Chapter 19: Chapter 19

We split up after that. Logan and Allan head down the center hall. Elijah motions for me to wait, and I do, with Holly, until the other two turn the corner.

“Anyone up for a kitchen raid?” Elijah asks. My hand shoots up so fast he laughs. “Figured that,” he says.

“I do have food in my room,” I say. “In case you’re only suggesting a raid out of necessity. Mom doesn’t send us anywhere without a foot-locker’s worth of snacks.”

“I’ve got some, too,” he says. “A box of beef jerky.” “Beef jerky?”

He mock-scowls. “No judgment, remember? I’m a Texas boy. Rural Texas, ma’am. I love me some beef jerky and some chewing ’bacco.” He pauses. “Okay, just the jerky.”

I look at Holly. “See how he did that? Mentioned the chewing tobacco, and suddenly, I’m thinking the beef jerky isn’t that bad. So, how about you? Up for a kitchen raid?”

Her expression says she’s reluctant to seem like a poor sport, but tonight was already enough rule-breaking for her.

“We’ll grab you a snack,” I say. “And we won’t be long. Is that okay?”

“Sure. I’ll be reading for an hour or so anyway. It’s only . . .” She checks her watch. “Ten thirty? They really do think we’re children, don’t they?”

“Apparently. I will see you in an hour max, then, and I’ll bring snacks.”

Elijah reaches for the lock on the kitchen door, and I put out a hand to stop him.

“You can’t keep snapping those,” I say. “It’s like breaking in to that cabin. Not the subtlest way to trespass.

He lifts his hand, revealing a key. “Ah,” I say. “Carry on.”

“Hey, I’m a teenager and a werewolf,” he says. “First thing I want to establish in any new situation? Where’s the food, and how do I get it?”

He opens the door. We’re at the far end, on the other side of the dining hall. Everyone has been sent to bed for the night, and there’s no one even on this side of the building. We tiptoe across the floor—so we don’t alert fellow campers sleeping below—but talking in low voices is safe.

I survey the pantry as Elijah rifles through the cupboards. When he’s done, he finds me assembling stacks of graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate. I put them in the toaster oven and watch the marshmallows expand. Then I pop them out before the dinger can sound.

I try to hand Elijah one. He eyes it with suspicion.

“S’mores,” I say. “An essential part of any camping experience.” “If you say so.” He takes one and examines it.

“Oh, come on,” I say. “You must have made s’mores around a campfire.

Didn’t you ever go camping?”

“Camping is a white-folk thing. There’s a reason God invented mattresses, and I don’t question His wisdom.”

“Uh-huh. Didn’t you tell me you’d been to summer camp before?” I hop onto the counter and settle in next to the bag of s’more fixings, building

another between bites of the one I’ve already baked.

“Bible camp, which did not involve the pagan sacrifice of hot dogs and marshmallows to the god of fire.” He snatches the last s’more as I reach for it.

“I take it you like them?” I say.

“I’m still deciding. More testing is required.” He crunches half of the s’more in one bite. “I will admit I was disappointed by the lack of marshmallow-roasting at Bible camp. And the overabundance of prayer, which is all well and good but could be done just as easily by actually getting out into the forest and admiring the Creator’s creations. The staff did not agree. There’s poison ivy out there, you know. And mosquitoes. Better to lock yourself in the cabin and pray really, really hard for the whole horrible experience to end.”

“Sounds like those counselors would have gotten along well with these ones.”

“No shit, huh? In the middle of all this wilderness, and we barely step outdoors. Why not just hold the conference between a McD’s and a Starbucks. Which is what I told my mom after that first Bible camp. I’d rather be in the city than stuck in a cabin, staring out at forest I’m not allowed to explore like I can at home.”

“You said you live in the countryside?”

“Yes, ma’am, tiny town about an hour outside Austin.” “Is it just you and your mom?”

He nods and puts my s’more stacks into the toaster oven. “She was forty when she met my dad. By that time, she figured she wasn’t having kids. She was okay with that. Mom always went her own way. Grew up in the kind of town where there isn’t a local vet because folks can barely afford medical care for their kids. Everyone wanted her to become a doctor, but her passion was animals. She didn’t want to leave her family, though. So she commutes to a clinic in suburban Austin. It wasn’t exactly the kind of life that

encouraged dating. She liked it, though, and if it meant no husband and kids, that was fine.”

“Then she met your father.”

Elijah opens the oven before it dings. “Met my dad, had me, lost him, and kept on going. She dates, mostly city guys that she doesn’t bring around. Not stepdaddy material. Just”—he waggles his brows—“dates.”

