SEVEN
Jace
The rest of the west cabin was empty, but Abby was on the phone in Luke and Isaac’s bathroom. I couldn’t make out any of her conversation, though.
Not without trying, anyway.
It would have been completely inappropriate for me to eavesdrop on her, but almost everything I wanted to do with, or for, or to Abby was completely inappropriate. And anyway, I didn’t actually want to know what she was saying; I just wanted to hear her voice. I wanted to know how she was holding up after seeing her picture plastered all over that sick bastard’s wall, and if she didn’t know I was listening, she wouldn’t hide anything.
But I resisted the urge, because we’d agreed that she was an enforcer, and I was an Alpha, and there was nothing more to our relationship. Just like any other enforcer, if she needed to talk, she’d tell me.
Her overnight bag sat open on Luke’s unmade bed with several articles of clothing hanging from it. Most of her stuff was jeans and cotton tees, but something green and silky peeked from one end of the bag, and Ireallywanted to know what it was.
Abby didn’t strike me as the kind of girl who would wear sexy underwear, but then I was learning all kinds of new things about her.
Focus, Jace.
I glanced around the room in search of something to divert my attention from that green scrap. On one corner of Luke’s desk, I found a gruesome and bizarre computer printout. I picked it up, scowling at the picture, and hinges creaked in front of me. When I looked up, Abby stood in the bathroom doorway, wearing nothing but a towel, and I forgot all about the grisly image.
Hell, I forgot my own damn name.
I’d seen her naked, of course. Most recently in September, before the Pride’s annual fall group run. But in that setting, the last thing on my mind had been…
“Jace?”
My gaze snagged on her damp, plump lower lip, the gateway to indulgences forbidden to me on the basis of decorum, and professionalism, and many reasons I could no longerquiteremember.
“Jace?” she said again, and I blinked.
“Sorry. I was just thinking about—”Tasting. Touching. Breaking every rule I’d ever been bound by in my entire miserable life… “—running. Together. Um…” I blinked again and cleared my throat, grasping for focus and control.
Get it together.You’ve seenmanynude human women.
But Abby was neither nude nor human, and those two facts made all the difference. Wearing nothing but a towel, she seemed to straddle some erotic line between naked and clothed, and my mind couldn’t quite fathom the temporary state.
Though the rest of me knew exactly how to proceed.
“I was thinking about a Pride run,” I finally managed to say. “We should do one this month. Make it a winter tradition.”
“Sure.” Her towel slipped a fraction of an inch, and I realized I was holding my breath. I knew what she looked like beneath that white cotton, yet being limited to my own memory made meacheto refresh the mental image by removing her towel.
Slowly.
With my teeth.
Abby shrugged, and the cotton slipped a little more. “We could probably all use the physical release.”
My cock stiffened and Iprayedshe couldn’t see. “Release?” She was doing that on purpose. Again. She was a child playing a woman’s game, and I wanted tolet her win.
Abby nodded and dropped her dirty clothes into Lucas’s already-stuffed hamper. “We’re all under a lot of pressure, hunting the murderer. And the killers he’s trying to kill. Ironic, isn’t it?” She turned back to me, and my focus snagged on her mouth again, then followed the line of her throat. So pale. So delicate. I could see her pulse through her skin, and I wanted to lick it. I wanted to feel the thrum beneath my tongue.
I wanted to know that her heart beat, and her pulse raced, and her body ached for no one else. No one but me.
What thehellwas I thinking?
“What’s ironic?” I asked, and only my automatic recall of the past few spoken words gave me any clue what we’d been talking about.
“It’s ironic that the killer’s actually doing us a favor.” Abby dropped the hamper lid, and I hardly heard the clatter.
