VON

Here she comes…

I leaned against my bike trying to look far more relaxed and casual than I was feeling. As Cassandra angrily marched towards me, I felt my blood start to heat up.

If I weren’t such a strong alpha, I would have given into my wolf and torn off that flimsy robe she was wearing with my teeth, but I dug my nails into my palms to control myself. I had to. The alpha of the pack has to be stronger than anyone, even his own wolf, and if I didn’t, we’d both be in trouble.

Cassandra paused several yards away from me, as if she knew that moving any closer would put her in danger. I smirked. She and I both knew that it would.

Her eyes were fiery as she glared at me. “What the hell are you doing here? Are you stalking me?”

I had to bite down to prevent a smile from forming. “I wasn’t stalking you. I was just…observing.”

Cassandra scoffed. “Right. And how long were you…observing me?”

She’s hot as hell when she’s angry, I thought.

The longer she glared at me, the more I thought about how fun it would be to tame her. I was sure she would purr like a kitten beneath me. All the things I wanted to do with her ran through my mind, but I couldn’t act on any of it. Regardless of how much I wanted her, I forced myself to play it cool and shrugged.

“Long enough,” I said.

“For what?” she asked, staring blankly at me.

I ignored her question and fell back into my thoughts. I didn’t think that it was possible that she had sold me the wrong potion. I had been watching her, and I saw she had taken time out of her day to feed a stray dog and even chatted up some of her customers. There was no way that Cassandra had tricked me.

When Maggie ran Cookieville things were more transactional. She would barely grunt a few words even to those customers who knew her best. Cassandra was more social, but she was still a witch. Even if she was a smoking hot one.

I stepped closer to her and saw her eyes betray a titillating sliver of fear. It only served to turn me on even more, whether she knew it or not. My body yearned to envelop hers and I could sense that the feeling was mutual. I had to keep the conversation going. I needed to understand what was happening to me.

Looking down at Cassandra, I made sure to stand up as straight as I could while placing a scowl on my face. The only way I would get the truth out of her was to make myself seem as menacing as possible.

“You used a lust potion on me,” I said.

Cassandra started to say something in her defense before that fire returned to her eyes. I had pissed her off. Good.

“What?” she asked.

I snarled. “I asked you to help me forget. Instead…”

The swell of her breasts caught my eye and I lost track of what I was going to say. The tie keeping her robe together loosened, driving my wolf crazy.

“What did you do to me?” I asked, thickly.

CASSIE

The nerve of this asshole, I thought.

I wasn’t sure if it was better to slap him or run away from him. My indecision rooted me to the spot as the werewolf brought his eyes back to mine and shook his head in disgust like he hadn’t just been staring at my boobs.

“I knew I couldn’t trust a witch,” he said. “Damn witches, all the same.”

Wow.

His words rendered me speechless. Tried as I might, I couldn’t string a simple sentence together. He was standing way too close, and I couldn’t think about anything other than how I had seen him the night before: his delicious body splattered with fresh blood.

I looked away, hoping to hide the flush on my cheeks. The werewolf reached out and placed his fingers beneath my chin to lift my gaze back up to his. His hand was as rough as his voice, and I yearned to feel it all over my body.

“Answer me,” he said.

My mind was clouded with conflicting thoughts as he forced me to look at him. I wanted to rage at him for making such a ridiculous assumption. But at the same time, I realized that he didn’t need to force me to look at him. I wanted to look at him. I couldn’t help but want to feast on the sight of him.

Is he right? I wondered.

Had I somehow messed up the night before and given him the wrong potion? I had been so flustered by him that it wasn’t totally implausible. And all the vials did look more or less the same. I could have easily given him the wrong one. He had seemed so relieved after chugging the vial I gave him that I figured he had taken the right one. But maybe I had been too optimistic after all.

Or had I?

While I could have made a mistake, why the hell was he accusing me of giving him a lust potion? It seemed way too specific and even a little far-fetched. Not a single customer I had served that day had asked for a lust potion and as I had gone through my aunt’s spell books, I hadn’t seen any special mention of them.

I wasn’t sure what he was hoping to accomplish by accusing me. Even if I had made a mistake and given him the wrong potion, I would have been an idiot to admit it. Look at what he had done to that would-be boarder.

I locked eyes with him and decided to meet fire with fire. If he thought he was going to come around and bully me for shits and giggles, then he had another thing coming. I didn’t care if he was the hottest man I had ever laid eyes on. I wasn’t going to let him push me around.

“So, you’re unhappy? You think I sold you the wrong potion. Fine,” I said. “What do you want? A refund?”

VON

And just like that, I was at a loss for words.

While I had been hoping to bully Cassandra into telling me the truth, she had seen right through me and faced my challenge with one of her own.

Shit.

Her eyes, even as she mocked me, were mesmerizing. They shone like emeralds beneath the summer sun and begged me to dive into them. If I had been able to, I would have let her stare at me for the rest of the night.

“Well?” she asked. “What do you want?”

It was a good question. I had raced back to Cookieville hoping to confront her and determine whether she could be trusted or not. But I knew there was more to it than that.

What do I want? I wondered.

Why had I bothered to come back and watch her all day from the safety and anonymity of the woods only to reveal myself to her when I had seen her in the upstairs bathroom window? I could have easily slipped away and remained undetected. But I had chosen to let her see me.

Why?

My wolf howled in my head. He knew damn well what we both wanted, and I wouldn’t be able to play pretend for much longer. I had been an idiot. I shouldn’t have come back to see Cassandra. It was a sign of weakness. Even if she hadn’t sold me a lust potion, whatever she had given me had made me weak.

For her.

My eyes drifted away from her mesmerizingly defiant ones and down to her throat before pausing at the swell of her breasts again. My imagination ran wild with the tantalizing thoughts of the secrets that lay just beneath her robe.

I want her. I want her body beneath mine, writhing in ecstasy, I thought.

As I consumed her with my gaze, Cassandra continued to stare up at me. She hadn’t flinched or backed away from me. Gone was the fear that she had shown me the night before when she still wore the guise of an old crone. Her stance was proud, and her eyes were fierce as she glared at me.

What had changed in her?

I was dying to find out and was moments away from doing just that when I heard the sound of a car pulling into the lot. It came to a stop and the door opened. Annoyed by the interruption, I turned to bark at the asshole who clearly couldn’t tell time.

“The bakery’s closed!” I snarled.

The driver paused and looked at me for a long moment before a flash of recognition came over her face. She broke into a grin.

“Von? Is that you?”