The Wicked Kiss by Trina M Lee Page B

the distance that separated us. She looked a lot better than she had the last time I’d seen her. How she’d managed to escape death was beyond me. Her once blood-matted fur was now long and silky, the color of sin. The one feature that set her apart from Raoul was the eyes. She had cerulean blues rather than ebony orbs.
    I was glad that the similarities only went so far.
    I waited, not blinking an eye, but she never came any closer. The seconds ticked by increasingly long. How I kept my feet planted is a mystery to me. Maybe it had something to do with the sudden memory of the challenge in Raoul's eyes as he lay dying, allowing Zoe to kill him. He had been willing to do anything to give her the vengeance she felt entitled to, regardless of my feelings, my need for vengeance.
    After a long, suspenseful moment that had me shaking in my tracks, she backed away toward the thick trees behind her. When she was sure that I wouldn’t give chase, she turned and fled into shadow.
    I didn’t hang around to see if she’d return. She wouldn’t, not tonight anyway.
    Instead, I beat it home to take a soak in a hot bath while I nursed a combination of guilt and confusion.
    I wasn’t sure where the guilt came from. Maybe because while I was relaxing in bubbles up to my chin, Zoey was out there trapped in wolf form indefinitely. The confusion was partly due to Raoul’s death having only occurred a few months ago. I just wasn’t entirely over losing the man I’d looked up to, nor could I accept his betrayal from beyond the grave. That would likely never change. How could it? He had waited until he was dead to reveal to me through a letter that he had been the werewolf that killed my family and turned me. That kind of pain didn’t fade overnight.
    Since I was alone, I dragged my fuzzy comforter out to the futon in the living room.
    After making some African red tea and grabbing a bag of chocolate covered pretzels, I was ready to get comfy with a good movie.
    I munched on pretzels as I scrolled through the TV channels with the remote. There was a late night showing of one of the old Halloween movies. With Halloween being just weeks away, I also had three or four other horror flicks to choose from. After eliminating them based on cheesiness and gore level, I stuck with Michael Myers and his shrieking teenage victims.
    It wasn’t long until my eyelids began to droop. The classic slasher theme played in the background as I drifted between sleep and wakefulness. It accompanied me as I sunk deeper, right into a dream I hadn’t had in months.
    I was back in my family home, surrounded by the bodies of my dead family. Raoul stood before me as wolf, but this time I knew it was him. The first thing I noticed was that I wasn’t my teenage self in this dream like in previous ones, and I was fully aware that this was indeed only a dream. I soon came to realize that though it was a dream, it was not at all the same one I’d assumed it was.
    Unlike dreams of the past, Raoul wasn’t snarling or preparing to attack. He simply stared into me with calm, coal-dark eyes. I was overcome with the instant urge to tell him what a jackass he was for trying to communicate with me now, after my run in with Zoe.
    It was always about her.
    But, try as I might to say all the things that came to mind, I was unable to give voice to them. I could only look into those dark eyes and feel a mixture of sadness and wonder.
    Just when I felt that something was going to transpire, another sensation roused me.
    When my conscious mind became aware that somebody was in the house, I was wide-awake, on full alert.
    My instinct had me swinging before I’d identified the intruder. All at once, I realized it was Arys, but he had already deflected each of my blows, catching my wrists tightly in his grasp.
    “Alexa,” he whispered loudly. “It’s me. But, a word of warning. Don’t fall asleep with the front door unlocked.”
    I stopped struggling against him and sat up on