Page 14 of Trick Me
“Ash?” Mikael’s voice sounds wrong, echoing from somewhere deeper than his throat, maybe deeper thanthis reality. “You look rough, brother. Rougher than me, and I’m dead.”
My hands shake as I press back against the wall, the cold tile shocking against my palms but not as shocking as my dead packmate standing there making jokes. “You’re dead. I carried your body myself. Buried you next to your mother. You’re dead.”
He tilts his head, a gesture so perfectly Mikael that my chest aches. “Death is negotiable in places of power, brother. You know this. Or did you skip that part of the lore lessons to chase girls?”
“I’ve never seen ghosts. Never. That’s not my gift, not my burden.” My voice cracks on the last word.
“Maybe it is now.” He steps closer, and I can smell him—copper, rain, and… death, maybe. Or regret. “Speaking of family, how’s Marina holding up?”
“What?” The question is so normal, so casual, that it breaks my brain a little. “Your sister? She’s… she’s managing. The pack provides for her.”
“Good, good.” He nods, then his expression shifts to something more serious. “Tell her that new lover of hers is stealing from her. Going through Mother’s jewelry, the stuff she kept hidden in the floorboards.”
“Marina doesn’t have a—what are you talking about?” My mind races, trying to process this. “How do you know about any jewelry? How are youhere?”
Mikael shrugs, a gesture made surreal by the way his damaged shoulder doesn’t quite move right. “Death makes you notice things. See patterns. Like how you’re panicking right now instead of thinking. Very unlike you, Alpha.”
The title hits wrong coming from him. He never called me “Alpha” when alive, just “Ash” or, when being particularly annoying, “Your Royal Wolfness.”
The bathroom door slams against the wall as I barrel through it, desperate to escape my dead packmate who won’t stop talking. I need air, space, something that makes sense.
I crash directly into someone coming around the corner at speed.
The bump sends them flying backward, and instinct kicks in before thought. My arms wrap around a slim waist, yanking them against me to prevent them from hitting the floor. The momentum spins us, my back hitting the wall as I absorb the impact, keeping them safe even as my spine protests the collision.
Soft. That’s the first thought. Soft and warm and curves that fit against me perfectly. She barely reaches my chin, forcing me to look down at platinum blonde hair that glints in the hallway light. Her body is pressed along mine from chest to thigh, and I can feel every breath she takes, quick little gasps that move her breasts against my chest in deeply distracting ways.
“Are you okay?” My voice comes out rougher than intended.
She looks up, and everything else ceases to exist.
Striking green eyes that hold entire winters—not cold but fierce, beautiful in the way avalanches are beautiful, deadly and inevitable. Her face is all sharp but softened by full lips painted dark red. An expression that says she’s trouble in the best and worst ways.
But it’s her scent that nearly drops me. Vanilla and lightning. How lightning has a scent, I don’t know, but it does—ozone and electricity and power. Beneath that, honey, a sweetness that has me salivating. It’s contradictory and impossible and absolutely intoxicating.
We stay frozen, her palms splayed across my chest, my hands spanning her waist, bodies molded together. I can feel her heartbeat, rapid and strong. Can feel the heat of her through the fabric of her dress. Can feel the moment she realizes our position and decides not to move away.
“I-it’s you. I’m so sorry about the apple peel earlier,” she finally says. “I didn’t mean?—”
“To mark your territory?” The words slip out before I can stop them, my brain apparently deciding that flirting is the appropriate response to this situation. “Interesting technique. Most shifters just use teeth. More traditional. Less sticky.”
Her eyes flash, leaving me grinning. “If I wanted to mark you, I’d be much more creative than apple warfare.”
“That seemed more like a crime of opportunity.”
Her fingers flex against my chest, nails pressing slightly through the fabric, and there’s something predatory in the gesture that calls to the Alpha in me. “Maybe you were exactly where I wanted you.”
“Covered in apple juice in a bathroom with a resurrected fish?”
She blinks, momentarily thrown. “What?”
“Fae party madness. Don’t ask.” I should let her go. I should step back. Instead, my thumb traces her waist, feeling the heat of her skin through silk. “You smell incredible.”
The words hang between us, too honest, too raw, stripping away the banter and leaving something hungry and dangerous. Her pupils dilate, black swallowing green, and then she leans in and presses her nose against my chest, inhaling deeply.
Not a subtle sniff. Not trying to hide it. Full-on breathing me in with the kind of focus usually reserved for wolf identifying. I feel the exhale against my shirt, warm and damp, and my control slips several crucial notches.
“So do you,” she murmurs against my chest, and the vibration of her words goes straight through me. Another inhale, longer, her whole body pressing closer. “God, what is that? I want to eat it.”
