Page 29 of My Monster's Keeper
Stix pulls open a desk drawer and closes it. “What are we looking for?”
“I don’t know. I just feel like there’s something here.”
He doesn’t question me, and I appreciate that. I leave the room and find the kitchen. It’s clawed to hell. Like a giant werewolf tore it up.
Puppy drops off the ceiling, causing me to gasp. He smiles, his tongue flicking out, and leans closer to me. “The Amshrilleeg was scared. The stench is like…blood wine.”
Stix inhales and crosses the room on his long legs. He climbs halfway up the wall and inspects a scratch.
“Puppy.”
Puppy’s head whips around, and, in a second, he’s beside Stix, sniffing the nightmare’s fist.
“What is it?”
“Something tasty, human meat,” Puppy purrs happily. He snuffles at Stix’s hand and purrs.
“Human meat is not tasty,” I growl.
Puppy tilts his human head to me. “Human meat is tasty, and you are human meat.”
The insult and threat isn’t lost on me. “And you’ll be a mystery stew.”
“What’s a stew!” Puppy thunders furiously. He flips to dragon form, and his tail lashes the space, crashing through the drywall.
He bares his teeth and hisses at me. I stick my finger up at him and turn my back on him.
I hear the sound but don’t even get to move a step before Wilder is wrapped around me, his arms bulging as he holds the Grim back.
“Bad Grim!” Wilder bares his teeth, and, to my utter shock, vines peel through the walls like they’re paper and wrap around the weight against my back.
“We don’t eat the Becky human.”
Puppy growls and backs off. Out of the corner of my eye, vines are ripped from the wall and thrown away carelessly.
Stix is still on the walls, inspecting the scratches. Unworried about Puppy’s attack.
Wilder holds me, and as I take a step back, I step on something and roll my ankle, crashing into him. I peer up, my eyes wide, my mouth dry. He is so hard, his chest feels like a wall of warm stone.
I feel a tightening, a tingle, a something that shouldn’t be there, and rip myself away from him.
“Sorry.”
My cheeks are hot. He inhales, sniffing the air. I see the exact moment he catches my arousal in the air. His eyes turn entirely black. And somehow that only increases the strength of the problem I’m having. I find myself back in his arms, mesmerised by that expression of need on his face.
What is wrong with me?
I rip myself free and put the entire length of the room between us.
Wilder hasn’t taken his gaze off me, but just when I think he might do something, he turns on his heel and silently leaves the room.
I lift my hand and press it against my chest. Only then remembering that Stix is still in the room. I peer up at him and find him staring at me with a perplexed expression on his face.
“What?”
“Nothing, poppet.”
His gaze caresses every line of me, and I start shivering and find I’m responding all over again. What the actual fuck is wrong with my body?
