Page 27 of Bad Blood Wolf

She shook her head. “You’re a strange man, Wolf.”

His grin faded, and his eyes turned serious. “It’s not what you say,” he told her. “It’s here.”

He skimmed his fingers down her arms until he got to her hands. He picked them up and kissed the knuckles softly, one on each hand. “Your hands say what’s in your heart.”

She didn’t know what was in her heart. She’d slammed the door on all that when she’d turned her back on the person her family wanted her to be.

He seemed to sense her uncertainty. He let go of her hands and stretched his arm, reaching over to grab one of her oversized shirts off a hook on the wall.

“Put this on,” he said.

Jasmin narrowed her eyes. “You don’t want me naked?”

The grin came back. “I will probably always want you naked. But this—whatever it is—is about more than getting naked.”

That made no sense. All male/female relationships were about getting naked. “What are we supposed to do if we’re not naked?”

Brody laughed. It was a nice sound, deep and rich. She realized she’d never seen a full-on, genuine smile on his face before. He was breathtakingly hot when he smiled all the way to his eyes.

“We’ll get to know each other. Put the shirt on. Where’s your hairbrush?”

“What?”

“Never mind, I see it.” He grabbed her hairbrush off the top of the dresser and led her to the futon, shrugging his jacket off while she slipped the shirt on.

“Sit down. This way.” He positioned her so she was sitting with her back to him. He sat down, and she felt him gather her hair into his hands.

“I used to brush my mom’s hair, when I was little,” he said. He started at the ends, easing the tangles out, gripping the hair about halfway up so it wouldn’t pull at her scalp. “She was a wolf, not a cat, but she liked it.”

He’d said was. “Is she—did she die young?” Jasmin asked.

“No,” Brody said. “She left. When I was six.”

“Oh.” She felt a little piece of her heart break for him. She pictured a little boy brushing his mother’s hair, so sweet and careful, and then one day she just wasn’t there. What could have made her leave him?

“What happened?” she asked.

Brody moved the brush further up her hair, encountering another tangle. “She had problems,” he said briefly. “It was better for everyone that she went.”

His voice was cool, but she could recognize armor when she heard it. There was a deep wound there he was protecting. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Yeah.” He teased the tangle out, and moved on to the next one.

He said, “I heard you cursing out Bastian in Portuguese. Did you grow up in Brazil?”

A not-so-subtle subject change. “I was born there,” she said. “We lived there until I was five, and then we moved to Florida. I grew up in the Everglades.”

“Cool,” Brody said. “Were your family crocodile hunters? Tell me you were crocodile hunters. That would be so awesome.”

That made her smile. “Sorry,” she said. “My dad was an accountant.”

“God, really? That’s so boring,” Brody said.

Yeah. So boring that he took his frustrations out on the women in his life.

“I’m disappointed,” Brody went on. “I figured you came from a long line of superheroes.”

“Well, if I did, I wouldn’t be allowed to tell you, would I? Although ‘mild-mannered accountant for a boring metropolitan corporation’ would make the perfect cover for a superhero. Just sayin’.”