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“Show me. Make me run.” My voice rang with a fool’s gold confidence. “This may be your final chance to frighten me. Lay your mouth on mine and I may not ever be.”
He caught my arm, grabbed with such heat to his touch I expected his fingernails to flake off in favor of claws. "If you experienced firsthand what my kind have done, what these hands are meant to do. . . ”
I took his hands in mine and laid them on my neck. His fingers flexed around my throat: an intentional grip, careful but firm enough to feel the roughening paw pads beneath his skin. As my heart beat to a dizzying anticipation, his touch waned.
His breaths came shorter, labored. Sweat on his brow marked the struggle against a howling undercurrent. “I can’t.”
I caught him by one heated wrist. “Where will you be, Caelan? Do you nip our heels to save us, and if that doesn’t work, too bad, so sad, on to the next sheep?”
He held a small, considerate pause. “You aren’t a sheep.”
I laid my hand on his chest, over his pounding, human heart. He glanced from hand to face, and the lingering polite distance between us closed. “You’re no savage wolf,” I said, drawing him into a hug. “You’re a man, and you’re trying. I don’t agree with everything you’ve done or might come to do, but I appreciate your effort. I appreciate you.”
He hesitated, but as my face pressed against the soft texture of his vest, his hands came to rest on my back. When I leaned away, he held me still.
“Caelan, I—”
Cupping my cheek, he searched my eyes. “Tell me why you're so important.”
chapter 20
THE WOLVES COMING
He had not transformed and yet the air steamed between us. Looking into those wild, hungry eyes, I didn't want to talk.
“Marcy?” His thumb rubbed my cheek as if to coax a reply.
For first time since I’d left my grandparents’ cabin, I felt truly seen. I weighed both stakes and consequences to draw a single conclusion: “Does it matter, Caelan?” Nervous, excited energy coursed through my veins. With a vulpine grin I hooked my fingers in his belt. “Will it change how you feel?”
“No,” he said in a murmured rush, lifting me onto the table. Documents fluttered left and right. He grabbed my waist and pulled me to the edge against him. A small noise caught his attention, but my hands were in his hair, drawing his face to mine. Our eyes met once more in the dark. We were watches wound and ready, on the cusp of falling in sync.
But in the second remaining before his mouth pressed mine, Caelan cursed and stumbled. Igor hung onto his ankle by tooth and claw, a raggedy mop of malice and hisses, until the sheriff slipped on scattered papers and hit the floor. The black cat hustled underneath the table.
Samson’s head popped over the arm of the couch. He jumped the side and bounded to my feet as I sank beside the man, relieved Igor hadn’t been squished and annoyed I hadn’t been kissed.
“You okay?”
“Fine,” he said through a small laugh, resting his arms on his knees. “Just bruised my tailbone.”
“I’m so sorry.” Even as Samson squeezed himself between Caelan and I in search of hands offering pets, Igor bumped the wall and followed the baseboard to the doorway with a sassy flick of her tail, slinking toward the rolling credits. “She's a brat when she wants to be.”
Caelan ran his hands through his hair. “Little Lady’s got her priorities straight, unlike yours truly. I should be apologizing, Miss Davins.” Sneezing, he scratched the older cat’s chin. “Went too far.”
My neglected libido, which had never before experienced the thrill of being hoisted onto a table, didn't think he’d gone far enough. I leaned into the man. “Let’s agree to disagree.”
That earned a chuckle and a short-lived grin. “You caught me at a weak moment. I'm exhausted. ‘Bed’ is sounding real good however I get there.” He rose and offered his hand. “Now, if you'll pardon my antics, I'll fetch your sewing machine then take a hobble around the property. Lock the doors. Let me in when I knock.”
“Or what? You'll huff and you'll puff?”
After retrieving Gram’s antique Singer, he exited through the front and left me to settle Mila upstairs. Samson had smushed himself between the girl’s back and the cushion. Igor stared balefully at the pair from the loveseat. Shooing the cat before she could terrorize the werepup, I woke Mila and got her and Samson situated for bed.
The backyard motion detector flipped on as I started on Snowmane’s pattern.
“Wires crossed, my ass,” I muttered.
Fifteen minutes after I'd cut the cloth, the blood-speckled wolf pawed at my slider. Ears swiveled and eyes bright with human intellect, he waited one entire second, then scratched again. When our eyes met, his snout pressed forward and fogged the glass.
“Seriously?” I groaned, unlocking the slider.
