Page 9 of Smoke and Mirrors
“Maybe a few rides to dry ourselves off?” Hunter suggested, still chuckling as he wiped his eyes.
“Good idea, but I pick.” I glared at him although I wasn’t really mad. His eyes heated as I grabbed the wet spot on his shirt to pull him closer to me. “I dunno, though. I kind of like you in a wet shirt.”
His arms slid around me and, despite their warmth, did nothing to soothe the goosebumps erected on my skin.
“I can say the same thing about you.” His voice was laced with huskiness.
My forearms braced against his chest but his heartbeat didn’t feel nearly as fast or erratic as mine. One of his hands pressed a warm imprint between my shoulder blades, the other traced my jaw with the lightest brush of a fingertip. My gaze fell to his lips where I saw a smile twitching to get out.
“What?” I asked.
“I was thinking,” he said with a lip bite so small I almost missed it, “that I could make a joke about wet underwear, but I don’t want to scare you away.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Really, Hunter? I got desensitized to offensive jokes when I was a toddler. You’d need to do a lot worse than that to scare me away.”
He shrugged, bringing his caress on my face to a pause. “That’s not really my style, anyway. Maybe Connor’s influence.”
I groaned, rolling my eyes skyward. He was absolutely right that Connor would not pass up the opportunity for an inappropriate joke. Neither would Razvan.
Stop. We arenotthinking about him. Especially not right now.
“Well, whatever your style is, I want to learn about it.” Feeling emboldened, I slid my hands up over his shoulders to wrap around his neck. “I want to learn all aboutyou, Hunter.”
His forehead lightly touched mine as his face grew closer. My pulse became a mad, rushing river in my ears as his lips filled my vision, parting as they nearly reached mine—
“OY! YOU, GIRL!”
I jumped back, startled at the voice that sounded like it yelled right next to my ear. Hunter immediately pulled me back tightly against him with a protective growl.
“Ya can do that cupcakin’ later. We need to talk, girl.”
The speaker was an ebony-skinned woman wearing a wraparound dress in a bright purple tribal pattern. Her hair was wrapped up in a matching purple fabric. She spoke with an accent I couldn’t place and beckoned me with one long, purple fingernail.
A dark tent stood behind her with a wooden painted sign reading Madame Thembi - Fortune Teller.
“No thank you, ma’am,” I smiled politely. “I’m not interested.”
The woman’s lips pulled back into a smile. “I’m not askin’ ya, Melody.”
Her jaws parted just enough to allow a long, slender forked tongue to flick out and taste the air.
5
MELODY
Iblinked and the serpent’s tongue was gone. Only a bright, cheery smile with a slight gap in her front teeth shined on the woman’s face.
“Ya know what I am. Don’t act scared, girl.” She nodded at Hunter. “Ya doggy boy can rip my throat out faster than I can strike. Ya have questions and if ya come in, I can find ya the answers.”
“You don’t have to, Mel,” Hunter growled low next to my ear. “Just say the word and we can walk away.”
“She’s a shifter,” I breathed barely above a whisper.
“Yes, but something’s off,” he snarled. “She knows what I am but she smells human to me.”
That should have spurred me to move along and quickly. But I stood rooted to my spot, unable to take my eyes off the woman. She seemed thoroughly amused by my wide-eyed stare, chuckling and shaking her head.
“Do you know what I am?”
