Page 25 of Wicked Witchmas: Elara & Tripp

“They are. I’m not.”

“Tripp.” Her tone was admonishing and indicated she didn’t believe a word.

Pressing his finger to her pillowy-soft lips and heaving an internal groan at the delightful feel, he shushed her. “Let me finish the story, Elara.”

Although she grimaced, she rested her cheek against his chest. “Fine.”

He fought a grin, lost, and immediately scowled. When he opened his arms to her, he hadn’t considered how right she’d feel or how inviting her spring-meadow scent would be, tempting him to roll about in her garden.

Tripp shook his head to clear it.

Get it together, Tripp!

“Where was I?” he mused aloud.

“Mount Vesuvius.”

“Right.” He kissed her temple, unable to help himself. “They appeared right before the eruption as a gift from a jilted suitor to my mother. He happened to be a Trickster.”

“What’s a Trickster?”

“You’d know them as the Norse God, Loki, and the Greek God, Hermes. The last one is considered the Divine Trickster, but I suspect another created those shoes.”

“Who is your mother, and how did she run afoul of deities?”

“She’s the Goddess Brelenia of Messia,” Tripp confessed.

Elara stiffened in his arms, and he waited for her to process what he’d told her. Expecting protest or, at the very least, a disbelieving scoff, he was somewhat surprised when she relaxed against him and said, “Yeah, it makes sense.”

“What does? That my mother is a deity?” he asked.

“Yes. I mean,lookat you.”

Her fingers had found the bare skin underneath his sweater and traced the ridges of his abdomen. His body’s reaction was immediate, and Tripp conjugated verbs to calm his cock’s response. Unfortunately, the ones he’d chosen were all sexual acts, which gave therootof those verbs a different meaning.

“Tell her to stop, Tripp. Tell her to stop right now!”his wiser side counseled.

But her caresses felt divine, and he’d been without a woman’s touch for far too long.

“What was another kiss between friends, Tripp?”his devilish side asked.

Pressing his fingertips to her jaw, he repositioned her head and lowered his. An instant before his mouth claimed hers, a furious, flying furball hit him mid back, yowling loud enough to wake the dead. Or scare the living into an early grave!

“Hex! No!”

Before Tripp could send the evil spawn to Hades, where it belonged, Elara plucked it from his back. When his gaze locked with the cat’s, his gut clenched, and he choked on his outrage.

“Where did you get that thing?” he demanded hoarsely, surging to his feet.

“Hex?”

“Yes,” he ground out between clenched teeth.

“He showed up behind the building one day, looking sad. When I couldn’t find a microchip, I scryed for his home, but it only showed the local graveyard.” Elara rubbed her cheek against the beast’s puffed-up fur. “I figured his previous owner must’ve died recently.”

“Elara, that’s no ordinary cat.”

She drew back and frowned at the faux-animal’s suddenly innocent-looking face. “Yes, he is. He even had a collar. That’s how I knew his name was Hex. Although why anyone would carve his name in the tag but not add a phone number makes no sense to me.”

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