Alcaeus
“Averhilda? Averhilda is your real name?”
She looked like she was getting ready to deny it and lie to me again as she rapidly chewed and swallowed the bite of food in her mouth, so I headed her off.
“Boar-like in battle—it totally suits you,” I rushed to say. “I love it!”
She made a face of surprise—or maybe horror—like she couldn’t believe that I knew what it meant. Either that or it was one of horror that I’d professed to love it.
“It’s awful,” she said. “I go strictly by Avery. Don’t ever call me Averhilda if you want me to answer.”
“Got it,” I readily agreed. “I love the name Avery even better.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Kai roll his eyes in disgust. I knew that I was probably grinning from ear to ear like a cheeseball, but I didn’t care. I didn’t give a damn what Kai or anyone else thought of me or of my situation with Avery.
“Do his eyes always twinkle and smile like this?” Avery asked Kai, her mouth half-stuffed with home fries as she jerked her chin in my direction. “Do you constantly feel like you’re left out of a private joke whenever you’re around him?”
A laugh burst from Kai’s chest—a genuine one. His sulky demeanor momentarily cracked and his eyes sparked at Avery’s observation. “Yes, actually. I do feel that way most of the time.”
She nodded once. “Thought so.” She brushed her hands together, dusting the crumbs and salt from her fingertips, before announcing, “I need a shower. Mind if I borrow yours?” she asked me directly.
My cock jumped in response as my imagination ran rampant with visions of showering with Avery—of sliding my hands all over her wet, soapy curves. Of tasting her wet skin in my mouth; of sliding her slick body against my own inside the shower stall; of fucking her against the tiled wall—both from the front and from the rear; of holding her spread thighs open wide between my biceps as I held her high in the air and ate her out—sliding her squirming ass up and down the slippery tiled wall as I licked and sucked and—
“Wowza!” Avery’s breathy exclamation jarred me back to reality to find her staring at the obvious erection tenting my pants.
“I need a shower, too,” I blurted without thinking. My brain was toast.
She shook her head, biting her smiling lip. “I didn’t invite you.” She stood from the little dining table. “But maybe later.” She tilted her head to the side, and her eyes gave me a flirtatious once-over that projected some kind of maddening contradiction between “give me space” and “fuck me senseless.”
I was dangerously close to ripping through the seam of my slacks.
Then she did the inconceivable. She grabbed the hem of her tank top and pulled it over her head, exposing the knife scars on her ribs that she’d denied me access to before. I didn’t have time to decide between anger and arousal as she unsnapped her bra and tossed it on the floor to join her discarded top.
So I settled on shock.
And awe.
Her breasts were perfect, exquisite mounds. Not precisely symmetrical like the breasts of a female who’d been born a she-werewolf or werelock would’ve been, but full and natural and—real.
Like everything else about her.
The sight of her hard nipples straining for the heavens—beckoning me to devour them—all but sent me to my knees.
I swallowed and nearly choked when she unbuttoned and unzipped her fly, turned her back to me, and pulled her jeans and underwear down. She stepped out of her discarded clothes, then stood and looked back over her shoulder at me.
Whether she did it to make sure that I was still watching her little show, or to see if I’d already come in my pants, I couldn’t say.
I didn’t have the mental capacity to contemplate it because I was too busy struggling to breathe like I’d only learned how to use my lungs five minutes ago, as my eyes feasted on the stunning sight of her gorgeous naked body, of all that golden-olive skin on display, of her mouthwatering ass—and of the scars that crisscrossed her back. And the one on her left hamstring that looked like it had been made by a belt buckle.
I’d never been torn between so many conflicting emotions and corporeal sensations at once before.
“Who? What? Names,” I finally demanded, every muscle in my body vibrating, straining against my wolf’s urge to shift and go to her—and then to run and kill whoever had left these scars on her. “Addresses,” I clipped out.
Hands planted on her hips, she pivoted to face me. “Been there, Chaos. Done that.” One corner of her mouth kicked up. “I can only give you cemetery plot numbers.”
“W-what?”
