Page 32 of Under an Endless Moon

“Um, hello, Otto, that is not going to happen. Are you even standing inside my shop right now? This is a place of happiness.” She spun around and acted like she was tossing fairy dust into the air.

Of course, because she loved to drive me out of my mind, she was dressed in a white dress with black polka dots, cinched at the waist and flared at her hips, and sky-high black stilettos.

My dick kicked.

Yeah, this definitely was a place of happiness.

“Some creeper steps through the door and all ill intentions go scadoosh!” She did some crazy wild flare of her fingers. “Right out the window.”

A slight chuckle rolled out of me as I edged forward and rested my forearms on the counter that separated us.

“Is that how that works?”

“Yep. That’s exactly how it works.”

For someone who’d been through the most brutal shit, she had abeautiful way of looking at the world. Fuck, how I wanted to protect that. Make sure she never suffered any pain again.

“Just do me a favor and watch out for these assholes around here? Someone could get obsessed watching you through the window dancing around in that dress.”

I tried to play it a tease, but my mind was back on that bastard who’d been bugging her the weekend before last at Kane’s. I still wanted to hunt the prick down and squeeze the life out of him.

She rolled those pretty eyes that were rimmed in black liner with the lashes coated thick. “No one is obsessed with me, and from where I’m standing, you’re the one who should be listening to his own advice. You’re the one running around doing dangerous things.” She dropped the last like we might have an audience when we were the only two in the store.

I didn’t want her to know just how dangerous they were.

I lifted my arms out to the sides. “Look at me. Do you really think anyone would mess with me? You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Those eyes took me in, and a roll of heat shattered the air, before she seemed to yank herself out of whatever thoughts she’d drifted into and scoffed. “The only thing I doisworry about you boys. Every single one of you is a boatload of trouble.”

“Doubt you’d have us any other way.”

Her laughter was soft as she went back to trimming some stems, though I could see the intensity she peered back at me with from the side. There was absolutely no teasing to her voice when she whispered, “And I doubt I’d be alive if you weren’t.”

A blade of pain cut through the middle of me. I knew exactly what she was referring to. As if I had stopped it? As if I’d been the reason she was still standing?

Old rage wound through me, though now, it was fresh. The blood on my hands still wet.

The mood must have gotten too deep because she smiled a bright, enchanting smile. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

Needed to see your face because you’re the only thing in this world that keeps me sane. Only thing that grounds me to reality when I feel it slipping.

“Just had run an errand and was in the area. Thought I’d stop in and say hi.” Would anyone fault me for the tiny fib?

She placed the stems she’d been trimming into a bucket. “I’m glad you did. It’s been quiet around here this afternoon.”

She rounded the counter and moved to place the bucket into an open slot in the middle section of the shop, then she ran her hands down the front of her dress to dry them.

Leave it to Raven to use her sexy as fuck dress as a hand towel.

“All right, I think I’m pretty much finished for the day. I need to shoot River a text to come pick me up.”

A frown instantly dented my brow. “Where’s your car?”

On a groan, she tipped her face toward the ceiling. “I dropped it off to get the oil changed this morning and they found like ten different things wrong with it, so they’re going to be keeping it overnight. River said to send him a text when I was ready, and he’d come pick me up.”

I shook my head. “No need for that. I can give you a lift.”

Wasn’t about to pass up a few more minutes with her.

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