“I, um. Yeah. I was more concerned with the teeth and claws part,” I mumble. Between the Band-Aid covering her shoulder and the dried blood of my bite on her arm, I’ve scratched her up in the last couple days.
Elise is picking some leaves out of her hair when she turns and catches my stare with her gorgeous doe-eyes.
“How long before I can show it off, you think?” she asks, and glances down at the bitemark, stretching her arm to admire it better.
I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath, but a sigh of relief escapes me, and I smile. And then my brain stutters over the image of her actually doing that, and my cheeks and the back of my neck get hot.
I look away and run a hand through my hair and fail to come up with anything resembling a sentence. “Oh. Um, yeah, I, uh—”
“Oh, you’re so cute when you’re bashful,” she giggles, stepping one leg over me and straddling my hips, her soft thighs making my cock twitch underneath her.
No one can fluster me like she does, and I’m happy to just melt in the feeling of it. It’s such a pleasure to be bewitched by her.
I twine her fingers with mine. I’ve missed being able to touch her like this. “And you’re sure you could put up with this side of me? It’s not exactly as avoidable as I used to think.”
“I wouldn’t want to avoid it,” she says, her expression so soft and sweet, I can’t help but reach up to touch her face. She leans her cheek into my palm and bites the corner of her mouth thoughtfully. “But maybe next time, can we like, drag a futon out here?”
Next time. It pings something so optimistic in me, for once without the painful apprehension of hope. Just certainty.
I like that idea. Maybe we can even build a little open-air shelter to keep it off the ground, but still accessible for a wolf with no opposable thumbs.
I can’t remember the last time I felt so complete. There’s a weight off my chest that I’ve lived with for so long, I forgot it was there.
I foresee waking up naked in the woods with some regularity in my future. Our future, I remind myself, and can’t help but grin at nothing in particular.
After maybe another half hour or so, lingering in the sleepy embrace of morning, breaking a couple more public-indecency laws, we decide it’s time to get moving before we die of exposure.The trail of clothes we find scattered through the woods is an improvement, but it’s still a little chilly.
We even find both of her shoes.
“You really didn’t have to shred my dress,” Elise says, frowning at the way her skirt doesn’t quite cover everything anymore. Oops.
She wrinkles her nose as she picks it up and shakes some dirt off it, the fabric fluttering where I tore through it.
A bunch of pine needles and other debris from sleeping on the ground had stuck to her, embedding lightly in her skin—a great excuse to keep touching her. I couldn’t stop. This morning is like something out of a dream. I don’t want it to end.
“Maybe we can just live out here in the woods,” I suggest teasingly, but, honestly, I’m willing to commit to that idea if she’s down. Sure as hell beats having to go tell my family what happened.
“I’m so hungry, I can’t even listen to jokes.”
“Your house isn’t that far away, y’know.”
We could go there, and I could make her breakfast and our world could stay just the two of us.
“My cottage is like seven miles from the Hayes House. We didn’t run that far into the woods, and I’m not walking seven miles before breakfast.”
“Seven miles if you take the roads,” I point out, but don’t push it further. “Yeah, we probably have to go back to the scene of the crime. At least for a shower and change of clothes. The others probably want to know that we’re alright too.”
“And apologize to Logan for ruining his wedding.”
“Yeah, even if he did start some of it.”
She grimaces, flicking some more pine needles off her legs. “Can we leave out the part where we boned it out in the woods?”
“If we’re going to tell them you’re my mate, that you know about us...I think it might be implied. Or just unavoidable.”
Some truths are weird and uncomfortable. It’s just another Band-Aid we have to rip off.
Now that I think about it with a little more perspective, actually, this is the last way I’d have thought I’d be bringing Elise home to my family. Re-introducing her as my mate. Being certain that’s who she was to me.
