Page 64 of Her Wolf

She didn’t deserve them.

Glancing up, she caught Bailey’s gray-eyed stare as she untangled herself from his arm. He frowned at her, that luscious mouth of his parting as if to ask her if something was wrong.

“Cora?”

She swung to face Finn.

Why would they follow her? Worship her? Give her so much happiness, she felt she’d burst? Why, when she’d done nothing in return.

Finn’s stony face cracked with a frown, his intense stare drilling through her as she took one step back, then another.

She shouldn’t be here. They shouldn’t be here. As she turned to bolt outside, she caught the suggestion of a figure in that curtain-draped darkness beyond the metal detector.

Santa Muerte, wearing red and black. Veiled like a grieving widow.

Exactly how Cora was dressed.

She managed a breathless, “Just getting some air,” before she hurried outside.

The world smudged through brief tears, but she blinked them back hard. Two cars came into the hotel’s property—a white Bentley followed by a gold, fully-kitted Range Rover.

She was on her second gulp of cool pre-twilight air when a warm, firm hand grabbed her arm.

“What is it?” Finn demanded.

“I just…” Cora glanced up at him. She wanted to lie, but her tongue refused to form the words. Instead, she said, “I’m scared.”

She expected him to announce that she was going back to the villa. That this whole idea had been idiotic, and he’d been right all along.

But he cupped her face, and his face softened. “Were you scared, when you were walking up to the altar?”

She took a moment to puzzle out what the hell he was talking about. And then her chest went tight. She gave a curt nod, pressing her lips together so they wouldn’t tremble.

She hadn’t been able to feel her fingers or her toes. Her heart had been beating so fast that her entire body had felt as if it was shaking from the effort.

“But you did it anyway. You took your life into your own hands, and you did what you had to do.”

Finn grabbed both her arms, squeezing her hard as he dipped his head a little. “You did it once. You can do it again.”

Her back straightened. That queasy, acidic pool in her stomach bled away.

“I can do this,” she said quietly, and heard resolve in her voice.

Feet crunched behind her, and she hurriedly stepped out of the way as a couple approached, subtly trailed by three bodyguards.

They wouldn’t be happy discovering that they couldn’t take their weapons past that metal detector; no one could. That had been one of Finn’s stipulations.

No weapons, not even for them. The exterior guards were armed with tazers, but no one inside the hotel would be armed with anymore more dangerous than a butter knife.

“Now,” Finn murmured, as the guests walked straight past them without seeming to recognize either her or Finn. “Don’t you want to go look inside?”

She did, more than anything, but instead she stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to Finn’s.

He pulled back. “Your paint—”

But she grabbed the back of his neck and drew him down for a kiss anyway.

Screw her elaborate make up, she wanted to taste him. Wanted him to taste her. And she wanted that taste to linger in his mouth until tonight when the four of them could have some time alone in their room.

She didn’t deserve them, but until the world set itself right, she would take full advantage of the situation.

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