Page 18 of Trick Me
A breath gushes past my lips. Then again,sharper.
“Easy,” he murmurs. “She’s not prey. She’s mine.” Is he talking to the wolf?
A tremor rolls through me.
I blink at him, stunned.
A sudden pull, deep and instinctive, like a thread being yanked tight, pulses through me. My muscles seize. My breath stutters.
In a heartbeat, the world tilts. A rush like falling and flying at the same time roars through my veins, and then everything is twisted. My bones crack. Heat floods my skin. My paws are hands. My chest heaves.
My breath catches. Muscles lock. And slamming me back into my human body.
I’m gasping on my back, skin bare, chest rising too fast, too exposed beneath him, the cold sinking in like a blade.
His weight remains over me. His hands grip my wrists, and the heat of his body is a brand against my naked skin.
I freeze.
His gaze drags over me, slow and intense, then meets my eyes. “Welcome back, pretty girl,” he murmurs.
My breath stutters. “Why the hell were you chasing me like a lunatic?” I snarl, and wow, I can actually snarl now. It comes from somewhere deep in my chest, reverberating through both our bodies. “I’m dying out here, and you’re playing predator?”
“I was trying to find you, not—” His explanation cuts off as a howl rips from my throat. Not a human imitation of a wolf, not the kind of sound drunk people make at the moon. The real thing, powerful enough to echo through the trees, to announce to every creature in hearing distance that something wild is here. It’s beautiful and terrifying and completely involuntary.
We both freeze, staring at each other. His weight shifts, and I can sense the thump of his heartbeat against my chest, quick but steady.
“Did I just?—”
“Yes.”
“That came from me?”
“Yes.”
“I howled. I actually howled. Like a wolf.”
“Yes.”
“Stop saying yes!”
“No.”
Despite the claws, the supernatural crisis, the fact that I’m partially pinned under a relative stranger in a dark forest, I laugh. Or try to. It comes out as something between a giggle and a yip, which is somehow worse than the howl.
“This isn’t happening,” I babble, because talking is better than thinking about how real this is, how his scent is everywhere now, overwhelming my senses. How I’m damn naked with my dress shredded through the woods. “I’m having a stroke. Or someone spikedthe fairy wine with hallucinogens. Or I’m still in bed and this is the world’s most elaborate stress dream.”
“This is no dream.” His weight shifts slightly. “Right now, we need to talk about what’s happening to you.” His thumb brushes against my skin, but it sends sparks through my entire body.
“What’s happening to me is that I think I must be cursed and someone really hates me,” I pant, trying to ignore how good he smells this close. “I told you, I’m not a shifter. This shouldn’t be possible.”
“I know,” he murmurs. His weight is still over me. “I think we’re connected. That witch in the mansion, the apple peel… she did something to us.”
“That was just a party trick—” But the words barely leave my mouth before something inside me twists hard, like it’s pushing back.
A sudden pressure builds in my chest. The wolf thrashes like it’s clawing for the surface, no longer content to wait. My breath catches. Heat pulses beneath my skin. My heartbeat stumbles.
I scream out, and Ash instantly rolls off me.
