Hunt Me! I Crave the Chase (Spooky Boys #3)

And it was beautiful and humbling and wonderful all at once.

“You want some food now? Cold pizzas are still good. And the shit Blair makes is like…top tier,” he offered, voice light. “How about a movie? I can give you a back rub. You look like you need it.” Jeffrey smacked a kiss on my cheek and my head spun as I realized how different he was already. “I bought those bacon things you told me you like. And Pop Tarts. Chocolate ones.”

“Chocolate?” I perked up. “I love chocolate.”

“I know you do, big guy.” Jeffrey slid off my lap and padded across the kitchen toward the cupboard. Jeffrey reached into the top cupboard, the hem of his shirt sliding up. There were finger-shaped bruises on his hips, and scratches from my claws. I groaned, immediately distracted, my heart settled once again.

He grabbed the box down and turned back around, leaning against the counter with a cocked eyebrow and a sexy smirk. Beautiful and bruised, both. “See something you like?”

“Everything,” I replied immediately. Jeffrey laughed.

“Dork.” Then he handed me the Pop Tarts and wandered off into the living room to set up the TV for a movie party. I watched him move around, my heart settled, the box he’d given me clutched gingerly in my grip. “Hey, I talked to Blair,” Jeffrey said—scrounging around in the couch cushions for the remote. “Richard too. You know…about shit.”

“You did?” I shoveled pizza into my mouth—figuring I’d save the treats for later.

Jeffrey kept talking, and the more he told me, the more proud of him I became. He was moving forward. No longer stuck. And the lost-lost-lost scent that had exuded from him when we’d first met was long gone.

It would take a while to heal.

Some wounds took longer than others.

But I had no doubt that one day Jeffrey would.

And the things that had felt impossible before would become as easy as breathing.

I hadn’t been lying when I told him he was the most wonderful person I’d ever met. And every day I spent with him, that only became more apparent. I just wished…we had more time. Our clock had begun ticking the moment I’d followed him home. And I knew that. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

If all I got was one more smile, my choice would be worth every sacrifice.

There was no escaping the hurt now, and I may not have been a human like he was, but even I knew we’d crossed that line long ago.

Mutt’s scars haunted me. They took a good week to heal, and all the while, I did my damndest to find a solution to the pesky-moon problem. I had less than a month before the next moon, which meant I didn’t have all that much time.

I buckled down.

And between my hunts for information, Mutt sent me texts. Cute pictures. Images of squirrels he found out and about. Of gnomes he’d been tempted to steal, probably. Of his hand, holding a broken Pop Tart. Of his bed, empty without us in it. Of each of his brothers, with no captions, though I could feel the love he felt for them without words needed at all.

It was a chilly, stormy day when I stumbled upon a lead that made my stomach churn.

“Do you know anything about mates?” I asked Avery, jerking my way into his office. He’d just finished up with a client, a nice lady who’d been cursed to speak backwards. Avery’s eyes narrowed in thought as he tapped his lip, then made a startled face when he realized he’d been elbows deep in a vat of frog warts and hadn’t taken off his gloves.

He gagged, bolted away, and returned five minutes later scrubbed clean, his hair a spiky mess.

“Sorry. What were you asking me?”

“Mates?” My heart pounded. It hadn’t stopped pounding. Not since I’d opened one of the new books he’d gotten me and stumbled upon a page that talked about them. “Do you know?—”

“Werewolf mates?” Avery frowned, twisting to look at me. “I know a little, yes.”

And then we just kinda stared at each other. Avery blinked, long lashes fluttering, and I made a sound like a kettle reaching a boil. I was normally a pretty patient person, but even I had my limits.

“Are you gonna fucking tell me? Or just keep jerking my dick off, or what?” I didn’t mean to be rude, but fuck. I felt like I was going to die.

Avery snorted out an amused laugh. “You remind me of my sister,” he said fondly, and then his frown returned. “What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with everything.”

Apparently he’d been doing some reading of his own, because he sure as shit knew a lot more today than he had when I’d first asked him for information.