“Responsibility?” he said gently. “Hanging over you?”
“Yeah.” Lydia exhaled. “Don’t tell Ruth.”
He smiled. “I’ll avoid it in any of our close personal talks.”
She likes you, for the record, Lydia almost said.You should see how she is with people shedoesn’tlike.
But even though a lot of people had trouble understanding her grandmother’s prickly demeanor, she actually thought Case got it.
The stretch of silence this time was comfortable, and for a second, Lydia felt as relaxed as she had ever been. Maybe even more relaxed.
Case stretched out his long legs, and this time, Lydia didn’t try to keep a leash on her imagination. She let herself luxuriate in the mental image of settling down onto his strong thighs, undoing the brass buttons of his jeans.
Maybe even if this didn’t work, they could ....
She didn’t think she was imagining the way he looked at her. She wasn’t going to kid herself that he felt the same magnetism she did, because that was too much to hope for, but there was a charge there for sure.
He was her last real hope. If this plan fell through, maybe they could at least salvage a moment of happiness together before she had to go sell herself to some brute almost as bad as Reeve.
But now shewaskidding herself. If her bite didn’t turn Case, then he would spend the next two weeks sick and miserable, not giving her one last comforting fling. There wouldn’t be any silver lining to that dark cloud at all. It was this or nothing.
“So,” Case said finally, “how do we do this?”
“I have to shift first,” she warned him. “It would be nice if I could do it like this, but it won’t do anything if I’m in human form. So unfortunately, you’re going to have to hold still while a wolf gently gnaws on your arm.”
“If that wolf is you, I think I can manage it,” he said gallantly. “Go for it.”
Lydia couldn’t imagine anyone else so readily agreeing to all this. Case was really one-of-a-kind.
Even if this all fell apart, she was glad that she’d gotten the chance to meet him. She was happy to know there was someone like him in the world at all.
She shifted and breathed in the now-familiar scent of him. Somehow it was still intoxicating.
“Hey,” Case said softly. He stretched out his hand. “Can I? Before you bite?”
Lydia nodded, even though her wolf huffily informed her that that wasn’t a normal lupine form of communication.
Case stroked her head, petting around her ears. It wasn’t exactly like how someone would pet a dog, not when there was so much awe there. He kept looking in her eyes, like he could still see her, like he’d seen her when he’d looked around the room.
“You’re a beautiful wolf,” he informed her solemnly. “I’ve never seen any others up close, but I feel like even if I had, you’d take the cake.”
We take the cake, her wolf said proudly.I think that’s good? Humans like cake.
We do,Lydia said, speaking on behalf of her human side.And it is.
Her wolf wistfully added,I wish we could tell him he’s beautiful too. You’ll have to do that later.
I’ll try.
Her wolf was in the middle of telling her that she didn’t have totry, she had todoit, it was a simple thing to tell someone, and it really didn’t see why humans had to make everything so difficult, when Case said, “Ready?”
That neatly took away her ability to think about anything else. As much as she wanted all this to be personal, something between her and Case, it wasn’t. Her pack’s future was on the line, and this was one of the moments that would ultimately decide it, for better or worse. Even her wolf felt a sharp, bitter stab of fear at that.
Still, Lydia forced herself to nod again. She wasn’t ready, and he probably wasn’t either, but that didn’t change the fact that it was time.
She was having trouble figuring out how to justgo for itand bite Case—she’d never bitten anyone before!—when he rolled up his sleeve and stuck his arm in front of her like it was no big deal. He was serving himself up as a buffet without any hesitation at all. He was overriding every basic human instinct about being around a wolf, and he didn’t even seem to realize how huge that was. How could he trust her so much?
Lydia carefully closed her mouth around his arm, holding him like that for a precious few seconds before she bit down.
