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know why, but she did know how to derail male suspicions.
    “I just love cheese so much.”
    She pointed at herself, finger sinking into her cleavage past the second knuckle. His gaze shot down and his face went slack.
    Gotcha.
    Zoe backed toward the cheese table, widening the gap between them.
    His gaze rose, and he frowned.
    “I especially love Camembert, don’t you?” Covering her intent with a flirty smile, she groped on the table behind her for a plastic sword pick, and when she found one, she stabbed a cube of cheese, hard, wishing she could use it on him.
    His frown darkened. “I don’t want cheese. I want to be with you—alone.” He took a threatening step closer.
    Falling back, she hit the table and covered by swinging the sword pick between them. “But the cheese is so creamy.” She gave the sword a little flourish then brought it to her mouth and licked the cube, slowly. Sensuously.
    Zeus’ expression changed, gaze riveted to her caressing tongue, licking his lips as if mimicking her. “All right. Let’s flirt here for a while.”
    Her wolf snorted in disgust, but she counted it a win and let her wary muscles ease.
    Until Daniel, nostrils flared like a bull, charged into the room.
 
    Daniel rushed into the ballroom, head and stomach churning, his gaze cutting left-right, frantic to catch a glimpse of Zoe.
    The ballroom was filled with swirling dancers and chattering groups. He couldn’t see the one lush figure he wanted. His heart thudded painfully. Damn it, a wizard was pursuing Zoe with evil intent, and he had no idea where she was. Couldn’t protect her, as everything inside him screamed to do.
    As if she was his to protect.
    He thumbed his temples through his mask. She wasn’t his, she never had been. He had to remember that. Friends in high school; her a ten and him a four. Despite what happened tonight on that fainting couch, she still saw him as that dork.
    Then Zeus’ brutal face appeared in a momentary gap in the crowd, cruelty pinched in a frown aimed at a graceful woman with a river of dark, glossy hair.
    Zeus is with Zoe . Daniel’s heart stopped.
    Then his pulse revved twice as fast. To hell with whose she was or wasn’t, he was going to rip Zeus apart.
    Daniel bulled like a linebacker through the dancers. Urgency knifed at him to simply mow them all down, and he barely managed to keep from blasting them away with a spell as he dodged and wedged.
    If Zeus hurt her, he was a dead man.
    As Daniel neared, he saw Zeus staring at Zoe, lust blazing alongside the cruelty in the brutal man’s eyes.
    And Zoe… Daniel slowed as his whole body turned to rubber.
    Her tongue curled around an hors d’oeuvre with such erotic heat, Daniel wanted to kill himself to be reincarnated as that cube of cheese. Zeus leaned forward, for all the world like he was going to replace the cheese with his mouth. Daniel’s heart rate goosed, everything in him rising to smash his fist in his rival’s face.
    Daniel sprinted for her, his conscience screaming at him to stop, that she deserved better than him, but he could care less; she was his , and no dollar’s worth of wizard was getting in his way—
    “Whoa there, cowboy.”
    A hand seized his shoulder and swung him around. He was confronted by a smirking man in black tails, his lounging stance as graceful as a wild animal.
    Daniel twisted and tried to wrenched away. “ Let go. ”
    But the man’s fingers were steel. “I will when you calm down.” Brilliant black eyes twinkled with amusement and a touch of sympathy through a satin domino styled to look like purple smoke.
    “Right. All right.” Daniel stopped tugging, pretending to cooperate, but he dragged oxygen rapidly through flared nostrils, ready for his opportunity to yank away. Maybe smash the man in the face as he did. No, that would take too much time, and he had to get to Zoe. “Who are you?”
    The man’s mouth quirked. “I’ve had many names. Currently, I’m going by the amusing