“Johnny decided he wasn’t in love after all. Dumped her. So much for true love, huh?”
My jaw dropped. “They broke up?”
“Oh, it gets even worse,” Sara said bitterly. “She wanted to leave and go home. Naturally, the clan wouldn’t let her. One of the males challenged another for her. It started a fight, and then the next thing we know, both males are hospitalized and the entire tiger clan is furious. The other clans are freaking out, the girl is freaking out, and Johnny just wants to run away. Vic’s about to lose his shit. The other clans are flat-out refusing to have anything to do with the Alliance until those two are exiled and made an example of. Beau’s putting them on a plane to Greenland this morning.”
“Greenland?” I sat down heavily.
“Yeah,” she said unhappily. “Some town just south of the Arctic Circle line, until things get ironed out. I don’t know that things will, though. People are really furious.” She swiped a finger under her eye, and I realized she was crying. “Poor girl.”
I said nothing. I knew Sara had been turned against her will, and it had worked out for her . . . eventually. She’d apparently had a very stressful time of it for years and years. And the wolf pack was to blame for a lot of it.
My thoughts automatically went to Sara’s wolf side. Maybe I could find a wolf to turn me . . .
And then I thought about Sara’s predicament and scratched that idea. A wolf pack wasn’t about to turn me and then let me waltz away. They’d lay claims, and from the stories Ryder had told me, several of them liked to lay claim at once. No, thank you.
“Everyone’s going nuts about all the changes,” she said sadly. “First my coming out as a human-turned- werewolf, which got the packs all riled up, and now this girl being turned into a cat. I feel sorry for the next guy that tries to turn a girl, because he’s going to have a lynch mob after him.”
I swallowed, thinking of Josh’s kiss. “What do you mean?”
“If a human so much as breathes in a supernatural’s direction now, every single alpha in the state of Texas is going to flip his lid and come gunning for them. No one wants to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.” Sara shook her head. “Some supes give me dirty looks at meetings. I can only imagine what that poor tiger girl is going through. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next person who turns a human ends up a smear on the pavement.”
Smear on the pavement? I thought of Josh’s laughing eyes. Those long lashes. That warm smile.
Guess I was back to vampires.
Sigh.
• • •
We were sitting on my couch, going over some of the vampire notes before my next date, when Josh looked over at me. “We should practice your kissing again.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your kissing,” Josh enunciated, as if I’d been deaf and not just surprised by his words. “I said it needed work and that I’d help you, remember?”
I gave him a wary look. If it had been anyone else, I’d have thought he was doing it to mess with me. That he was feeding me the world’s corniest line because he wanted to kiss me and thought this would be an easy way to get what he wanted.
Except that this was Josh Russell who was offering. The playboy of the Paranormal Alliance. A man who could get any woman he wanted—and did, quite frequently. He had no need to play flirty little games with someone like me.
So it had to be legit.
I dug my nails into my palms to fight the blush that threatened to reveal how unsettled I was by his offer. When we’d kissed before, it had shaken me to my core and had made me want things that I wasn’t supposed to want. Things that weren’t part of my ironclad plans.
But now my entire body clenched with how much I wanted that. Flustered, I slid a bit closer to him on the couch. “You really think practice is necessary?”
“Absolutely.” His gaze was totally confident and relaxed. “For one, I think you should work on your expressions.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Vampires are predators, right? So you need to think like prey. The last time I kissed you, your reaction wasn’t very pleasing to the male ego.”
“It could be because I was kissing you,” I said, my light tone taking the bite out of my words.
“Ouch. I’m wounded, Marie.” He clutched a hand to his chest in mock injury, then moved a fraction closer to me. “I’m serious. After a guy kisses you, you need to go all soft and sweet in his arms. He’ll think he’s turned you into a pile of mush, and that’ll please his ego. Especially a vampire’s, since they seem to have bigger ones than most. Stroke it a little and you’ll be sitting pretty.”
My mouth quirked in amusement at the thought of faking softness after someone kissed me. Exactly how did one pretend to be soft? Picture marshmallows and let my posture slump? Poke my lips out in some sexy version of the duck face? What?
While I contemplated this, Josh moved his hands to my hips and tugged me forward. Suddenly I was pulled against his larger form. My hands automatically went up defensively, and I ended up resting my palms on his chest. His nice, firm chest.
I resisted the urge to flex my fingers against it.
Josh’s face leaned in close to mine, and I could smell his breath, minty and sweet. He tilted his head slightly, as if moving in to kiss me.
My entire body tensed, waiting for the brush of his lips on mine, and I closed my eyes.
Nothing happened.
I opened them again.
He was giving me that same expectant look. “Kiss me, Marie.”
“Why should I kiss you? I’m the one that has to be all melted at the thought of your lips touching mine.”
“Soft. Not melted.” He grinned at my grumpiness. “And if you kiss me, I’ll show you what I mean, and then you can try it yourself.”
“This feels like a scam,” I muttered in protest, but I leaned in obediently and lightly brushed my lips over his closed mouth. Then I pulled back and watched him expectantly.
He laughed in my face.
I scowled. “What’s so funny?”
“You think that was a real kiss?”
“We’re pretending here, remember?”
He shook his head. “I’m almost offended at how bad that kiss was. Clearly we need to practice more than just your reaction.” Josh turned to face me fully. “Here, let me show you how to do it.” When I didn’t move, he added, “Relax.”
I gave a deliberate full-body wiggle and rolled my neck to show him that I was relaxed. “Hit me with it.”
I shouldn’t have been startled when his hand moved forward to lightly cup my neck. I mean, I was staring right at him, watching him lean in, his eyes so heavily lidded that they looked closed, his mouth angling for mine. But the brush of his fingers against my nape sent shivers down my spine and pleasure cascading through my body.
One thing was for sure—I loved Josh’s touch.
And then in the next moment, his lips were on mine. Soft, gentle, ever so slightly gliding over my own. Prickles of awareness rushed through me, setting all my nerve endings alight with sensation. He tilted his head just a little and the delicate brush of his lips over mine changed, adding just a hint of pressure. It felt almost as if he’d been touching me all over my body, and my nipples grew hard.
This felt . . . dangerous. I had this crazy attraction to Josh that I couldn’t afford to nurture, and kissing—this soft, caressing tease of a lesson—was exactly what I didn’t need in my life right now.
I parted my lips to protest—and his tongue slid into my mouth.
I moaned, unable to help myself. His lips had parted, changed the intensity of the kiss, and the hand on the
