The broad head bumped into the ceiling. Plaster rained down on them. The house wasn’t big enough for him—and now that he’d stood up, it was clearly a him.
“’Enough of that.” He deposited her on the bed. “You arre going to sit, now.”
She struggled, ripping at his hand with her useless human nails.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m cavalrry”
Cavalry? “Let me go!”
The grizzled head cocked sideways. “Take it easy, girrl. I know I’m furrry, but I’m the good guy.”
“Prove it,” she hissed. “Let me go.”
He let her go.
She rolled across the bed and put it between them, with her back against the wall. He held up his hands, and his body rippled. The muscles writhed, and the bones of his face shifted beneath the skin. The huge fangs retreated into the gums.
Jessie trembled, unable to look away as the human emerged from the beast. And for the second time in an hour, she was face to face with a large, naked man in her bedroom.
Two in one night. She’d hit the jackpot.
This guy was no slouch in the muscle department either. If anything, his shoulders and arms were even bigger than Braden’s. And his thighs... she ripped her eyes away.
She would not go there. Her body had embarrassed her enough for one day.
Tufts of gold hair framed rugged, but handsome, features. And those wild cat eyes. They were magnificent—a gleaming, metallic gold. The pupils expanded from mere slits to human—or as close as they were going to get.
His face suited the rest of him. The man was built like a bloody mountain. His body riveted her. Everywhere she looked, there were long, deep slices. Claw marks? Or teeth marks? Hard to tell which. Rivulets of blood followed the contours of muscle and skin. More muscle than she’d ever seen on any male. They folded and rippled with every move he made.
He was huge. Everywhere. And intimidating as hell. But not perfect. The blood flowed over a fine tracing of silver lines. Some intersected. Quite a number were raised in ridges. She identified them with a sense of shock. Scars. He’d been hurt before. Many times. There were hundreds covering every inch of his skin.
Well, almost every inch. She looked down and then immediately averted her eyes to the floor. Which was covered in a thick carpet of gold and black fur. As she stared at him, she had a sense of déjà vu. Had she seen him before? Ridiculous. No way she’d ever forget this guy. But the sensation remained. Her eyes raced back to his face, searching her memory. Not a face you’d forget. She found herself staring at the short tufts of black and gold hair that stood up like—well, like fur.
“You shed a lot.” She winced. As an opening statement, it was perhaps not the most relevant to the moment.
“Yeah. Sorry about that.” He scrubbed a big hand through his hair. “Even the stuff that stays is annoying. Always suffer from bad hair after a shift.”
Bad hair? It tipped Jessie over a cliff she hadn’t even been aware of. She snorted a laugh. She had a gorgeous naked hunk of—werewolf? No idea, really—standing in her bedroom. But at least he wasn’t pinning her against the wall, or poking her with—
Her mind veered away from the danger zone. The man loomed in her doorway, naked and as comfortable in his own skin as a baby. She, however, required that something be done about the situation. Like, now.
“I want you to leave,” she said.
“Sorry. Can’t,” he replied.
“Yes, you can.”
“Nope. Those guys will be back.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
He was likely right. But she didn’t know who the hell he was. He was as much a beast as they were.
He widened his stance and crossed his arms as he stared at her. Although his face was now human, his eyes still gleamed gold. And the pupils kept pulsing from round to catlike. As though he wasn’t nearly as calm as he looked.
One of his hands was clenched in a fist. It dripped blood down his arm and onto the floor. It added to the blood oozing from all over him.
