Page 24 of His Whispered Witch (Witches and Shifters: Scott Pack #6)

The lizard twitched, and he got out of the truck bed rather than eat it.

He stopped. He couldn’t go charging through the undergrowth. His wolf was going to get ideas.

He took in the smell of cow manure on top of baking dirt and running water. The wind shifted, and he also smelled the donkeys.

How did people live out here? Almost nothing grew, and the sun cooked everything every day until it was bleached dry.

She held up the battered, priceless heirloom. “I can throw this in the creek right now. You’re right, this is dangerous.”

His last suspicion bled away. She was trying to help. Even if there was nothing between them, all she’d ever done was help.

What would it be like to be free of the venom? To never experience that pain again? He glanced down at his wrists and the beginning of the scars that climbed his arms. What would that possibly be like?

“Don’t destroy it,” he said, squeezing the words out of somewhere.

She nodded once and put the book in the glove compartment. She didn’t look triumphant or satisfied, just worried as she made her way over to him.

“I will never hurt you,” she whispered and put her arms around his waist slowly, giving him plenty of time to pull away. He didn’t want to pull away; he roped his arms around her and held on.

“I feel like we skipped a step,” she said after a long minute.

“What step?”

“You went from client to lover to whatever we are now.”

He looked down into her eyes and, unable to resist any longer, ran his hand over her head, reveling in how she shivered.

He wanted to offer her the world and forever but remembered how that went over between Malcolm and his love when he made far too serious declarations far too soon, however true they were.

“There’s plenty of room on the land. You can stay wherever you like.

There’s not really a place for a shopfront, but Harpers Ferry is close.

” There was another coven there, but they were all friends now, right?

A few years ago, they’d nearly reignited the shifter wars, but that was in the past, right? She didn’t need to know that.

“So what, you want me to move to Harper’s Ferry? And how close as close?”

“As the crow flies? Thirty minutes. By road? An hour.”

“An hour. You want me to be an hour away?”

Was he going to be so polite that he’d lose her? “I want you next to me.” He wanted to add forever but bit his tongue.

“Are we insane?” she asked and stepped closer. “Because I feel like we’re insane. Nobody does this. Drops everything in their life and goes to war with the family who took them in.”

She stepped out of his arms, and he was so glad he hadn’t said it as she stomped toward the creek and then back again.

“Seriously? Nobody does this!”

“Nobody does this,” he said slowly, “because they don’t wanna take a risk. Because they believe the propaganda that we are bad for each other. Because they don’t trust.”

“Nobody can trust in a week. Nobody can know in a week!”

He knew. He knew in a moment. “Okay, but they know it’s wrong in a week, right?”

“What?”

“Maybe we can’t know for sure in a week, but we can know it’s wrong in an hour, right? Often less. And that’s not this.”

Finally, she stopped pacing. “That’s not this.”

“I mean it should be,” he couldn’t resist saying.

Even as he told himself to shut up, he had to warn her.

“My wolf is insane, and it turns out I’m part-snake, who also can’t be sane.

And I don’t have anything. I mean, I have a pack.

It’s not fair to them to say I have nothing, but I’m not a catch at all. ”

She stepped into his arms again when he expected her to run for the hills, and rather than say anything else, she went up on her tiptoes and sealed her lips to his.

He could feel her all along his front, curves everywhere pressing into him—round, soft, and perfect, and nothing he deserved but he could not give her up.

“Sex is not gonna fix any of this,” he couldn’t help murmuring.

“We could just keep driving…” She took one step backward.

He locked his arms around her back and pulled her to him again. “It’s not gonna hurt anything either,” he said nonchalantly and felt her smile against his lips.

They were both lies.

Sex did fix things; his touch-starved, company-starved, insane wolf settled when she was in his arms.

It could also destroy everything if she ever walked away. He knew with simple clarity that he would not come back from that. They’d already pulled him back from the brink once. No spell on earth would do it again if he lost her.

That wasn’t a good thing or even remotely comfortable.

They had no commitment between them, not even a discussion of terms. She wasn’t coming with him because she couldn’t imagine her life without him.

She was coming with him because she had nowhere else to go in the world, and a werewolf pack was better than being alone.

Every warning and red flag about why this was a terrible idea faded as her lips met his, tasting of lipstick and magic.

He drank her in and decided to put everything down. He’d given up hope so many times in his life, it was almost a joke at this point. If he had to do that tomorrow, at least he could have this memory to add to the collection.

When he felt her hands slip under his shirt, cool against the steaming skin of his back, he pulled away and looked around.

Suddenly, he hated the prairie. In the forest, there were a thousand bolt holes, but out here, they had a copse of cottonwoods and his truck.

He walked her backwards toward that and pulled the seat forward to reveal the bench seat in the back. He swept away the remains of their flight and tilted her down onto it. This was going to be awkward and ridiculous, and he couldn’t stop.

She gasped and shimmied, shrieking with laughter as she almost tipped off the seat, and he climbed in after her.

“What are we doing?” she asked.

He kissed her quickly, wedging one leg onto the bench and the other into a foot well, and held himself up against the passenger seat with one arm, grateful for once for shifter strength.

“I have to touch you.” He hadn’t lasted the last time, so overwhelmed by the miracle of her in his arms. He wanted this to last.

She grinned. “It’s like we’re seventeen necking in the back of a car, only we don’t even have a backseat.”

“We could drive an hour to the next town with a hotel and check in and lie down on their nice little bed?—”

She kissed him to shut him up, and he didn’t protest as he carefully lowered onto her. They almost tipped off the seat again, but this would just about work.

“There’s seriously not a bed available for an hour?”

“That’s probably optimistic.”

“You don’t realize on the East Coast how much empty land there is. There’s nobody anywhere.”

“It’s not empty enough,” he muttered as he drank her in. He didn’t want to talk anymore. He didn’t want to think anymore. He just wanted her.