Page 657 of Love Bites

CHAPTER9

Iheard soft chanting.I gently pulled back a leather flap at the entrance and peeked inside.

Two gray eyes stared back at me from less than a foot away.

I yelped and stumbled back, but not before a quick hand reached through the opening and pulled me inside.

“What are you doing here, Chavvah?”

“I … uh.” His pure masculinity was an aphrodisiac.

“Are you in pain?”

Yes. Yes, I am. Pain from wanting you hardcore.I noticed he wore nothing but a loincloth, and his body was covered in swirls of light and dark clay that covered all of his skin, even his face.

He leaned in close and sniffed me. Honest to heavens, took a long-ass whiff of my scent. “You don’t smell like you’re in pain.” He offered a feral grin. “You smell like desire.”

“Don’t tell me I smell like desire.” He really threw me off-kilter. I wasn’t even making sense to myself. Two could play the sniffing insult game. I leaned forward and inhaled his scent. “You smell like…”Bergamot and spice and everything nice. “…like dirt.”

He moved in so close I felt his breath on my face. “Smell again.”

Oh, Lord. He smelled earthy, and musky, and orange-y, and wowza, sexy as hell. The juju he threw my way made my heart do somersaults, turned my knees to mush, and created a flood of pure want that made my panties wet.

I groaned. He growled. He’d been doing that a lot lately. “What do you want from me?”

His eyes glowed with intensity, his wolf so near the surface I could smell his fur. “Everything,” he said.

My body burned, and while the sweat lodge was hot, I knew Billy Bob was the main source of my heat. I wanted him, but God how I didn’t want to want him. “We can’t,” I panted because I’d stopped breathing like a normal person a few seconds earlier. “It won’t work.”

“Why do you have to be so damn stubborn?” The exasperation on his face matched my frustration.

“We’re too different. We come from different worlds.” Literally. Lycanthropes and therianthropes, while both shifters, had very different origins.

“You are not as different as you think, little sister.” The tall form of the man who’d been in my room the night before, the one whose voice I’d been hearing for a year, appeared near the fire at the center of the circular room.

A scream escaped me. Billy Bob held onto me so I couldn’t flee. “That’s him. He’s the one who tried to get me last night.”

“I only wanted to talk.” The guy’s tone was calm and reassuring, which made me panic more.

“You don’t sneak into someone’s bedroom and scare the shit out of them just so you can have a conversation.” I tried to yank out of Billy Bob’s grasp. “Let me go!”

“Chavvah. You need to listen.”

“The hell I do!”

He shook me then, not hard, just enough to get my attention. Before I could protest, he kissed me, and let me tell you, that shut me up but good.

When he’d pretty much macked the resistance out of me, he eased up. “This is not a man.”

“I can see him right there.”

“And what do you see?”

“A big, tall guy.”

“Look again.”

The man’s face and body, like the night before, was all shadow. Even in the firelight, I couldn’t make out any distinguishing features. It was as if he were made of smoke. “What is this?”

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