Page 69 of Wrestling With Werewolves

I nod and stand quietly, thinking about what he shared, hands on his chest as he lathers up my hair with shampoo and gently caresses my scalp. His big fingers force a tightening in my body, nipples pebbling against his chest as I close my eyes and let my head fall into his hands.

“Lola,” he huffs, “I never would have thought washing hair would be sexy, but if you keep making those noises, I’m not gonna make it past step one.”

I open my eyes long enough to see Big Daddy and my wolf’s colors shine brightly through his irises. “I’ll tone it down, Alpha; it’s a promise.” My tone is teasing, but Richard places a soapy finger under my chin.

“Never,” he growls. “Never tone a single thing down about yourself. Not for me, not for the pack, not for Marco.”

My father’s name sends a swirl of butterflies through my belly. His challenge is a day away. And my situation with Richard got infinitely more complicated the moment of our claiming bites.

Richard prods me back to the present with a tickly finger to the side. “We’ll tackle that later. Let’s deal with the hair, more food and water, maybe a nap. And then we can talk through my plan.”

I close my eyes as I wave at the conditioner. “That’s next. And there’s a plan?”

Richard squirts creamy conditioner out of the bottle and brings his hands to my hair, rubbing the conditioner gently in from the tips up close to my scalp. I reach up and run my fingers through the snarls to finger detangle even though they’re wet and weighted down.

“I have a plan,” Richard says with confidence. “As soon as the challenge has passed, we’ll invite him here and talk to him openly. We’ve done nothing wrong.”

I huff out a growl. “You know he won’t see it that way.”

“He’ll have to.” Richard’s swirling green-and-golden eyes find mine. “There hasn’t been a Luna bond in thousands of years, Lola. This is a blessing, a chance to learn directly from the goddess herself. There are words in Vikand’s book that I could never translate, but we can both read it now, if Big Daddy is right.”

“That’s so wild.” I grin at him. “I hope it’s true.”

He nods with a smile, stroking his fingers through my hair. “Big Daddy has been right about everything else. I’m excited to dig in and find out what we can.”

I mull that over as we leave the conditioner in while we finish washing our bodies. My hair is still super tangled on one side, but the rest of the steps to fix it start post shower. We manage to make it out with minimal sexual shenanigans. I’m honestly exhausted to a bone-deep level I couldn’t have imagined.

We leave the shower, and I snag one of Richard’s tees. Moving carefully around my head, I scrunch my curls in the soft shirt.

He grabs a bath towel and hands it to me. “I’m not so much of a bachelor that I don’t have towels, Lola.”

Huffing out a laugh, I continue scrunching. “Terry cloth is hard on curls, and they’ll get frizzy if I dry too roughly. Remember all those steps I mentioned?”

He cocks his head to the side. “I’m beginning to understand why you sleep with your hair wrapped in silk.”

“Bingo.” I laugh as he steps forward and takes the tee from me.

Big hands come gently to my hair and scrunch from the bottom up. He’s learning fast. He moves all the way around my head, sighing when he gets the matted section on one side. “I don’t know what to do about this, though. Honestly, it’s a bird’s nest, mate.”

Mate. That singular word is enough to make everything inside me come alive.

“I’ll never get tired of hearing that,” I whisper.

“And I’ll never stop saying it.” He brings his forehead to mine, nuzzling the tip of my nose with his.

We stand for a long moment, basking in the connection as our wolves snore somewhere in Richard’s mind. Eventually, he sighs.

“Much as I’d like to do this with you forever, we need to take care of this hair.”

“And you should check in with Connall,” I urge. Being Richard’s means this pack is mine in a way that runs deeper than me being a visitor. Leighton’s parents drift into my mind. Lou and Iggy follow. I should call her. I bet she’s?—

“You’ve gone into pack omega mode,” Richard says with a sensual chuckle. “I can hear you.”

I blush, running both hands up his stomach to his chest. “It’s hard to turn off, ya know?”

His wry smile tells me he knows precisely what I mean. He points to the kitchen. “Go sit. I asked Connall to bring your guitar over plus all the shower stuff from your place. I’ve got twenty bottles of hair stuff I have no idea what to do with.”

Beaming, I cross the room as the tree house pulls a barstool out for me. I pat the counter as I seat myself. Richard reappears from the entryway with a bag full of hair product bottles and my beloved guitar. When he hands it to me, a deeply innate sense of relief hits me. My fingers itch to play, and so I do.

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