Page 57 of The Warlock's Kiss

“And I shouldn’t have let you,” he replied with a smile of his own.

She opened her eyes to look up at him. He watched as their blue glow faded, leaving only her lovely, natural brown. She grinned cheekily and ran her fingers lightly from his bicep to his shoulder. “Can we do it again? And I…seem to have developed a thing for…tentacles.”

Laughter bubbled up from Merrick’s throat; he hadn’t expected anything like that from her. “You can have as manytentaclesas you want.”

“You seriously can’t just whip those out and not expectsomekind of reaction.”

“Oh, I expected a reaction. Just notthisreaction.” He moved a hand to her face and swept some of her damp curls back from her cheek. The perfection of her features, enhanced by the flush of her cheeks, struck him anew, and he couldn’t help but stare in awe. His heart skipped a beat. “You are beautiful, Adalynn. More so than words can describe.”

Her smile softened, and she lifted her face, brushing her lips over his in a gentle, lingering kiss. That kiss led to another, and then another—and it wasn’t long before he flipped her over onto her stomach and put histentaclesto good use.

Chapter Eleven

Merrick sat up suddenly, eyes snapping open; he’d gone from sound asleep to fully awake in an instant. Adalynn stirred beside him, her sleep-warmed body shifting against his beneath the covers.

Something had breached the wards around his property. No, not something, butsomethings—a group of five, moving at great speed. Though he could not determine their nature through the wards alone, he guessed they weren’t human.

His bedroom was lit only by pale, yellow-tinged moonlight from outside, which flowed in through the drawn curtains. The night sky was a murky midnight blue behind a vague gray haze that left the stars obscured.

“What’s wrong?” Adalynn murmured.

“Get up,” Merrick replied, tossing aside the bedding as he hurried out of bed.

The grogginess in her expression quickly gave way to concern and confusion. She pushed herself up into a sitting position. The blanket fell away, exposing her pert breasts and rosy nipples; under different circumstances, Merrick would’ve leapt back into bed after that glimpse and put all his focus and energy into pleasing her. But entirely different instincts were at play in him now—he needed to protect her from this sudden, mysterious threat. Nothing mattered beyond keeping her safe.

He strode to the armoire, tugged it open, and pulled out a black silk robe. He tossed the garment onto the bed beside Adalynn. “Put that on and fetch your brother.”

Though her confusion didn’t ease—and her eyes now gleamed with a hint of fear—Adalynn grabbed the robe and pulled it on as she climbed off the bed. “What’s going on, Merrick?”

“Intru—”

A deep, unnatural howl sounded from outside—too deep, too layered to have come from any normal wolf. Adalynn’s face paled, and Merrick’s magic flared in his chest, building to crackling heat in a flash.

“—ders,” Merrick finished. “You’ve heard that sound before, haven’t you?”

She pressed her lips into a tight line and nodded.

Merrick took a pair of pants from the armoire and tugged them on. “Get Daniel in here.”

Adalynn rushed to the bedroom door as Merrick went to the windows one-by-one, scanning the grounds outside for movement as he closed the curtains. His latest uninvited guests were nowhere to be seen—yet—but their trajectory when they’d crossed the wards would take them directly to the house.

Five werewolves. He’d never encountered werewolves running in a pack before the Sundering, but he imagined they’d changed when the moon shattered just like so much else had.

For one, they were in wolf form—but the moon-shards were not full.

A door opened down the hall. Adalynn and Danny had a brief, whispered conversation, their voices too soft for Merrick to make out their words.

Merrick glanced through doorway to see the siblings jogging down the hall toward his bedroom. He walked to the chest against the wall and knelt in front of it, lifting the lid to rummage through the bedding and old clothing inside until he found what he wanted tucked neatly at the bottom.

At the corner of his vision, Adalynn—holding Danny’s hand—led the boy into the room, closed the door, and locked it.

Merrick removed the wool-wrapped bundle from the chest, along with the box of shells that had been nestled beside it. He unwrapped the bundle as Adalynn and Danny moved to stand near him, revealing the old but pristine pump shotgun it contained. He opened the box and fed shells into the tube.

“There’s one of those werewolves outside, isn’t there?” Danny asked.

A chorus of eerie howls answered before Merrick could, all closer than the first. Adalynn and Danny crowded closer to Merrick, their eyes wide with fear.

Merrick stood and worked the shotgun’s slide action to chamber a shell. The sound shattered the relative silence of the bedroom with an ominous finality. “There are five of them.”

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