Total pages in book: 203
Estimated words: 199654 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 998(@200wpm)___ 799(@250wpm)___ 666(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199654 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 998(@200wpm)___ 799(@250wpm)___ 666(@300wpm)
“That’s mighty bossy of you, Jason Creed.”
I slap her backside. “And?”
Her eyes are lit up. Fuck yeah, she’s also aroused.
“And… I’ll go take a shower,” she advises. “But I also want a hot bath to soothe my muscles and feel my feelings, so I’m taking my coffee and a muffin with me. If you want to join me, you may.”
“I may?”
“Yes. Provided that you bring that cinnamon coffee cake.”
She grabs one of the take-out coffees from the cardboard tray and snatches the bakery box from me before climbing the stairs.
I’ve got zero interest in eating breakfast while in the tub, but I am very interested in bathing with my mate.
My girl was riding such a high from mating me that telling her best friend she has a wolf after all was an afterthought she almost forgot about.
Fuck, I’m a lucky guy.
***
“This isn’t making me salivate,” Bailey says, unimpressed eyes on the platter of raw meat I’m about to cook.
“Maybe once it starts cooking,” I suggest and drop the steaks on the grill.
Not even a minute later, she says, “Yep. Now I’m hungry.”
“Good sign.”
“Very good,” she agrees. “The smell of meat got this started last night. Oh! I’m feeling something. It feels funny in my chest. Cicely once told me she didn’t feel her wolf until she’d shifted a few times, and then the connection was there, getting stronger and stronger until it didn’t feel strange anymore. Is that what it was like for you?”
“I remember the newness of the sensation just as I was shifting the first time or two, but I was real young, Bay.”
“Hm,” she ponders, watching me flip the meat on the grill.
“Won’t be long and your wolf won’t be a stranger, baby. She’ll just be part of you, part of your instinct.”
A minute later, I deem the meat sufficiently seared and add the steaks to our plates before moving them to the patio table.
It looks good back here since Bailey’s mom came over and spruced up the yard. It feels like our space back here. I decide I’m buying a hammock and putting a swing out back, changing the fencing, which needs doing anyway, giving us a better view of the river behind the house.
“Do just what you did last night,” I suggest, sitting across from her.
“What happened last night wasn’t intentional. I just saw the red and felt drawn to taste it. So…” She dips her fingertip in the red liquid pooled around her steak and looks at her finger, scrunching her face like she doesn’t want to do it.
“Close your eyes if it grosses you out,” I suggest.
She does, then puts her finger to her tongue.
“Bubbles!” is all she gets out before she shifts, vanishing inside my shirt.
I jump to my feet, looking down at the lump in my shirt on the chair. A wriggling, frustrated lump that puffs, then whines.
She’s tangled up in my shirt, stuck, but fighting to get out of it.
And last night there was a tiny spark of familiarity in my chest, like what I feel when someone in the pack shifts for the first time and my wolf recognizes theirs. Today, that spark is stronger. My wolf needs to meet Bailey’s wolf.
I lift the shirt up and Bailey’s wolf startles, then is immediately putting her front paws to the table, eating the steak.
“You want me to cut that into bites for you?” I ask.
She’s paying no attention to me. She’s going at that steak like I’m about to steal it. If I try to get in there, I’ll get bit again with those tiny, but razor-sharp baby teeth.
She doesn’t get all the way through it, only eating about a quarter of it, though she walks across the tabletop to mine and licks all the red off my plate before jumping down, missing the chair and tumbling to the deck, yelping.
“You okay?” I ask, squatting.
She gets up on her hind legs, balancing her front paws on my leg, wagging her tail and panting happily.
I ruffle the fur on her head and scratch behind her ear, but it’s cut short when something catches her attention and she’s darting to the steps that are four deep going to the next level of the deck, but halts and jumps back like the stairs make her nervous.
I can sense something in my chest. She wants at the grass.
I pick her up, tuck her under my arm, and bring her down there where she immediately puts her nose to the grass and sniffs, sneezes, then gets what can only be described as the zoomies. She’s running, ears pinned back as if it’ll make her go faster. Very fucking cute.
I’m in just sweatpants, so I take them off and turn to set them on the deck rail so I can shift and introduce her to my wolf, but before I get to it, she’s on the other side of the fucking fence!