“Are yousureyou don’t have brain damage?” I teased.
Tak finished dicing the peppers and pushed them into a pile. “My head still hurts, but I’ll live. Did you see what happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
With one hand, he cracked two brown eggs into a bowl. “It’s fuzzy. I remember shifting, and then after a while, I got sleepy and let my wolf take over. I shouldn’t have, but he’s cunning enough to stay out of trouble.”
I stared vacantly at the backsplash behind the stove. “Wait a minute. I thought you shifted to protect yourself against an attack.”
He didn’t reply. He just kept beating those eggs.
I turned to look at him. “Are you telling me you shiftedbeforethe attack? On purpose? This isn’t the country. You can’t just let your wolf run out in the open. It’s too dangerous. Not just because of the cars, but animal control might capture you.”
Tak threw back his head and laughed.
“It’s not funny! Every Shifter’s worst nightmare is going to the pound.”
He set down his knife. “Do you ever laugh?”
“This isn’t a laughing matter. What if the cops had arrested you? Who would have bailed you out?”
He flashed a grin, and curse me for thinking him handsome.
Tak jerked his chin toward me. “What’s wrong with your neck? You keep rubbing it.”
“I slept on it wrong. I just have a crick in it.”
When he closed the distance between us, I sucked in a sharp breath.
“Can I do something?”
Wide-eyed, I stared up at him as he reached out and braced his hand where my shoulder and neck met. His thumb pressed deep, and he suddenly gripped the top of my head with his other hand and tilted it. Tak had large hands, and when he began kneading my neck, I had a funny feeling in my stomach. I closed my eyes, and he moved my head again, his other hand sliding down to my shoulder and then working its way back up.
My arousal startled me, and I slapped his hand away. “That’ll be enough.”
“Better?”
I turned my neck in a slow circle, the pain miraculously gone. “Yes, thank you. Did a healer teach you that trick?”
He studied me for a moment. “Your father must be a serious man. It makes me curious about your mother. Are they opposites or the same?”
Flustered, I grabbed the bowl of chopped vegetables and dumped them into the skillet. Why was he asking about my parents?
Tak suddenly pressed his body against my back and reached around me. I couldn’t tell if it was the burner heating me up or his close proximity, but when he grabbed the saltshaker and said, “’Scuse me” in a rough voice against my ear, a flash of heat rippled from my breasts to my lower belly.
I wriggled free. “I need to brush my teeth.”
The louder he chuckled, the faster I fled toward the hall. Once I reached the bathroom and slammed the door, I stared at myself in the mirror.
Oh. My. God.
No wonder he kept looking away. It wasn’t about hiding his tattoo; it wasme. I looked like a troll who’d been living between the seat cushions for the past three hundred years. One piece of my ratted hair had stuck to the side of my face where I must have drooled in my sleep. What little eyeliner I’d applied the day before had smeared around my eyes, and red marks that looked like grid lines covered the right side of my neck where the pillow sham must have wrinkled. I cupped my hand in front of my mouth and assessed my breath.
Just as I thought.
I quickly brushed my teeth and then stepped out of my dirty clothes. For a brief moment, I thought about taking a shower, but there was too much to do. Had Mr. Franklin finished repairing the store window? I’d also fallen behind on chores. Like making sure I’d wiped all the blood off the floor in the living room. Not to mention doing a load of laundry, checking the mail, and changing out my sheets and blankets. After I finished combing the tangles out of my hair, I gazed at myself in the mirror and reached for a bottle.
Tak would be out of my life in less than an hour, so why should I care what I looked like? Yet there I was, slathering my naked body with scented oil.
