“Did it?”
Dallas shook his head, his eyes full with a bitter mirth. “Not even a little bit.”
His words did little to assuage the confusion filling my mind. “Then why not come up here and join us then? You know how I feel and even if we’re not bonded it’s pretty obvious how you feel,” I said, nodding to the erection currently tenting his shorts.
Dallas scrubbed a hand over his face, pushing his glasses up into his curly auburn hair. “I guess I just wanted to wait to have this conversation when you were a little more, I don’t know, coherent? I didn’t want to confess my feelings if you weren’t going to remember it.”
My face warmed a bit because therewassome truth to that. The last forty-eight hours were a complete blur of orgasms, alphas, and bonds.
This was the first time I felt truly like myself, even if there were some lingering heat effects still making me want to jump the bones of the alpha in front of me.
“So youdohave feelings for me?” I prodded, my heart in my throat.
Dallas snorted like it was obvious. “I wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t, Lennon. Any sane man would have run screaming for the hills the moment your grandfather looked at him sideways.”
I scrunched my nose at the mention of my grandfather. “But you’re not going to?”
He shook his head, his expression turning suddenly resolute as our eyes met. “No, I’m not going to run anymore. I’m tired of pretending like I don’t care and that I don’t love you.”
I sat straight up with surprise at his words, my breath catching in my throat.
“What?” Dallas asked, his face twisting with concern as he leaned forward. “Are you feeling sick? Is your heat flaring up again?”
But I just shook my head, my eyes filling with tears.
“Lennon, talk to me.”
He reached for my face, cupping my cheeks in his warm hands and I leaned into his sweet scent.
“You’re the first one to say it,” I whispered to him.
Green eyes blinked with surprise. “What?”
“You’re the first one to say you love me out loud.”
Dallas’s auburn brows drew together. “Then what the hell were those guys doing the past two days then?”
I shrugged. “There wasn’t a whole lot of talking between the sex.”
I knew how they felt—it was pretty obvious when they were sending their emotions down a shared bond. But he was the first one to say it outloud.
Which made it feel special.
“I think I love you too,” I said, suddenly feeling a bit shy.
“You think?” he asked, the corner of his mouth tugging up into a smirk. “I come up here and bare my soul to you, Lennon, and youthinkyou love me back?”
I tightened the blanket around my shoulders with a petulant huff. “I dunno, I haven’t gotten to experience you in full yet, what if you’re bad in bed?”
The alpha scoffed like that was the dumbest thing he had heard in a long time. “I amnotbad in bed, Lennon Holloway.”
As if to prove himself, he gave me a gentle shove back into my nest and I fell back, the blanket that had been tucked around my shoulders falling away and revealing my love-bitten body to his green-eyed perusal.
“In fact, may I enter your nest and prove it to you?”
My insides twisted, albeit more weakly than they had before when I was in the thick of my heat, but I nodded anyway.
“Undress first,” I told him, wanting him to reveal more of his tattooed skin.
