Chapter Twelve

Waking up to the smell of coffee and pancakes? Not the worst way to be greeted by a new day, Zoey mused, as she padded into the kitchen.  She’d dressed in the extra set of clothes she carried in her messenger bag – jeans and t-shirt, her usual work uniform.  Dominic was ridiculously sexy in plaid boxer shorts, flipping pancakes onto a plate, and he turned and smiled at her when she walked in.

She grabbed a coffee mug and poured a cup from the coffee pot, added some cream from the pitcher, and took a sip.

“You do make a mean cup of coffee,” she told him.  “My friend Danielle would like you.”

“Danielle’s a woman, right?” That jealous tone was back.

“Is that a serious question?” she laughed.

“I don’t know.  It could be French. Like, the French pronunciation of Daniel.”  He set a stack fluffy pancakes in front of her.  They were swimming in maple syrup.

“You do hear yourself, right?”  She sipped deeply from her mug.  “You’ve apparently dug into my background and my entire life.  You should know by now, I’m a one-man-at-a-time kind of girl.”  And she dove into her pancakes.

“And I’m that one man,” Dominic said firmly.

She winked at him.  “For the time being.”  She enjoyed his groan of frustration.  He was really fun to torture.

“By the way, I meant to say, love the tattoo,” he said.  “Right next to my mate-bite scar.  ‘Love bites’? It’s like it was meant to be.”

“Huh,” she said.  “Never thought of it that way.” 

After breakfast, she got her phone out of her messenger bag and called the dispatch center to let them know she was available. 

 Dominic looked disappointed. pushed his chair back and strolled over to her, gathering her into his arms.  “You could stay a little longer.”

It sounded so tempting…which was why she had to leave. She’d never meant to spend the night, wonderful as it had been.  Yes, he was great at sex, and he made her feel really good about herself, and he was a gentleman in all things.  He held doors open for her, he made sure she came first, and often, he brought her snacks in bed, he was all about her pleasure and comfort.

But she still felt as if he were a mystery wrapped in an enigma, as if she didn’t know him at all. And more important was the fact that the Blood Oath pack were still a criminal organization, and he was one of their highest ranking members.

So she needed to get out of here while she still had the will power to do so.

“I can’t. I need to give myself some extra time, I’m sensing obstacles.”

“Sensing…what? I thought you were a garden witch.” He looked puzzled.

Oops.  Apparently he didn’t know everything about her – and she’d like to keep it that way.  If he didn’t know about her map skills, that made it easier to hide from him.  “Yep.  Sure am.  You are not wrong.” She tried to wriggle out of his arms.  He tightened his grip.

“Talk to me.”  She tried to duck, but now he had her caged too tightly.  Her struggles were having an effect on him; she could feel that effect, pressing into her stomach.  If this went on much longer, she’d lose all motivation to leave.

“I can wait all day,” he murmured into her hair.

She tipped her head back up and glared. “You are an absolute bastard!”

He smiled down at her. “I’m having fun.  How about you?”

She replied with a scowl.  “I’m going to be late.”

“What a shame.”

She let out a hiss of frustration. He was enjoying this way too much. “Fine! I’m also a map witch. Let go of me.”

He released her, looking puzzled.  “What is that, exactly?”

“Because of my connection to the earth, I can find my way anywhere.  I can also sense obstacles.  I’m finding a lot more obstacles these days, so I need to build in extra time to get around town.”

“What kind of obstacles are you running into?”

She shrugged.  “I don’t know, my magic doesn’t tell me that.  It could be a traffic jam, a rampaging troll, road construction…my magic just lets me know where things will either slow me down or stop me completely.”

He went tense. “That can’t be a coincidence.  We have enemies.  We’re in a feud with the Bianchi pack.  They are strictly forbidden from interfering with females, but…I don’t trust them. Come stay with us.  I can keep you safe.”

“Do I still have a choice?”

Dominic hesitated, before saying “yes,” with great reluctance.

