Page 53 of King’s Kismet

“Don’t wake up the beast?” York added with a disapproving expression.

“Avoid the wrath of an angel?” Stone continued, rolling his eyes at Palmer.

“Oh,” Sloane sang. “This one is my favorite… You shouldn’t play games with the Devil.”

“Fine,” the mage grouched. “We can exchange the keys for the book.”

I observed the amusement roll across Sloane’s features before I asked, “What do the keys unlock?”

“I still want to know what the book is called,” Novak mumbled around a mouth full of popcorn.

“You don’t read,” Stone pointed out.

“Nope,” the vampire agreed. “But I want to find the contact information for the author so I can thank them for our afternoon of entertainment.”

Briggs sighed. “Don’t do that.”

“Fine,” Sloane agreed, her eyes narrowing suspiciously at the mage as the keys fell into her hand.

“It’s a cock cage,” Novak mock-whispered to us. “That’s going to fuck up his whole day.”

York snorted. “Somehow, that doesn’t seem fair.”

“It’s Sloane math,” Briggs said, tipping his beer bottle at the druid. “It never makes sense. Two plus two multiplied by—”

Novak groaned. “Don’t.”

Palmer passed Lo a book as she dropped the keys into his hand. Then the mage disappeared in a hurry.

She smiled down at the cover, but her happiness was short-lived.

“That’s the first one, you jackass,” she snarled. “I finished this one already.”

Lo dropped the book in my lap as she stepped into the void. The mage’s laughter floated through the house, though I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

I held the book up, showing the guys as I read the title. “Return by NV Roez.”

“Yeah. Totally going to thank her.” Novak leaned his head back, cackling at the ceiling. “She gave him the wrong keys.”

More Humid than Hell

The mage had muted me.

Yes. The mage.

He was on my shit list today. And I wasn’t calling him my mage until he gave me back my voice.

I had spent the better part of an hour trying to unweave the magic on my mouth, but that fucking asshole had worked in all kinds of triggers to let him know I was tampering with his spell.

So far, I had croaked like a toad, meowed, and barked. What I really wanted to do was growl at him and pounce. He was testing my patience, drawing that line of fight or fuck so thin I thought I might truly kill him this time.

As my ire grew, Briggs put me in his lap, banding his arms around my waist to stop me from lunging. It wasn’t a terrible idea, but my wolf wouldn’t be enough to hold me back when I finally popped.

My guys—and the mage—were currently talking about... Well. I didn’t know. I stopped fucking with the magic to see if the conversation was interesting.

“Which is totally fine,” Novak was saying. “I love watching her. Fuck her in any and all the positions, but watching you two as animals?”

What the actual fuck were they talking about?