Page 19 of Can't Help Growling in Love
“Yeah, she’s got a concussion and a few minor lacerations, but she’ll be fine.”
“It doesn’t get to you?” I study her closely, admiration rising for her—and her colleagues.
“It does, but you learn to let it go. You can’t bring the work home with you, or it eats you from the inside.” She flashes me a quick smile. “That, and the hospital runs a pilot program where all health workers get access to therapy if they need it. And I do, so I’ve been going for months now.”
She talks about mental health so easily. I swallow, then offer up a truth of my own.
“I’m an Army vet. Walked away from that soon after the Great Revelation, after I took a hit in my knee that shattered my kneecap.”
I resist the urge to lean down and rub my hand over my knee. I’ve told her about it, but not the cause of the injury. The scars have healed, courtesy of my accelerated healing, but the screws in my bone still ache sometimes.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “That can’t have been easy.”
I shrug like she did earlier. “Therapy helps, like you said.”
June fidgets with her sleeve, and it only registers then that she’s wearingmyclothes. My breath hitches in my throat, and I swipe my gaze over her, from where she cuffed the sweatpants to make them fit to the way the hoodie hangs loose around her shoulders.
“Your eyes are golden,” she whispers.
“I want to kiss you again,” I admit, my voice coming out all gravelly. “I liked kissing you before.”
I’ve been thinking of nothing else since. Getting through work was torture. I kept replaying the soft touch of June’s lips, the exquisite taste of her.
“I want that, too, but can I touch you?” Her hands twitch at her sides. “I won’t if you don’t want me to.”
“You can,” I rumble.
June reaches for me, and I lower my head to capture her mouth with mine. At the taste of her, I groan and close my eyes, then lick her tongue to drink up more of her essence. She grasps my t-shirt first, fingers twisting in the fabric, then reaches for my shoulders for leverage. I take her waist and shift her closer. I haven’t felt this way in years, and the need explodes inside me, a feral, snarling thing that demands I keep this woman, devour her, please her.
“Asher,” she gasps as I trail kisses down her neck, right to where her scent is the strongest, on her neck.
It’s where the mating bite belongs. My hindbrain supplies the information, and my mind goes blank, want and desire pulsing through my veins. I’m shifting, unable to hold back the change, because she brings out the parts of me I usually keep hidden. My cock is hard against her hip, but she doesn’t seem to mind—her scent blooms, the caramel notes deepening, so fucking powerful. I want to kneel between her legs and find out what her pussy tastes like, but I can’t, not yet.
Her fingers slide from my shoulders to my neck, and I shudder at the sensation. She pauses, but I kiss her again, letting her know I’m loving every single moment of this. She moans, and I capture the sound, then suck on her lower lip. She scratches the back of my head with her blunt fingernails. I can almost imagine what it will feel like to take her in my half form, where she’ll have fur to hold on to while I?—
Beep. Beep. Beep.
An annoying sound pierces through the haze of lust, and I groan, leaning my forehead against hers. “Fuck.”
June pulls away from me, her eyes wide. “What is that?”
I take a step back, though I don’t release her waist. “I set an alarm earlier. To remind me that I have to read out the news and schedule more music.”
“Oh.” She glances around, as if she’s only now becoming aware of where we are. “Crap, you’re still working. I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have?—”
I kiss her cheek lightly to stop her apology. “You didn’t. I wanted this. So fucking badly.” Forcing myself to unclench my fingers, I finally let her go and scrub a hand through my hair. “I do have to take care of this. Can you wait for me, maybe? I’ll be ten minutes. Fifteen, tops.”
She nods, eyes bright. “Sure. I want to see how you do this.”
“Here.” I hand her a pair of headphones hooked into the station’s system. “You can listen if you’d like.”
Maybe I should be self-conscious about this, about having a live audience, but I’m not. June has a way of putting me at ease, as if she won’t judge me if I fuck up somehow. Besides, she’s been listening to me for a while, and that knowledge pushes me to focus, to deliver my best work.
In the booth, I shut myself in, pop my headphones on, and test the mic. I open the news text on my tablet and scroll through quickly, then let out a deep breath as I wait for the current song to end.
Outside the studio booth, June walks over to the wall of records, as far as the cable of her headphones will allow.
The ending notes of the song remind me that I’m supposed to bedoingsomething, and I scramble for my tablet, then clear my throat and turn the microphone on.
