“Yes.”
“Do you think you could take a spin through the graveyard and keep your eyes open for my broom? I must have forgotten it in all the excitement that night, between Genevieve scampering off into the woods with Hunter— whose eyes, by the way, were glowing bright red—and my Romeo morphing from wolf to man rather unexpectedly. Anyway, if you see it would you please grab it before somebody flies off with it? You know a good broom is hard to find.”
“Yeah, sure. If I see it, I’ll get it for you. But wait, isn’t Hunter Knight supposed to be dead?” Candice said.
“Well, kinda. Actually, he’s a little undead.”
“Isn’t that like being a little pregnant?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. It’s embarrassing enough for me to admit that my sister’s getting some vampire action. God, I wish the girl had better taste in men, alive or dead.”
Candice sighed. “Hey—don’t be such a prude. If I’d chosen one of the undead I might not be unmarried.”
“Candice, honey, I love you, but you are a hopeless piece of work. Now be a doll and go find my broom. Bye.”
Godiva hung up the phone and sat tapping her chin with one long, slender finger. Candy was getting old before her time. Goddess knew, she really did need a lover. A young lover. A young werewolf lover. A hot, naughty affair would be the perfect thing to keep her from moving to Denver. Her fingers itched to swirl up a little love spell, but magic wouldn’t work on her friend. Godiva’s eyes widened and her full, pink lips tilted up. Magic wouldn’t work on Candy, but it definitely would work on a werewolf....
Two
Candice would never get this damn assignment done.
“You’d think after teaching for almost twenty years I wouldn’t have any problem doing homework.” She grumbled at herself and ran a frustrated hand through her thick blonde hair. “Poetry themes . . . poetry themes . . . poetry themes . . .” Death, time, love, heartbreak, the soul, happiness, sex . . . “Sex,” she muttered, chewing the end of her well-sharpened #2 pencil. “That’s one I can’t write about. Like I’ve had sex in—”
She clamped her lips shut, refusing to speak aloud the ridiculous amount of time it had been since the last time she’d been laid. As if the last time even counted. Ex-husband number five had been, in politically correct terms, penis impaired. Spoken plainly, he’d had a pathetically small dick, and an incredibly large wallet. Unfortunately, one did not make up for the other. Candice grimaced. Quite frankly, women who said size didn’t count had clearly never been with a man with a small dick. And, as if their, well, lack of substance wasn’t bad enough, SDM (small-dicked men) had the same problems short men had. They were mad at the world. Like it
“Theme!” she said, forcing her thoughts back to the blank notebook page. She wanted to create poetry that would dazzle her professor, replete with complex symbolism, witty phrasing, and possibly even a few clever slant rhymes. What she had come up with was exactly—she glanced at the naked page—nothing.
She was, indeed, screwed (figuratively speaking).
“Okay, so write something . . . anything . . . write what you know. . . .”
What the hell did she know? She knew she was sick of teaching the Fighting Fairies and she knew she would never get married again. Well, she certainly didn’t want to write about high school, which left . . .
“What the hell. At least it’ll get me writing.”
She drew a deep breath and let her pencil begin moving across the blank page.
She blinked and reread the first two lines. Not Shakespeare, but it did have a certain ring to it. Candice grinned and continued.
Wasn’t that the truth! Her pencil, with a mind of its own, kept moving.
And the self-propelled pencil stubbornly stopped. What now? What now? What now? She jumped as the clock in her study chimed seven times. Seven o’clock already? How long had she been on the phone with Godiva? Now she’d have to hurry to get in her five-mile jog, complete with graveyard detour, before the sun set. Crap! She absolutely didn’t want to be outside alone after dusk. Weird things had been going on around town lately—and it took some doing for anything to be classified as “weird” by a Mysteria native. Candice put down her pencil and began pulling on her running shoes.
The beat of her shoes against the blacktop road was a seductive lure. The sound beckoned to him. He’d heard it while he was still deep in the woods. It had called him away from the young thing he was still licking. She snarled after him, disgruntled and unsatisfied at his premature departure. He called a hasty apology and promised to meet her and her twin sister later. Right now he had to follow the beat of her running feet, even though it was unlike him to leave such a delicious tidbit. He prided himself on his ability to satisfy. Like a modern Don Juan, his lovers could count on him for romancing as well as consistent orgasming, but the steady slapping sound seemed to somehow have gotten into his body. It pulled him away from his lover with an incredibly powerful singularity in thought.
The rhythmic lure thrummed with his pulse . . . his heartbeat . . . it pounded through his loins, making them feel hot and heavy. He scented the warm evening breeze. Woman . . . hot, sweaty, and ripe. And not far ahead of him. He wanted her with a single-minded intensity that he hadn’t felt for anything or anyone in years. Growling deep in his throat, he hurried to catch her.
Jeesh, gross. Candice kept glancing nervously from side to side as she sprinted through the graveyard, totally annoyed that she’d promised Godiva she’d look for her broom. Not slowing down, she gritted her teeth and peered into the creepy shadows that flitted past the edge of her vision. Nope. No broom. Also no walking corpses, trolls, goblins, or fairies (whom she disliked with an intensity she knew was unreasonable—they hadn’t asked to be made the school mascot and she shouldn’t hold it against them, but she did). Nothing untoward at all. Just lots of spooky graves and silence. Thank God. Sometimes it was damn disconcerting to be normal in a town filled with abnormals. She shivered and increased her pace, wanting to leave the graveyard and (hopefully) anything that wasn’t 100 percent human behind her.
Lengthening her stride, Candice thought that the burn in her muscles actually felt good. Godiva had been right about one thing—she did have a killer body. Sure, she’d like to lose a few pounds. Who wouldn’t? But thanks to her lifelong love of jogging, her legs were long and strong. She also still had excellent boobs. No, they weren’t as perky as they had been a few years ago, but they were full and womanly, without boulder-hard, anatomically impossible enhancements. And—best of all—she had seriously big blonde hair that was light enough to hide the encroaching gray without requiring too many touch-ups.
With a burst of speed, she shot out of the graveyard and pounded down the empty blacktop road that would
