Page 24 of Lost Touch

He looked at me for a long moment, his eyes serious and his mouth set in a hard line. “You’d rather I hurt you?”

I gave it a moment’s thought. “Yeah, I would. Because you wouldn’t mean it. And to hurt you, I’d have to mean it. I couldn’t, Drew. I know that for a fact.”

Drew’s face tightened, and he stood up abruptly, his chair screeching on the floor. “I’m going out for the night. To run. Wear myself out as much as I can. I won’t be back until morning, so lock the front door. I’ll jam the back door into the frame. Not that I think anyone’s likely to bother you out here.” His jaw muscle ticked. “I’m the only real threat,” he muttered, and stalked past me without another word.

A moment later, I had to cover my ears as a horrendous screeching and thumping came from the laundry porch: Drew jamming the door into the frame, apparently.

For a long time after he left, I stared at the shiny surface of the table, marred only by the coffee we’d both spilled on it. The patterns of the droplets and smears resembled dried blood, the aftermath of a coffee massacre.

At long last, I got up, checked the front door, and went upstairs to bed, leaving most of the lights on. I doubted I’d be getting much sleep anyway, so I might as well not lie awake in a creepily dark and silent house.

Chapter 8

Differences in Sexual Function

A couple of hours of tossing, turning, punching all four of the bed’s pillows into different shapes—because screw it, if Drew was spending the night out in the woods and leaving me here to brood alone, at least I could have as many pillows as I wanted—and jumping at every rustle, creak, and shadow, I gave up and reached over to click on the bedside lamp.

I shot a hostile glare at the pillows as I rolled out of bed. Four of them, and they’d still let me down, the little assholes.

Fine, sleep wasn’t in the cards, and lying in bed obsessing over everything that had happened that evening, and everything that could still happen, obviously wouldn’t accomplish much.

I needed a plan, and for that I needed information.

The living room’s giant windows made me feel like a helpless little fish in a bowl surrounded by predators, so I grabbed the laptop I’d been using, made a cup of tea, and headed back upstairs to do my research in bed.

And then I sat there, fingers drumming on the edge of the laptop, biting my lip and staring at the blinking cursor in the search box.

How did you even begin to research something like this, at least if you weren’t a shaman or something?

Speaking of, I made a mental note to collar Drew when he got home and ask why the hell he hadn’t already called the shaman he’d consulted about me, but I had a sinking feeling I already knew the answer: he couldn’t let his family find out anything about this, and the shaman would be too much of a risk.

All right, either way, all I had tonight was the internet. And if Googling “why does my alpha werewolf roommate act like a jerk all day” hadn’t been super productive, I doubted that “how do I cure an alpha werewolf who’s gone crazy and wants to forcibly claim me in the laundry room” would be that much better as a search term.

I gulped a big swig of tea to moisten my suddenly very dry throat, and took the plunge: “alpha werewolf sexual function differences” looked really, really damning in black and white on the screen in front of me.

I hit enter.

Nothing but the same random crap that you always got no matter what you searched.

I frowned and tried again with a couple of words rearranged. Okay, no, I did not need a towel with a wolf on it from a random vintage website.

Finally, in desperation, I clicked on the settings. And…Drew, that absolute bastard. He’d had the safe search on when he gave me the fucking laptop!

But all annoyance fled, replaced by open-mouthed shock, as I reran the search without any filters.

Okay, so somehow I’d made it twenty-five years without ever knowing that alphas had…a knot.

Aknot?

I read the description I’d found on one of the many websites that had popped up, my eyes widening and widening. Because, what, the evolutionary biology powers-that-be had sat down and said, “You know what? Alpha cock just isn’t big enough. Let’s make it geteven biggeronce it’s in there. Huge! And also, since alphas don’t already have enough advantages in size and strength and everything, the knot’ll keep their mates from getting away. In case they’re still conscious. LOL!”

Drew had one of those. Even his big hand might not be enough to wrap around that…that…oh, God.

I slammed the laptop shut, breathing hard and glancing around shiftily as if I expected someone to pop up from under the bed and start shaming me for being a pervert. For good measure, I put the laptop on the floor and snapped off the bedside light. Just in case.

Differences in sexual function.

Well, Jesus Christ on a cracker.

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