Page 29 of Magpies & Mayhem
Jordan tugged his cloth wrap off and handed it to me, his eyes scanning my body hungrily the whole time. He looked a little disappointed when I pulled the wrap around me and sat down. “Why are owls a problem? Should we get Huck?” he asked distractedly.
I shook my head, only to be irritated by the fact that my hair was loose again, and I didn’t have any way to tie it back. “Huck’s fine. He’s too big for an owl to take. As for me, it probably wouldn’t kill me, but I’d prefer not to deal with a talon through my body cavity.” I scratched at the healing burn on my arm; it was itchy from being stretched repeatedly. “Owls are sneaky gits,” I grumbled.
Jordan huffed a disbelieving laugh. “Owls?”
“I’m of the opinion that all birds are secretly some kind of fae. Nothing else makes sense,” I said, doing my best to sit like a lady—which wasn’t great. “I don’t know how they would have made it into the Void, but just think about it,” I continued. “The weird songs, the noise mimicry, the incredibly complicated weaving abilities thatno one teaches them!They just grow up and automatically know how to do it. Sometimes it’s even real, actual sewing, using theirbeaksas a needle. And the insane migratory birds with unfailing compasses who can travel thousands of miles to an old nest site.And people leave food out for them!Just like the old stories of the fairies in the Void!” I squinted, trying—and failing—to make out the owl in the dark. “And if birds are like fairies, owls and hawks are the malevolent ones.”
“What? Owls are awesome. Everybody loves owls,” Jordan argued.
“Nah. Birds that murder other birds arenotmy kind of people.”
Jordan squinted at me. “Do you actually think birds are fae?”
I laughed. “No. But you have to admit, they’re weird creatures.” I still loved them though. As long as they weren’t cannibals. ‘No thanks’ on the cannibalism.Nota fan.
“Sidney,you’rea weird creature,” Jordan mumbled. Huck bounded up to us and Jordan picked up a stick from a little pile he’d made beside himself and chucked it as hard as he could throw. Huck’s little head whipped around so fast it was a blur as he took off after it. I guess hewaskind of dog-like sometimes, but I wouldn’t have thought to throw a stick for him.
“But you still love me, so what does that say about you?” I asked with every ounce of sass he deserved.
“Maybe I do,” he answered in a whisper so quiet it might have been a breath.
He wasn’t looking at me when he said it—he was staring down at his little stick pile—but my breath caught in my chest. Every one of the intense feelings I’d had for him throughout my childhood and teenage years, all the feelings I’d been shoving down, down, down, since I’d first walked into Levi’s apartment, came surging forward. It was so strong that I couldn’t speak, and I didn’t know whether to be angry and tell him not to tease me or to cry because I was so overwhelmed. I was leaning toward angry, because how dare he make me feel this way?
But then he turned slowly, with a stick in his hand as if he were studying it, and raised his eyes to meet mine. “Is this a nice stick?”
Everything stopped. My heart stopped. My lungs stopped. My thoughts stopped. His hand drifted toward me with the stick held aloft, his eyes bright with curiosity. He was joking—he had to be—about my declared love language being nice sticks. But I hadn’t been. He had no way of knowing this—he couldn’t have—but a proffered stick, a nice one, was the magpie equivalent to a marriage proposal. I watched my hand lift of its own accord and grasp the stick, taking it from his hand. My bird brain was doing an end zone victory dance, even as my rational side was telling me there was no way he meant it. Bird brain didn’t care. He’d just proposed.
Chapter 18
“Iwaslying!Sticksaren’t really my love language!” My voice was pitched several octaves too high as I clutched the stick to my chest. Jordan narrowed his eyes at me. He couldn’t have known,could he?That a stick, a good stick, delivered to a prospective mate meant, ‘We can use this to build a nest. Let’s build a life together.’ I wasn’tactuallya bird, of course, but shifters took on many qualities of the animals we shifted into. And black-billed magpies, like all corvids, mated for life. My brain wasscreamingbecause I’d just accepted his offer.
His curious gaze flickered back and forth between my eyes and the tightly clutched stick I held in a vise grip. “Hm. If that’s the case, you’d be okay with me taking it back, then?”
I held it tighter. “No, you gave it to me. It’s mine.”
The corner of his mouth twitched with the barest flicker of movement. “Oh, I see. And I guess that means you also don’t want—” He flipped another stick from his pile up into his fingers, so that it stood balancing on end, one tip pinched between his thumb and forefinger. “—this stick?”
I stared at it for a long moment, not seeing the stick at all, but what it meant. A life together, building a home and family with this man who couldn’t have children, who was rejected by society, who would outlive me by millennia, who was prickly and stubborn and flighty. Who I’d pined after foryearswithout his notice. Who Istillpined after without his notice. Who didn’t even know what he was offering. I snatched that stick from his grip too, adding it to my other one. “Sticks aren’t my love language,” I squeaked, the lie ringing hollow in my high-pitched protest.
He was studying my expression with all the intensity that a predator studies its prey, and try as I might, I couldn’t scrape the emotions off my face. “Is that so?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
I nodded my head far too wildly to be believable.
His lip twitched again before he schooled it and leaned forward just enough to be in my space. My heart was racing. The sharp scent of vampire overwhelmed the subtle smell of the desert around us. “Then whatisyour love language, Sidney?” The quiet words were colored with a hint of menace and a larger dose of mischief.
“Kissing,” I blurted. It was a dare, and he would know it. There’s no way he’d let me get that close to his face, and if he did, well… then we’d have a little fun.
He narrowed his eyes into a haughty glower. “Who have you been kissing?”
“Hot boys.”Why am I this way?
He bared his fangs in a wicked grin, hearing the bluff for what it was, but it was there and gone in an instant. “You think I can’t kiss you?”
I was practically panting as I glanced at his mouth and then made myself lock eyes with him. I didn’t dare answer him, afraid I might push him too far, but I let the challenge show in my eyes.Can you?I really didn’t know.
“I can kiss you,” he said, and the arrogance of his tone almost made me believe him until I heard the shakiness of his breath. He leaned closer, and I held my own breath, letting my gaze flicker from his mouth to his eyes and back again. But he hesitated, as if he were just as unsure of himself. Slowly, he lifted his hand and wrapped it around my jaw, gently but firmly pinning me in place. The pressure of his grip on my face nearly made my eyes roll back in my head at how obscene it felt. If he hadn’t been holding me up, I would have melted into a puddle of short-circuited goo. Those loose screws in my brain were rattling away as he closed the distance between us so slowly. I could have died from want.
I was nearly startled when his lips finally brushed mine, as satiny and pillowed as I’d imagined them to be. “Is this okay?” he whispered against my mouth, hot breath fanning my face with the scent of him.
