Page 46 of Crying Wolfe
He cast the sky a dubious look but didn’t have the heart to say more.
“December skies are famously fickle, you know,” she continued, consulting a periodical she’d opened over the logbook. “As are the Geminids.”
“Those are the twin constellations, right?”
She looked over at him with approval. “The meteors that move across the twin constellations, but yes. You remembered!”
“I’m learnin’, lady.” He poured on the patois he knew amused her so much, scratching idly at where her nails had bit into his bare chest. “Turns out you can teach this old dog a couple of new tricks.”
“I have an appreciation for the old tricks, as well,” she said with a wicked grin that stopped his heart.
“Come over here then, honey, and I’ll— Hey, pssst. Castor!” he hissed at a ginger kitten as it attacked what was left of the block of cheese with predatory vigor. “Git off there, you little demon.” He lifted the squirmy body from their leftovers and plunked it next to a grey tabby that’d already climbed into his lap.
The two immediately went to war, and Eli was glad he’d slid back into his pants in order to protect his pecker.
“The ginger is Astrid, the calico is Castor,” Rosaline corrected with a teasing smile. “So much for your memory.”
“Oh. Right.” He blinked over at the tiny brood that’d become lesson #8 or was it 9?
Didn’t matter, he’d learned the hard way that if he ever said “no” to animals, she was just going to do what the hell she wanted anyhow. So, it was ultimately easier to accept the fact you can’t have a soft-hearted wife without a few critters for her to spend her love on.
Besides, they were kinda cute when they weren’t tempting him toward murder.
He eyed the other end of the rug he occupied with narrowed eyes. Sometime during their interlude, the kittens had found their way into the observatory and knocked over their open bottle of wine on the parquet floor.
That hadn’t been difficult to clean, but at some point, the priceless rare carpet was forever ruined by soaked pads of little burgundy kitten paws.
And he’d not yet identified the culprit.
“I feel like one’s missing.” He searched the room. “Nova and Orion are by the globe over there, and I saw Ursa creep beneath the desk. I’ve Astrid and Castor here.”
“And Pollux,” she said, sweeping up another on her way to settle on the floor beside him, setting the kitten next to the brawling siblings.
“Where’s that white one?” he asked.
“Draco?” She twisted this way and that, the fabric between the buttons of his shirt parting a little to give him tantalizing glances of her pert breasts. “I haven’t seen him.”
He tried to remember when he had ever liked to just look at a woman so much and came up empty.
“You should have named one Andromeda,” he offered, allowing Castor to gnaw on the tip of his thumb with tiny teeth.
“Oh?” She lifted her brows. “It makes sense, I suppose, that you’d have a fondness for myths about dragon-slaying heroes.”
He reached for her, capturing her chin beneath his thumb and forefinger, pulling her close for a kiss. “I don’t know much about that, but it was the night of the Andromeda meteor shower that I discovered I’d a fondness foryou.”
Her answering smile made him light-headed.
Pulling her close, he arranged the pillows so they were both comfortable, before draping her over his chest and pulling her leg to cover his where he employed lesson #11.
Women liked to be stroked and caressed in places other than their sexual bits. A man could get a woman to acquiesce to all sorts of depravity if he spent enough time tickling the underside of her arm, the little columns beside her spine, or the divots in her lower back and the smooth curve of her hipswithoutrequesting sex.
He supposed it shouldn’t be a discovery that women wanted to be appreciated for more than their naughtier parts, but he was ashamed to say it was… Eli wondered how many other husbands had never cottoned to this discovery and missed out on one of the more enjoyable intimacies of marriage.
Rosaline didn’t seem to mind his rough skin, arching just as shamelessly as one of the kittens in search of his touch as goosepimples lifted the fine hairs on her body.
“Tell me this dragon-slaying myth,” he asked, deceptively nonchalant. Was he the hero of this story? Or the dragon protecting his hoard of treasure.
“Well, the dragon-slaying myth was just a literary device to describe this sort of narrative, but remember when I told you Andromeda was a princess of Ethiopia and widely thought one of the most beautiful women in the known world? Her mother, Queen Cassiopeia, bragged that Andromeda was even more lovely than the Nereids, who were water nymphs famous for luring lustful men to their deaths.”
