“Then it looks like instead of you canceling on your parents while I take you in this bed, again and again, we’ll be having dinner with them tonight. The both of us.”
Glaring at him, I sat back on my heels. “You can’t make me do what you want.”
The deep laugh that he let out was taunting. “Like I couldn’t make you keep your ass on this bed while I was in the shower.”
My stomach muscles clenched as I looked around the bed. Sure enough, I hadn’t moved at all from the bed. Even when I redressed myself.
I thought about it for a moment. An idea formed. Maybe taking Gabe to meet my parents wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. They were a lot for me to handle. They were a lot for anyone, separately. Together, my parents were combustible. And not in a good way.
Perhaps, Gabe would meet them and realize that he didn’t want me as much as he thought he did, given that I was their stock and all. This could be a good thing to get him to back down from wanting a real relationship. Then he would agree that this thing between us had an expiration date, and he wouldn’t press for more.
“You know what,” I said after thinking it over, “I think you’re right. All four of us should go out to dinner.”
“About time you got on board.”
“You’re not nervous to meet my parents?” I asked.
He shrugged. “No sweat.”
I let out a laugh. “You say that now.”
He cupped my chin again, this time planting a kiss on my forehead. “I’ll say that later also.”
Cocky bastard.
“We’re meeting at La Guardia at six-thirty,” I told him.
“We’ve got about two hours between now and then.” He stood and stretched his arms overhead.
That was the first time in almost three months that I got a real look at his back. I stared at the wolf tattoo that looked different from the first time I’d seen it. It was still huge and appealing, but something about it looked more mature and ferocious.
“Your tattoo’s changed.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “I finally started to get it shaded in.”
I continued to inspect it and noticed the difference. The eyes were the same. Now, the left side of the wolf’s whiskers was colored in. The fur was darker and more prominent, though not finished.
While the right side of the wolf’s face, formed out of a series of flowers and petals, was more colorful. A few pops of red, orange, and blue appeared in some of the petals. But the flowers formed so that they created the other half of the wolf’s face.
“Oh, they’re wildflowers,” I said out loud as I stared. I thought back to the flowers that peppered the Texas Hill Country landscape as we floated above in the hot air balloon.
Sugar and spice.
The beauty and softness of nature combined with its ferociousness.
All of it was starting to become present in Gabriel’s tattoo.
He turned around and leaned down, capturing my lips with his. The sudden kiss pulled a moan from me, and my mons started to quiver.
He pulled back. “You need to get ready for dinner. I’ll arrange for a car to pick us up.” He pressed his lips to my forehead.
The kiss was so soft and gentle. I pictured the flowers on the right side of his wolf. When he pulled back with that gleam in his eyes, the left side of the tattoo came to mind. The possessive wolf that Rayven told me months earlier to watch out for.
I swallowed and hoped that my plan of allowing Gabe to meet my parents would work to get him to back down. I realized that I sure as hell wasn’t strong enough to keep putting him off. Dinner with my folks was my last ditch effort to avoid giving him my complete and total surrender.
Chapter 17
Gabe
