Page 81 of Wretched Thorns

She looked up at him.

“Your turn.”

He looked at their hands. He looked at the floor. He closed his eyes for one breath.

When he opened them, his eyes were warm-brown, and the wolf wasn’t anywhere in his face, which was something he’d been doing for her all night without her quite realizing he’d been doing it.

“I don’t have a last name to hand you.”

She waited.

His jaw worked.

“Bodie picked the one on my paperwork off a road sign.”

The words came out flatter than she’d heard him say anything yet. She tightened her fingers around his without thinking about it.

He looked down at the place she’d tightened.

“Abandoned at fifteen. Placed in a holding cell in Broussard like a rabid… No pack would claim me.” His thumb moved against her hand again, the same quarter-inch. “Bodie walked in, paid the fine, and drove me up here. Next morning Jasper shoved the syrup across the table and they’ve all treated me like a brother every day since.”

He looked down briefly.

“I didn’t know what to do with that.”

He took a breath.

“I’m a wolf, with no name, with a wolf temper — bound by all the laws that come with being a wolf, but none of the protections of a sanctioned pack. We’re a pack of outcasts, which I love by the way, but we aren’t afforded the standard pack protections, and you should know that. This is me, Tara.”

She didn’t answer right away.

She looked at him. She let her face do whatever it was doing.

She’d known him for barely three days.

She trusted him in a way that didn’t make any sense. That was the part that really scared her.

Her body was sitting a hand’s breadth from his. She could smell him, feel his heat. She could feel her body leaning in with or without her permission. The thrum of what she was beginning to accept as a bond was deepening into an ache, a need. She wasn’t going to win this argument with her body tonight.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

She tightened her fingers around his.

“You think I care where your last name came from?”

Dex’s throat moved once.

“There is power in names for your kind.”

“Dex.”

She waited until he looked at her again.

“You have a name. Don’t matter where it came from. A name is a name, and that technicality won’t stop me from putting a hex on you or anybody.”

She leaned in closer to him. “I’m just that good.”

She scooted closer. “And if you’re that good, I’ll be hollering that name you think you don’t have all fucking night.”