Page 67 of Black Moon

I ran my tongue between the sharp edges of my front teeth. Without question, Linden would give me whatever I asked for. And while I did want to crawl into blankets that smelled like him and feel his arm slip around my waist in the middle of the night, I wasn’t sure I was ready to ask him for all that.

“Would you want me to?”

A funny-looking smile crossed his lips then. He stepped into my space, his soft palm moving to cup my cheek. “Of course I would. Don’t want to deny you space of your own—”

“Maybe if I need to work, I could use one of the guest rooms. But I could still sleep beside you?” I sounded way too eager, but I tried not to think about it.

And Linden seemed determined to help me think less when he leaned in and brushed his lips across mine. “Sounds perfect. Whatever space you need’s yours. Rowan’s on the top floor, Juniper’s in the guest house, so whatever you want.”

I held his hips, keeping him close. “What Ireallywant is to use your laundry. I only packed for a few days here.”

Linden’s laugh rang like bells in my head, the sound brushing aside all my worries and doubts.

“That, we can definitely accommodate. Let’s go get your stuff.”

35

Linden

Waking next to Colt outside his heat was somehow even better than in his heat. The why was simple enough: he didn’t need to be there. There was literally nothing keeping him in my bed, but he stayed anyway.

And there he was when I woke up, one hand absently stroking mine, which was wrapped possessively around his waist, and the other pecking quietly away at his tablet.

“ ’Cha doing?” I mumbled. It sounded at least semi-coherent to my own ears, so I didn’t bother clearing my throat and correcting it.

He smiled and ducked his head to nudge mine. “Reading emails from the office. Didn’t want to wake you.”

“Important stuff?”

The expression that crossed his face at the question brought me fully awake. Clearly, someone thought it was important, even if he considered it debatable. “They’re not too impressed with the notion that diet could be what’s keeping Grove omegas healthy. They want it to be something dramatic and definite.”

“They want a story, not a list of healthy food,” I mumbled into his side, burying my face in the warm skin there. Damn, it was too easy to get used to this. To get comfortable with it. “Don’t blame them. I want a magic answer that cures everything too.”

Colt hummed at that, smiling and running his hand along my whole arm. “You want to heal the world. They just want the scoop.” Then he bit his lip and looked at the screen again. “They do want the story, but they think there’s more to it that I’m not catching.”

I pushed up next to him, leaning my head on his shoulder. “Does that mean you’re staying a while longer?”

“I already was staying a while longer,” he pointed out, then clicked off his tablet and tossed it to the end of the bed. “Want to make out instead of worrying about this?”

“As long as you don’t mind morning breath, definitely.”

He didn’t seem to mind at all. Unfortunately, a few minutes later, his phone rang and he peeled away from me. “That’s Claudia. She promised to call this morning and I have to talk to her.”

I groaned and fell back against the pillows. “Seriously? Claudia? I promise I’m more fun than she is.”

He chuckled, and on the other end of his phone, so did Claudia.

“He wishes he was more fun than me,” her tinny voice said over the line. “But if he was, he wouldn’t be the perfect pack alpha.”

And we were back to that. After Colt had been so offended by the notion of being used in political machinations—something I didn’t blame him for at all—now he was deliberately involving himself in pack politics. He and Claudia had been cooking up something for Friday night at The Cider House, and he’d been talking about me going down and talking to people at the next pack meeting.

Like a politician.

And when I pointed out that he didn’t want to get involved in politics and neither did I, he just offered me a beatific smile, kissed me on the cheek, and changed the subject.

I wasn’t sure whether to feel like a child whose opinion had been dismissed, or honored that they thought so highly of me.

And it wasn’t like I didn’t want to do the job. I just didn’t want to be a slimy politician, making promises I had no intention of fulfilling, and pretending to care about people and issues I didn’t give a damn about for the sake of getting people to agree with me.

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