"Yeah, like I said, I've never fed from a kitsune before so I'm guessing. But so long as it doesn't happen again, it should wear off." He guided his clunky old car out of the garage and into the early evening. "So just, try to resist me for a few hours."
I scoffed. "I could say the same to you."
His jaw clenched so hard I could actually hear his teeth grinding together. "Fine. We both agree to keep our hands to ourselves until the pheromones fade from your system, then everything can go back to normal."
The fact that he hadn't argued confirmed I wasn't the only one with poor impulse control. Something about this made me feel … smug. Then I processed what he'd just said. Everything could go back to normal? Great, I could go back to crushing on my vampire boss in secret. Is that what I wanted?
Plain and simple, no.
The side effects from him taking my blood were actually presenting a perfectly plausible opportunity to release a little frustration … if I had the ovaries to take advantage of it, that is.
Neither of us spoke for the remainder of the drive to RADOPA, and I got more than a few curious or scheming glances when I stepped out of the boss' car wearing nothing but a pair of drag queen heels and his shirt. Talk about injustice, having to do a walk of shame without even getting laid first.
"What the fuck is he doing here?" I exclaimed, stopping short at the doorway of the boardroom and glaring at the obsidian-haired alpha werewolf who had accosted me several nights ago.
Mik, who’d been a few steps ahead of me, paused and turned to raise his brows. "You've already met?" His tone smacked of jealousy and I fought back a grin.
"Not officially," the alpha responded with a predatory smile, "but she has touched my balls. Haven't you, fox?"
Mik's expression clouded into something legitimately terrifying and I both wanted to rip his clothes off and run in terror. It was a constant battle around him sometimes.
"I kneed him in the balls when he tried to rape me," I corrected, and Mik's scary ass anger turned to the wolf, who had the grace to look a little uncertain of himself. If I hadn’t reached out and put my hand flat on Mikhail’s abs, I think he might’ve ripped the man apart right then and there.
"I was never going to rape you," he snarled. "You kitsune are so dramatic sometimes. I was just planning on torturing then killing you. Like I said, I don't go for unwilling bed partners. Now if you'd changed your mind about being willing, well that would be another matter altogether, wouldn’t it?"
Mikhail slammed his fist down on the table, making everyone jump, and I noticed the other occupants for the first time. "Everyone, sit the fuck down. We have important business to discuss." The look he threw me said that we’d be discussing this later, whether I liked it or not. The only comforting factor in the equation was that I was certain he’d kill the alpha male if he thought our banter was in any way serious. I wasn’t entirely certain it wasn’t.
From a quick glance around, it looked like all of the shifter groups were represented, including—oh for the love of fucking tails!—a representative from the Vail Valley Earth. Finley fucking Wilde. Damn him for looking gorgeous in a loose-fitting gray-brown shirt and jeans, wrinkled and slightly disheveled but clean. He had one bare foot up on his chair, like he didn’t care where he was. Fin wouldn’t dress up for some hoity-toity meeting if he had a gun to his head.
It reminded me why I used to … why I might still be in love with him.
As I gawked at my ex, all the unseated shifters quickly scrambled to take seats as Mik's order roared through the room, and I found only one vacant seat left available for me to take. Beside the alpha. He hadn’t bothered to dress up much for the meeting either, but his protest felt intended while Fin’s felt natural. Still, he looked damn good in the black tank he was wearing, his massive, muscular arms and their many tattoos exposed.
Groaning to myself, I gave him a tight-lipped smile and perched on the edge of the chair next to him, as far away from the overgrown dog as possible. He seemed to find this amusing, and gave me a wolfish grin. That wasn't even a metaphor, he actually displayed fangs in his grin. Considering he’d promised to kill me the last time we met, it wasn’t exactly a reassuring expression.
"Right, thank you all for coming on such short notice," Mik began with a sigh, then saw me seated beside the alpha wolf and scowled. "Mr. Wilde?" He turned to Fin, sitting on his left. "Please switch places with Miss Hunt."
"What?" Fin exclaimed, running his fingers through his mussy hair. It was a tad too long, but without me around to cut it, I guess it’d stay that way for a while longer. "Why?"
Mik glared death and Fin wisely dodged his gaze. "Because Bennett Beowulf just admitted he would quite like to torture and kill your ex-mate.” This last word was said with a certain amount of frustration that I had no idea how to parse out. “Are you happy to leave them sitting together in such close proximity? No? Then move."
Fin looked pissed as hell, but no one disobeyed a direct order from Mikhail Ravena and lived to tell the tale. Well … no one except me. I chose my battles wisely though, and certainly not in front of witnesses, so I did as he asked and switched seats with my ex. Whether it had been an accident or not, I hadn't missed the emphasis Mik had put on the ex part of that equation, and neither had Fin, if his pissed off face was any indication.
Once I was in my new seat, Mik's foot hooked around the leg of my chair and tugged me a little closer to him. Now who had a crush, hmm?
"You all know why you're here," he continued, addressing the room, like that little act of male dominance hadn't just happened. "So I’m going to make this short and sweet. If you’re sitting at this table, you’ve asked our organization to deal with one of your own at some point in the last few months." Several of the people around the table grimaced or grunted their agreement; Mikhail didn’t have to say you paid us to murder a rabid shifter for you outright in order to get his point across. This was a seriously big fucking deal, one which had seen RADOPA overbooked with mercy kills in the past few weeks. Not a single shifter faction in the Denver Metro Area had been left unaffected.
"There's a party drug going around known as pixie dust," Mik continued, and paused when the alpha wolf chuckled, this deep, low throaty sound that I tried not to like. He was a fucking psychopath, but also … Mik was hilarious. "Something funny?" he asked, focusing his attention first on Bennett, and then on me.
When our eyes met, my body lit up, like I was covered in flames. My mouth began to water and my throat got tight; I even shifted in my seat.
"Calling dust, pixie dust is like calling pot, marijuana. Or referring to meth as methamphetamine. Nobody says that. Just call it dust." I tore my gaze away from Mikhail and found myself looking at the doors to the room, just in time to see Riot burst through, dressed in tight leather pants, his mohawk styled up into a fringe.
Oh, for fuck's sake. Like my panties weren’t flooded already.
Clenching my jaw, I tapped my fingers on the table and tried not to think about the fact that Ziff was missing. He was the only constant in my life and I wanted him back. The only clue I had that he was okay was a simple text from Revel telling me she had him at the downtown Best Western. She also wanted to meet me for dinner tonight to make the exchange and discuss the uh, arrangement that I'd messaged her about.
I was probably going to have to take Fin, wasn't I?
Just the thought infuriated me. Imagining his first sighting of Revel, all those luscious curves. Ugh. I was not a woman-hater, but thinking about my ex joining up with the swanky, sexy vixen was putting me into a seriously bad mood.