Page 45 of Clawless

Reed was just coming out of the shower when I barged into his room. Steam swirled out behind him, and part of my brain dissolved right along with the sight of him in low-hanging sweats and nothing else. But my mercenary side was crowing. This was perfect. Reed was hot. His skin was damp, his cheeks were flushed, and if he wasn’t dripping pheromones, then I had enough pent-up emotion for both of us.

I tossed my bag on the sofa and put my hands on my hips. “I think we should practice. Right now.”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand me. My chest was heaving from running all the way from the gym. And I hadn’t exactly been in control before that. After spitting my relationship with Reed in Jasper’s face, I’d bolted like every shifter in the school was snapping at my heels. So now I was standing before him a disheveled wreck, but with enough fire in my veins to make my purpose clear.

“Okay,” he said slowly, and looped his towel over the bathroom door. “You want to… sit on the sofa?”

Hysteria bubbled up inside me. I didn’t need cheek kisses and sly remarks now. “No. I think we should just… get on with it.”

His lips quirked, but he headed my way. “Sure. But you want to be more specific? I wouldn’t want to overstep the mark and end up in another of your head-locks.”

My lips quirked at the reference to my wrestling skills. Reed still had me if I was on my feet, but once we were on the mat, I could hold my own. But I wasn’t interested in fighting with him now. I swallowed hard. “Kiss me, Reed. Show me how you’re going to convince the school we can’t keep our hands off each other.”

Something flared in his gaze, and for a moment my heart skipped a beat. But when he blinked, his face took on its familiar blank mask. I almost expected him to pull away, but he bent down to feather his lips over mine. I closed my eyes, willing myself to get swept away by it. It wasn’t easy, since my heart was still racing from my encounter with Jasper, and Reed was so gentle I felt like my skin was vibrating. He finally cupped my face, but he was touching me like I was porcelain, and I could feel him holding back. It was a good kiss. His lips were warm and soft, and the heat coming off him convinced me he was feeling something. But it was all too slow and sweet to block out the twisting pain in my belly.

I needed him to taste me. Not just because it would prove he was into this, and it wasn’t all political maneuvering to appease our families, but because the last time he’d made me weak in the knees, he’d been using his alpha voodoo. But when I tried to deepen the kiss, he pulled back an inch, his gentle touch now cautious.

Fuck caution. He might not have had something to prove, but I did.

Which is why I didn’t give him any warning. Grabbing his shoulders, I hooked a foot around his ankles, and drove him down to the sofa. He looked at me in shock and I flushed, but made myself focus on the pulse beating in his neck.

It told me he wasn’t unmoved. Which was kind of obvious, since I’d just tossed him onto the couch. But there was something in his eyes. Something that said this was more than just an experiment to him. And it gave me the confidence to slide across his waist until I was straddling him. I dragged my hands up his ribs, over the wide planes of his chest, and dug my fingers into the massive ridges of muscle along his neck. Reed wasn’t just hot; he was a burning building. And as I ran my lips up the damp column of his neck, I had every intention of hurling myself on his flames.

“Wait,” he said, this throat vibrating against my mouth. “Vail, slow down.”

I was off him so fast, I probably left scorch marks. I definitely felt like my face was on fire. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I overstepped the line.”

“No,” he said, but he didn’t reach for me. “It’s fine. You just took me by surprise.”

I groaned, happy to let out some of the pain tearing at my belly. “I just feel like I’m about to jump out of my skin.” I scrubbed my hands over my face, trying to keep the tears at bay. “Shit, I’m so embarrassed.”

He reached up and pulled my hands away, easing me down beside him. “Hey, don’t be. I want this. I really want this. We just don’t need to go from zero to ninety with one kiss.” When I made a strangled sound, he sat forward, and scrubbed at his own face. The awkwardness of the moment made me want to puke, until he turned to me and I saw the vulnerability in his eyes. “Cal wasn’t joking when he called me a virgin.” I looked at him in surprise and he said, “At the pool. When he said I’d probably die that way.”

I huffed, thinking back. “I thought he was talking to me.”

That earned me a small smile. “It was definitely a swipe at both of us, but he was reminding me of Jay’s prior claim.”

The little bubble of intimacy popped in my face and I scowled. “If you guys take alpha classes in being possessive assholes, you should all consider yourself graduated.”

I expected him to take offense, but he just laughed and scooped a sofa cushion off the floor. “Cal can be an asshole, but he’s not all bad. He just doesn’t trust easily.”

“He’s not the only one,” I grumbled, then rubbed my stomach. That shredding feeling had faded, but I still felt pretty lousy. “But you know the virginity thing applies to me, too. I guess you can smell it on me, or whatever, but nothing’s changed because I was with Jasper. We never got that far.”

He studied me for a moment. “Your scent becomes more complex when you’re with someone for a while. You always seemed like sunshine to me, but if anything, you now smell… warmer. I just figured you two got together.”

“No,” I said shortly, and snatching the cushion off him, hugged it to my aching middle. It wasn’t lost on me that I happened to be a long way from Jasper’s sunshine smell when the clenching in my stomach returned. “But why haven’t you? I sort of thought alphas were insatiable beasts.”

Shifting his hips, he pried my hand off the cushion, and laid it right over the hard ridge in his sweatpants. Talk about taking someone by surprise. I was too busy gaping at my fingers – which looked tiny next to the hard wedge of muscle they were clutching – to sense the change in the air. But when he tipped my chin up, I saw the silver sheen in his eyes and knew I was staring straight at his wolf. “Don’t think I don’t want this. But wanting something and acting on it are two different things for me. Cal was also telling the truth when he called me the Ragemaster. I have to take things slowly with my wolf, or shit can get bad fast.”

I blinked at him, trying to concentrate when all my attention was on the throbbing heat under my hand. “You sound like you don’t trust your wolf.”

“Not a bit. And he’s always been a little too interested in you, Vail.” I had a flashback to the supply closet and him telling me my fear smelled like heaven to his wolf. I moved my hand back carefully, but the sheen had faded from his eyes. If he really did have to struggle to keep his wolf in check, it explained the blank mask he so often wore, and I felt a pinch of sympathy. Or maybe empathy, since my wolf was a stubborn bitch in a different way.

I nodded. “We haven’t rushed into it before now, so I guess it makes sense to wait.” My stomach chose that moment to growl and he smirked.

“We should probably make an appearance at the dining hall,” he told me as he got to his feet and went to the dresser for a shirt. “Get those tongues wagging before Saturday.”

I bit back a comment about my spit-addicted wolf, who was all for wagging tongues, and grimaced. “I really don’t think I’m up to having the High Table toss me into a doggy bowl tonight, Reed.”

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