“Deceased,” she clarified. “Caput. Six feet under.”
I felt myself frown. I didn’t understand. My brain had stopped working. I tried and failed to do the math.
“You strike me as a guy who might like to overindulge his hero complex. So I just want you to know, I’m good.”
“Hero complex?” I shook my head. “I don’t have a hero complex.”
“Look, I get it,” she said with a little smile. “You grew up in ancient times. I appreciate that you want to be chivalrous and protect me from the world. But I didn’t grow up in the seventeenth century. And I can’t be that damsel for you.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Never been wired that way.”
There was a long pause as I willed my brain to function to no avail. I just sat there, staring, at a loss, trying to figure out which of my wounded organs was in more distress—my dick or my heart.
“We cool?” she checked.
I didn’t respond. I could barely comprehend what the hell had just happened.
Her gaze flicked to Kai, reminding me of the fact that he was still in the room with us.
“Nice boner, Doc,” she said as she strutted past him on her way to the bathroom. “Knew you were crushin’.”
Once the bathroom door had shut and locked behind her, Kai said, “You totally have a hero complex.”
After I’d worked my jaw off the ground, punched Kai for getting a chubby, and then rubbed my own out in the hotel suite’s second bathroom, I was able to assess the situation with restored brain cells and see just how well everything was going already between Avery and me.
My woman was absolute perfection, ideal for me in every way. I was so high in love that there was no coming down.
“Let’s examine the contents of her bag, shall we?” Kai’s voice droned in my ear, calling my attention back to the “evidence” he’d gathered snooping into Avery’s human background—as well as her backpack. “Ah, what’s this? Grenades. Both the deadly kind and the annoying stun kind. How adorable,” he deadpanned. “What’s next? Oh, here’s a handgun. With a silencer—you know, in case she needs to murder someone without the neighbors hearing.”
Despite my mounting irritation with Kai over his disdainful behavior toward my mate, I couldn’t quell the shit-eating grin that had broken out on my face as he revealed the awesome contents of Avery’s backpack. My mate was the cutest little badass that ever was.
He pulled a ziplock bag of unmarked pill bottles out next. “Pills,” he said with feigned exuberance. “How utterly precious. What could they be, you ask? Oh, just some ovulation suppression hormones, is all. Who has time to go into heat when you’ve got rogue hunters to slay?”
“Sensible.” I gave a thumbs up.
That was the best item he’d pulled out yet. The idea of my mate going into heat without me near her was abhorrent. Thank God she’d had those pills. She wouldn’t need them anymore, though.
“I’ll take those,” I told him, pulling the bag from his hand and chucking them straight into the trashcan in the corner.
He groaned and lectured, “Al, at least dispose of them properly.” He walked to the trashcan and retrieved them. “Oh, hey, I’ll just take care of it for you.” He tossed them into his medical bag. “As usual,” he appended under his breath.
I rolled my eyes at his dramatics. Not getting laid in over a century had taken a serious toll on his personality.
Kai pulled several stacks of cash from Avery’s backpack next. They looked to be mostly small bills—twenties and fifties. I whistled low and shook my head, busting up laughing. It was all just too cute.
“Getaway funds, perhaps?” Kai said. “Stolen, maybe?” He shrugged. “Who can say for sure? Well, we could say for sure—if her mind wasn’t blocked off by the most intricate mind shield that our kind has ever encountered, right?” He pulled a phone from the side pocket of Avery’s backpack. “But let’s not worry about that mind block just now. I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation for it that is in no way a threat to our lives.
“Let’s talk about this instead, shall we?” He held the phone up for me to see and pressed the button to access its programmed contacts. “There are just two contacts programmed into Avery’s phone. And they’re both for the same number. One is labeled ‘Friend,’ and the other is labeled ‘Scary Stranger.’ No doubt this amounts to more adorableness to you, and you’re not the least bit curious, but dare we call the number and see who this contact might be?” He raised a challenging brow.
The better man I wanted to be for Avery would’ve said no. But I wasn’t that man. Yet. I grabbed the phone out of Kai’s hand and pressed the call button.