I tensed, staring at the wall as if I could see through the fucking drywall and brick to the sky outside. “I don’t – don’t know. Do you...”
As I prepared to launch myself off him and into my closet before he went insane with bloodlust, his smile broke free and he squeezed my thighs. “I’m kidding. There are some who lose control, but it’s got nothing to do with the moon.”
I whacked him lightly again, wanting to be furious at some fucked-up teasing, but the grin softened the hard edges of his expression and made him look younger. I pointed the “I mean business” finger at him. “I don’t like that.”
“That I’m not going to succumb to moon-madness and ravish you?”
The thought left my mouth dry and my thighs aching just a bit. When I didn’t immediately snap at him and instead considered the possibility, Dodge’s grin spread like wildfire and his hands slid all the way under my shirt. “Oh really.”
I smacked him again but couldn’t swallow a nervous laugh as I arched away from the delicious friction of his palms. “Stop it. That’s not – I don’t like when you make fun of me like that. I don’t know about this – this shit. If I ask a question, I mean it. I want – Ideserve– a straight answer.”
He was still grinning as he laced his hands behind his head and just watched me. “Fine. No such thing as moon madness, not for shifters. Can’t speak for witches or fae, though, they’re not my people.”
I almost went light-headed. What the fuck? Were all the fairy tales true? “W-witches? Fae?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and I could tell he hadn’t meant to say it, that he’d somehow fucked up. Dodge tugged on the drawstring of my pajamas once more. “Do you want to hear the rest of my sob-story, or you want to quiz me on the supernatural encyclopedia?”
“There’s an encyclopedia?”
He laughed, a sudden guffaw that ran through his whole body and almost launched me to the floor. Dodge shook with his mirth, barely catching me and pulling me tight to his chest before I rolled off. Dodge’s massive arms linked around me, holding me close. His fingers slid into my hair as his head turned and he breathed in from my neck. He chuckled, his beard tickling my cheek and throat. “No, babe, there’s no encyclopedia.”
I closed my eyes and resisted the urge to nuzzle into him. “Don’t be a jerk.”
He sighed and the hand not massaging my scalp slid down into the back of my pants, squeezing my ass under my panties. “I’m trying really hard to be a gentleman.”
I snorted and reached back to retrieve his hand from my so-called ‘six, maybe six and a half’ butt. “Not a chance. Thought you didn’t want to waste your time on a mere six?”
“Baby, you’re a perfect ten,” he grumbled, taking my earlobe in his teeth at the same time his hips moved in a slow, deliberate thrust that made it clear, even through his jeans, how very much he liked having me sprawled across him. “Every inch of you.”
“Thought you were going to keep on with your story,” I said. I dragged my attention away from the distracting friction where our hips met and the rough drag of the calluses on his palm up my back and around to my side so he could hold me even tighter. I pushed away from him, up on my elbows, so I could study his face.
Dodge’s eyebrows arched as he looked up at me, and those storm-clouds passed over his expression again. But he smiled with half his mouth and tugged on my hair. “Well. If you’d stop distracting me, Persephone, Iwillkeep on with my story, thank you very much.”
He waited but I just smiled. Dodge went back to stroking my back but didn’t speak until I exhaled some of the tension and relaxed against him. I rested my cheek against his shoulder and listened to the thumping of his heart, the rough rasp of his voice as he went on. “They didn’t know she was a shifter, and they didn’t know I was. My father did, though. He’d considered having my mom turn him, but in the end, they didn’t have enough time.”
I didn’t know what to do with my arms. I didn’t want to dig my elbow into his shoulders or just splay across him like a deboned chicken. I slid my arms under his shoulders so I could touch his neck and play with his hair. Dodge growled in appreciation and his hands got bolder on the small of my back, returning to my ass without hesitation. He was totally, completely, and unapologetically an ass man. I closed my eyes and tried not to push my butt into his strong grip.
Despite the distractions, he managed to go on in a remarkably calm voice. “My father died before she had the chance to change him. If he’d been a shifter, he might have survived. As it was, he was there one minute and gone the next.”
I stilled, pushing up to see his face. “I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “It was a long time ago.”
“Doesn’t make it less hurtful and awful,” I said. I rested my chin on his chest. “Were you close?”
“Yeah.” His gaze went far away and he went quiet for a long time. Dodge finally shook himself and offered me a tight smile. “He was a good dad, especially because of the bullshit parents he had.”
“What happened after he passed?” I asked, when he didn’t immediately go on. I got a tight knot of anxiety in my stomach, like I didn’t want to know what had rocked his world as much as mine had been. If it compared to finding out that some people got chopped up and fed to retired circus tigers, maybe I really didn’t want to know.
Dodge toyed with my hair, his fingertips tracing along my cheekbone. “His parents found out about it, paid for the whole funeral, acted real nice to me and my mom. It lasted a few months. That was all they needed.”
I swallowed the knot in my throat. I didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to push, but it seemed like... he needed an audience. He needed someone to ask and pull the information out of him. To help excise those wounds, to get the poison out. It was a fucked up thing to talk about lying in bed together, but it had been a fucked up day. “All they needed to what?”
His jaw clenched and the muscles ticked until I feared for his teeth. “To get all the paperwork together so they could take me away. They had her found incompetent and unfit as a mother. Planted drugs on her, had other people file false claims about her beating me, lined up all kinds of character witnesses to show that they were the only people who could take custody of me. They put themselves out there as my saviors, since they hadn’t saved their son from my mother’s claws.”
His fingers dug in as his anger heated, and I sucked in a breath. Dodge immediately gentled his grip and smoothed his hands over where he’d squeezed, muttering something like an apology as his lips brushed my forehead. I concentrated on breathing. “Surely they didn’t...”
“They did. They won. They had money. Lawyers. The judge was in their pocket.” Dodge took a deep breath and I rose up on his chest. “They took me away from her. Her pack fought, or tried to. It didn’t matter. My father’s parents locked me away in their mansion. I was their do-over, their second chance. They thought they’d failed their son by letting him marry my mother, so they would... correct the mistake with me. They wantedmeto be the perfect heir – go to the right schools, take the right job, marry the right woman.”
