Then he headed out to find his mate.
When he got back to his room, though, he found Taylor locked in the bathroom.
“You can’t come in,” she called out, and she sounded ready to cry.
He felt a surge of worry. “Taylor. Talk to me. Did someone hurt you? Tell me who, and I’ll rip their spine out.”
“Nobody hurt me. I’m fine.” She sniffled. “Please go swimming without me.”
“I don’t want to go unless you’re with me. Open up.”
There was a pause, and then the door was open. She wore a bathing suit – and a towel wrapped around her waist, draping to her ankles. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, avoiding his gaze.
Cliff felt a surge of frustration. What to do? He had no good role models there. If his mother had refused to speak to his father, his father would either have hit her or stormed out of the house, picked up some random woman and flaunted her right in front of his mother’s face. That was not gonna happen here.
What would James do? James would sit back and be patient. Stupid James.
“Come sit with me, then,” he said, gesturing to a grouping of chairs by his big bay window. “When I’m with you, I feel calmer and happier. Please.”
Silently, she followed him and sat down, several chairs away from him. They sat there in silence for several minutes, and finally she looked up at him. “How are you doing, by the way?”
He met her gaze. “Stressed out. Worried that I might have to kill one of my brothers at the end of the trials. Nobody can best me in combat. Grant is excellent at a lot of things, but he’s a stubborn ass, and I’m afraid he’ll refuse to surrender if I have him pinned down. We clash a lot, but I don’t want to have to kill him.”
“Oh,” she said quietly. “Well, my problem seems stupid in comparison.” She pulled her towel up a little bit. “My legs are hairy.”
“And?”
“They’re not alittle bithairy. I look like a damn Sasquatch, and I shaved this morning.”
“That’s what’s upset you?” Cliff roared with laughter, until he saw the look on her face.
Damn, humans were complicated.
“Every single woman looks like that now. The full moon is in a little more than a week,” he said. “I’m a werewolf. Why would I care about hairy legs?”
“But I just… I just…” She dropped her towel. “Doesn’t this disgust you?”
He walked over to her.
“Taylor. Because I love you, I love every last thing about you. Everything about you is beautiful to me. I don’t care if your legs are hairy or if you have morning breath. You are my everything. Let me make you feel beautiful right now,” he said, and scooped her up in his arms.
He carried her over to the bed.
His clothes quickly joined the towel on the floor, and Taylor’s self-consciousness melted into helpless giggles as he tried to take off her bathing suit, cursing Lycra in a range of incredibly inventive ways. Eventually she took pity on him and peeled the suit off, tossing it over her shoulder and wrapping her arms around Cliff as they tumbled onto the bed together.
He was hard and ready for her, and he slipped easily inside her, hissing through his teeth when he was seated all the way inside her. He briefly closed his eyes, and she wrapped her legs around his hips, reveling in the sensation of his thick cock filling her.
They moved together in a sweet, intimate rhythm, murmuring each other’s names, tasting, experiencing, achingly sensitive to each exquisite contact. When Taylor came, emotion swelled inside her, and she looked up into Cliff’s whiskey-colored eyes and saw love shining back at her.
Chapter Twenty-One
Austin successfully completed the obstacle course once it had been checked over.
Three more days of trials went by, with various tests of speed and endurance. The men each had to race a certain distance, timed, lift stacks of weights, throw hundred-pound weights twenty feet, and climb hundred-foot-high rock walls.
During the day, James and Anita sat with Taylor for several hours and had her do meditation exercises to prepare her for being a werewolf. Chantelle sat and watched, weirdly fascinated.
Finally, bright and early, the competitors were getting ready to go hunting. They’d shift into their wolf forms and bring back big game for the Elders’ inspection and approval. It was an ancient tradition, from the days when the Alpha’s hunting prowess might be the only thing that kept the pack from starving during a long, cold winter. These days it had no real meaning, but werewolves were hide-bound by tradition.
