trust him. A hound, one of the castes most people tended to avoid.
Many of the ?sir, particularly the ones who didn’t deal with the hunt, regarded hounds as less than human. And while some women saw that as a challenge in a tame-the-beast sort of way, Raquel wasn’t like that. She liked him. She wanted to be his friend. There was something incredibly simple and appealing about that. Or it would be simple, if he could only look at her the same way. As a friend. Because even if she wasn’t engaged to Christian, a friend was all Rocky could ever be.
Audrey was fun, though. She had the same sense of humor as Rocky along with the same kind of openness and honesty. She was pretty, like Rocky. And smart too.
He tried to will himself to be interested in Audrey. Not a serious interest, just something to distract himself from the misguided attraction he felt toward her sister. But the fact that he was trying to do that made him feel like an idiot, a sleazy, hopeless, desperate idiot. He liked Audrey in the same way he liked Grace or the twins. Having Audrey sit next to him on the floor eating pizza while he flipped open his sketchbook to the runes he’d sketched earlier only drove home how stupid he’d been to think there was nothing weird going on between him and Rocky. That he could invite her to his house and help her with her problem and not want more. His attraction wasn’t going away. He couldn’t keep ignoring it, but he didn’t know what the hell to do about it either.
Audrey craned her neck to get a look at the sketches.
“Do you mind?” he asked pointedly.
“Not really, no.” She set her chin on his shoulder. “Wow, Fen, you do good work. I didn’t think hounds had the patience for this kind of thing.”
Being a hound was a little like having ADD. All your senses were sharper, but the human brain could only handle so much. When he was in human form, it was hard to block everything out. Drawing had always helped him focus, like withdrawing to a quiet room inside his head. Gardening brought him to that same place.
He sometimes imagined it must have been easier to deal with being a hound when times were slower, just as he imagined the sexual ramifications were easier to navigate when society had been more traditional and even unhappy marriages lasted a lifetime. But possibly not.
“Some have the patience for it,” he said. “Some don’t. It depends on the hound.”
“Well, you clearly have an eye for detail.” Audrey tilted her head. “Those are the runes she gave you?”
“She” being Rocky, who’d left to find the bathroom and grab another beer five minutes ago. Because more of the drunk and chatty Raquel sitting cross-legged on his couch with that warm and sort of goofy smile on her face was exactly what he needed right now.
“These are the runes Rocky wants to try. Your witch provided the arrangement. I’m just making it pretty.”
Audrey gave a funny laugh and he turned his head. “What?”
“I’ve never heard anyone else call her Rocky. I only do it because it drives Mom nuts.”
“Sorry,” he murmured and went back to his work. “I didn’t realize I was stepping on your toes.”
“You’re not.” He could feel her gaze settle on him. “Why
He glanced up and found Audrey studying him with a frown on her face, waiting for an answer. “Rocky suits her.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, but something about his answer seemed to unsettle her. He shook his head and returned his attention to the sketch. The runes should be connected, he thought, in one unbroken chain, but he didn’t know if that would change the effect they had on Raquel’s magic.
Audrey pointed at the paper. “It worries me that she’s adding that one.”
“To amplify her power.”
“Power’s not her problem.” Audrey sat back. “She’s the most powerful witch Kathy’s ever come across. I think she needs something to blunt her power, you know. Otherwise it’s like trying to douse a match with a fire hose.”
Fen stopped to consider that. Rocky came up behind him and knelt on his other side. “I don’t want to give up my power. I want to learn to use it.”
She shifted closer to examine the drawing. The scent of sunshine and magic surrounded him. Her hair brushed his ear. Her breast, full and tempting, gave slightly when she leaned against him. He closed his eyes and set the notepad down on his leg so she wouldn’t notice the tremble in his hand. “That line—” she pointed, “— there’s too much of a curve to it. It needs to be straight.”
He corrected it as she studied the rest. He wished she’d move away. He could do this for her. The tattoo, he’d help her with that. Hopefully, it would do what she wanted it to. She could replace the wards herself and take her place as clan witch, take her place as Christian’s wife. Fen knew she felt the need to prove herself. Like a cracked pot that needed to be glued back together. There was nothing wrong with her so far as he could see. She let other people tie her up with their expectations, tie her into knots, just like Christian had always done to win his father’s approval.
She didn’t need to be fixed. Neither had Christian. Maybe the two of them could...help each other see that. They’d marry, heal. Be happy.
Fen very badly wanted them both to be happy.
“Can I overlap the runes? Or join them?”
She hesitated. “Best not. I’m not exactly sure what that would do. It
He nodded and adjusted a line or two. He held it up. “What do you think?”
She sat next to him on the carpet, her knee bumping against his, and rolled up her shirtsleeve. “Let’s do it.”
“Tonight?”
“Why not? I need to know. I won’t do anything hard. I’ll...I’ll reheat the pizza. I could practically manage that now without any help.”
He hesitated, considered the set of her shoulders and the mulish glint to her eyes. “You’re drunk.”
She straightened and gave him her best sober look, which wouldn’t have fooled a second grader. He sighed. There wasn’t much danger in this. He was using washable marker for the test run and could disable the runes with a single swipe from the damp rag on the table.
“Okay, give me your hand.”
She leaned over to set her forearm on the table but he grabbed it instead, pulling it across his lap. She inhaled sharply and he looked up at her, but she stared at her arm. A blush slowly crept up her neck. He could feel the flutter of her pulse through her wrist. He would have noticed her reaction to his touch even if he hadn’t been able to scent it on her skin. Arousal. It hit him hard. Unrequited lust was one thing.
He tightened his grip and bent his head, focused his attention on the art. It was a simple design but important to get the runes exactly right. It would be easy to write a curse onto a person if you didn’t know what you were doing. He hoped to hell they knew what they were doing.
He could see the veins clearly through her fair skin. She had freckles everywhere, across her nose and forehead, on the tops of the lovely breasts he shouldn’t ever have noticed. There were no freckles on the inside of her arm, only soft skin and delicate, fascinatingly feminine musculature. A wrist so narrow he could snap it by flexing his hand and a pulse that raced beneath his fingertips. If she’d set out to purposefully torture him, she couldn’t have done better.
Done.
He released her. He and Audrey sat staring at her for a moment and when they were certain she wasn’t going to explode or anything, Audrey said, “Well?”
Rocky rotated her arm to look at the design. “It tingles a bit on my skin, but I can’t feel the difference inside.”
“Try it.” He lifted his chin to indicate the pizza. At the edge of his control, he needed her to leave soon. He hoped to hell this worked. If it did, he’d only need to see her again like this once more to place the permanent tattoo. And then he could make himself scarce until the wedding.
She flipped open the cardboard lid and squinted at the pizza with the intensity of a starving pit bull. It should have been comical, but both he and Audrey held their breaths until the cheese began to bubble. Audrey made a yip
