He chewed slowly, his eyelids sliding shut. When he was done, his tongue skated along his bottom lip, licking up the stray sugar and cinnamon.

My own tongue mirrored his.

His eyes darkened to a stormy grey, and he stepped around me, back onto the path. Like a spell was broken, I shuddered at the sudden cold.

What a jerk! A small woman falls over because of his giant, solid back, and he doesn’t even offer to help her up? Just eats a donut like it’s a sex act and then saunters off?

I picked myself up, dusting off the back of my skirt and stormed towards the donut stall.

“I’ll have a⁠—”

“Sorry. We just sold the last of them.”

My shoulders slumped. “Any chance you can cook me one? Just a single donut? I need my fix!”

The young man shook his head, looking uncomfortable. “I would, except that last guy demanded like, eighty donuts. Totally wiped out my ingredients!”

I stiffened. “That … that giant blonde dude bought eighty donuts?”

The guy shrugged, scratching the back of his neck. “Well, he didn’t specify eighty, exactly. He just … asked me to use the rest of my dry mix, and he’d buy whatever that made. It was kinda weird, to be honest.”

I huffed. “Super weird.”

I turned, fighting back the lump in my throat. I wasn’t going to be sad about this. I could survive a Saturday night at home alone without sugary, fluffy, cinnamony goodness to tide me over.

From the corner of my eye, I spotted a flash of blond. He was waiting at the lights to cross the road. As I watched, the light turned green, and he and his eighty bloody donuts strolled onto the crossing.

Heat flooded my veins.

No, I wasn’t going to be sad.

I was going to be mad.

I was going to give that jerk a piece of my mind … and hopefully convince him to part with half a dozen of his eighty bloody donuts.

I sprinted towards the crossing.

4. Dinner and a Devilish Show

Chapter 4

Dinner and a Devilish Show

SJ

“She’s following,” Beezle hissed at my ear. My chest constricted. “She’s … she’s running. Her skirt is flapping all over the place!”

I almost choked on the mouthful of the surprisingly light and fluffy ringed treat Jemma Bliss referred to as a ‘donut’. A memory appeared in my mind of the scrap of red underneath that skirt when it had flipped around her hips earlier in the day.

Usually, wayward winds were not my friend (because they were more often than not the result of one of Hellen’s tantrums). Today, I was thanking all that was evil for that glimpse of Jemma Bliss’s tiny undergarment.