Loving York (Warwick Dragons #2) - Milly Taiden Page 0,1

dumb name, one they had come up with while drinking one too many cranberry vodkas in college.

“What?” Mia shouted. “No. We can’t separate.”

“Sure we can,” she answered. “We’re doing the fake-out. You go with that, and I’ll carry this. They won’t know who to follow. Go.”

With a nervous backward glance, Mia booked it to the door, swinging the canister over her back and securing the cross-body strap.

Josie ran in the opposite direction, weighed down by the stupidly heavy wooden frame.

“Put it down, little girl,” one large flat-faced man commanded as he stepped in front of her.

She sidestepped away from him only to come face to face with two other pissed-off guards who glared at her. Jeez, what was this? The testosterone and steroid conventions? These guys were huge to the point of looking like cartoon characters. Didn't they know ‘roids shrunk peckers? She would have opened her mouth to throw the quip at them, but it would be pointless.

There was no finer way of putting it: Josie was fucked.

The three guards circled around her. She should have panicked when the three men started busting out of their clothes, but she knew what was happening.

“Fucking shifters,” she mumbled to herself, putting the frame down at her feet before raising her hands up in the air in a defensive move. The three men were replaced by three giant jaguars, growling at her with their long-ass yellow fangs shining with saliva. They wanted to have a nice witch feast, judging by the look in their eyes.

“Nice kitties,” she purred, scanning the room for the closest exit or a Ficus.

She could do a bit of damage with a nice Ficus or even a bamboo plant.

“If you think you can outrun shifters, you’re not as smart as I thought you were.”

Josie’s head snapped in the direction of the voice. A man, lanky to the point of being in desperate need of a few steaks, advanced toward her. His exaggerated height did nothing to help his appearance. His hair, brown and slicked back, looked wet with whatever product he had used to tame the ‘do into compliance. It did not suit him. His eyes were brown, but there was something off about them.

They were slit like a goddamn snake.

Josie grimaced at the sight of the shifty bulbous orbs. Why this snake shifter preferred to keep his snake eyes in his human form was beyond her. It was not sexy or appealing.

At all.

But the eyes had their purpose. At least they had told Josie what she had suspected. The snake shifter was none other than Milo Steiner.

The man she had been trying to steal from.

“Where’s my painting?” he asked, slithering toward her.

“Painting? What painting? I’m looking for the bathroom.”

This line was always used by ladies in heist movies. It never worked, but Josie had always wanted to use it. Fortunately, she was the best thief out there. She’d never been caught before, so she had never actually been able to use the line.

It was lackluster at best. So not worth the hassle of getting caught.

Milo snapped his fingers, and one of the jaguar’s pounced on her, pitching her to the ground.

Having a two hundred pound big cat on top of her had not been how she had wanted to spend her day. She was supposed to be halfway out of town with Mia right about then. At least her best friend was far away by now, safely away from Milo and his kitties. Mia wasn’t like her; she was human.

Josie had an unfair advantage, being a witch. Even if her powers were itty bitty bits of nothing since her witchy relatives had an obsession with making babies with human lads. She had some control over the earth element.

Not that it was much of an advantage when she was being pinned down by a jaguar. There were no potted plants anywhere that she could use as a weapon.

Seriously, would it have killed the shifter to have at least a cactus? Didn’t he know snake plants existed? It would have been right up his alley.

“Your associate made off with a very rare Johannes Galileo, though I suspect you know just how much that painting is worth. You’ll bring it back to me.”

“Unlikely,” she snapped back, her voice breathy. You try breathing with a jerky jaguar crushing your lungs. “That thing belongs in a museum.” Listen to her! Not only had she used the cliched bathroom line, but she was straight up quoting a certain sexy archaeologist. If only she