“Nope,” he said.
Strong hands caught my waist in a firm grip and held me captive, and then suddenly he was laying on his back and I straddled his hips. My heart jumped to my throat as I looked down at him. Dodge gazed up at me with a surprising lack of interest.
So maybe hedidn’tfind me attractive.
The opposite was definitely not true. My palms rested against the hard planes of his chest, and not even my flannel pajama pants and his jeans were enough to disguise the iron muscles of his thighs. I concentrated on breathing. “Let me go.Now.”
“You stay here,” he said, calm. Implacable. As unmoving as a fucking boulder. “It’s not safe.”
“Nowhere is safe,” I said. I meant it to sound furious and aggravated. It was true – the entire world felt too dangerous to survive. How the hell was I going to get up and keep going the next day? I’d always be looking over my shoulder, looking for... badly-dressed guys chopping up bodies? Wolf-men? Dark-haired women who could wave their hands and make the air turn into a wall?
But my fury disappeared in the way my voice cracked on ‘safe,’ and my throat burned with tears. Damn it. I didnotwant to cry in front of him. Again.
I slammed my fist into his chest in frustration with my own emotions. I didn’t know what else to do. There wasn’t anything to rage against or run from or fight. I just had to... endure it.
Dodge’s hands remained on my waist, though they slid lower and dangerously close to my hips. He took a deep breath, his chest expanding, and I felt the movement of his body all the way through me. His hazel eyes studied me but it seemed like a mask had fallen over his expression. He wasn’t the same guy who’d laughed and joked about me doing squats to thank him for saving my life, and he wasn’t the same man who’d squeezed my knee when I sat in the car and tried to keep my shit together when I thought I was going to die any second.
His right hand rested on my thigh, his fingers curling around to the back while his thumb moved restlessly over the top of my thigh. Thunderclouds moved in his eyes, hiding the real Dodge as I gazed down at him. The air got very thick and close around me. I felt like I was floating in some other reality.
Dodge’s grip tightened on my thigh. “This world sucks, babe, I’m not going to lie. You thought you knew how the world worked; you thought you knew the rules. And today you found out that there are some things that are very, very different from what you knew. It happens. It happens to all of us. There’s nothing to be ashamed about being thrown off your game.”
“It happens to you?” I asked. I desperately needed to know that the incredibly dangerous, incredibly capable man in front of me had his world shaken once or twice.
He hesitated, studying me for a long time, then nodded. His eyes almost reflected the soft glow of the nightlight in the bathroom, sparking gold. His other hand settled low on my leg, just behind my knee where it dug into the mattress at his hips. My breath caught. I couldn’t believe I was still sitting on him, still straddling him like – like –
My cheeks ached and I started to slide off him, to move back to the safety of the mattress without a mountain of muscle between my legs, but he caught my waist and kept me where I was. His tone went husky and rough. “Stay.”
Smoke must have curled off my face as everything heated up. I swallowed hard but stayed where I was, trying not to tense my thighs against his, to test whether he’d react. His fingers slid under the back of my t-shirt, ghosting over my bare skin, and goosebumps peppered all over me.
Dodge watched me, head tilted, as he did it again. “There’s been a couple of times I got knocked for a loop.”
“Wh-what was the worst?” I almost arched my back as his caress repeated and his fingers curled down to the waistband of my pants.
At least it took my mind off the events of the day. It was hard to remember the wolf-man and Deirdre’s weird powers with Dodge teasing and touching my bare skin.
He made a rusty noise, as if weighing how much to tell me, then relaxed his arms so his hands once more returned to my knees. I missed the caresses with a sudden ache. Dodge cleared his throat. “My father’s family was rich. Really fucking rich. So rich I didn’t – I still don’t understand how rich they were. They were the kind of folks who had vacation homes – multiple ones. A few in the mountains, a few on the beach, some overseas in Italy and Greece, a whole island in the Caribbean... Rich people.”
I nodded, mesmerized by the rhythm of his speech. The words came reluctantly, like he hadn’t ever said them out-loud before. “They sound like it.”
“They were.” It sounded grim, more a curse than a grandson’s appreciation. Dodge took another deep breath and though his gaze remained on me, his attention drifted. “My father was their only son, their heir. Their golden boy. They sent him to all the right schools, lined him up with the right job, the right country club, put all the richest bitches in front of him... And he had the terrible fucking judgment to fall in love with my mother.”
Bitterness twisted his voice and my heart jumped to my throat. But I couldn’t find words. I didn’t want him to stop talking.
Dodge frowned and absently tugged at the front of my pajama pants, where the drawstring had knotted and tangled. He toyed with it, apparently unaware that I held my breath and fought not to wriggle and squirm at the teasing, glancing touches. “My mother had theaudacityto be trailer trash. The absolute worst pedigree they could have imagined. She was worse thanthe help.”
He threw the words out in some East Coast, upper crust accent, but his grip tightened on my knee and he yanked on the drawstring. When I tensed, he abruptly shook his head, growling. “Sorry. Sorry. I won’t hurt you.”
“I know,” I said quietly. I meant it. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. He’d been careful with me, at least physically, even if some of his words were sharp as fucking daggers. I rested my palms on his chest, wanting to smooth away some of those edges for him.
Dodge’s gaze drifted back up to my face, like he remembered who I was for the first time, and his eyes turned even more golden in the dim light. Half of his mouth dragged up, though the expression didn’t last long. “They didn’t even know she was a shifter. That would have pushed them over the fucking edge.”
“A shifter,” I said. “Is that what – what you’re called?”
Again, his attention sharpened and his grip tensed and then all of him eased. He shifted into a gentler, almost teacher mode. “Yeah. Shapeshifter, shifter, wolf.”
“Not werewolf?” I braced for ridicule or laughter, more sharp words with a teasing but half-meant endearment on the end. I couldn’t decide if I liked when he called me ‘sweetheart’ and ‘babe,’ or if it was too annoying to tolerate.
His face softened in a smile. “No, not werewolves. Unless – is it a full moon?”
