Page 12 of Ravaged Wolf
I want to touch his hair. It looks soft.
For a second, he sways toward me, just the slightest bit, like my thoughts are drawing him in, but then he stiffens his spine, sniffs, and runs a nervous hand through his curls.
“Hope you’re okay if I put my pool table there.” He nods toward the middle of the living room.
“Fine by me as long as I can put up shelves for my antique doll collection along the wall.”
“Which wall?”
“All the walls.”
His thick brows pinch together. “You’re pulling my leg.”
I keep my face blank and slowly shake my head. “Not at all.”
“All right, then.” He slaps his thighs and blows out a breath. “I guess I’m making some shelves. How many dolls are we talking?”
“One…thousand.”
His smile breaks like a sunburst. “Are you teasing me, Izzy Owens?”
He said my name. I want him to say it again, so I can listen closely and press it in my brain like a flower in a book. I want to tell him to repeat himself, but obviously, that’d be weird, so I shrug, sigh, and say, “I knew I should’ve said a hundred.”
He nods. “You went too big.”
It makes me thinkgo big or go home, and that makes me say, “Are we really going to move in here together?”
The idea makes my heart thud faster, and I can’t tell whether it’s from excitement or fear or both.
“It’s weird, eh?” he says gently.
“So weird.” I peek up at him. He’s examining the cabinets across from us.
“I don’t know anything about pups,” I admit quietly.
“I was lying about dinner. I can’t cook,” he says. “But I know pups. I’ve got two younger brothers.”
“You’ve got all brothers? Two older and two younger?”
“Yeah. If we have a girl, just know my mom’s gonna go nuts. Actually, she’s already gone nuts. She’s knitting you a sweater.”
I can’t even picture my mom knitting. She’s not one to sit and relax. At night, she paces in the kitchen, making calls to her female friends.Catching up on the day, she calls it.
“Winter is months away,” I say because I want to say “sheis?” And I don’t want to sound like no one’s ever made me a sweater.
“She needs time to do the matching scarf and mittens.”
“She knows about me.” I guess so if his dad and brothers had to come and stop him from busting down my parents’ door. My stomach churns, unsettled. I don’t want to think about that.
“She’s got a basket put together for you. Of, uh, blankets and stuff.” Those dark slashes appear along his cheekbones.
It’s tradition for the mothers and female relatives of a mated pair to give a female in heat the linens to make her nest. I’ve helped my mother put together elaborate baskets for her friend’s daughters. She does them up with silk ribbons and posies of white roses and baby’s breath. You always have to rush when you hear about a mating to get it together and delivered before it’s too late.
Even though I’ve helped her make them, I can’t quite picture my mom packing a basket for me, careful to pin the bow just so and arrange the folded quilts and blankets so they look like a flower. She makes the baskets to play up to the people she thinks are worth the time. I only get on her nerves.
Sadness creeps over me like a fog. I drum my heels against the cabinet below the island.
Trevor shifts so his hard bicep brushes against my upper arm. “Your folks are pretty pissed, eh?”
