“Okay, we'll check it out when Abel brings his guys. After breakfast.”
*****
He made a mountain of pancakes, happy to see Ivy demolish four of them despite her uneasy awakening earlier. He delighted in the sounds she made with each bite, proclaiming they were so sweet and rich, they didn't even need butter, but she wasn't stingy with the warm syrup.
Watching the way she licked it off her lips and fingers made his dick so hard he worried he wouldn't be able to walk in a straight line. Abel and his guys were going to give him hell once they showed up and saw what a state he was in.
Ivy was in the process of swirling her tongue around the tines of her fork when she suddenly went still. Her eyes glazed for a moment before a beautiful smile split her face. She even went so far as to bounce in her seat with excitement, her breasts bouncing right along with.
“I feel them coming!” she whooped, his brain momentarily stuck on bouncing breasts and coming. Uriah made an inarticulate sound, sort of a—muwah?—jolting at the sound of her fork clattering on her plate and the screech of the stool legs on the floor as she scooted back. “Four people! No! Six!”
Ivy got up and danced around on her toes like an excited little fox, her long skirt playing around her bare feet.
Uriah hadn't thought about her outfit much, except to appreciate how the dark green tank top draped across her breasts and left a wide strip of her sexy, soft belly on display.
He hadn't thought about how the lace of her bra might peek above the scooped neckline as she bounced, or that he would suddenly be so vehemently jealous that Abel and his lions would see her like this.
It wasn't like him, but Uriah still got up and came around to snatch her up. Something in his expression tipped her off to his mood because her eyes went wide before he slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her until she went limp and clung to him.
She looked dazed and breathless when he pulled back, but it wasn't enough. He chaffed the delicate skin of her throat with his unshaven cheeks, unable to keep from acting like a complete brute when he yanked down the edge of her tank and the cups of her lacy bra.
He latched onto one of her petal pink nipples and sucked hard, flattening the tender tip against the roof of his mouth, the little squeal of surprise she made bleeding into a beautiful moan.
She clutched at his head, coming up on her toes to offer him whatever he wanted, which only spurred him on to suckle harder. Until petal pink turned to rosy red, and she panted softly, trembling from head to toe with lust and need.
He heard the lions’ footsteps on the gravel drive and their muffled voices. Uriah carefully tucked her breasts back into her bra and righted her shirt, touching apologetic kisses to her flushed cheeks. “I'm sorry.”
Ivy's lashes fluttered in confusion. “What for?”
“I'm a complete asshole because I can't stand the idea of Abel and those damn lions seeing how beautiful you are first thing in the morning, all bouncing tits and happiness without my scent all over you.”
Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully, her chest heaving with her unsteady breaths. She still had a grip on his arms, ignoring the loud banging on the front door. “Bouncing tits and happiness?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm,” she said noncommittally, but there was amusement sparkling in her eyes at least. “Are you going to answer the door, or should I?”
“I got it.”
Uriah made it almost to the door before Ivy called out to him. When he turned around, she pointed at him imperiously, then down at herself. “You made a mess that I expect you to clean up. Later.”
His mouth positively watered with hunger, and he regretted having called Abel to come to the house so early. “With pleasure.”
Ivy winked at him, and in response, his dick thumped against the back of his zipper. “Should'a waited to call Abel,” he muttered darkly.
*****
“Let me get this straight. Your chick is wigged out because of a flower?” One of Abel's guys, Uriah had already forgotten his name, stared at the oddly shaped flower with an expression of extreme skepticism.
Uriah cracked his knuckles, envisioning the enforcer on the ground, bleeding profusely. To his surprise, Abel turned to his guy and silently glared with such menacing heat, the lion took a step back and muttered, “I'll go sniff around.”
“You do that,” Abel growled, staring after the man until he disappeared into the trees. Once he was gone, his tone gentled and he looked at Ivy with a quick smile of apology. “Is it poisonous?”
Standing at his side, twisting her fingers in her skirt, Ivy shook her head. “No.”
“And you're sure this wasn't in the seeds you spread around?”
“I'm sure. The garden shop doesn't carry anything like it. Queen of the Night is a tropical flower; it doesn't thrive here. The flower opens at night and blooms until dawn, then wilts. This one is... perfect.” Ivy waved her hand to punctuate her point.
Abel nodded in understanding, rubbing at his jaw while he examined the flower from all angles, picking up a stick to poke at it. The flower snapped open like it was spring-loaded, which made all of them jump back.
Uriah went so far as to throw his arm out and shove Ivy behind him, shielding her in case something terrible came flying out, but other than the petals opening to reveal red letters written across the silky white spears, nothing happened.
“Don't trust your little ones?” Abel read aloud, turning to look at them like Uriah or Ivy had the answer. “What the hell does that mean?”
Uriah shook his head, but Ivy looked pale and disturbed. “It means I wasn't wrong or imagining things. I'm going to the coven house. I need to work in my garden.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Don't trust your little ones.
The warning haunted her, and not even the soothing pull and tear of removing weeds from her herb garden could dispel the churning fear and uncertainty rioting inside her.
There was something she hadn't mentioned to Uriah this morning because she hadn't quite trusted the feeling.
It was a strange thing to realize she might not have been able to use the magic she was born with, but her senses weren't so dull that she couldn't feel different kinds of magic all around her.
She'd sensed the wild animal magic in Uriah, and the other shifters around town. She’d sensed the magic her coven sisters built as they called upon Goddess. Early this morning, she’d sensed the ripple along the soles of her feet that had woken her out of a sound and peaceful sleep, pulling her from the warm safety of Uriah's embrace.
Don't trust your little ones.
Le Doux's letter warned Ivy not to trust anything the Fae said, and there was no doubt in her mind the person responsible for the warning via-flower was Fae. Even in sleep, Ivy felt the tickle of magic so similar to her own.
That was the truth of it. Like the ground flexing beneath her feet when she purposefully used her own magic for the first time, Ivy felt the earth reach out toward her with the gentlest of caresses to wake her. It hadn't felt like a warning so much as a whisper of kinship.
The flower had been left inches from the boundary of the wards erected by the coven, white, perhaps as a peace offering? Or was it just another pretty lie? A foolish hope that maybe, just maybe her brother knew about her and was trying to help her.