeks. I became hyperaware of my blushing, which made me blush even more. I must have looked like a damn firetruck.

I turned and went to lock the door. This moment had to be something pulled out of my wildest dreams, and I wasn’t about to let anyone wake me up from it.

That’s when a scream ripped through the air and made my blood freeze.

An explosion shook the ground underneath me.

I threw the door open just as Verona ran past. A tiger shifter leapt through the air, ripping through the fragile barrier of red mana Verona tried to erect. Her phone flew out of her hand. It cracked against the wall. She tripped. Screamed again.

It all happened so fast. The tiger shifter tore into her throat. Blood sprayed across the wall and coated the portrait of President Cruz, some of it splattering on my shirt, landing on my mouth.

This wasn’t a dream at all—it was a complete nightmare.

The tiger turned its bloody face toward me and leapt.

Chapter 9

Party Crashers

Xavier

I launchedmyself off the couch, simultaneously making a solid wall of sand appear in front of Blake.

“Get behind me!”

The tiger’s claws broke through the sand. Blake stepped aside and began to shift. The wall crumbled and dropped the tiger at my feet. I launched a kick into the tiger’s unsuspecting jaw. The massive head lurched sideways but didn’t appear to do much damage. Those saucer-wide green eyes locked on me. The shifter completely ignored the growling Blake and swiped at me with those saber-like claws.

“Get back!” I shouted at Blake, who was trying to enter the fray by biting at the tiger’s tail.

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