Page 19 of Wicked Witch of the Wolf

My phone buzzed.

Ronan:Where are you? Tacos are cold.

Me:Doing a light B&E. Nuke the tacos. Be there soon.

Ronan:You worry me, Lennox.

Cecil appeared on top of the fence. He was hauling a burlap sack the size of a beanbag.

I knew what that was. After all, I’d found twenty-eight of the suckers in my yard a few weeks ago.

Hex bag.

Cecil flung the bag at my head.

I caught it and put it in my pocket. “You neutralized the spell, right?”

The transition from warm,midday sun to cool, darkened pub was abrupt and welcome. My skin tingled as icy air from a vent near the door gusted down my back. Cecil shivered and clung to my hair behind my neck like a creepy little choker.

“Hey, Betty,” a male voice called out. “Looking good.” The owner of the voice was young and probably good-looking to most women. He was as appealing as an unbuttered slice of toast on a paper plate to me.

Toast. Damn, I was hungry.

“Hey,” I returned, making my utter lack of interest in the speaker clear.

The other men at the table, all shifters, called out similar greetings. I repeated my lifeless, “Hey,” then faced the bar. “Where’s Ronan?”

Edie Blanton was drying mugs with a checkered towel. The bartender was in her late forties and had a no-nonsense attitude that fit perfectly with the pub’s vibe.

“In the back,” she replied.

Ronan already had my favorite music playing on his phone whenI sauntered into his office with Cecil. Bread’s “Make it With You” was on, and it was all I could do not to climb onto Ronan’s lap and slow dance my way into his pants.

“Saved you some cookies.” He tossed two saucer-sized, pink polvorones onto his desk.

“Are you sure you’ve had enough? You probably need these more than I do,” I heard myself say.

Ronan just stared at me. “What?”

I rounded the desk and ran my hands over his shoulders, massaging the hard muscles in his back. “Are you okay? You seem tense.”

Ronan peered down at Cecil, who’d leapt off my shoulder and onto the desk at the sight of the pink polvorones. He’d already unwrapped one and was sitting cross-legged on the blotter, munching on it.

“Am I being punked?”

“Would you like to be … punked?” I skimmed my lips up the side of his throat. “Is that what you’d like?”

He shivered. “I don’t know what that means, but yes. Yes, I would.”

My lips coasted over the rim of his ear. “I can do that.”

Ronan snatched up the remaining polvoron and brandished it in front of my face. “You’re telling me you don’t want to put this in your mouth right now—oh, gods, I am very much regretting saying it like that.” He wiped a drop of sweat from his forehead. “What I mean is, don’t you want my cookie?”

“Don’t you want mine?” I whispered.

“Nope.” Ronan jerked to his feet. “Nope. This isn’t normal.”

He scooped up Cecil then hoisted me over his shoulder, firefighter style, and ran out of his office and down the short hall, where he unlocked the door to the stairs that led up to his apartment. He took the steps two at a time up to the living room, dumped me on his sofa, and set Cecil on the coffee table.

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