Page 24 of My Hexed Honeymoon

“This isn’t a popularity contest. It’s pack mentality, and I’m the leader, so they can deal with it.”

“Pack mentality, huh?” She picks her way over stones, leaning more heavily against my side and relying more on me in a way that makes me feel ten feet tall. “And how, pray tell, do you expect them not to hate me when you feel the same way?”

I come to a dead stop, whirring to face her so quickly that I brace my hands at her waist just in case.

Also because my hands go there, okay?

“I don’t…” The assuring words I mean to say won’t come. “…hate you exactly.”

She laughs again, a little sardonically, and I frown, because it’s definitely at my expense. “Sorry. It’s just that you can’t even convince yourself of it. You certainly didn’t convince me.”

A desperate sense of urgency inundates my system.

The next thing I know, my hand is on her cheek. Strands of her hair swirl in the wind, silkily grazing my arm.

God, I ache to drive my fingers into the gold, fisting the strands and angling her lips to open up beneath mine.

Our mouths are mere inches apart, her minty fresh breath indicating she recently brushed her teeth. With her body becoming pliant, a certain part of me is growing hard, threatening to show everyone precisely what this woman is doing to me.

I dip my head, leaning dangerously close to the gorgeous witch and brushing my mouth over hers. I leave it there for a beat, savoring her gasp and her soft curves before moving my lips to her ear. I nip lightly at the shell, grinning at the scent of her arousal dampening her panties.

“I don’t hate you,” I whisper in her ear.

Shallow breaths leave her chest bumping against mine, in and out, up and down. Bump, bump, bump.

“Believe me now?” I ask.

“Everyone calls me Talia, by the way,” she says, her pink tongue darting out to lick her lips, and there’s no way she doesn’t feel my erection growing against her belly. “As for the rest…we’ll see.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

The fire’scalmed to a low, flickering blaze, the kind that settles into the bones and makes it easy to forget we’re being hunted. Diego and I are sitting on a large, flat rock a few feet from the pit, our knees brushing as sparks dance up toward the dark sky, popping like little stars before disappearing.

He holds a perfectly toasted marshmallow at the end of his stick, rotating it with a kind of reverence. “The coals are the best,” he says. “They give the marshmallow that perfect toast without lighting it on fire.”

I raise an eyebrow at the towering inferno in front of us. “Then why have a raging bonfire?”

Cockiness packs every inch of the grin he flashes me. “Well, because the thing about us werewolves—we’re of the opinion bigger is better.”

A laugh spills free, so there’ll be no playing it cool. There’s something about tonight that has me feeling carefree in a way I rarely get to be. It feels like a real party, an activity I’ve so rarely been allowed to participate in.

We celebrated sanguine moons and took advantage of their timing and impact on our magic. But I was home-schooled,my subjects predominantly Herbology, Astrology, Spellwork, Hexes, and Advanced Curses, Warding, and an hour of Astral Projection, followed by at least an hour lecture in Ways I Disappoint My Mother.

Shaking off that memory, I do my best to hold onto the happy. “Okay, but as you’re puffing up your chest and showing off how manly your big bonfire makes you, you should also know you have melted chocolate, like, all over your face.”

I gesture toward him with my half-eaten s’more, licking chocolate off my own lip. “And it’s not exactly giving off scary-alpha vibes. Just saying.”

“Honey, when you’re as big and tough as I am,” he says, placing a proud hand in the center of his chest, “I don’t need to bother giving off scary-alpha vibes. I simply do.”

Juggling my melty dessert to my other hand, I shake my head and do my best to act unaffected. “Whatever, tough guy.”

“Hey”—Diego wipes at his lips with his thumb, missing the smear of chocolate in the corner entirely— “You’re looking at my mouth, aren’t you?”

“Oh, is that how you wield your power?”

The log we’re perched on rolls the tiniest bit as he shifts closer. “Nah. It’s a rather effective distraction technique, though.”

I’m about to ask how, despite the fact that I’m very much distracted, when he lunges forward and takes a bite out of my melty square of deliciousness.

---