Page 2 of Touch of Evil

My gaze skips around the apartment, past the galley kitchen and to the boarded window covered with aScarfaceposter. I don’t see anyone or anything else. What I sense though is wrong and it shouldn’t be here.

I keep my voice quiet, not wanting whatever is here to hear me. “Do you feel that?” I ask.

“Yeah, baby,” he says. “It feels good. How about you feel it, too?”

Forget it. Ted is on his own.

I grip the greasy knob, trying not to give too much thought as to why it’s greasy, and more than anxious to leave Ted and his new roommate behind.

Ted slams his hand on the door above my head. It’s a show of strength, reminding me that he’s the one with the muscles and no matter how hard I pull, this door won’t open unless he allows it.

Hot and heavy breath skitters along my neck, fluttering the strands of loose blonde hair that escaped my bun. He’s aroused, like a wolf who’s just caught his prey.

Except I’m not prey, no matter how much I resemble the part.

“I thought you were different, Emme,” he whispers, this tenor pitch dropping low.

My hand slips away from the knob. “I thought you were different, too,” I say.

There were no penis pics from Ted. No midnight booty calls while drunk on witch’s brew. No inappropriate texts that made me blush or had me Googling terms like “pony play.”

I did think Ted was different. Yet here I am, in a dirty apartment and in the company of another naked loser and…something else.

That sense of hate returns, surging along with a foreboding air of vengeance. Whatever is here is out for blood.

Ted skims his knuckles down my spine, adding another layer of “ew” with each pass. But it’s that feeling that we’re not alone that amplifies my need to escape.

I reach for the knob, again. It’s useless, Ted keeps his position and the door firmly in place.

“You’re making this a lot harder than it needs to be,” I tell him. My eyes fix on the chipped gray paint covering the wood. Ted is under the impression he has me where he wants me. He fails to see I’m the one in control.

“You’re the so-called ‘sweet’ one,” Ted begins. “The innocent one of the Weird girls.”

The insult draws my attention back to him. “Our last name is Wird,” I correct. “And we’re not a fan of that nickname.”

Ted continues as if I never spoke. “I know better. Every hetero with a dick does. You fucked that vampire and fucked him good, no?”

His Creole accent was cute at first. Nothing of that cuteness remains. Heat builds along my cheeks, erasing the chills that the dark presence stirred.

My teeth clench hard. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I also hear you’re sad and lonely, desperate since your boyfriend was killed. You remember him, don’t you? The samewerewho preferred a disfigured freak over you—”

I whip around, no longer feeling polite. “Don’t you dare speak of Liam and his mate that way, and don’t presume to know me.”

“Relax, sugar tits. They can’t hear me. They’re dead, remember?”

I slap him across the face. It hurts.Oh,ithurts. I avoid shaking out the burn in my hand. The strike worked against me. He barely felt it. But he knows I felt his words.

Humiliation crawls across my face. Beingwere,he can sniff my pain and embarrassment. He laughs, bent on casting another blow. “Your brother-in-law is the Alpha Aric Connor, right chérie?”

The throbbing pain stiffening my fingers tightens my response. “Yes.”

Aric is a revered pureblood and the strongest of his kind. His reputation alone cautions supernaturals against offending me. Ted, being new to Tahoe and naïve to Aric’s power, doesn’t understand he’s about to cross a very dangerous line.

He bends to meet my face, his lascivious grin cutting lines into his narrow face.

“Just because you’re related to the alpha by marriage doesn’t make you anything special. If you want the truth, it’s your sister Taran I wanted. She’s as hot as the fire she casts with her magic. If she wasn’t mated to the second in command, I would have fucked her harder than you did that vamp.” He pushes off the door. “Now, run away, little girl. Keep living your lonely and pathetic life. Maybe next time, you’ll appreciate the piddly scraps thrown your way.”

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