Page 45 of Lost Touch

One hour. One hour, and I’d be at some fancy restaurant under the scrutiny of Drew’s uncle Boyd, his wife, his two sons, Drew’s parents, Alyssa, the infamous Victoria, andherfamily.

All werewolves. A lot of them alphas. And all wishing puny little human me far, far away—at best—for one reason or another.

I’d retreated to the bathroom to use the mirror in there to give me an edge on the tie thing, but so far all it’d accomplished was giving me a great view of my damp, rosy face, chin lifted to expose the tangled mess at my collar.

A soft sound alerted me to Drew’s presence in the doorway. I turned my head, and—froze.

Oh, my fucking God. Drew in a T-shirt and gym shorts looked like a cover model.

Drew in a tux could’ve been the cover model forJames Bond Monthly.

He lounged against the door frame, massive arms crossed and shoulders straining even the obviously custom tailoring of his jacket, the rest of him long and lean and powerful. His eyes rested on me with something intense gleaming in their depths.

And a hint of alpha glow on top. That didn’t surprise me. He’d been keyed-up as hell all day. For once, I was kind of glad I couldn’t feel my ass, because with the number of times he’d knotted me over the past few days—and extra that morning, plus once in the afternoon before I got in the shower—I had to be absolutely ravaged.

“I’ll help with that,” he said, and pushed off the wall, sauntering into the bathroom to take up position right behind me, his chest brushing my back. “Here.”

He reached up and around, setting both hands on my neck, tugging gently at the mess I’d made of the tie.

Our eyes met in the mirror. I realized that I was seeing what everyone else at this dinner would be seeing, and the last of the confidence I’d been gritting my teeth and forcing myself to fake sizzled away like a drop of water on a hot pan. My head only came up to Drew’s chin, not only giving me a full view of both of our faces—mine plain, unevenly flushed, and damp with nervous perspiration, blond curls all messily tousled no matter now I tried to make them behave, and Drew’s movie-star handsome, with his dark-brown waves all naturally, perfectly bedhead-sexy—but emphasizing how small and thin and vulnerable I looked compared to him, and by extension everyone related to him.

“They’re never going to buy it,” I muttered without meaning to.

Drew’s hands paused, the ends of the tie dangling from his fingers.

“Buy what? You mean the mate bond? Sure they will. Only someone with magic can see a bond or the lack of it, and we already know our energy’s too messed up to tell the difference. Besides, no shamans or anything at the party.”

He went back to work on the tie, his fingers brushing my throat and chin and making me shiver.

How could he not understand what I meant? He was looking at the same thing I was. It had to be purposeful, acting obtuse so he wouldn’t hurt my feelings by agreeing with me that no one in their right mind would think he’d choose someone like me.

“You don’t need magic to see that—” I cut off abruptly, snapping my mouth shut. What good would it do to say it out loud?

“You’re right, I don’t,” he said, his voice gone all low and husky. He dipped his head, eyes shining, and nuzzled below my ear, breath coming a little faster than it had a second before. “No magic required to see how fucking hot you are.”

I went rigid, everything from my brain to my toes all cold and tingly.

No magic required.

Except that it had been. Drew had been magically altered over a period of months, and if he hadn’t he’d never have touched me.

We’d done more than fuck over the past three days, too. Drew figured out that while I had a lot of pop culture references, scenes from movies, and bits of dialogue embedded in my mind, I couldn’t remember ever seeing a movie and had no idea why I knew any of it.

He’d set out to fix that, gleefully filling in the time between ravaging me with all of his favorites, which unsurprisingly slanted heavily toward sci-fi and anything with Bruce Willis, or both.

Drew had cuddled me close while we watched in bed, laughed at my commentary when it was meant to be funny and smiled when it wasn’t, whispered his own in my ear, and generally acted like he enjoyed me. Justme, not only my body.

I’d basked in it.

But it occurred to me for the first time that liking someone had a lot to do with hormones, nearly as much as wanting to fuck someone did. If you were attracted enough, besotted enough, even stupid jokes and shallow remarks could seem funny and interesting.

Maybe that had been my deal with Clayton.

Anyway.

It was all a lie, bottom line. Not that I blamed Drew for it. He couldn’t help it.

Drew had moved on to nipping at my earlobe, his hands wandering down and away from the half-tied bow tie.

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