Free Hood's Obsession by Marie Hall

with the chunky black lettering of the very same words. “But I’m not a bar wench—this here’s my pub, and that there,” she said, hooking her finger over her shoulder to a freakishly massive wall of centaur muscle Lilith had completely overlooked standing guard at the exit, “is my boy toy, Chestnut.”
    She laughed and leaned in as though to whisper something in confidence. “Though round here we just call him Chest—Chestnut tends to make my bronco a little testy. So…” She righted herself, tapping her long manicured purple nails on the wheelchair armrests. “What’ll you have?”
    “Umm?” Lilith turned to Giles who merely shrugged, wearing a similar look of confusion on his own face. “What happened to Mortimor? Thought he was the proprietor of the Skull.”
    “Oh, Mort,” Kym snickered, sounding a little like a braying horse. “Well, he kicked the bucket about a year ago. Me and Chest grabbed up this place quick like.” She snapped her fingers. “Kind of fits my style. And don’t,” she said, lifting a finger, “let the chair fool you. I’m a tough broad.” Hiking up her shirt, she revealed the carved wooden handle of a dirk tucked into her pants. “There will be no thieving, no cheating, and no killing in my pub. Got it?”
    “You’ve no worries there, madam.” Giles inclined his head. “We wish only to dine and perhaps rent a room for the night.”
    “Food, I can do.” The pixie-faced beauty grinned. “But no can do with the rooms. I don’t run no bordello, mister.”
    “Indeed.” He chuckled. “Then an ale and a mincemeat pie, if you have it.”
    “Sure do.”
    “I’ll just have an ale, some bread, and whatever cheese you’ve got.” Lilith nodded. “And Kym?”
    The barkeep had already turned her chair about, but stopped and glanced back. “Yes?”
    “I’ve always been fascinated by accents, but yours is strange. Where are you from?”
    Perhaps a little blunt, but then her mother had gotten a chance to travel not only all of Kingdom but Earth, too, and Lilith suspected this strange creature had not been born here.
    Kym glanced at the centaur and her brown eyes softened. “Chest saved me from a hellhole in Kentucky.” Blinking, she looked back at Lilith. “Earth.”
    And with those words she rolled her wheels back toward the front of the bar.
    “How in the world did a centaur enter into Earth? Could you imagine the sight of him amongst the mortals?” Lilith turned to Giles, forgetting for a moment the attraction she fought so hard when she was near him. “And that Kym would willingly leave with him?”
    He shrugged, but his lips twitched. “The universe is a strange place.”
    “No stranger than a shifter and a demone working together, I’d imagine.”
    His gaze was soft as his eyes looked upon her. And though she knew she looked nothing like she normally did, for a moment her wolf reveled in the exotic beauty of the man looking at her as though he saw not the crone but the woman.
    It was the first time in days he’d not looked at her with scorn or censure and though she hated to admit that it made her weak in the knees to see it, it was the absolute truth. And on the heel of that thought came another…
    For two weeks she’d clammed up around him, hoping their minimal interaction would lessen her awareness of him, but it hadn’t. In fact, it had seemed to have the opposite effect. So maybe if she just relaxed a little and opened up, maybe then she could get to know him and perhaps then she could see that they were better suited to being friends than lovers.
    Nibbling on the corner of her lip as she decided to give it a go, she gave him a soft smile. The moment she did it she could have sworn his irises dilated and he inhaled a sharp breath, but rather than lean away from her, it seemed to her that he drew just a little bit closer.
    “Bloody hell,” he murmured a second later and then tapped his fingers on the table. A vein on the side of his neck