Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 60481 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60481 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 242(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
I swung my legs around to hang from my fingertips then dropped to the concrete below. I probably shouldn’t have shown my shifter abilities, but considering she had a kid with the same perks, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal. Plus, I was pretty tall, and the drop wasn’t all that far.
“Okay, bud.” I looked up at the boy. “Just drop down, and I’ll catch you.”
Clio didn’t take her eyes off her kid. “Are you nuts?”
“I won’t let him fall,” I vowed.
“You’re telling him to fall!”
I shook my head. “I told him to jump. Not fall. I’m gonna catch him, Clio.” I made a beckoning motion with my fingers. “Come on, bud. Let’s go.”
Instead of jumping, JT imitated the way I had done it, swinging down off the beam to hang by his fingertips.
Cute kid. I already loved him.
“JT!” Clio cried, and I could only grin.
“I got you,” I encouraged.
The boy let go of the beam and dropped through the air.
His mom screamed.
I caught him, swooping him around in a circle to break the fall and make it fun. “Good job, buddy.”
He whooped and laughed.
I handed him to Clio, who glared at me as she hugged him tightly. Her eyes were wild still, but she exhaled, and her shoulders dropped about three inches. Seeing her like this, as a fierce mother protecting her own, made my dick so fucking hard.
Mine, my wolf growled.
The women I was used to flaunted what they had. Tight jeans, snug tops, eager pussies. That was what turned me on.
Before.
Now, seeing a woman in dirty, belted coveralls hugging her child made me want to come in my pants. There was no question she was mine. My wolf agreed as he preened and howled deep inside me.
“You both are nuts!” she exclaimed.
Happy in a way I never imagined, I grinned, then got serious. “I would never let anything happen to your little boy.”
I wouldn’t.
There was no choice. No option. Clio belonged to me. And that meant the boy was mine, too.
3
CLIO
* * *
“I’m really sorry, Mommy.” JT swirled his arms back and forth over the bubbles in the tub, his blue eyes focused on them.
I sat on the lowered toilet seat lid while he took his bath.
“It’s okay, lovebug,” I said, ruffling his hair. He’d been apologizing the rest of the afternoon about climbing up onto the rafter. Even over dinner a little while ago. After I closed up the shop, we came upstairs, and I made his favorite dinner, spaghetti and meatballs.
In the tub, I’d gotten the sauce off his face that the napkin had missed.
“But we’ve got to be careful.” I wasn’t going to tell him how scared I’d been. It was in his nature to do these things that would be considered reckless in regular children. Regular, as in human. The bigger he got, the more I learned about what he thought was fun. He hadn’t been reckless, he’d been… JT.
Half the bubbles had popped, but he kept trying to tower them up. I scooped a handful and placed them atop his head.
He giggled. “I wasn’t going to fall.”
I rolled my eyes. “You fell out of that tree before we moved.”
“That’s ‘cause there was bird poop, and I didn’t want it on my hands.”
“What if there was bird poop on that rafter in the shop?”
He looked up at me and giggled. “There’s no bird poop inside!”
“Mouse poop?”
“Mouses are afraid of high places.”
I sighed. “You’re probably right. But I meant we have to be careful showing people how amazingly fast and fearless you are.”
He cocked his head, the bubbles not even tipping off his wet hair. It was like a dollop of meringue.
“I can’t help being so fast.”
“I know. It’s tough being so incredible, isn’t it?” I slid to my knees and rested my forearms on the edge of the old tub.
“I don’t climb to the top of the jungle gym at school even though I want to because I’m nice and don’t want to make the other kids feel bad. Bobby Sanchez and I like the swings better.”
“That sounds fun.”
“Mommy?”
“Yeah?” I reached for the shampoo bottle.
“How come I’m so ‘credible? I mean, Remy in my class is pretty ‘credible, too. She smells special. Like cookies Miss Edna makes. But she says she doesn’t like to climb things. She likes to paint pots.”
“Pots?”
He nodded. “Yeah, her mommy makes things with clay, just like in art class!”
He’d only been in school in Cooper Valley a few weeks, but he had settled in well. I’d hated to take him away from California, but the job here opened up. Fortunately, he mentioned different boys and girls all the time.
“That sounds fun. But you’re incredible because…”
I trailed off. Someday, I was going to have to tell him his father was a wolf shifter and that he probably was one, too.