Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
I don’t care. I don’t give the slightest fuck.
I am too busy staring at him, and at the place he was standing before. I knew it was real. I knew it. But sometimes, when the whole world tells you something isn’t real, you start to doubt yourself, no matter how certain you are.
I stare up at him now, as he stands over me, looking down at me, still very naked.
“Oh, Callie,” he says. “You’ve been a very bad girl, you know.”
I don’t care if he’s mad. I don’t care what the fuck happens now. I got what I wanted. I got what I needed.
“You’ve really made life difficult for me,” he says, taking the bullets out of the gun and disassembling it more or less instantly. He’s practiced with weapons. Good for him. So am I.
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t tell people about shifters, werewolves, cursed ones, children of the wild, babes of Enkidu, whatever you want to call us. Our existence depends on our ability to stay hidden at all costs. Your need to research, to expose, to publish? That cannot be indulged. If any other wolf were to find out what I showed you tonight, you would be hunted down and killed.”
I am still too busy being thrilled at having finally encountered a shifter that I don’t respond immediately, or even at all. I just keep looking at him as he places the pieces of gun to the side and runs his fingers along my jaw and down my neck.
“We are going to have to have a good long talk about what is to be done with you,” he says.
I melt. There’s tenderness in that touch, a sort of caring that makes me feel as though I am being guarded. I don’t know where the threat is coming from, but I know he will not let it reach me. There is pure possession in those brilliant blue eyes.
“You don’t look worried enough,” he says. “Maybe I should start with the consequences of pulling a gun on me in my own home.”
“You’re a wolf,” I say. “You’re a man who can take the form of an animal. You’re magical. You’re more than human. You’re…”
He moves his thumb to my lips and presses them closed. “We’re not talking about me, or about what I can do. We are talking about you, and your behavior. Do you understand?”
I did it. I really did it. Whatever happens now, it was worth it.
“You don’t like it when I pull a gun on you. I get it.” I giggle. The giggle comes out of nowhere, relief probably. I feel giddy with the discovery. Finally. I’m sane. I’m sane, and I know I am sane, and nobody is ever going to make me feel crazy again.
I’m not imagining what happened to me. It wasn’t a fucking animal attack. A person who could become an animal attacked me. Tried to kill me. And now…
“Callie. Look at me.”
I look up into his stormy blue eyes, and try not to smile. I know he wants me to be sorry and afraid, but I can’t be either of those things. I am far too thrilled. A dream of a lifetime has come true.
“I tried to keep you out of all of this,” he says, his voice rough and filled with what might be pain. “I didn’t want what is coming for you to ever happen. I wanted you to be able to keep living your comfortable life in your comfortable world. Remember that, when things get rough.”
I lower my head to hide a smile.
He grabs my face and makes me look up at him.
“You’re mine,” he says. “I need you to understand that. Mine.”
There’s something in his voice that isn’t typical possessiveness. He means it. Deeply. He means it in a way I don’t know if he should be able to mean it. He’s an animal. I have to remember that.
I know what his kind do. I know how they are wild to the core, how they follow their own rules and laws. I know how they won’t hesitate to hurt a human, and how dangerous they can be.
“We don’t know each other,” I say. “I’ll keep your secret, but I’m not yours. I don’t belong to…”
I don’t get to finish the sentence before he uses that rough grip and drags me up against his mouth, pressing a possessive kiss to my lips, then claiming me with his tongue. His kiss makes my head spin, drives the remnants of sanity from my mind.
I let him seduce me. I think I was already seduced from the moment I saw him naked in front of me, his brutally beautiful body muscular and powerful and masculine.
Now I let him kiss me, I let him lay me down on his bed, and I let him claim me, long and deep and fucking hard.