“Then no.  If I go stay with you, I’m afraid I’d never get to leave.  And I still have a life, Dominic.”

“At the next full moon…”

She met his gaze coolly.  “You underestimate my abilities, Dominic.”

His eyes snapped with dark possessiveness. “And you overestimate my patience.”

Before she could say anything else, she heard a knocking on the door.  Dominic’s expression went sour with annoyance.  “Damn it.  Romano has the worst damn timing.” He stalked off to answer the door, just as her phone beeped with a text message.  It was Danielle. 

“R U boinking a Blood Oath Pack member???”

She hurried into the bathroom so she could speak in privacy, and called her friend. Danielle answered on the first thing.

“What the hell?” Danielle demanded.

“It’s complicated! Dominic Lombardi’s wolf bit me on a full moon.  Apparently that means he thinks I’m his mate.”

“Then tell him you’re not!” Danielle sounded appalled.

“Gee, why didn’t I think of that?” Zoey said, annoyed. “He’s Blood Oath pack, Danielle, and he claimed me publicly, and apparently when their wolf bites you on a full moon, you’re theirs. It’s a thing.”

“You mean, you’re going with it?”

Was she? Zoey hesitated. “He’s… not what I thought I was.”

“Do you know why all the businesses have been closing up? I found out.  Everyone’s talking about it.  It’s The Blood Oath pack.  The pack deliberately raised their protection fees so high that they couldn’t stay in business any more and lots of the business owners are just leaving the city so the Blood Oath pack can’t murder them.  They’re having to go into hiding.”

Zoey felt an odd flare of protectiveness towards Dominic.  Where had that come from?

“Come on, Danielle, that’s just rumors.  We all thought that it was the Blood Oath pack behind the garbage problem, and it turned out that it was just a corrupt neighborhood liaison.  And they took care of it.  Why would they force businesses to shut down? Then they couldn’t collect money from them. That would hurt the pack, not help them.”

“Oh, I see.  For months you’ve been trash-talking the Blood Oath pack.  But now you’ve got a rich, powerful boyfriend, and you don’t need to live in our lousy neighborhood any more, so who cares what happens to us?” Danielle said bitterly. And before Zoey could answer, Danielle had hung up.

Frustrated, Zoey stalked out of the bathroom.  Romano was serving himself pancakes.  Dominic was giving him extremely sour looks.  He gave her a cheery wave.

“Romano.  We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Zoey said snarkily.

“I know, I know, you guys didn’t have sex,” Romano said.  He gave her an exaggerated wink.

She brushed him off with a hand wave.

“Dominic.  What do you know about all the businesses closing in our neighborhoods? They pay protection money to the Blood Oath pack, right? So you must be keeping track of them?”

The warmth in his eyes vanished.  It was as if a door had slammed shut in her face. “We don’t speak of pack business to non-pack members.”

She felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on her head. Who was this man? One minute he was inviting her in, opening himself up and letting her see little pieces of himself, making her feel as if she was special and magical, and the next, he was everything she’d hated and feared for months and months. 

The other Dominic made her melt like butter on a hot sunny day.  But this cold, hard stranger, standing in front of her? She would not be the mate, or the wife, of this man.

“I see,” she said tightly.  “I see a lot.  Things I really don’t want to see. Thanks for last night, it was…interesting.”  He flinched when she said that. Good. She’d meant it to hurt.

Holding her messenger bag, she turned around and walked into the bedroom, shut and locked the door behind her.

“Zoey!” Dominic bellowed, his voice so loud the door shook.

She shot out the window and onto the fire escape just as he kicked the bedroom door in with a sound like a bomb going off.

Then she scrambled down the ladder and dropped to the ground and disappeared around the corner.  She’d leave her bike at Sergio’s for now; she had another bike stashed in an empty warehouse in the warehouse district.  And Dominic was about to find out how hard it was to track down a map witch who didn’t want to be found.