Stray Magic by Jenny Schwartz

Author:Jenny Schwartz [Schwartz, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-01-25T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Lunch was rabbit stew. It was decadent luxury to eat food that I hadn’t helped to grow, hunt or prepare. My mouth watered at the savory aroma, and there were biscuits to soak up the gravy.

An arm bumped mine as a man reached around me for a plate.

For a wonder, he seemed only a couple of years older than me. Everyone else I’d seen had been at least thirty.

“Hi.” I smiled at him.

He grinned back at me. He was tall and broad, leanly muscled though well-fed, with curly russet-brown hair, freckles and hazel eyes of a smoky-gray shade. “Hi, yourself. I’m Rory.”

Automatically, I juggled my plate to hold my hand out to shake. “Amy.”

His hand was calloused and strong, but his grip gentle. His grin gentled, too, becoming a lopsided smile. “You don’t recognize me? I’m a werewolf and one of the tutors.”

“Oh.” I didn’t pull away, and he didn’t release me. I looked past him, and his group was staring at me with a range of expressions from bewilderment to outrage. Apparently, they weren’t willing to treat him as just another person. An attractive person. “Nice to meet you.” I freed my hand.

“Likewise.” He let me go readily enough and concentrated on scooping stew onto his plate. “I helped catch some of those rabbits.”

A year ago, I wouldn’t have recognized that statement as a flirtatious boast, but now I knew just how much bringing food to the table meant. “You’re a mighty hunter.” I teased him as I would have any of the Apfall Hill hunters before second thoughts had me worried that a werewolf might be more sensitive to jokes about his predatory instincts.

“That I am.” He put a second biscuit on my plate.

My flirting skills were rusty and the glares from humans around us didn’t help. I smiled awkwardly and turned away. A few empty places remained at the tables in the tent, but I escaped outside. I sat down on a log.

Rory sat down next to me, on the side that blocked the wind from me. “Unless you mind?” He looked so human, and there was an expression in his gorgeous gray eyes that flustered me. He regarded me with hope.

“No.” I blushed. I truly had lost my flirting skills. At college I’d never have allowed a guy to unsettle me this way. “I don’t mind.”

He relaxed beside me and began eating.

Winona came and sat at my other side. She was eating even before she was seated. “Great stew,” she mumbled. “Good gravy.”

“Tutor Rory here caught the rabbits.” It was the most subtle way I could think of to warn Winona that we weren’t all human, here.

“Some of the rabbits,” he said casually. “And none of that ‘tutor’ stuff. Rory is fine. Or ‘gorgeous’ or ‘sweetling’ or ‘oh yeah, baby, more’.”

Winona laughed so hard she choked.

I patted her back with more force than needed, while trying to ignore my burning cheeks. I might have been rusty at flirting, but audacious Rory wasn’t. His shoulder was warm against mine.

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