The tension in her body melts, and she relaxes back against me.
If this feeds something in her soul, as providing this warmth and harbor does mine, I’ll hold her whenever she needs it.
My hold on her fingers tightens a hair, and instinct sets my chest rumbling. A purr vibrates through my body—and hers.
Johanna jerks and pulls away, disentangling limbs and covers.
“Sorry, gotta pee.” She hides her face, though not before I catch the flush on her cheeks, peeping through strands of brown hair, silver threads gleaming as she passes gaps in the curtain. Her nightgown flares. Even the dim light can’t hide how the fabric drapes over her lush figure.
She leaves me lounging on the bed. No matter how well the furnace works, the air flowing along my exposed front is cooler than her body. Yet watching her run away, especially the lovely jiggling of her back side and thighs, counters the chill and keeps me hard.
I roll over, burying my head in the pillows as her feet slap against the hall in her hurry to escape. We haven’t slept in a puppy pile like this in a long time—months, a year, or more—and never without Max and all his complexity.
How can I not love Johanna after long years working together, along with Max, to build our business? Or for how she helped my daughters before and after my ex-wife and I split? They turned to Aunty Jo with questions they couldn’t bring to me and didn’t trust to their mother.
After my divorce, Johanna remained a cousin of sorts, thanks to her relationship with Max, so I looked on occasion, even admired, but nothing more.
However, without Max around, that may change. Can change. Or has it already?
My inner alpha rouses. Cradling her this morning called to the core of the internal physiological instincts that make me alpha, that shape me, body and soul. My alpha likes the way she blushes and glances back over her shoulder as she scampers off. We live under the same roof and I already know so much about what we both like and dislike—meaning I know exactly the kinds of things with which to court her.
The matter requires thought and caution—to watch and wait until she’s ready.
Still, she needs care and attention to ease her through losing Max and all the changes that will bring. She’s intelligent, graceful, and loving: perfect alpha bait, whether or not she realizes it yet.
At least, perfect forme.
Chapter 7
What Max Left
JOHANNA
As the eldest of seven, I never particularly wanted children of my own. Perhaps I weakened a few times over the years and even shed tears when the possibility vanished for good—I’m post-menopause and enjoying the freedom this gives me—but for the most part, my lack of interest in having children never changed.
All the more so because Anamaria, Bebe, and Caity are mine. Not my daughters of course. I don’t like their mother, but I respect their relationships with her—or lack thereof. Yet, they’re still my girls, whom I helped raise.
Watching them smile, laugh, and grow into the wonderful people they are makes any day better, no matter what storms wreck me and regardless of hurt or loss.
They also serve as a buffer between me and their father, one I didn’t know I needed.
Until I ran away this morning because Corinpurredfor me.
Corin. Purred. Forme.
It’s one thing to hear an alpha purr from a distance, quite another to feel it against one’s body, knowing it’s for you. Myparents purred for me when I was a child, and occasionally now and again when we met up after I’d grown and moved away, but they’ve been dead and gone these last three years. Max purred regularly, but not since before his collapse.
No distant memory of a purr holds a candle to the most recent. Full-body contact from head to toe, his chest pressed against my back. The sudden rumble accompanied by vibrations rippling outward until every bone in my body resonated.
For one long glorious moment, my whole body rushed toward an unbidden orgasm.
The next instant, it was as though I’d been doused in cold water as it dawned on mewhopurred for me, where we were, and under what circumstances.
Corin.
Max’s cousin.
A man I’ve shared a house with for well over a decade without any sign of sexual interest on either side.
