Page 85 of The Wild Wolf's Rejected Mate

His grin widens. “I do have a great beard.”

My lips rise at the corners of their own accord. “Very yankable, it seems.”

He takes a step closer. I clutch the sides of my gown with my sweaty palms. “Yes, I’ve been told that many times. Great for yanking and catching crumbs.”

“Seems like a good thing to have, then.” I don’t know what I’m saying, or what we’re doing, or what I’m still doing up on this table. Is this flirting?

“It serves me well.” He closes the rest of the distance between us. “Want to give it a tug? See what everyone is talking about?”

My face catches fire. My lower belly squirms. I’m on my own. My wolf is hanging back, watching, and the pecking voice is missing in action.

I can’t think of even a quasi-smart reply. I’ve run out, so I do what I have to do—I reach out, take a chunk of beard between my forefinger and thumb, and pull, very gently. The smile that breaks across his face steals all my air. Blood whooshes to myhead. I’m a balloon about to pop. I’m a complete dork, and at the very same time, I’m utterly, totally, transcendentally entranced.

I drop my hand. Justus catches it and brings it back to his face, pressing my palm to his cheek. My skin is so clammy. My thighs clench, trying to tamp the squirmy sensation that’s doing strange things to my pulse and breath and ability to think.

“I shouldn’t have left you.” I’m not sure whether he means today or back when we mated, and regardless, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that. My wolf snorts. She agrees with him, and she’s unimpressed that it took him so long to realize it.

“I was fine.” I’m going to assume he’s talking about today.

“I was afraid you’d ask me to take you home, so I made myself scarce.”

My jaw drops, not much, but enough that I have to close my mouth. Males don’t justadmitthings. They brood or stomp around or refuse to eat the dinner put in front of them, and then you have to go back to the kitchen and play ‘guess why’ with the other females.

Hold on. Back up. Focus. He bailed because he didn’t want to take me home today?

“But youwilltake me back to Quarry Pack?” I ask, my anxiety spiking. I don’t actually want to be anywhere else right now. I like his rough hand cradling mine while I stand on top of a table like I’m a bold female who’s never obsessively worried about exposure, bolt holes, and escape routes. But in order to breathe, I need to know Icouldgo.

“Yes, when you say it’s time,” he says, his eyes shuttering. He lets go of my hand, and I let it fall to my side. There’s a fraught moment while he braces himself, waiting for me to ask, and I try to think of something, anything else to say instead.

I do want to go home. But not right now. I’m afraid to tell him that I want to stay. That he’ll read too much into it.

He’s afraid, too, though he’s doing a good job not showing it. The bond is giving him away.

I stare down at him. He stares up at me.

He blinks first. “Will you come for a walk?” he asks, his voice gruff and tentative.

I nod, my throat too tight to say yes out loud.

He reaches for me, but he doesn’t grab my waist. His hands stop and hover a hairsbreadth over my hips. I have to step forward into them.

He cocks his head and lets me see into his eyes again. He’s nervous. Relieved. Excited.

I am, too. I step into his hands. His fingers curve around my sides, and he lifts me like I’m made of cotton fluff. I instinctively grab his shoulders for balance. His wolf rumbles. I draw down a deep breath, my nose quivering. Oh, lord. Hisscent.

When I was a girl, we’d till the garden behind Abertha’s cottage as soon as the ground was soft and dry enough, usually in March when the weather still felt like winter on most days. The sky would be stark gray, there would be a bite in the wind and only the barest hint of buds on the trees, but with every spade-full of turned dirt, a delicious springtime scent would rise in the air. That’s Justus.

When I breathe him in, I can hear the crunch of my boots on the cold dirt, the scrape of the hoe hitting rocks, the thunk of steel hacking through clumps of earth. I can feel my palms burn from the rough wooden handle.

His scent confuses the past and the present in my head. He wasn’t there. It’s a trick of the senses that he smells exactly like my memories.

Or is it something else? Out of all the males in the world, Fate picked him for me. Why?

He takes my hand and leads me in the direction of the bonfire, his pace so slow it’s almost bride-like. His grip is strong and certain. I hope he doesn’t notice the clamminess.

We take one of the worn paths that winds between the various areas of activity. We pass by a workbench with the tools left out and some sort of wooden contraption left in the vise. A little further on, someone has left a bowl on a pottery wheel, the rudimentary kind made from wood discs that you kick with your foot. Farther still, there is a circle of empty chairs, whittling left in one, a pipe left in another.

We pass through scents—sawdust, clay, tobacco—but Justus’s rich earthiness travels with me. My steps feel light, and my head swims. I’ve never felt like this before. Sonot alone.

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