Liam was stalking back toward me, the door shut again.
I grinned. “Nothing.”
“Uh-huh.” He tore the sheet off my body, eliciting a gasp.
Then he extended his hand. “I need a shower and I believe you need one too.” He leaned over and ran his nose across my collarbone, making a giggle pop out. As he dragged his nose lower, he froze, and then his nostrils flared.
I propped myself up on my elbows. “What?”
He dipped a finger inside of me, then pulled it out and smelled it. His pupils dilated, diffusing over his irises. “Hope you’ve got lots of episodes with your little Simon lined up because you’re going to wait for me—right—here.”
“Um, why?”
“Because you’re in heat.”
“So?” I pulled my legs to the side and stood, then walked past him into the bathroom.
“What do you mean,so? If I can smell it, the whole fucking pack can smell it.”
I turned on the shower. “You do realize I’m in heat four times a year, and it’s been happening for a while now.”
He stared at me as though I’d grown an extra head. “Four?”
“Once per season. Wait . . . you didn’t know?”
“I didn’t exactly grow up around female shifters.”
“Well, then let me educate you, Mr. Kolane. We’re in heat every three months, and when that happens, we don’t hole up.”
He leaned against my doorframe. “What about cold pods?”
“When we’re in wolf form, we take extra precautions, what with being naked and in touch with our wild, but in skin, males are surprisingly civilized.”
He grunted, then pushed off the wooden frame. “I’m in skin, and I’m not feeling very civilized.”
I grinned up at him as he approached. “Good thing you’re not required to be.”
“It is, isn’t it?” He hooked my waist and pulled me against him. “How long does it last?”
“Three days.”
His pupils shrank to pinheads. “You think it’d fly if I tell the pack I don’t feel like alphaingfor the next seventy-two hours?”
Laughing, I turned and stepped into the shower. He followed me inside, not laughing.
Water streamed down the sides of his face, dripped off his rough jaw. “Any chance your parents would keep Storm tonight?”
I grabbed on to his shoulders and touched my lips to his. “The problem with my parents won’t be the handover; it’ll be thegetting him back.”
Such potent hunger blistered his gaze that my stomach performed an entire gymnastics routine. “May Storm forgive me for all the abandonment issues he’s going to have.”
“You’re not abandoning him, Liam; you’re increasing the number of people who get to love him.”
He tipped my chin up and slanted his mouth over mine. “So sweet,” he rasped. “Everything about you is so fucking sweet, Nikki.”
My lashes lowered with the weight of his affection.
“What the hell are you doing with a man like me?”
