Page 17 of Wicked Ways

Okay, he was still pissed. “I shouldn’t have left last night.”

A shrug. And for a second, a flash of—hurt? pain?—appeared in his eyes but vanished when he blinked. “Hey, I’m the big, bad beast. You were smart to run from me.”

No, she hadn’t been. “Shifter.” She said the word softly, testing it.

His smile vanished.

“That’s what the vampire called you.”

“Yeah, well, I guess your date had come up against my kind before.” He held up his hands, and claws, fiercely sharp and long, had replaced his fingernails. “These are usually a pretty good giveaway, as are the teeth.” His lips pulled back to show just a glimpse of a very sharp fang.

He was trying to scare her. Miranda kept her chin up and took a step forward.

Cain dropped his hands. “Demons can sprout claws, too, but your vamp must have known that I wasn’t a demon.”

“Uh, demons?” Just how many supernatural creatures were there?

“Yeah, demons.” He whistled softly. “Lots of them walking the streets. Using glamour to blend in with the humans. And those bastards can get pretty strong, especially the level tens.” A pause. “Not all of the demons are real threats, though. The weak ones, level ones or twos, hell, they can’t cause much damage at all.”

Right. Good to know.

Demons. He’d just told her that demons were real. She shook her head. “How many…” She licked her lips, swallowed, and asked, “How many of your kind are out there?” Another tentative step forward.

A roll of one powerful shoulder. “There are hundreds of thousands of shifters. Men and women who can change into animals. Small. Big. Deadly. Of course, then there are the charmers, the djinn, the⁠—”

Her hand lifted. “Charmers?”

“The ones who talk to animals.”

She blinked. “The djinn? Would that be like—what? Genies?”

“Something like that. But it sure takes a hell of a lot more than some old dusty bottle to contain their power.”

Okay, too much information. Her head was seriously starting to spin. “How can they all be real?” Hushed words. It was too wild, too incredible.

“I’m real.” A shrug. “They’re real, too. And the ones I’ve told you about so far? They are just the tip of the supernatural iceberg.”

And she was the Titanic, going down, fast. Miranda took a deep breath. She needed to focus. At that moment, she didn’t want to find out about every supernatural creature that was strolling around the earth.

She wanted to know about Cain. “A shifter,” she repeated quietly, turning the topic back to him. She’d already seen his face change a bit. “What kind of animal do you become?” When he’d attacked the vampire, he’d looked positively predatory. His cheekbones had sharpened. Eyes glowed. “A wolf?” Ohmygosh, like a werewolf?

He threw back his head and laughed. “Ah, baby, relax. I’m not one of those psychotics.”

So the wolves were psychotic. Nice mental note for her. She took another small step toward him. Her body hovered near the couch now. Just a foot or two away from him. Cain was close enough to touch.

And she did want to touch.

Her gaze swept down his body. Over the sculpted muscles of his chest. Down the rock-hard abs. Over the material of his boxers, material that was stretched tight to accommodate his thick arousal.

Her nipples tightened as a wave of yearning swept through her. She’d felt that arousal last night, but the barrier of clothing had been between them, as it was now.

Miranda didn’t want anything between them.

“You looking to walk on the wild side tonight?” His voice snapped like a whip.

Her stare jerked back to his. Found him glaring at her. “Cain?”

“You come out here, wearing a shirt that’s so thin it shows your nipples, your sex smelling so good that it makes me ache, and then you look at me like you could eat me alive.”