I Bite She Sucks, Bloom, Penelope [recommended reading TXT] 📗

lived my whole life in a bubble to come out of it and start catching the hots for the first man to pay attention to me—especially considering this "man" only loosely qualified as a member of my own species.

No. The inter-species thing wasn't the big hurdle. The fact that he was rude, abrasive, and a jerkface was the biggest hurdle.

He wasn't the charming prince I'd always daydreamed about rescuing me from my germ-free castle. It was more like the hot pool guy asking if you wanted to sneak out and smoke a joint on the roof with him. Hardly a sparkling romantic fantasy.

So I needed to stop paying attention to how nice it felt to be held by him. I also needed to stop sneakily trying to take mental snapshots of the way his body felt against me and saving them for later. That was absolutely not smart.

Then again, it hardly mattered. Riggs the werewolf was about to get a front row seat to my condition. He'd see what kind of burden I was on everybody around me, and he'd run for the hills. Just like my dad had run from my mom in the end.

That, or the shadowy figures I saw following us on the rooftops would kill us first.

The loopiness was really settling in. I laughed, pointing to them. “Look!” I said. “Vampires!” I thought it was a hallucination, but Riggs' grip on me tightened as soon as he looked where I was pointing.

"Shit," he said.

12

Riggs

I couldn't tell how many were up there. All I knew was that we weren't alone. We hadn't been from the start, but the vamps on the rooftops hadn't made a move yet.

The pale fuckers were always slinking around on rooftops. These ones seemed to know my reputation because they hadn't made a move when we left The Wet Flea. They'd just followed. But I'd only sensed two or three before. Now I could see half a dozen, maybe more.

That, and now Sylvie couldn't move on her own. It'd be a lot harder to try to get away when I had to carry her.

We were close, though. Maybe another minute of jogging and we'd be there, but I could tell Maisey was struggling to keep up. She'd looked fit, but something was wrong with the human. She seemed to only notice Sylvie's condition, but I'd been picking up something with the older sister, too. It was hard to tell exactly what was wrong with her because she still reeked of vampire. I guessed some blood had gotten its way under her clothes. Thankfully, it was probably subtle enough that the howlers wouldn’t notice and cause trouble for us.

They were both a fucking mess, and I was the idiot who had decided to rope myself into their problems.

Dumbass.

"Carry the angry one," I called over my shoulder to Fang.

"He's asking me for help!" Fang shouted. "You got it, Captain Riggs."

"Don't call me that," I shouted.

I heard a brief yelp of surprise and indignance, then confirmed that Fang had Maisey over his shoulder, ass up. Gravy Boat was easily keeping up with me—unfortunately.

We were just about to reach The Wet Flea when a lone figure dropped from the darkness to land in the street in front of us. He was tall and thin, with silver hair and a cocky, arrogant resting face.

"Lazarus," I said.

"Riggs," he replied, mouth twisting around my name. “We meet again.”

“You’re not on neutral ground this time, asshole. Either get out of my way, or this will be the last time we meet.”

"I was delighted when I found out you were the werewolf who decided to meddle. But I'm prepared to make you an offer. Walk away now and hand us the girls. Do this, and I'll consider our conflict resolved. Continue to resist, and... well." He spread his hands, as if to say, "rules are rules."

I met his icy blue eyes. "Fuck you."

Lazarus smiled, but it didn't touch the rest of his face. "I was hoping you would say that. But I do have to ask. Why these women? What are they to you?"

"The enemy of my enemy, or some shit like that.”

He stared at me with a look on his face I didn't like. Then he angled his chin down, narrowing his eyes at me as amusement twinkled in them. "You don't know, do you?"

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn't see the advantage in admitting that. "I know all I need to know."

"Yeah," Fang said, a little too loudly. "And Riggs will fuck you up if you don't get out of our way. Any friends you brought, too. He'll fuck them up. Then he'll piss on their corpses!"

"Fang," I muttered.

Gravy Boat took a step in front of me and hissed at Lazarus, arching his ugly, wrinkled ass up in the air. Maybe the little bastard wasn't all bad, after all.

"Last chance," Lazarus said. "Hand them over, or this gets ugly."

"It got ugly the moment you decided to show that thing you call a face in front of us," Fang said.

"Fang," I growled. "Would you please shut the fuck up?"

Lazarus was motionless. I braced myself for him to attack or try to grab the girls. I had Sylvie clutched tight. In that moment, I realized I cared about keeping her safe in a different way than I cared about keeping her sister, Maisey, safe.

I didn't have time to unpack that. I also didn't plan to let anything happen to either of them. I felt my wolf stirring inside, readying himself to shift into action if needed. It seemed my wolf shared in my protectiveness towards Sylvie. Or maybe that’s where it was coming from in the first place.

But Lazarus finally tilted his head to the side, then smiled. "Another time, perhaps."

I sensed a new presence beside me and saw that Felix had come from somewhere and was now looming behind us. I had to give him credit, the big bastard did strike an imposing image,