Page 49 of Enslaved

14

KEANE

Three cold ones for breakfast, and now I’m on my way to hunt a witch in a grocery store parking lot. Only I’m thinking less about what I need to do, and more about my sudden and inexplicable need to kiss Briar Fenix.

The rumpled nightdress, the hair in need of a brush, the ridiculous threats to blow me up, and the fact she’s a witch are all things I know I don’t want in a woman. The witch part is non-negotiable.

My mind flashes back to her standing in the bedroom doorway, gripping her half-eaten blueberry muffin with a look in her eyes that told me she wanted to ram the thing down my throat. And I wanted to kiss her.

Why?

All the women in my past have only ever been tall, leggy blondes or classy brunettes interested in a fling that went nowhere. Exactly my type.

None of them looked or acted like Briar Fenix.

What is it about her that makes me forget she’s a witch, and my enemy?

Doesn’t matter. The feeling will pass soon enough.

I’d think it was just the alcohol at work, but with shifter metabolism being so fast, alcohol has little to no effect on me. I’d have to down a damn sight more than three beers for my thinking to be impaired.

The memory of her luscious ass forces itself in my mind. My hands tighten around the steering wheel as arousal punches through me.

This is a problem.

Not so much the idea that I’m attracted to her body. That’s easy enough to ignore.

Or it should be.

It’s that my wolf doesn’t have a problem with the idea, either. And he should have.

A big one.

That a witch has been messing with the souls of my pack should enrage my wolf beyond measure. I should be fighting to hold him inside me, battling the need to shift and tear her peachy-gold skin into ribbons.

But that’s not what he wants to do to her.

He wants to taste her.

And not the bad kind. The peeling the ridiculous nightdress up her soft, slender legs and exploring beneath those hot pink polka-dot panties kind.

Maybe those beers were stronger than I thought.

Maybe all the weeks… I snort.Weeks?

Maybe all theyearsof drinking, and night after night being ripped from sleep, haunted by nightmares of my pack dying as I lay fucking some blonde tourist, have finally caught up with me.

I should have been with them. As the best fighter in the pack. As the future alpha, I should have been there.

Plastic creaks. I loosen my hold on the steering wheel. Cash is in short supply, and this truck is something I couldn’t afford to replace if I wrecked it. And God knows the last thing I need is to be stuck in Madden Grove with no way of getting out if Liam Wolfe sends his pack after me.

As I pull into the grocery store parking lot, no sooner have I parked up at a spot closest to the last place I spotted the witch when movement in the forest draws my gaze that way.

“Fuck,” I breathe.

Liam Wolfe, alpha of the Madden Grove wolf pack, leans against a tree in a white tailored shirt and black pants, his arms folded across his chest. His eyes meet mine and he tips his head. A little. Just enough to show me that he’s seen me.

So I can’t leave. Liam will take it the only way he can: that I’m scared shitless and I’m running.

---