Lucien clenched his jaw and looked away. “With Mack’s betrayal, and the break-in and attack in your apartment,” he said quietly, “I can no longer trust anyone, not even my pack members, not to hurt you.”
A chill went down my spine. “You think there are others here who work with the Syndicate like Mack did?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and the frustration coloring his voice was apparent. “So I’d rather not take any chances.”
His words scared me a little. That he couldn’t trust his own pack members saddened me too. And also reminded me of something. “It was mentioned this morning that you’ve been the Alpha here for a short while,” I remarked.
Arctic-blue eyes found mine, filling with emotions I couldn’t decipher. “I used to be the Alpha of a werewolf pack in Paris,” he told me, and there was a hollow undertone to his voice. “This pack’s former Alpha died unexpectedly seven months ago, and since this pack lacked an Alpha, and I lacked a pack, the ASS—the American Supernatural Society—offered me the opportunity to become the Alpha here.”
There was gravity to his words, and also a tone of finality, as if he didn’t want to talk about it any longer—though his story made no sense to me. He said he led a pack in Paris, so how come he lacked a pack?
But seeing that his face was set in hard lines, I let it drop, and, to alleviate the heaviness, I mentioned something I’d been thinking for some time now. “Are they aware their name spellsass?”
To my utter relief, Lucien’s lips twitched in response, the distraught emotion receding from his eyes. “Well, in all fairness, everyone refers to them as A-S-S rather than the word itself.”
“It still begs the question, who came up with this name, and if they did it on purpose,” I noted with a wry grin and then stared when he let out a chuckle that seemed to surprise both him and me.
“Yes,” Lucien murmured, grinning now as he looked at me with dancing eyes. “You know, every country inhabited by Otherborne—which, you may be surprised, is not all countries—has an officialorganization like the ASS. For instance, France has theFédération Française du Surnaturel.”
His French popped up as he mentioned the organization name, and I was fascinated by that for a few moments before it occurred to me why he’d mentioned it, and I snorted. “So the initialism for that would be FFS.”
Lucien’s cheeky grin made me chuckle. “Perhaps the same person who coined ASS is at fault here too,” he said, gaze softening.
That reminded me of one other. “I think that person is at fault for more than just these two,” I said, giggling. “You mentioned the Syndicate’s Covert Umbral Neutralization Taskforce, otherwise known as CUNT.”
He laughed out loud now, and I watched, mesmerized, as I imprinted the sound and the visual of him laughing so hard into my brain. My heartbeat was loud and quick as pride filled me becauseIwas the one who made him laugh.
Stepping closer to me now, Lucien leaned forward, making me gasp quietly and freeze as he found my ear. “Remember the Council’s full title?” he murmured in a sexy, amused voice that made me shudder. “The Council for Regulation of Arcane Phenomena?”
I giggled again. “CRAP? Seriously?”
Lucien leaned back a little so his face was close to mine. Too close. That made me giggle once more, even before he murmured in that sexy voice of his, “There is also the organization Enoch and I belong to. The one that shares our objective of exposing ... you know.”
I definitely knew. “Okay, this organization name can’t be worse.”
He grinned wickedly. “The Imperative for Transparency and Symbiosis would beg to differ.”
“TITS.” I snorted and burst out laughing. He joined me, too, laughing at the silliness of the pseudodeliberate unfortunately initialized names.
After a few moments, our laughter subsided and we stared at one another, grinning.
And suddenly, his close proximity, his beautiful eyes, the soft wind blowing his auburn curls, and his ethereal beauty hit me like a truck. My grin disappeared, and I watched his follow suit as I stared at him, searching his gaze. “I like seeing you laugh,” I blurted in a whisper, throat clogged with emotion.
Before I could drown in those beautiful eyes of his that bored into mine as though he were looking straight into my soul, he murmured, “I like seeing you laugh too.”
My lips parted, my eyes widening at his mirroring confession. “Oh.”
His gaze hooded as it dipped to my lips, causing me to shudder uncontrollably. “Drew,” he murmured in a raspy voice, a hand suddenly cupping my cheek while the other arm curled around my waist. His palm pressed against the small of my back and pulled me toward him until my front was pasted against his. His fingers stretched over the small of my back, while his thumb traced my lower lip.
His touch felt like an electric shock to my nerves, and I shivered again as my hands instinctually grabbed the front of his shirt to keep me steady on my utterly weak knees. When my knuckles brushed against his exposed collarbone, his expression suddenly shifted, gaze flashing with something akin to hunger.
And in the daze I was in, all I could think wasKiss me. Please.
“Alpha?”
Both of us jumped, releasing one another as if we were on fire, and stepped back, putting much-needed distance between us. We snapped our heads toward the intruder and saw Callista, one of the Betas, standing there, glancing between us with a little furrow between her brows.
Lucien cleared his throat and straightened, squaring his shoulders. “Head in,” he said, now in an authoritative, flat voice, without a hint of the former moment of carefree humor. “We’ll be right there.”