Page 66 of Fanged Temptation

Leah caught my eye mid-groan, begging with her eyes for a swift rescue. I huffed out a hushed laugh, loping over to add fuel to the fire instead. “She did something similar when we were teens, though I believe that time it was a fish bowl instead of a bucket…”

“That’s right! It was your Halloween costume that year,” her grandfather chimed in and Leah buried her head in her hands, muttering all the swift punishment she planned to enact on the lot of us.

A few hours and many an embarrassing story later, I found myself staring out the window, leaning against a pillar with my arms clasped loosely across my chest. We’d migrated to the sitting area of the grand hall, and everyone was still chattering away behind me.

There had only been a few slip-ups on the Leyore women’s part—the occasional mention of werewolves and one or two brief displays of impossible strength when Dylan caught the marble statue that Sky had knocked from its post by accident.

Leah’s grandfather had simply blinked, thoroughly impressed, and took off on a tangent about how he and his buddies could have used muscle like that back in the army. The werewolf thing he misheard completely, and launched into a detailed review of the story Beowulf—which he’d read recently, and ‘What do you read, Amara?’ And ‘What are your thoughts on the latest Jeff Noon?’—and so on and so forth.

“Hey.” Leah’s voice drew me back to the present. She’d detached from her grandfather, sidling up to my elbow with a soft smile. “You okay?”

I forced a slow breath, leaning my head back beside hers when she slid her arms around my shoulders. “Yeah. Or… I will be. Eventually.” My lips curved, a shaky attempt at a smile. “Killing my fiancé, confronting my family… it’s not exactly a tidy resolution.”

I felt her nod, her voice tickling in my ear. “You don’t have to be fine right away.”

“I’m not,” I admitted, little more than a murmur. “But I’m done dwelling on it. I’m ready to—live. For myself, finally. I’ll probably be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life but…” I stared down at my hands and balled them into fists. “I want tolive.”

“And you will.” Leah ghosted her lips across my cheek, not quite a kiss but brimming with affection all the same.

“Leah–I wanted to say…” I sucked in a breath. Blew it out again. “I don’t expect you to put your life on hold for me.”

Leah’s arms tightened on my shoulders. “Maxine–”

“No, just let me say this.” I leaned into her, keeping my eyes on the window and the streetlights flickering outside. “If you want to go back to San Francisco and put this whole thing behind you, I won’t stop you. I won’t even be mad.”

When Leah stayed quiet, I tilted my head to meet her eyes—ocean green and just as deep. “But if you want to stay… If you want to—see where this goes, feel it out…”

Our lips were a hair’s breadth apart, though neither of us moved to close the distance. I forced the tremor from my voice. “If you’ll have me, I’m yours.”

Leah swallowed, ocean eyes teeming with life. I turned fully in her arms, twining my own around her waist, and waded deeper into those waters.

“I’ve always been yours.”

30

Leah

“All I’m saying is, you need to get to know this woman before you decide to move in with her!”

I folded up another shirt and wedged it into the suitcase on the bed, shooting my grandfather a pointed stare. “I mean, you’ve been on one date and you haven’t even met her grandkids yet.”

My grandfather folded his arms, huffing under his shaggy mustache as he glared out the window. “You don’t get it. I’m in love, Leah—and I’m old. I don’t have much time left.”

I rolled my eyes, closing the suitcase with a snap and a zip. “Does she even have a name, aside from ‘woman-I-met-at-the-grocery-store’?”

“Of course she does,” my grandfather proclaimed, clutching his hands to his chest like a love-sick fool. “Angela. She stole my heart when she stole the last box of pop-tarts from my shopping cart.”

I groaned, hauled the suitcase off the bed, and straightened up with a sigh, glancing around the neat little bedroom he’d been living in for a week.

When my grandfather decided to stick around for a little while after his unplanned trip to New York, Jordan and the rest of the Leyore women had offered to put him up in a fancy hotel. But my grandfather had chosen this dinky little B&B instead—and I’d taken up residence in the second room considering my mournful lack of houseboat.

Now, my grandfather was preparing to head back to San Francisco. His flight left in a few hours, and Amara and Dylan were on their way over to drive him to the airport.

He’d be going back to San Francisco alone.

“You know,” I mumbled, fiddling with the zippers on the suitcase, “I could come with you—I could move back home.”

“Why on earth would you want to do a thing like that?” My grandfather shook his head, scratching absently at his beard. “You’ve done quite well for yourself here, kiddo. You don’t need to throw it all away for the sake of your old man.”

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