She sighs. “Babe, I say this with all the love in the world, but don’t cockblock me. I want this.” Her eyes flick over my shoulder, and she smiles broadly. “And I will definitely not cockblock you either.”
Before I can glance over my shoulder, a warm hand falls to my waist, and I feel Kane’s heat at my back. If I were any less intoxicated, I’d be embarrassed that Kane overheard Sybil’s words. Instead, I lean into the shifter at my back, my need still building.
“Hey there,” Sybil says to him, giving Kane a tiny wave.
“I don’t want to leave you,” I insist.
“I trust Sawyer with my life,” Kane says, jumping into the conversation. “He won’t let anything happen to your friend.” To Sawyer, Kane adds, “Walk her home at the end of the night.” Those words are accompanied by a burst of shifter magic. It brushes my skin and bends the soft light out here before settling on Sawyer’s shoulders.
I don’t know much about pack hierarchy and dynamics, but I think I just witnessed a bit of the power play involved.
“Kane, man,” Sawyer says, “you know you don’t have to tell me.”
I think I’ve been given all the reassurances I can. Still, I don’t like leaving my friend out here regardless. Sybil must see it on my face because she pulls me in for a tight hug and whispers in my ear, “Babe, go screw the brains out of that man. I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow. Promise.”
She releases me, then pushes me into Kane, who catches me by the upper arms. To further drive home the fact I’ve been excused, Sybil drags Sawyer’s mouth back down to hers.
All right, message received loud and clear.
I turn from her, and Kane is there, his eyes shining a little too brightly.
“You’d fit right into the pack, you know,” he says, as we move toward the outskirts of the clearing.
“What do you mean?” I ask, threading my fingers through his.
“Pack doesn’t leave their own behind. You were ready to drag her out of there, and even with all our reassurances, I can still scent your worry.”
He can scent what now?
Shit, what else has he been smelling over the past few hours?
I redirect my thoughts back on topic.
“Sybil’s my best friend,” I say as we leave the clearing, the trees looming around us. “She’s always been there for me. I’d give my life for that girl.”
That wolfish glint is back in Kane’s eyes, watching me like he’s tracking my every movement. “Like I said, you’d fit right in with the pack.”
I’m somehow both flattered and unnerved by the compliment.
Lycanthropes have been known to lay a claiming bite on witches out late in these woods.
“Where did you want to go?” Kane says, interrupting my thoughts.
Right. We hadn’t decided on that.
“My place,” I say, leading Kane along by his hand.
Three steps later, I nearly twist my ankle when I step on a branch wrong.
Freaking heels.
Kane catches me before I go down and reels me in close.
“You okay?”
I swallow and nod at him.
“Good.” He smiles and leans in a little closer. “I’m pretty good at giving piggyback rides—if you’re interested.”
I’m a witch, a symbol of revolutionary feminism. I don’t need a man to carry me, or coddle me, or worry over—
“Hell. Yes.”
Kane lifts me and swings me onto his back and, ah, provides some relief for the poor, aching balls of my feet.
“Hold on,” Kane says, and then he runs.
I yelp, nearly falling off at first. I wrap my arms around Kane’s neck and then laugh and laugh.
This is ridiculously fun. Kane is going to get so laid. So laid.
“Someone’s eager,” I whisper into his hair, wrapping one of his sandy curls around my finger.
“Can you blame me?” he says over his shoulder. “I want to get back to kissing those lips.”
“It’s not fair to be hot and have good game,” I whisper back into his ear. I follow it with a brush of my lips.
Before he can answer, we pass a naked couple. I yelp when I see a witch who lives down the hall from me getting railed by a lycanthrope.
“Oh my—titties!” I meant to say goddess, but I sort of just said what I saw instead.
Beneath me, I hear Kane’s booming laugh.
We see another couple and another, each one in various states of ecstasy.
Kane slows briefly partway to campus.
“Why are you slowing?”
Kane points to a nearby standing stone. “These mark the boundary between coven lands and pack lands.”
Branching from either side of the stone is a faint luminous line, magically marking the boundary. I try to remember if I noticed it earlier this evening, but if I did, I’ve since forgotten.
“Why are you showing me this?” Part of me wonders if this is about Nero. Maybe his pack knows my familiar is a panther, and maybe Nero really has been poaching on lycanthrope territory.
Kane is quiet for several seconds, and with each passing moment, I feel more and more like this is about Nero.
But then, he says, “If you ever want to visit me, all you ever have to do is cross the boundary line. My pack mates and I patrol the perimeter here.”
That was not at all what I expected.
I peer over his shoulder at him. “Kane, are you…are you saying you want me to visit you even after tonight?”
Only after I say those words do I realize how much I’ve laid out on the line. Because maybe Kane doesn’t want to see me after tonight and I got it all wrong. Maybe this is where he really does pulverize my heart.
He hesitates again. “Yeah,” he eventually says, “I am.”
And then he begins to run once more, and I’m left with my giddy, churning thoughts until we reach my residence hall.
We pass the stone lamassu, and Kane sets me down in front of the door, catching me when I stumble a little.
His brows come together, and then he leans in, breathing in my scent. “Are you good?” he asks, pulling away. “If you’re not, we don’t have to do anything else toni—”
I grab him by the shirt and resume kissing him. He’s so noble, and damn it, I like that.
Kane is soooooo getting laid. And then laid again.
“I’m fine,” I whisper between one accosting kiss and the next.
That’s all the shifter needs to hear. He growls, the sound not wholly human, and presses me back against my front door as his mouth devours mine all over again.
Somewhere in that kiss, I discover Kane doesn’t taste like I expect him to, nor does his mouth move like I think it will. Each deviation throws me off.
Clearly, this is me trying to sabotage myself because it can’t handle something too good to be true actually, legitimately happening to me.
Right in the middle of the kiss, I start laughing because something too good to be true is happening to me.
“Tell me the joke,” Kane says, still peppering my laughing lips with kisses.
I shake my head against him. “I’ve liked you for so long. I can’t believe I get to kiss you now.”
In response to that, Kane’s mouth returns to mine, and for a brief minute, I’m lost to it. I still have to ignore the nagging thought that something isn’t quite right, but I push it away easily enough.