My jaw tightens, and I gently close Ethan’s bedroom door, padding downstairs to the kitchen. I grab a beer from the fridge, step out into the garden, and drop into a chair. The night is clear, the mountain air cool against my skin as I sip my beer, irritated.
I should be thinking about Derek coming back. About what I’m going to say when I see him for the first time in four years. Can I even look at him without everything I’ve buried clawing its way back up?
Instead, I’m thinking about a woman who threatened to permanently damage my ability to have more children. She’s violent with her words, sweet when she’s pressed against me, and I really want to just bite her.
My mouth curves before I can stop it.
She’d had her hand flat against my chest in that locker room, trying to push me back, and she’d been shaking. Not from fear. I know what fear smells like. This scent had been warm and sweet, and she’d hated every second of it. The flush spreading down her neck. The way her breath had gone uneven.
My nurse is very pretty when she’s losing control.
I catch myself. Roll the phrase back.
My nurse.
I frown at my beer bottle.
She’s not mine. She’s an ER nurse with a mountain of debt and a spine made of iron who likes my son and barely tolerates me. That’s all.
The locker room was stupid. I know it was stupid. The moment I had her against those lockers, I knew I was pushing too far, and I pushed anyway because I could smell exactly what it was doing to her, and rational thought just vanished. Maybe I haven’t been with a woman in so long that the smell of her arousal made me go a little overboard. But then no woman has roused my interest in a long time.
I take a long drink.
I just find her interesting because her temperament is similar to that of a female wolf shifter’s. That’s it. There’s nothing more to it than that. I grimace.
If I’ve scared her off this job because of what she called my ‘locker room stunt,’ Coach will have my head. He’s going to beat me black and blue. I’m not looking forward to that. Maybe I’ll go to Miranda to get some pity points so she can join the team then. I almost laugh into my beer just thinking about it.
She holds herself so tightly. Every wall up, every door locked, all that sharp humor she uses like a fence to keep people at a distance. And then something pushes open that fence just slightly, and underneath there’s this person who cut Ethan’s sandwich diagonally and warned him about burning his tongue and looked at him with a softness that she would never ever aim at me.
I don’t understand why Ethan took to her so fast. He barely tolerates Linda most days, and Linda’s been with us since he was six months old. But this woman he met in a park three days ago, he’d draped himself across her like she was furniture he’d owned for years.
I watch the tree line as something catches my cycle of repetitive thoughts.
A wolf steps out of the darkness, big and dark. It begins to walk toward me, its gait predatory, and I lift my beer. “There’s nothing in the fridge, Coach.”
Leon shifts at the edge of the patio. He straightens, rolls his shoulders, and reaches for the folded pants I keep in the box by the back wall. Tugging them on, he disappears inside without a word.
When he comes back, he’s holding two beers. He drops into the chair across from me and takes a long pull from one before setting the other on the table between us. “Yours is nearly finished.”
I grin. “I told you there was nothing.”
“You had beer.” He lifts it in the air as if checking the brand. “I’ve hired Miranda Carver.”
“Yeah, she told me.” I drain my beer and pick up the second one.
“She’s coming to sign the contract in two days. After that, she’s on site for every practice session for the next six months.”
“Six months?” I glance at him. “Is that how long this will be? I thought she was just going to be here for a month or two.”
“I checked the regulations,” Alpha Ramirez says heavily. “She needs to observe the players for six months, check for steroid use and all that garbage humans put in their bodies.”
“Ah,” I murmur. We sit in silence for a while, each lost in his thoughts, and then I ask, “What do you think of her?”
My alpha is quiet for a moment. “She minds her own business.” He takes another drink. “I offered her good money, and she accepted without negotiating. She also didn’t flinch once during practice.” He glances at me. “That counts for something.”
“Yeah,” I say.
He gives me a look. “Be honest with me, Grayson. What is actually going on between the two of you? And don’t use Ethan as a reason for anything you tell me.”
