Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71067 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71067 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
“I know that,” she says. “It’s just when I realized Laura thought that about me, when I thought she knew me better… I feel like I’m going crazy, Rex. I feel like I’m not myself, and I’ll never know myself.”
“You are coming to know yourself. All of yourself. And I think it is a good thing that your father has emerged. You will come to know him too, not as a scared child horrified by his actions, but as a woman who is building her own family. You will understand him, too.”
“I already understand him. He’s a psycho.”
“Yes. Probably. Definitely. But you are not. And that is what matters. No matter what you did, or did not do.”
The truth is, I think she probably did take a few bites of the driver. It’s hard not to when you’re savaging someone in wolf form. The killing bite is, after all, a bite. And the blood that flows between your jaws is going to find its way inside you.
“You think I did!” she gasps as if she’s just read my mind, which of course she hasn’t. It’s just her fear talking.
“I think you were scared, and hurt, and defending yourself, and that a few bites won’t do you any harm. It’s not something we should get a regular taste of, but most wolves who have fought humans have some exposure.”
“I’m going to be sick,” she says.
And then she is.
She rushes to the bathroom, retching and trying to stop herself from making a mess. She is so wound up over these thoughts her body is rebelling. I follow her and hold her hair back while she is ill.
“Poor thing,” I murmur. “You need more rest. You’ve had too much excitement.”
“Excitement is the wrong word,” she says, washing her face afterward. “I fucking hate this. All of it. I wish I’d never come to the city. I wish I’d never met anyone. I wish I hadn’t been born.”
“You need a nap,” I tell her. “You need to sleep and you’ll feel better.”
“I’m not sleepy,” she says as I start the shower. She needs to relax and clean up and then once she settles, I know she will be tired. She is hopelessly exhausted still, coming to terms with herself and all that has happened to her.
I usher her into the shower, where she stands and stares at me under the flow of the water. She looks at me with eyes that contain a lot of pain and doubt. I wish I could take this part away from her. I wish she didn’t have to come to her own terms on how it feels to be a wolf who has done the unspeakable.
But I can’t do that for her.
I might never know what really happened in that truck. She says she didn’t consume his flesh. I don’t know if that’s true, and I don’t care if it is. But she does. She’s so afraid of becoming her father she can’t focus on anything besides that one act.
I wrap my hand around the back of her head and pull her close. “I don’t care what you did,” I say. “There is nothing you could do that would make me stop loving you.”
“What if one day I leave our kids in the middle of a bloodbath and drive away, leaving them to face the authorities and they end up in the care system until they turn eighteen?”
“I can think of a few reasons that wouldn’t ever happen. One of them being you have me, the other being that you are not your father, and even if you were to spend the rest of your life actively trying to become him, you would not succeed. Come. It’s bedtime for you.”
I wrap a towel around her, because she seems sullenly disinclined to dry herself off, and I pat her down all over, before putting a robe on her and wrapping her hair in another towel, which I scrunch lightly until it feels less than sopping.
“When did you learn to do this?” She asks the question with curiosity mixed with a hint of jealousy.
“Do what?”
“Dry hair.”
I smile at her in the mirror, where she is pouting at me.
“It’s not rocket science, sweetheart,” I tell her. “I want to look after you. This is less than the bare minimum.”
“Have you dried another woman’s hair before?”
She is in an absolute mood.
“Baby,” I murmur in her ear. “If you don’t settle down, I’m going to spank you.”
“Why?” she gasps. “That’s so unfair!”
“Because I can tell you’re in a mood that isn’t responding to being taken care of kindly, so you’re not leaving me with much of a choice. Settle down, and behave yourself.”
It is at this point that she bites me.
And that is how I end up sitting on the edge of the bath, with my mate thrown over my knee, her gown pushed up and out of the way, my palm slapping her curvy ass over and over until it glows a pretty red.