Trying to ignore the pang of loneliness in my heart.
CHAPTER TEN
barrett
She’d wanted me to kiss her.
Eryne had made it obvious. She’d wanted me to kiss her, and I hadn’t.
Every bit of me wanted to, but I’d stopped myself before I could let it happen.
She wasn’t ready for this. Ready forme.I knew it when I saw the way her face drained of color when I was talking about my job—about the sick creatures I hunted for a living. It unsettled her.
I sat back on the couch as she walked into her bedroom, no doubt ready to strip off her clothes and pull on her pajamas. My cock was practically standing at attention any time I was around her, and this line of thinking wasn’t helping.
Earlier, I hadn’t expected her to be waiting for me to come home. But when I’d seen her on the porch, and had shifted back to my human form, she was the only thing on my mind. Not my clothes or my lack thereof. Just getting back to her.
Fuck, even now I could smell her arousal, and it was so hard to hold back.
The mate bond was urging me to take her, to claim her, to make her mine, but I couldn’t. She had no idea what was between us. I felt like an absolute dick for keeping it from her, but would she still want to be around me when she knew the truth? I still hadn’t figured out how it was possible that we were mates when shewasn’ta wolf.
I’d never heard of mates being different species until now. Though it was possible for shifters to procreate with humans, they didn’t normally share a mate bond. Not like this.
Maybe it had something to do with the witch magic that tied us together. I needed to find out more about the witch and demon that were mated.
That was a good distraction from thinking about the sweet scent of my mate and how desperate I was to taste it directly from the source.
“It’s been one fucking day, Lockwood,” I scolded myself. “Keep it in your pants.”
I was going to sleep on the couch. Or maybe the floor.
Next to her,my wolf urged.
Like he knew, just as much as I did, that I wouldn’t be able to sleep without her in my sights.
“You’re the worst,” I grumbled, rubbing at my chest, where the bond ached for completion.
But I couldn’t. Iwouldn’t.
Not yet. Not until I knew that this was what she wanted.
Till she could reassure me that all of this—us—was enough for her. I’d never be able to give her the life of a normal witch. I wasn’t built for that. Wolves were built for the open road, for forests and pack life and the great outdoors. That was all I’d ever known. I’d spent more of the last decade sleeping in motels and in my car than I had at home.
I didn’t know how this would work.
But I knew I didn’t want to leave, either.
Tomorrow,I promised myself.
Tomorrow, I’d call Ezra and start investigating this thing for real. Maybe I’d go down to the newspaper or the library to find the history of this town. Something had to have been left behind—a reasonwhythe wards were enacted in the first place.
Eryne didn’t seem to know the fullhow,but I could be persuasive. I could find out the answer.
And still, I couldn’t deny that regardless of all of that, I didn’t want to leave because I didn’t want to leaveher.
Maybe that was the biggest problem of all.
“Did you really sleep outside my door all night?” Eryne asked the next morning as I rubbed at my neck while cooking a pan of bacon on her stove.
