Page 29 of Reclaiming Home

“Yeah, blood loss and injury take a lot out of you.”

He wet a washcloth and turned the shower off. “Can you get the rest from my hairline?”

“Sure, come sit.” I handed him a towel so he could cover himself a bit, and waited until he sat on the toilet lid.

He handed the washcloth to me and tilted his head so I would have a good view of the area where the cut hid inside his thick, dark hair. The issue was that the way he tilted his head made the wolf perk up.

I froze, torn between what the wolf wanted and what I needed to do, Kye’s hazel eyes opened.

“What?” he asked.

Clearing my throat, I shook my head. “It’s uh….” I felt awkward suddenly. Vulnerable. It was a weird feeling to have.

He put his hand on my hip and tugged the hem of my T-shirt. “What is it, Brodie?”

I loved my name on his lips. Almost more than I loved it when he called me Alpha.

I took a deep breath and let it out, then smiled self-deprecatingly. “It’s the way you tilt your head.” Completely unable to stop myself, I ran my fingers along the graceful arc of his neck. “It’s….”

He licked his lips. “Ah.”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t take my hand away or tear my gaze from where I was touching his pale skin. “It’s… a wolf thing.”

I could see the corner of his mouth lift, and then he tilted his head even more.

I rasped out a chuckle. My body was responding to him like it hadn’t to anyone in a very long time. “You’re playing with fire, boy.”

He tongued his lower lip slowly, then whispered, “And what if, sometimes, I like to burn?”

I almost got a head rush from his tone alone. “I’ve put submissives on their knees for lesser reasons.”

His head jerked a little and my gaze locked with his. There was surprise in his eyes, but something else, too. An expression I had seen many times before.

I swayed toward him, but caught myself at the last moment. I cleared my throat and pointedly nodded at his head. “None of them have ever bled in the beginning, though.”

Kye let out a snicker. “So what you’re saying is that you’re one of those Doms who sometimes make subs bleed?”

Smirking, I cupped his jaw with one hand to hold his head still, and started to rub the blood off his face. “Absolutely. All you have to do is ask.”

“Noted.” He closed his eyes, but smiled as I continued to scrub the dried blood off his hairline.

Luckily the moment passed, but it left a seed of something hopeful under my breastbone. Like maybe this could work when I told him the truth about our connection.

The cut turned out to be small and there was no debris inside. I still made sure it was cleaned to my standards, even though Kye whined at me.

By the time I was done and I helped him get dressed—getting the T-shirt over his head without disturbing the cut was a challenge he hadn’t counted on—Carys was hollering at us from downstairs.

We went downstairs and had one of the best meals I had in a while. As we were eating, Kye’s phone dinged.

“An email,” he explained as he checked it. For a moment, he appeared surprised, then he threw back his head and laughed.

“What?” Carys asked, amused.

“Well, they’ve just let me know that I didn’t get the job I interviewed for a few hours before I started my drive here.”

I snorted and continued eating.

“I, for one, am happy for that,” Carys said and beamed at her brother.

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