“Why? So you can better imagine them later?” I stick my tongue out at her before sipping my latte. Sheesh, now it’s cold.
“Humor me.”
“Um, tall? Leather, denim, muscles. One was really big and another had a bunch of scars. The last guy had these really green eyes and was—”
“Missing his hand?”
I frown at her. “How would you know that?”
“Don’t turn around unless you want to find out.”
Crap.
Motion behind me reflects as a shadow at the edge of my glasses. I can sense them looming over me, even when I’m wishing as hard as I can that they’re not.
“These seats taken?” asks Alpha’s deep voice. It must be all that chest cavity to resonate through.
“Yes,” I say. I’m not going to have my comfort lunch ruined by these guys.
Nicky’s eyes are as wide as saucers, and if she wasn’t so loyal, I bet she’d already be pulling out the chairs.
Alpha flips a chair around and straddles the back of it as he sits. I make a point of not meeting his eyes, but Nicky is like a deer caught in his sexy headlights. She makes a tiny noise when the chair creaks under his weight. Ripper drops in on the other side, taking a seat between us. Blade remains standing behind him with his arms crossed over his chest.
“What are you doing here? I didn’t just mean out of my house, I mean out of my life.” I put so much frost into my voice that you could go ice skating on my words.
“Well, that wasn’t completely clear to me,” says Ripper with smooth confidence. He turns to Alpha. “What about you?”
“Can’t say that it was. We got off on the wrong foot and we’re sorry about that, honey. Let’s try this again.”
“Not interested.”
“Out of our hands” says Blade. “We’re here anyway.”
“Put it back into your hands!”
Ripper holds up his stump with a frown. “Is that a joke?”
“What? No! I—”
He cracks up. “That never gets old.”
“You are such an asshole.”
“I’m sorry. Humor is one of my coping mechanisms.” Ripper wistfully glances down at his wrist.
“I…”
“Stop riling her up,” Blade growls. “We’re not here to make fucking friends.”
Obviously.
I tease Nicky about her love of Romance books, but my own guilty pleasures are the ones with dragons, magic and elves sweeping innocent human princesses away on lusty adventures. It’s annoying that if you gave Blade pointed ears, he could cosplay as my current book boyfriend. Strong, but lean, with high cheekbones, long, lustrous black hair and deep, blue eyes. He’s even got the dangerous aura and holier-than-thou attitude down pat, but in the real world, it’s going to take more than great eyes to make me forgive him for jumping me in my bedroom.
“I’m Nicky,” my friend peeps up, looking back and forth between the three of them like a kid on Halloween who just found the house giving out full size candy bars.
“Alpha.” He puts out his hand and she takes it way too enthusiastically.
“I’m Ripper.”