Page 34 of Daddy's Friend’s Mate

Light.

I could see light.

I knew it was light by how Regina perked up with recognizable alertness at my side. She trembled fiercely and then clutched my chest, her nails leaving the impression of curved indents in my peck.

Without much effort, we trudged through the filthy water, the mixture of slum winding into a river that flowed beyond the mouth of a wide opening. An exit—finally. Light trinkled off the water like silvery stars in the darkness. Mostly moonlight. For this far out from the abandoned warehouse were merely woods and open grassy areas.

I could smell the greenery, the lush grass, and swampy moisture tinting the air. Milky strands of light illuminated the edges of the river, the wet grass and dirt, the roots of trees trailing up the bank to the grassy knolls beyond. We were much safer here than in the city, better attuned to this environment than the chaos of humans.

Though humans weren’t too bothersome for me, I found they often got in the way of me accomplishing my missions. Wolves were forced to live in silence alongside every other supernatural creature in our shared underground universe. It was too great a truth for humans to handle, too much to chew.

With everything else that went on in their world, it was agreed centuries ago that our lives should be veiled. Every effort was made to live in harmony without causing distress. But time after time, something like a war cropped up, an old feud, or a petty rivalry that made it difficult to guard this massive secret.

I was getting tired of it.

So, coming upon a private area like the beginning of a forest was a relieving experience. I found Regina was losing a lot of her previous tension as well as I hauled her the last few feet out of the tunnel and toward the bank. As soon as I had her hoisted out of the water, she turned and grasped my forearm, inviting me to return the gesture.

She pulled me from the water like I didn’t weigh three times her mass in muscle. Something about her magnificent strength tapped into with the grip of her hand reminded me that I wasn’t dealing with any ordinary woman. Water soaked through my jeans, trickled down my legs, and sloshed around in my boots. Irritation was hardly the word for what I felt.

But my clothes weren’t as weighty and gross when I looked at Regina. Sweet goddess, her hair came alive with pastel lavender and hues of pink in the moonlight. Her eyes glowed like shimmering silver tinsel on a Christmas tree, and her entire form seemed to sparkle with the water that clung to her clothes. A slow smile widened her lips as she looked at me, enhanced by the droplets of water plucking themselves from her clothes one by one.

Liquid dots danced around her form, lifted her hair, streaked over her face to head north. Each one that dissipated created a sensational yet small burst of light that reminded me of fireworks exploding in the sky from a distance. Her magical display of cleaning her clothes was enough to distract me from mine.

And it just made me want to kiss her that much harder.

I shook my hair out. “Alright, you can stop showing off now.”

She delicately fixed her hair. “You’re just jealous.”

“I’m just mad you didn’t clean me first.”

Her eyebrows rose as her smile grew sly. “Oh? I’m supposed to groom the puppy first? Is that it?”

“Well, you don’t have to say it like that.”

“Then, how should I say it, Eric?”

I avoided her gaze. I tried my best to keep my focus on our surroundings. Trees, meadow, trees again—this place was far from the bed and breakfast, but we could probably track our way back using my nose. And her magic. Together, we made a decent team.

When we weren’t distracted.

I scrubbed my fingers through my hair. “Can you—?”

Tiny speckles of glitter danced around me. With a dreamlike quality, each droplet from my clothes and boots rose from me. They floated above my head, briefly circulating where I stood before dashing away into the night sky. My cotton shirt eased away from my skin. My jeans stopped squeezing my junk. When I stepped toward Regina, my socks didn’t slick against the inside of my boots like seaweed on the ocean floor.

Once all the water was gone, I was left with a feeling of freshness. I dared to look at Regina, noticing the smile of contentment that now sat on her lips. It wasn’t what I wanted to see.

No, it was what I wanted to see. But right now? In the middle of a meadow near a river that spat out gunk from an old warehouse my ex had stalked us in?

It wasn’t the right time. It wasn’t the right place.

But wasn’t that just how it always went?

Teresa and I had been like that once. We were animals in the woods and in the bedroom. That was how Kiara came to exist. After that, I was a lot more careful, but it wouldn’t matter once Teresa took off. Her appearance was more than an inconvenience—it meant this mission ran deeper than some favor that Steven had passed off to me to complete.

I frowned. “I don’t get it.”

“What?”

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