My heart accelerated. “Sometimes. Not always. Do your females do orgies, or not?”
He stiffened. “Look. There aren’t any mateable females back home. So we’re right buggered. And even if there were, it’d be up to the ladies who they did the naughty with.”
No mateable females? There was real anguish running beneath his words, and I was suddenly embarrassed that I’d pushed so hard. “I’m sorry. This is all very new to me.”
His big body relaxed, and he sketched up a smile. “Crikey, if I were in your shoes, Angel, I’d be downright bonkers.”
“Angel?” That’s the second time he’d called me that.
His smile morphed into a wide grin that had heat shooting to places I’d be best not to think about. “I call it like I see it.”
I should have been far more indignant about the nickname than I was. I mean, I barely knew this guy. Instead, it fired something warm within me, and I suddenly found it difficult to breathe.
I turned my back and sucked air in, and then out, trying to reestablish a respectable rhythm. His form looming close behind me seemed determined to scuttle that effort.
Trix shot me a look from the end of her leash that seemed to say, “Get it together, lady.” I appreciated the advice, but it wasn’t helping the situation. Neither did my mind’s fixation on what he’d said.
I glanced back over my shoulder at him. “Can I ask you something?”
“Defo.” His eyes flared again.
Wowsers, was that sexy. No chocolate made could compare to that. Like a mood ring, they were. “Are there female Dires here in Canada?”
His eyes went dark, giving me an answer before he spoke. “Not many.”
“That’s really bad.”
“Yeah.”
I swallowed and resumed walking. No females meant his kind were in real trouble. There were undercurrents to this new world that I still had to learn.
Cody and Kitani had led us down a path that looked quite new. The bushes all showed signs of recent pruning, and the ground was riddled with roots trying to trip me. “Where is this academy?” I asked Cara, who walked just ahead.
“It isn’t in this realm,” she explained. “We are heading for the new gate I have installed.”
“Gate?” Right. She’d mentioned the other realms. My guts started to twist into a knot.
“Yes. I have created a portal that will take us there.”
She could create portals? I filed that fact away.
“I hate gates.” Matt growled the words.
Cara’s eyes rose above my shoulders, to where the Dire shifter loomed. “You aren’t fond of using gates?”
“They eat you up and spit you out in the woop woop.”
I twisted to offer him a questioning look. When his eyes glowed at me, and his lips twitched, it confirmed my suspicions. He wasdeliberatelybeing obtrusive.
“Middle of nowhere,” he explained.
I crossed my arms. “If you know how to say that, why all the woop woop?”
His grin broke free, and my heart skipped a beat. “The sheilas like it.”
“I have no idea what a sheila is, but it is not me,” I insisted. “And if you can speak English, then speak it.”
He didn’t look the least bit repentant.
