Page 7 of Trick Me (Immortal Vices and Virtues: All Hallows’ Eve)

Soft. That’s the first thought. Soft and warm and curves that fit against me perfectly.

She barely reaches my chin, forcing me to look down at platinum blonde hair that glints in the hallway light.

Her body is pressed along mine from chest to thigh, and I can feel every breath she takes, quick little gasps that move her breasts against my chest in deeply distracting ways.

“Are you okay?” My voice comes out rougher than intended .

She looks up, and everything else ceases to exist.

Striking green eyes that hold entire winters—not cold but fierce, beautiful in the way avalanches are beautiful, deadly and inevitable. Her face is all sharp but softened by full lips painted dark red. An expression that says she’s trouble in the best and worst ways.

But it’s her scent that nearly drops me. Vanilla and lightning. How lightning has a scent, I don’t know, but it does—ozone and electricity and power. Beneath that, honey, a sweetness that has me salivating. It’s contradictory and impossible and absolutely intoxicating.

We stay frozen, her palms splayed across my chest, my hands spanning her waist, bodies molded together. I can feel her heartbeat, rapid and strong. Can feel the heat of her through the fabric of her dress. Can feel the moment she realizes our position and decides not to move away.

“I-it’s you. I’m so sorry about the apple peel earlier,” she finally says. “I didn’t mean?—”

“To mark your territory?” The words slip out before I can stop them, my brain apparently deciding that flirting is the appropriate response to this situation. “Interesting technique. Most shifters just use teeth. More traditional. Less sticky.”

Her eyes flash, leaving me grinning. “If I wanted to mark you, I’d be much more creative than apple warfare. ”

“That seemed more like a crime of opportunity.”

Her fingers flex against my chest, nails pressing slightly through the fabric, and there’s something predatory in the gesture that calls to the Alpha in me. “Maybe you were exactly where I wanted you.”

“Covered in apple juice in a bathroom with a resurrected fish?”

She blinks, momentarily thrown. “What?”

“Fae party madness. Don’t ask.” I should let her go. I should step back. Instead, my thumb traces her waist, feeling the heat of her skin through silk. “You smell incredible.”

The words hang between us, too honest, too raw, stripping away the banter and leaving something hungry and dangerous. Her pupils dilate, black swallowing green, and then she leans in and presses her nose against my chest, inhaling deeply.

Not a subtle sniff. Not trying to hide it. Full-on breathing me in with the kind of focus usually reserved for wolf identifying. I feel the exhale against my shirt, warm and damp, and my control slips several crucial notches.

“So do you,” she murmurs against my chest, and the vibration of her words goes straight through me. Another inhale, longer, her whole body pressing closer. “God, what is that? I want to eat it.”

“That’s an interesting way to describe a scent.”

She pulls back just enough to glance up at me, but not enough to actually create distance. We’re still pressed together in ways that would be considered foreplay in some cultures. “Seriously, what cologne is this? It’s intoxicating.”

“I don’t wear any.”

“Sure you don’t.” Her nose wrinkles adorably, and then she’s leaning in again, this time toward my neck, and I have to lock my knees to stay upright. “Nobody naturally smells this delicious.”

I can’t help but laugh.

“Pine,” she says, but her face flushes. “I think it’s, like, pine. And musk. And something sexy too…” She trails off, genuinely blushing. “Something that makes me want to do inappropriate things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as continuing to sniff a complete stranger.”

“I’m not judging. You smell like you’d taste like electricity and wild woods.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“You’re making it a thing.”

She laughs, this throaty sound that has my cock throbbing. “Do you practice lines like that, or do they just come to you in the moment?”

“This is not practiced.” I mean it. Nothing in my experience has prepared me for a woman who crashes into me, smells like heaven and danger, and apparently wants to inhale me like a drug. “I’m Ash, by the way. ”

“Erynn.” She tries to step back, but her heel catches on the uneven rug. She pitches forward, hands shooting out for balance.

Her nails rake across my forearm as she tries to steady herself, and pain flares sharp and unexpected. Not normal pain, but the burning lines of actual wounds. I hiss, more from surprise than hurt, and look down to see torn fabric and blood welling from four perfect scratches.

“Shit!” She jerks back, staring at her hands in horror.

Her nails have become claws. Not the painted nails from moments ago, but actual claws that are pristine white, curved, at least an inch long, and sharp enough to part flesh without effort. They gleam under the hallway lights, beautiful and terrible.

“I did that?” Her voice pitches higher, panic threading through it as she stares at my arm. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit, my hands, what’s wrong with them?”

She holds them up, fingers spread, staring at the claws with revulsion and terror. They’re not retracting, not shifting back to normal. Just remaining there, permanent, and she’s looking at them with the expression of someone who’s discovered they’ve grown extra limbs.

“You’ve never shifted before?” I ask carefully, watching her face pale to the point where I’m concerned she might faint .

