Lover Beware Read Online Free PDF

to someone outrageously appealing—but someone who wore ragged jeans on weekends, played baseball with the guys, and changed the oil in his car. Lily didn't even think about trying to reply. She was too caught up in that grin, what it did to his eyes and the way it lifted her heart
    "Here you go." The waitress deposited their coffee, dumping a couple of containers of creamer beside Lily's cup.
    Lily hadn't so much as glimpsed her approach. Shaken, she tore one of the creamers open and dumped half the contents into her coffee.
    Had he used some kind of magic on her? Or did it just spill out from him naturally, without his willing it? If it wasn't magic ... she didn't want to think about what it would mean if she could react like that to him without any magic involved "Does magic have a smell?"
    His eyebrows lifted. "It can. Why?"
    "You knew the attacker was lupus. Our lab did, too—at least, they could tell it was someone of the-Blood, because magic leaves traces. I wondered if you were smelling the same kind of traces they found."
    "I don't think so. Magic does have a distinctive scent, but only when it's active. When a spell is being performed, for example. What I identified was the smell of lupus, not magic itself."
    "Is there anything else you can tell me about the killer?"
    He frowned and sipped his coffee. She was not surprised to see that he drank it black. "He wasn't a juvenile."
    "You can tell that from the scent?"
    "No. The body wasn't eaten."
    Coffee sloshed in her cup. She set it down carefully. "Explain."
    "It's pure superstition that an adult lupus will be overcome by bloodlust and attack whatever moves. Young lupi lose themselves in the beast, but we learn control. If we didn't, we really would be the ravening beasts depicted in movies like Witch Hunt.”
    "So a child or adolescent wouldn't have acquired control yet."
    "Not a child. The Change arrives with puberty."
    She thought of a particularly improbable photograph she'd seen while waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store recently. A woman had been sitting up in a hospital bed with several blanket-wrapped bundles tucked into her arms. Bundles with puppy faces. “The National Tattler would be disappointed to hear that."
    "I doubt the Tattler allows facts to interfere with its editorial focus."
    "I guess not. Talk about raging hormones." Lily gave herself a moment to think by sipping her coffee. This was completely new information. She hadn't heard it, read it, anywhere. Why would he trust her with this knowledge? Was it true? "You’re saying that a young lupus kills. And eats what he kills."
    "If he is allowed to, yes. But we are careful with our children. None go through the Change unsupervised."
    Her lips twitched. Embarrassed, she took a quick sip of coffee.
    "Something amuses you?"
    "I have an odd sense of humor," she said apologetically. "I thought of those ads—you know, the public service ones?— where parents of teenagers are told to nag them about where they're going, who they'll be with, all that. And I pictured one aimed for the parents of teenage lupi: 'Where are you going? Who else will be there? Have you eaten? I expect you back before the moon rises, young man!' "
    He burst into laughter. "You're not that far off."
    A bubble of happiness lodged beneath her breastbone. She liked the sound of his laughter, the way his head went back to open his throat to it, the smooth line of his throat... uh-oh, she thought, the bubble popping. What's happening here?
    She poured more creamer into her coffee so she could stir it around. A light touch on her cheek made her look up, startled.
    "Hey. The light suddenly turned off in your face. What happened?"
    She could have told him again to keep his hands to himself, but it would have been dishonest. Somehow, between one grin and a moment of shared laughter, they'd stepped outside their proper roles and entered undefined territory.
    But the very lack of definition made complete honesty im-
    possible.