Dustin sucked air between his teeth in a hiss. "A lottle, but friends do that sometimes. Right?"
"Well, not like we did, but we can go back. We'll just make fun of each other like we used to, and I'll call you names a lot, and you can just keep doing all the annoying shit you do and stop complimenting me."
"Done. Giving compliments makes my balls shrivel up. Like tonight, your hair?" He shook his head but was cracking an even bigger smile. "Okay, it looks sexy as hell, and I want to play with it, but by play with it, I mean pull it while I'm fucking you senseless, but I swear that's the last compliment I'll ever give you again."
She rolled her eyes to the roof of his car and laughed. "That was a compliment? Okay, last one … You're a really, really good kisser. I mean … out in the woods today?" She arched her eyebrows at him. "A-game."
"I know, right? Credit where credit is due, though-I had a really good partner. You have those little blowjob lips that are just so suckable."
Emma clamped her legs tightly closed because talk like this was getting her revved up again. "Your dick is really big. I know I called it a Vienna sausage before, but you were right. It's way more than a bratwurst."
"I thought we weren't complimenting anymore. Okay, your vagina is probably really big."
"Nope, that's horrible. That's not a compliment at all."
"No?"
"Nope. The worst."
"Okay, officially friend-zoned again. Those fantastic kisses were just some beginner's luck, so we can do this for a few more days-just hang out, do the friends thing, back off from everyone expecting some big romantic story from us. Maybe if we break up gently, Kane will forget those stupid conditions and let us in anyway."
"Perfect. That's the perfect plan."
Dustin tapped his palm on the steering wheel and nodded once. "I feel much better now."
"Great, can we go to the bar now?"
"First, I'm going to buy you hamburgers to make your tits grow, like a good friend."
Emma giggled as he pulled out of the parking lot. She'd missed this easy rapport with Dustin today. The first day she'd come to interview for the crew, she'd liked him the least of them all. He was a mouthy playboy she hadn't understood, but over the weeks, he'd turned it around and surprised her with his layers. And since she'd tended to his neck injury, he'd turned into this delicious mystery she wanted to unravel slowly.
Dustin pulled them through the drive-through of a fast food burger joint, ordered way too much, then drove ten minutes down winding mountain roads to an empty parking lot.
"We could've eaten in the parking lot of the restaurant," Emma muttered, digging through one of the bags as her stomach growled again.
Dustin swatted her hand and yanked the bag away. "Patience, and besides, you're a mess when you eat. It's like watching a vulture feed. You aren't eating in my car."
She shoved his arm and swung the door open. "That was rude."
"That was honest." He made gulping sounds and a ridiculous eating face.
Emma giggled and shook her head. "Not funny. I'm cute when I eat. No one has ever complained before."
"Because you lived with blood suckers. They don't know what dinner manners are. They probably think you're normal. Grab that, will ya?" He jerked his head at the trunk of the car that he'd popped open.
There was a thick blanket and a pillow in the back.
"Do you sleep in your trunk often?" she asked innocently as she pulled out the blanket.
"Har har, no. I sleep in the back seat when my pack mates are being assholes." His voice had gone all serious, though.
"You know what I've noticed?" she asked as they walked along a winding pathway right beside the river.
"That I'm ruggedly handsome and hilarious and would provide fantastic genetic material for your future children? I mean, I'd make a horrible baby-daddy, but our pups would be cute as fuck."
"Uh, no, since we literally just had the friend-zone talk. No, you talk louder for me now. Clearer. I still have to read your lips a lot, but when I first met you, I was confused half the time because you murmured and wouldn't enunciate."
"Huh." Dustin cast her a sideways glance, and his eyes reflected unnaturally in the moonlight. "Really? I feel like I'm talking the same as I always do."
"Nope, I noticed the difference. Trust me, it's a big change." She bumped his arm. "It's a good change for me. You have a nice voice."
"Compliment! We should make a compliment jar like a swear jar. Like … every time we say something sickeningly nice to each other, you have to give me a blow job."
Emma blasted a surprised laugh and hugged the blanket closer to her chest. "You're ridiculous."
Dustin got quiet, and as he set up their blanket on a flat field of grass overlooking the water, he got a faraway look and a slight frown to his features. When they were settled and dishing out food, he said something that surprised her down to her bones. It was a soft admission, as if he didn't know if he wanted her to hear or not. "You have a nice voice, too."
"What?" she asked, watching his lips carefully. Those lips … so sensual, and she knew what they could do against hers, but now they rained down words that got the butterflies going crazy in her stomach.
"I said you have a nice voice, too. I like it."
Heat burned her cheeks, and she ducked her gaze as she admitted, "I hate it. I worked really hard in speech therapy to get where I am, but someday I want a normal voice. One I can hear perfectly so I can sound like other people. I want to sing." The heat spread to her ears on that last admission, so she cupped her hands over them to hide the blush.
Slowly, Dustin leaned forward and pulled her hands away. "Did you just give me something big?"
She nodded, still unable to meet his gaze.
Dustin scooted closer and lifted her chin with his hooked finger, drew her gaze to his lips. She really liked his mouth. The shape of it, the thickness of his lips, the way he licked his bottom one sometimes when he was nervous and didn't want anyone to know. "You said someday. Is surgery an option?"
Emma shook her head. "I have sensorineural hearing loss. Both of my inner ears are malformed. This is the best I get as a human."
"As a human," he repeated. "Is that why you wanted to pledge to Kane's Crew? Are you going for a shifter bite?"
"No. A bite won't cure me. I was born with malformed pieces, Dustin. Maybe an animal would improve it, maybe it would make it where I could hear some without my hearing aids, but there is only one thing that will fix me."
Dustin angled his face, frowned, and dropped his finger from her chin. And then suddenly, his eyebrows jacked up in an ah-ha expression. "You mean you're going vamp?"
"I'm taking a break from my coven because I wanted to see life outside of it, you know? My parents wanted that for me, too. But since I was a kid, all I've wanted is to be Turned and be whole."
Dustin gritted his teeth and shook his head at the river. "You are whole."
"You know what I mean."
"No, I don't! You think being a bloodsucker is a fix, Emma? It's not a fucking fix. You're giving up sunlight, food, humanity-"
"Stop!" She shoved him hard. "Stop talking about things you don't understand."
"You don't need to be fixed."
Emma's eyes rimmed with tears, and she ripped her gaze away from him so he wouldn't see how much this hurt. "You don't know what it's like."
"To be different? Fuckin' false, Emma. You know what percentage of the population of werewolves are submissive? Do you? Almost zero percent. I grew up the cull pup. I grew up being the disappointment, only supporting my brother's rise to alpha like a fucking servant because he was the important one. I got pitied looks from every wolf I ever met because it must be awful to be me, right?"
"But being submissive isn't a disability!"
"To you!" Dustin stood and walked to the water's edge, ran his hands through his hair, then paced back to her. "Even if I could change the parts I hate about myself, I'd never turn vamp to do it. You won't be you anymore. You won't. And now you're pushing for this crew you plan on leaving anyway?"
"Turning vamp isn't an option for you, wolf, and I don't have to leave the crew. I would just live on a different schedule."
"For eternity."
"Vampires don't live forever."