“Shifted?” The word comes out as almost a shriek. “I don’t transform. I’m not a shifter. I don’t turn into… into… whatever this is!”

“But I assumed by your scent and your ears that you were mixed blood, shifter and fae.” They’re slightly pointed, barely noticeable unless you’re looking, but definitely there.

“No.” She shakes her head violently, platinum hair flying.

“No shifter blood. My grandmother was fae, but of mixed heritage. Some siren, some earth fae, maybe a touch of banshee, which would explain the death stuff, but not shifter. Never shifter. We don’t have shifters in my family.

We have alcoholics and mediums and the occasional pyromaniac. ”

Behind her, through the wall, Mikael reappears. He seems more solid this time, details sharper—the freckles across his nose, the way his left eye was always slightly greener than the right.

“She’s not lying,” Mikael observes, circling us with interest. “But she’s not entirely right either. Something’s different about her. Wrong. She smells like wolf, but not wolf. Death, but not dead. Yours, but not yours.”

“Not now, Mikael,” I mutter without thinking.

“Who’s Mikael?” Erynn asks, looking around with those too-green eyes.

Shit. She’ll think I’m crazy. “Nobody. Just… thinking out loud. Bad habit. ”

Mikael grins, and it’s the same shit-eating grin that got us into so much trouble as teenagers. “Nobody? I’m hurt, brother. Here I thought we had something special. Remember when you cried because Sean ate your last piece of birthday cake? You were fifteen. It was adorable.”

“I was not fifteen, but eight,” I snap, then realize I’m arguing with a ghost.

“Eight what?” Erynn asks, clearly confused.

“Nothing. Different conversation. In my head. Which I’m having. Apparently.”

Mikael walks straight through her, and she shivers violently, wrapping her arms around herself. “Okay, that was weird. Did you feel that? Like someone walked over my grave. Or through me. Can someone walk through me? Is that a thing that happens at fae parties?”

“You felt that?” I stare at Mikael, who looks equally surprised.

“The sudden cold? Yes.” She looks around again, then directly at where Mikael stands, though her eyes don’t focus on him. “There’s something here. I can feel it. But I can’t see it, which never happens. I see dead people for a living. It’s literally on my business cards.”

“You put ‘I see dead people’ on your business cards?” I ask, desperate to deflect.

“Well, no. It says ‘Spiritual Medium and Afterlife Consultant.’ But the point stands. I should be able to see whatever’s making you talk to yourself.”

“Tell her about the wet dog incident,” Mikael suggests. “Women love vulnerable men, and I think she likes you.”

I ignore him.

Someone stumbles down the hallway, drunk and laughing, reeking of fairy wine. They bump into Erynn hard enough to send her reeling forward again. This time when I catch her, something’s different. Her body temperature is spiking, skin feverish through her dress.

“Something’s wrong,” she gasps, doubling over. One hand clutches her stomach, and the other braces against my chest. “It’s moving. Inside me. There’s something inside me trying to get out.”

Her claws extend further, and the sound that comes out of her is a whimper that becomes a growl that grows into something else entirely.

“Tell me exactly what you feel,” I demand, keeping my voice steady despite my own growing panic. Something is happening here beyond normal fae-party weirdness.

“Hungry,” she whispers, and her voice has changed, rougher, deeper. “So hungry, but not for food. For… running. Hunting. I want to chase something. I want to catch it. I want to—” She looks up at me with terror-filled eyes. “The spirits warned me not to come tonight.”

“She needs to shift,” Mikael says, all humor gone from his voice.

Yet she insists she’s not a shifter. I reach for my wolf, the constant companion that’s been with me since my first change as a child. The presence that defines me, grounds me, makes me what I am.

Nothing.

The space where my wolf lives is empty. Not sleeping, not distant, not angry. Fucking gone. A void where half my soul should be. Cold dread floods me.

“I need air,” Erynn gasps, then bolts.

She moves wrong, too fast for a fae, too clumsy for a shifter, too desperate for anything controlled.

I watch her disappear through the ballroom doors, every instinct screaming at me to follow. Not to help. To hunt.

“Well, go after her, lover boy,” Mikael says quietly. “Unless you want to explain to the elders how you let your mate get torn apart by your own wolf.”

“She’s not my—” I stop. The apple. The witch with her knowing smile. The peel hitting me, most likely marking me. And now with the full moon outside, she’s transforming…

“The spirits warned her,” I say aloud, pieces clicking together with horrible clarity. “They knew this would happen. ”

“Spirits usually do. Cryptic bastards, the lot of them.” Mikael starts fading, becoming translucent. “Better hurry. Your wolf’s not known for its patience, and her body’s not built for what it wants to do.”

It all comes at me quickly—my ability to see ghosts, her shifting into a wolf even though she isn’t one.

We’d been cursed, and somehow our abilities swapped. How the fuck does that happen?