Why was he acting like this? So…engaging.
It wasn’t like him. In fact, it’d never been like him. She narrowed her eyes. “What do you want, Jericho? My shift starts soon, I don’t have time for these games today.”
“Just, heard your voice. Came to see what you were doing.”
“I’ve got to go.” She made to walk around him.
“Where’d you say you got the mirror by the way?”
Jutting out her jaw, trying in vain not to inhale the spicy warmth of him, she pursed her lips. “I didn’t.”
And this time when she made to move around him, he let her, but her stomach was now a mass of nerves, and it had nothing to do with his presence and everything to do with what he might have heard.
The bridge came to an abrupt end. One second it was stretched as endlessly as an ocean into the horizon, the next, they were off. And the horrible, rending sound wasn’t thunder at all.
But a bike. A gleaming bike of chrome that spit a long orange and blue tail of fire, the light in the front wasn’t white, but red. A deep, bloody red color that almost appeared to blink back at them.
Sitting astride the metal beast was the black leather-wearing demon himself. His long blond hair was caught back in a ponytail, scruff dusted his jaw and he was gazing at Aeric with an impish curl of his lips.
“The famed Huntsman.” The silky smooth voice was designed to make any woman salivate, and any man want to grind that pretty boy face into the dust beneath their feet.
Aeric gnashed his teeth, immediately feeling a burning hatred fester and boil down deep in his soul. “Rumpel,” he snarled, fisting his fingers by his sides.
Lissa, who’d been silent up till now, turned toward him. Her eyes were slitted as she said, “Relax, hunter. We need him, remember?”
She was right. He blinked, and took a moment to breathe deeply through his nose and out his mouth. Just enough to get his irrational urges under control.
When he looked up, Rumple was leaning back on his bike, feet propped up on the handlebars with his arms crossed behind his back and his peaked brows raised.
“You owe me,” Rumpel grinned.
“I did not ask for your help,” Aeric ground out.
“Tsk. Tsk, Aeric. You know that is not how this transaction will go.”
“And just how do you imagine this will go?”
“With me getting what I want, hunter. And if I don’t,” he sat up, straddling the bike once more, “then you’ll return right back to where you were. And good luck getting out of that by yourself.”
His laugh was like the scrape of nails on glass. Heart pounding with fury, Aeric took a step forward. Ready to throttle him, Lissa jumped into his arms.
Her furry little body instantly quieted the rage humming through his blood.
Her face had transformed again, and this time it wasn’t the cat but the woman gazing down at him. “Aeric, before you do something we’ll both regret, remember that even in female form I’m not nearly strong enough to pull you out, you had minutes before the bit of land you stood on turned to dust beneath you too. If you reject his offer, there will be no coming back.”
He didn’t realize he was petting her again until he heard her purring, but the repetitive movement definitely helped to calm him. And as he pet her he realized she didn’t smell like spring rain as she always did, now she smelled of the perfume of a thousand roses.
“Lissa, you don’t understand, there is no end to his trickery. You agree to one thing, little realizing you’ve been duped into so much more. It’s not worth it. I’ll figure out something.”
She hissed. “Foolish man. Just like all the rest. With what? You’ve lost your pack. The are no tools to bail you out, there is only this.” Her tiny nostrils flared as her full pink lips tipped down with a mixture of disgust and anger and it was irrational that he should suddenly feel like laughing.
Did she actually care?
“You’d have me sign a deal with the devil? And what if his deal kills me in the end anyway? You’re okay with this?”
Not that it was her decision to make, in the end he’d be the one deciding what to do, but it confused him that she would care so much.
She didn’t answer, just continued gazing at him with that intense feline stare that made him feel strange. Discombobulated.
“Why?” he asked. “Give me one good reason why you care so much, and don’t just say because, because if you do I will turn around and demand he put me back in that hole.”
He himself couldn’t understand why he wanted to know the answer to this riddle. Why it mattered so much to him.
But in all his life no one had ever really cared what happened to him. Anyone and everything he’d ever loved had always disappointed him, always left him in the end. So why did a perfect stranger care so much?
“Because I think you can save me,” she finally whispered.