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“You’ll love me through it.” Wolf tilts his head, his nose twisted in a sneer. “But not the way I want to be loved.”
My heart sinks, and a sharp burn hits my sinuses.
“I’m sorry.” I close my eyes.
“No.” Kody’s booming baritone snaps my gaze up. “You will not apologize. We all claimed you. Who you claim in return, that’s your call.” He glares at his brothers. “Isn’t that what we’re fighting for? Freedom to choose? Freedom to love who and how we want? We had that choice taken from us. But no longer. And I’ll be damned if we take the choice from her.”
I didn’t realize how often Leo looks at me until now. With his eyes directed across the room, distantly staring at fuck-all, I feel the absence of his gaze like a punch in the gut.
He wants me for himself. Given the stark look on his face, it sickens him that I love them equally. In his competitive, jealous, territorial heart, he wants me to love him the most.
I’ve been forthcoming with him. I laid out the stakes in entangling himself with a scorned, ruined woman like me. He disregarded every warning and claimed me anyway. I’ll share the blame for the mess we’re in, but I won’t carry all of it.
Stepping toward him, I reach out a hand. “Leo.”
He evades my touch and treads to the door. “I need space.”
I move to stop him.
Kody catches my arm. “Let him go.”
The door closes behind Leo’s retreating form, and I sag. “I can’t.”
“Where’s he going to go?” Wolf huffs. “There’s no way out. No cigarettes. No food. No sex.”
“You still have two working legs.” Kody shoots him a glare.
“Dead men don’t need legs.”
58
Frankie
—
A week later, I remove the stitches from Kody’s thigh.
“It looks good. I mean, wow. Really good.” I run a thumb over the new, satiny pink skin. “How’s it feel?”
“Beautiful.” He rests two fingers beneath my chin. “Fucking enchanting. Makes me hard as fuck.”
“Nice.” I laugh. “I should put that on my resume for future employment. Provides emergency medical care that feels so beautiful and fucking enchanting it makes the patient hard as fuck.”
“Come here.” A gravelly rumble.
“No way.” I bounce to my feet. “You’re sweaty and need a shower. Off with you.”
He crushed his physical therapy today. Hell, he’s been busting ass all week with zero complaints and minimal grumpiness.
“Join me.” He stands from the bed, wearing tight briefs and nothing else.
I can actually count the ridges of his hard-on through the fabric, not to mention the ripples along his torso, every muscle etched and honed, beckoning my fingers.
Irresistible male.
I glance up, and oh, my heart. Those smoldering eyes.
The way he looks at me makes me feel like I’m built for destruction, like there’s no desire too dark, and he’s a heartbeat away from proving it. A heartbeat from stripping my clothes and my skin and scraping his cruel love like fangs along my bones.
Ten minutes in the shower with him would be total annihilation.
“You know I can’t.” I warily glance at the door.
Wolf is due back any minute, and Leo is in the workshop, trying to figure out the inner workings of the power system.
God knows where Denver is lurking. Not that he’ll come up here. He keeps to the main floor like a nutjob lying in wait, organizing his kidnapping kit, plotting world domination, or whatever he does when he’s alone. I try not to think about it.
Kody breathes deeply, dragging his nose through the braids I plaited in my hair. He pauses at the spot beneath my ear, nuzzling, sniffing. I shiver as his inhale sucks the scent from my skin.
“Are you smelling me?”
“At every opportunity.” He bites down, a feral clench of canines on the juncture of my shoulder and neck.
“Kody.” My hands crawl into the lush midnight fur of his hair, pulling, pushing. “Kody, release me.”
A growl vibrates as his warm tongue lavishes the tender flesh between his teeth. He takes his time letting go. Leaning back. Closing his eyes. Licking his lips. “You taste like cinnamon sunshine.”
“That’s specific.”
“I’ve had three months to think about it.” Intense inky eyes swallow me whole. “I can’t wait much longer.”
“You can.”
“I won’t.” He grabs my mouth, his fingers and thumb digging in, denting my cheeks. “Don’t let Leo’s possessiveness dictate what you want.”
“Gee, thanks.” Letting my annoyance fly, I smack away his hand. “Good thing I have such strong and able men telling me what to do. Lord knows I’m not capable of thinking or doing what I want all by myself.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then say what you mean.”
“He’s ignored you for a week.”
“I braided his hair this morning.”
“He tolerated it.”
“He secretly loved it.”
“He’s angry.”
“So am I. We’re having an argument. A snit. Whatever. That’s what people do when they live on top of each other. It’s normal.”
