Page 15 of The Wolfing Hour
“How dare you? That was a great pun.”
“I mean, I can handle the stuff with your murderous father—let’s face it, he wants me dead, too—but the corny jokes?” I clenched my teeth, wrinkled my nose. “That’s going to be hard to overcome.”
“Too bad. You’re locked in, Lennox. No backing out now. You’ve got me, puns and all.” He released my hair and swooped down, gripped the backs of my thighs, and hoisted me high up in his arms.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and kissed a trail from his jaw to his collarbone as he carried me into the bathroom. We broke apart briefly and undressed ourselves because it was faster, then ducked under the warm spray of the shower together.
I shook the water out off my face and opened my eyes.
Ronan was watching me. His eyes flashed gold, and a sexy grin tilted his mouth. “We’re going to make the first one hot and fast, because I want it that way and so do you.”
“You seem very sure of that,” I said, not at all embarrassed by the need in my voice.
“Oh, I am.”
Whoa. The heat in his gaze competed with the heat from the shower. Tiny dots of sweat beaded on my upper lip. “And the second one?”
“Slower. The third one slower yet. See, you need to understand that I’m not going anywhere. That I love every inch of you, inside and out. This is one way I can show you. There are others.” His voice dropped into a husky whisper. “You’ll see.”
My skin prickled with goosebumps.
“You like that idea?” He raked the fingers of one hand down my chest, skimming my breasts, stopping at my abdomen, the heel of his hand inching lower at an agonizingly slow pace.
I tried to speak, but it was as if my breath had been swept away. The best I could do was, “Uh-huh.”
“Good, because I’m going to do it over and over. I’m going to imprint my body onto yours, and whenever you start to doubt how I feel about you, you’re going to remember this on a visceral level. Whenever you feel warm, shivery, and wet, you’ll recall this moment and call out my name. And I’ll come, Betty. Oh, I’llcome.”
“Holy hellebore, you’ve definitely got the hot part down.”
His grin widened.
“So what happened to fast?” I teased, as warm water rained on my head and sluiced over the muscled planes of his back.
“I’m getting there. I just wanted to prepare you first. You know, so you can’t say you weren’t warned.”
There were a series of pithy remarks on the back of my tongue, snarky observations about men who thought their penises were imbued with some sort of mystical healing power, but then he pressed me against the tile wall with that hand splayed over my belly, went to his knees in front of me, and I forgot all about it.
He grinned up at me. “Give me two minutes.”
“Only two, wolf?”
“Possibly less. We’ll just have to wait and see, Betty bonita.”
An hour later, I was tucked against his warm, naked body under the sheets of my bed. I’d waited, I’d seen, and it had been glorious. He’d been right about my needing him. Beautifully, deliciously right.
However, as much as I liked his penis, it wasn’t magical and it hadn’t solved my problems. My doubts about myself remained.
A shaft of sunlight broke through an opening in the room-darkening curtains I’d bought with his schedule in mind, creating a golden glow over my side of the bed. I lay there, body satiated, mind racing.
Why in the world would a creature like Bloody Mary be afraid of me?
The answers I came up with were disturbing. What’s more, I doubted they’d end up being as upsetting as the truth.
Ronan snuffled in his sleep. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, the man was exhausted. His ex-alpha—and birth father—was gunning for him, the wolf pack was in the midst of what amounted to a civil war, and worst of all, Floyd had been MIA for the last two weeks.
Out of sight, out of mind wasn’t a solution with someone like Floyd. Dangerous people needed to be monitored, not ignored. I had a terrible feeling he was lying in wait, ready to hurt Ronan or someone he cared about.
I pressed a kiss to his mouth and slid out of bed. My mind was overflowing with unanswered questions, and sleep, even next to the deliciousness that was Ronan, wasn’t happening.
