Cheekbones is a man of action more than words. Soon as we're done with the clerk, he yanks me out of the store by the front of my hoodie. Less than three seconds later, he's found a suitable creepy alleyway and slams me against a brick wall. I gasp for air, winded. My Grave life of poor necromancy puns flashes before my eyes. My plastic bags drop to the ground. Cheekbones pushes his tongue down my throat. Once I get past the mixed signals, this situation is a hundred percent better than it sounds.

Cheekbones can kiss, for one.

"I like- I like this a- lot uh- lot. Wow. A lot better than what I was planning," I say, panting against his mouth between the fierce kisses. My brain doesn't remember what I was planning, so I tangle my fingers in the hair at the back of his neck. He looks at me with dark eyes and bites my lip. "Your back on the wall. Now." My breath hits his neck and Cheekbones guy cannot switch our positions fast enough.

As I slide myself between his legs, Cheekbones makes an appreciative noise. Unzipping his jacket results in a second that drips in promises for five nights at the sinhouse. He makes another porn noise for my hands up the hem of his illegal form-fitting shirt.

I am halfway to NSFW territory and there isn't even a dead body in sight. All things considered, I have no idea where to proceed from here.

I manage to comment on this. Cheekbones responds by pressing his entire body against me, mouth hot, heavy, and enthusiastic.

When I have to pull away to breathe a fifth time, I push him away with one palm on his chest so I don't die from suffocation. Cheekbones allows it. He settles his head and back against the brick wall.

He looks at me like I'm the full moon. I look at him like he's a porn star.

"What do they teach you here?" I demand because I was getting the impression he'd been shy or inexperienced. Both of which, by now, I know are very incorrect. "How to trick-seduce everyone within a five-kilometre radius?"

Cheekbones gives a breathless laugh at the expression on my face. Eyes half-lidded and lips half-parted, he looks at me, thoughtful. "I know some things," he says. As if he's offering to put himself in charge of whatever our mouths should be up to for the next six hours. He lifts his chin up, exposing his throat. "Do you?"

"That you're a werewolf?" I say, pulling at the front of my hoodie. "Figured that when the claws came out." He'd torn it a little, once he'd realized that I was also on board to play tonsil hockey with negotiable timeouts.

Cheekbones doesn't blush but he grins, filthier than me digging up graves, opening coffins, and cussing out screaming, trespassing necrophiliacs at four the morning. "You want to know what happened to your cousin, right? I can help you. What's your name?" he asks me. "I'm--"

"What are you doing?"

At the front of the alleyway, Lady In Charge from the funeral stares at us in horror. Bushy Fur in Front is still her version of a classy look. Beside her is the clerk from the convenience store.

Right...small town. Small snitch town.

Cheekbones doesn't react at first. Then he stiffens. He yelps. He shoves me away. "It's--it's not what it looks like. I can explain--"

"Girlfriend?"

"What?" He's tucking his shirt back in, trying to straighten himself and his hair out. He looks between her and me with growing panic at my expression. "No, no, she's my--"

My, Interrupted yells out in a guttural, half-roar for Cheekbones. He flinches. She shouts something not in English that makes Cheekbones shrink into his shoulders. Cheekbones responds back. He's shrieked into submission. There's a lot of screeching. Most of it is one-sided.

"Sorry," Cheekbones mumbles to me, and promptly ditches me in the alleyway with the very angry, but very pretty lady in unidentified fur trim. The clerk follows after him. Blue Eyes storms towards me and my disheveled being in her heels and her fashionable bob.

"So." I take a step back from Carnivore Fur. The silver nails are in one of the plastic bags. If I dive in, she might land either a bite or claw to my waist. The mace can isn't silver, but I can bluff. "Nice weather we're having--"

"You," she snarls, " stay away from my son."

"OH," I say. This changes everything. "SON. He's your SON." That is so much better than boyfriend. That means Cheekbones and I can kiss more later. Also, she looks ungodly young to be a mom of a son that well grown. Is that a werewolf thing?

"Unholy things like you shouldn't mix with the living," she hisses.

"I'm alive, actually, even if I'm not that holy. Unless you're talking about my cousin--"

Her eyes glint a red sheen as she reaches out with now very long, sharp nails and grasps me by my throat. She slams me into the wall. "Finish your business and get out of town. I looked the other way because he begged me at the church, but I won't stand for you seducing him with your hip gyrations."

"My what?" I almost choke to death with laughter in my shock. "My...hip gyrations?" How long was she even watching? What was she even watching? Her grip tightens. I wheeze. "Sure. Yes. Of course. No gyrating of the hips."

"We have rules here," she tells me, nostrils flaring at my attitude. "I don't care how it is where you come from, but we have a code. Your Clan will be hearing from my Pack."

Double Uh-Oh. "Does- Does it have to go that far up? I mean, we only made out--"

She drops me to the ground and tosses something right where my head used to be. Alarmed, my hands cover my head, but nothing happens. I peer up. Black tendrils of familiar thick shaped fabric float down. One lands in my hand.

"This is your second warning, corpseraiser," Werewolf Mom spits at me as I stare at the confetti that used to be my hat. "You have three days. Either leave this town whole, or in pieces. Make your choice."