Page 45 of Claimed By Werewolf
“And what’s that?”I asked, keeping my voice level.
“The flavor of the month,” she sneered.
“Enough,” Werewolf said to her, his voice quiet but like a razor.He looked at me.“With me.”
He steered us to the back hallway.We’d barely passed a door when Tremor’s voice called, “Wolf.Bring your shadow in here.”
Werewolf’s hand tightened a fraction at my hip.“You don’t call her that,” he said without raising his voice.
Tremor lounged by a desk with tattoos crawling up his throat like ivy looking for something to strangle.“What should I call her then?Your future problem?Your present distraction?”
“Try her name,” I said, surprising even myself.“Demi.”
Tremor’s eyes cut to me.Flat.Interested.A snake deciding which way to strike.“Brave.You teach her that, or did she arrive defective?”
“I was born like this,” I said.
“Most are,” he replied.“Then something breaks it out of them.”
Werewolf slid half a step in front of me.Not enough to block my view.Enough to remind everyone in a ten-foot radius he could.“Church in an hour?”he asked.
Tremor’s mouth twitched.“Wouldn’t miss it, and neither should you.”His gaze skated over me one last time, then he headed out of the office.
I exhaled slowly.“I don’t like him.”
“Good instinct,” Werewolf said.“Keep it.”
“What does he want?”
“To find the seam.”He angled his head toward the door to a storage room and nudged me inside.It smelled like old metal, lemon cleaner, and dust.“Yours.Mine.Ours.”The door clicked shut.The noise of the main room dulled to a hum.
“Why are we in a closet?”I asked.
He didn’t touch me at first.Just stood there.The room was small enough that his presence ate it.My skin prickled with awareness.The hoodie felt suddenly too warm.
“To talk without ears listening.You okay?”he asked without looking at me.
“Define okay.”
His eyes connected with mine.Whatever he saw in my face softened something in his.He closed the distance slowly, like he was approaching something skittish.The calloused backs of his fingers skimmed my jaw.My breath misbehaved.
“They’ll talk,” he said.“They’ll push.It’s how they see where you bend.”
“And if I don’t bend?”
His mouth curved, not a smile so much as a show of teeth an inch before one.“Then they try to break.”
“I’m not easy to break,” I said.
“I know.”His thumb traced the corner of my mouth like he was memorizing it.“That’s half the problem.”
“Only half?”
“The other half,” he said, and now his thumb was under my bottom lip and I couldn’t stop the catch of breath, “is that I want to keep you from finding out how close you can get to the line.”
“What if I want to know?”I asked.The words came out barely above a whisper.The room seemed to fold inward with them.
His hand slid to the back of my neck.He brought me in slowly, as if every inch mattered.The first brush of his mouth was a promise.I rose on my toes to answer it and let the world outside the door dissolve.
