Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3)(79)

Rising on tiptoe, she kissed her golden wolf’s jaw. Stubble pricked her lips, the sensation making her nipples tingle. He was scowling as he wiped off the remnants of her tears. “Since Vashti is more comfortable with the leopards and Renault has run with his tail between his legs, we’re free tonight—and the festival’s going through the night today because a massive BlackSea-run cruise ship came in just after midnight. Let’s go play.”

Warmth emanated outward from Memory’s heart. A different guilt cut at her—that she should feel such happiness while Yuri lay dying and Abbot was in surgery, but Yuri himself had told her to embrace life. Freedom is a gift, he’d said to her late one evening. Never take it for granted. Never waste it. Live.

Alexei took a step back and held out his hand. Swallowing the worry lodged in her throat, Memory held her friend’s words close as she accepted the invitation. She and Alexei had only gone a few steps when someone whistled from across the street. “How’d you get such a pretty date, wolf?” a male voice heckled. “Bet you had to wear a cat suit!”

“Go drown in catnip, you flea-infested rug!” Alexei aimed a rude gesture at the other side of the street.

When Memory tried to twist around to see the man who’d started the small fight, Alexei tugged at her hand. “Don’t encourage them,” he grumbled. “Cats think they’re the Casanovas of the world, can prowl their way into any bed.”

“I prefer wolves.”

A slow smile curving his lips, Alexei broke their handclasp to sling his arm around her shoulders, tugging her against the steely heat of his body. “Is that your stomach? Hungry?”

Memory nodded and thus began the most delicious night of her life. She ate everything that looked interesting or smelled good, until she was full to bursting. Then she had sticky, sugary rice-flour sweets that made her moan, and topped it all off with a vanilla milkshake doctored with crushed-up cookies.

“My people are deranged,” she said.

Alexei raised an eyebrow at his E, even as he kept his body between her and the others on the street. They’d made their way back to Chinatown and to the festival, which showed no signs of winding down, hordes of excited human and nonpredatory changeling cruise passengers in unseasonal Hawaiian shirts and sundresses mixing with the locals. “Deranged?”

Memory held up her half-finished milkshake. “We gave this up for nutrient drinks.” Shaking her head, she took another sip. “Deranged.”

Alexei laughed, delighted with her. Memory saw everything through new eyes, made him feel young, too. He was ready to buy her the world—and especially food, but he hadn’t forgotten her fear of being in “debt.” So he’d channeled his protective instincts in another way.

Before hitting the stalls, he’d taken her to a twenty-four-hour automated bank and shown her how to access her Collective-linked account using her palm print. “SnowDancer had that in the system from when I granted you access to the substation. We sent it through to the Collective to fast-track your account. If you want, you can ask their finance person to add an iris scan for greater security.”

Since she’d left her phone in the compound and didn’t have a watch capable of storing financial data, he’d then walked her through how to load money onto a temporary card. Her resulting pleasure in being able to buy him food had melted more hard places in his heart.

He was in a fucking huge amount of trouble—and he didn’t care. Not tonight.

When Memory tugged him into a girly and overstuffed trinket shop he’d usually avoid like the plague, he threatened mutiny—but they both knew he was only playing. Tonight, he was Memory’s.

She came out of the shop with a pair of earrings in the shape of paper parasols. “I need to get my ears pierced like the girl who sold me these.”

Alexei pointed to a sign for an all-night drugstore. “Might find a clerk trained in ear piercing there.” He frowned. “But how about we put off making holes in your body until—”

But Memory was already laughing and tugging him across the street.

Five minutes later, he folded his arms and told himself not to strangle the slender male who was about to hurt Memory.

“Go glare at something else in the store,” Memory ordered with a glare of her own. “Do you want his hand to shake?”

Growling, Alexei turned on his heel and stood by the door.

“Thanks,” the clerk whispered. “I hate it when the dominants come in with their mates or cubs. Half the time I think they want to take the piercing tool and pop a hole between my eyes.”

“Trust me, he’s all growl and only small bites.”

“Um, sure,” the clerk responded dubiously, which pleased Alexei’s wolf and confirmed the clerk was in possession of his brain cells. Alexei would have to talk to his E about convincing people that he wasn’t scary. A man had a reputation to protect.

His muscles locked when she hissed twice.

“Alexei, it’s over,” she called out a second later.

He turned to see her sliding in the earrings while admiring herself in the mirror. Then she looked at him with a huge smile. Walking over, she rose on tiptoe to kiss a line along his jaw. “Thank you for not eating the clerk.”

And his heart, it fell.

Hard.



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