“Totally understandable.”

We’ve baked three s’mores, and we both reach for them at the same time. I grab one and try to snatch up a second, but my fingers graze the hot pan, and I yelp, dropping both. He scoops them up and shakes them at me. I grab for one, but he backs up, and I slide off the counter . . . just as he’s coming back to give me the s’more, sandwiching me between him and the cupboards. Elijah grins down at me. Then he puts a s’more half way into his mouth and arches one brow. I lift up the inch I need to be on eye level with him. Then I take one dainty bite from the edge of the s’more. His brow rises higher. I keep nibbling until our lips brush, and then I kiss him, tentative at first, in case this isn’t what he intended. His hands slide down to the hollow above my hips, and he chomps down his half of the s’more before kissing me

back.

After the first kiss, I expect this one to be a disappointment. That one had layered the thrill of danger with the buzz of the unexpected, making out with a cute stranger in an empty hall, hoping whoever was approaching didn’t realize we’d broken into someplace we shouldn’t be. Add in the realization that Elijah was a werewolf, and it’s obvious the kiss held an extra something I shouldn’t expect to find again.

Yet I do. He kisses me back, and sparklers explode in my brain, firing and popping and writing his name in the night sky. At first, I taste chocolate and marshmallow and graham cracker. Then that fades, and he tastes of things I never associated with tastes at all. He tastes of the forest. Of sunshine and shadow, forest and meadow, fast-running water and lazy ponds. Of the run

and the chase and the hunt and the gloriousness of those moments when the human world slips away, when I am a creature whose skin I fully inhabit. In Elijah’s kiss, I feel my wolf blood strumming through my veins, rising to meet his.

Elijah’s kiss is deep, hungry even, as if he’s reaching for something, reaching into me and embracing what he finds there. I smell him, the musk of wolf mingled with his own scent. I feel him, the heat of his body blazing against mine. Yet that hunger stays in the kiss, held fiercely in check. His hands remain on my waist, fingers splayed and as hot as fire-brands where my T-shirt rides up, his skin meeting mine. He grips me firmly, but not as if he’s forcing his hands to stay where they are, not as if he needs to keep them from wandering up or down. Just like during our first kiss, the firmness feels as if it’s for my sake, telling me his hands aren’t going anywhere, that I won’t feel them creeping and need to tense, pulled from the kiss, ready for the “no” that becomes a war of wills and boundaries, my body a battlefield.

His hands stay exactly where they are, letting me relax and enjoy the kiss until we run out of breath and separate, laughing softly as we pant for air.

“Wow,” I say. “You are really good at that.”

He hesitates and then lets out a whoosh of a laugh. “I was going to say the same thing about you. Pretty sure it’s not me.”

“Mmm, I think it is. But like with the s’more, I believe more testing might be in order.”

I’m teasing, but he doesn’t need another hint. He pulls me against him for another amazing kiss that only breaks when my stomach growls, and he chuckles against my lips before backing up.

“Making out is very strenuous,” I say. “Burns so many calories.” “S’more s’mores?” he says.

“I think this requires protein.” “I have jerky.”

“So you’ve said, and you may keep it.”

I return to the pantry and come out with a jar of peanut butter. I take two Hershey bars and give one to Elijah. Then I open mine, break off a piece and dip it into the peanut butter. We sit there, dipping and eating.

“You said you have a dog,” he says.

I nod. “A shepherd-border-collie cross. Atalanta. Not named after the city.”

“Because that would be Atlanta. Atalanta is a huntress from Greek myth. I’m sure you hear that mistake a lot. Try having a dog named Lagahoo. People come up with all kinds of weird mispronunciations for that.”

“Lagahoo?” I grin. “You named your dog ‘werewolf’? That’s Caribbean, right? A variation on the French loup-garou.”

His grin matches my own. “Very good. It is, indeed. Dad grew up in Jamaica, but his family was from Trinidad. That’s where the lagahoo comes from. Someone dropped her in our front yard when she was a puppy, and Mom decided I was old enough to have a dog of my own.”

“Atalanta was abandoned, too. I found her in our old playhouse one winter, and I convinced Dad to let me give her to Logan as a Christmas present. Only, as it turned out, Logan had found her first and put her in the playhouse as a Christmas present for me. I didn’t realize that until years later because I was so excited about getting him a puppy that he didn’t have the heart to tell me he’d rescued her for me.”

“That’s kinda awesome.”

I take another scoop of peanut butter on chocolate. “My brother is

awesome. I know you didn’t see him at his best, but—”

A door bangs, right outside the kitchen, and we both freeze.