Storm raised his hand as though to show my mother his little ducky. She grinned at him and then cooed while I stared everywhere but at Liam.
“I’ll go warm up his M-I-L-K.” Before she left, she looked around my wet bathroom. “Not sure who’s having more fun in here.”
“The Kolanes are ganging up on me,” I fake-grumbled. “If any of my brothers are free, send them up.”
Mom shook her head, smiling. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Once she was gone, I laid Storm’s towel on the bathmat and rose up on my knees. “Time to get out of the waterpark.” I reached out for him when Liam got up.
“I got him, Nikki.” My Alpha’s timbre was back to its gravelly soberness. Gone was the lightness our water fight had produced.
As he leaned over, I was possessed with a surge of spontaneity, or insanity. I dipped my hand under the water and then whipped it up, drenching his face and neck.
I got to my feet, smirking down as a stream of bubbles dripped down the column of his neck and absorbed into the neckline of his black T-shirt. “You shouldn’t let your guard down around me, Kolane. I may look feeble, but I was raised by wolves.”
He crooked his neck and looked up at me. My heart, which was already beating fast, detonated when his eyes began to glow.
“Thinking up ways to retaliate?”
Both the yellow radiance of his irises and camber of his mouth increased.
“Should I be worried?”
“Terrified.” The word rolled off his tongue like the thunder preceding prodigious summer storms, the sort that shook the sky and swelled the streams. The sort that soaked you to the bone and invigorated your very marrow.
His nostrils flared out delicately, and I swallowed, because I imagined it wasn’t the powdery soap I’d used on Storm he was smelling.
Wiping my slick palms on my jeans, I skirted him. “I’ll get his PJs.”
The second I was out of sight, I stuck my palms against my heated cheeks and shut my eyes. I seriously needed to get a grip before I did something I’d regret.
Like make a move on my Alpha.
Inhaling sharply, I snapped my lids open and grabbed the phone I’d chucked on my bed. After shooting off a message to Adalyn to ask where she was, I dropped off Storm’s pajamas and lotion.
“I need to go meet Adalyn about something concerning her bachelorette . . .” My lungs gripped my next breath in a desperate attempt to slow my careening pulse. “Will you be at dinner?”
His gaze slipped down my throat, settled on the pulse point fluttering my skin. “I think your family may need a break from me.”
I didn’t know about my family, butIdefinitely needed a break. I was acting more crazed than the halfwolf that had launched itself at the silver bars.
“And, Nikki . . .” He wiped his wet palm against his T-shirt, the movement slow and steady. “I apologize about the way I sent you home, but I was trying to appease your brothers.”
I almost wished he hadn’t apologized, because it was easier to eschew a brute than a decent man. “I figured as much.” I drummed my fingers against the door. “Anyway, have a good night.”
As I clambered down the stairs, I read Adalyn’s reply, rooted through my bag to locate my car keys and wallet, then escaped my house and the alluring wolf upstairs.
Chapter 14
Adalyn locked the glass door. “I’m finally all yours. What’s going on?”
I spun on the hairdressing chair I’d plopped my ass on twenty minutes ago and tossed theInStylemagazine Adalyn had jammed into my hands to distract me while she finished styling her last customer’s short bob.
“I have the hots for our Alpha.”
“What?” Adalyn slammed her palm across her chest as though she was surprised but her shit-eating grin told me she already knew, and she found it extremely amusing.
The temptation to pitch a hairbrush at her was strong. “It’s not funny, Ads. And the worst part is, I think he knows it.”
