While You Were Creeping - Poppy Rhys Page 0,25

clearly frustrated. “No, you’re just tricking your family. How am I supposed to believe you won’t trick me when you’re lying to them?”

“Way to pass judgment.” That stung more than it should have. Mainly because he had a point. “You were all for it this morning.”

Not that I faulted him. I’d do everything I had to if it meant escaping a hellish interdimensional prison.

I scrubbed my face. “Listen, let’s just do what we agreed to do. I’ll help you, you help me, and then when it’s all over, we don’t have to think about each other ever again.”

He grunted. “Fine.”

“Fine.”

He gestured toward the stairs. “After you, darling.”

“Thanks, honey.”

As I brushed past him, I tried not to register how charged the air around him felt or that the whole time I walked up the stairs, I could feel his gaze on my ass.

Smile, Holly.

TWELVE

KYE

I’d already forgotten the names of her family members, hadn’t I? If I thought really hard on it, I might remember.

But Holly’s ass was burned into my immediate memory and it left zero room for anything else.

The way she angrily stomped up those steps made her hips sway in a manner that should be illegal. The skintight jeans she wore—which looked painted on—molded to every curve and dip along her shapely legs and cheeks.

It didn’t get any better when she turned to scowl at me either, because her turtleneck sweater left little to the imagination. Her breasts would cup nicely in my palms. And her nipples would gently pebble against them too.

I’d gotten a good enough hint of their size. Like fat gumdrops that would be perfect for sucking.

Stop, you idiot.

I’d just accused her of lying. Which, I still didn’t trust her. Maybe she was a witch, maybe she wasn’t. It was too early to rule anything out and I needed to keep my horns about me.

Berchtas were tricky.

By the time we joined everyone, Holly was back to smiling. We were the last ones to the table and I even held out her chair like a fucking gentleman.

I could keep up my end of the deal.

After someone—I think his name was Delaine, one of her cousins—passed me the platter of sliced roast, Meredith popped the question.

The question. The one Holly had prepped me for. The one we had to get our stories straight about.

“How’d you two meet?”

I saw Holly open her mouth, as if she were about to answer.

Aht-aht.

I beat her to the punch. “We met on Love Is Holo.”

I’d seen Love Is Holo on a commercial last night while trying to get comfortable on the couch. An app for desperation.

Holly’s eyes immediately found mine and murder shone there.

I’d gone completely off script. This wasn’t what we rehearsed. But I was done playing by these rules. If Holly wanted me to go along with her weird, slightly sad plan, we needed to spice it up.

Her trio of muscled, weightlifting cousins—think their names were Troy, Jag, and Dirk (hey, Holly’s ass hadn’t erased my memory after all)—began to laugh.

“No way. You use that app, Holls?” Troy sounded surprised.

“I—” Holly croaked.

“Didn’t know she was on there too,” Dirk admitted, his knife pausing on his plate as if he realized what he just said.

“Goddamn, I knew you used that app!” Jag taunted Dirk. “Explains so much. No offense, Holls.”

Meredith frowned. “What’s Love Is Holo?”

“A hookup app,” Jag volunteered, and the trio chortled anew. “The algorithms pair you up and send you on blind dates. You don’t know what the other person looks like until you meet.”

“Didn’t think you had it in ya, Holls,” Troy teased.

By then, I had a shit-eating grin on my face as I passed the mash-filled bowl. “Potatoes, Holly?”

Her face was five shades of hot as she took the bowl and angrily scooped heap after heap of mash onto her plate before passing it.

“I was drunk.”

Gretta cackled and Meredith’s lips pursed.

“Now, now,” I chided. “You were sober when we met.”

“I meant I was drunk when I signed up,” she amended and smiled sweetly at me. It didn’t reach her eyes though. Those still spoke of murder. “But I figured, what the hell, ya know?” She shrugged and poured herself a healthy glass of wine.

It glub-glubbed from the bottle, drawing everyone’s attention. Holly stopped it right under the rim of the glass before downing half.

“First thing she said,” I continued on with this tale, “can I feel your horns?”

“Got straight to the good stuff,” Gretta hooted, holding her glass out for wine too.

Holly obliged. “Why waste time, right? He