Defensive Magic: A Paranormal Urban Fantasy Tale (Lost Library Book 3) Read Free Page A

braless, with eyes so dry it hurt to blink. John had stopped just long enough on the way in to grab the jeans he’d abandoned before his change. At least his disheveled hair looked rumpled and sexy. She was sure her dark curls were tangled into messy knots. And David—well, David must have picked up on her overt cues of embarrassment. He’d wrapped himself toga-style in the blanket she’d thrown at him, covering the greatest surface area possible. If he weren’t such a giant of a man, he’d look foolish.
    Before she could gather her thoughts sufficiently to ask David an intelligent question, he said, “What note?”
    With a sinking feeling, Lizzie replied, “The one you placed under my pillow?”
    His big brown eyes locked on her briefly. “Not me.” Shifting his gaze and looking directly at John, he said again, “It wasn’t me.”
    “The note?” John held his hand out, palm up, in Lizzie’s direction.
    “Just a sec,” Lizzie grumbled. She really was cranky tonight. She wasn’t usually so short. She was polite, dammit. And she didn’t cuss. She wrinkled her nose, thinking the girl she used to be was fading into her past.
    After a few seconds of fishing around, she found the crumpled note in the back pocket of her cargo shorts. She didn’t remember putting on the shorts or stashing the note. She hesitated, spending an extra moment to straighten out the creases before finally handing it over to John. It was silly, but handing it over made the invasion seem more real. And John was going to be seriously pissed when he read it.
    Turning to David, Lizzie decided that now was a great time to get some answers from him—while John was too busy getting a good mad going to notice. She was just tired enough, just overwhelmed enough, that she didn’t pity the idiot who thought it was a good idea to threaten her. It was almost comforting to think that the vicious twit who wrote the note was likely to become a dead or maimed idiot in the near future. Almost.
    “Why were you in the house?” Lizzie delivered the question with an abruptness that seemed to startle David.
    “I wasn’t. I mean, I never came inside.” He cast a sideways glance at John, waiting for something.
    Lizzie snorted. No help there, buster. John didn’t even notice; his attention was still fixed on the note.
    “What were you doing on my property?” she clarified.
    David swallowed. “Challenging the Texas Alpha.”
    That sure as hell better not mean what she thought it did. “Aren’t challenges to the death?”
    “No,” John replied at the same time that David said, “Yes.”
    “Not necessarily,” John said after silencing David with a narrow-eyed look. Tipping his head in David’s direction, he added, “Otherwise, we’d be burying him out on the greenbelt right now.”
    David turned his head decisively away from John, looked her directly in the eye, and said, “Challenges are usually to the death.”
    Her chest tightened, squeezing her lungs. For a second, she felt like she couldn’t take a breath. Then the moment passed. And she remembered that John hadn’t given any indication he felt threatened by David. Not now, and not earlier as they’d fought in her yard. Viewing their fight in hindsight, Lizzie could see that John had controlled the pace, their movement through the yard, and the inevitable outcome. But he wasn’t dismissive of David—not exactly. He just wasn’t nearly as cautious as Lizzie thought he ought to be. Another surprising thought occurred.
    “Did you think you would win?” Her incredulity must have colored her words, because David’s color changed, taking on a slightly pinker hue. It wasn’t her intent to shame him, but she was surprised. He claimed challenges were to the death, yet he was so thoroughly outclassed in the fight. He must have had some idea of what to expect. John was known by reputation in the Lycan community. She’d learned a little of how other Lycan perceived him when she’d been