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"Looks like he was mauled by dogs," the new blood said.
Collings shook his head. "No. Not a dog... Wolf."
"We don't have wolves around here," Doc Fenton said, shaking his head.
Collings' lips curved up, but he stayed silent.
Oh, they had a Wolf alright.EIGHTEENJanieI heard him rummaging around. From the tentativeness of his footsteps, I imagined he was trying to do so quietly. But, well, a man his size could never really be quiet. When I forced my eyes open, he was leaning down and tying his boots.
"Why do you always sneak out when I'm sleeping?" I demanded, still half asleep but always ready for a fight.
"Never sleep. Not waking you."
That was nice. Considerate. But still.
"Why don't you leave a note?"
"You want notes?"
"They'd be nice. Save me from all the 'dead in a ditch' thoughts, y'know?"
He gave me a lip twitched and moved over toward the kitchen, grabbing a pen and a pad and scribbling.
"I didn't mean now. I'm awake now. You can just tell me." God, he was so dense sometimes.
"Wanted notes, got a note," he said, moving to the bed and placing the note on the nightstand.
I wasn't positive, but I was pretty sure he was fucking with me at that point. Humoring him, I picked up the note. "You're going to the laundromat?"
"That's what it says." He lumbered over to where he had a giant bag stacked beside the door and hauled it up.
The next words were out of my mouth before I could temper how desperate they sounded. "Can I come?"
"Like that?" he asked, a wicked grin pulling at his lips and I realized I was sitting up in bed, sheet pooled around my waist, shirtless.
I rolled my eyes, snatching up the sheet and holding it to my chest. "Real mature. No not like this. I'll put on my..."
"In here," he said, jerking the bag up.
"I'll figure something out," I said, pulling the sheet with me as I climbed out of the bed. I couldn't exactly wear his tee out in public. But maybe if I took his flannel and belted it so it looked like a dress? That could work. I moved toward the hook by the door, snatching the flannel off. "What?" I asked when Wolf just stood there staring at me, brows drawn together.
"Sheet."
"What about the sheet?" I asked, looking up at him.
"Fine naked last night."
He wasn't wrong. After we had had sex, we had both stayed on top of the blankets, both gloriously naked, me babbling, him giving me his usual short answers. Occasionally, his hand would move over and drift across my belly, down my thigh, over my breasts. But it was chaste, like he was just trying to get to know every inch.
I hadn't ever been a particularly insecure woman. We had very little privacy at Hailstorm. I'd seen Lo naked more times than I could count and she could say the same of me. Besides, I didn't really have all that much going on body-part wise. I liked how I looked, but I was flat and boyish, straight up and down. There didn't seem to be much to be insecure about to be honest.
"That was last night," I said to cover my own confusion at my actions. "This is this morning."
To that, I got an exaggerated eye roll. His arm moved out and snagged the tuck I had made above my chest and pulled it free. The sheet pooled to the floor. "Better," he said with a nod.
"I needed to put this on anyway," I said with a chin lift as I slipped my arms into the flannel. He wasn't going to get a rise out of me over that. Nope. No way. And I didn't feel a pleasant flush of warmth as his eyes took me in hungrily as I buttoned up his shirt. "Do you have a belt?" I asked, expecting an immediate yes as I cinched in the waist.
"Got rope."
I looked up, fighting a smile. "You can't be serious," I said, shaking my head. He shrugged a shoulder and then, well, he got me some rope.
It wasn't high fashion, but it didn't look as absurd as it sounded either.
So off to the laundromat we went.
See, here's the thing: I'd never been to such a place before. Growing up, we had our own machines and at Hailstorm, the girls co-opted their own set separate from the guys too. So I had never been introduced to the washer and dryer-lined walls and the white folding tables down the center. I use the word "white" loosely here because there was brown stuff of indeterminate origins in the crevices. Why? I couldn't tell you because they were for folding the clothes, you know... after they had been cleaned. At a machine in the center, a woman with a baby in a sling was hauling crib sheets into the washer with a huge yellow stain in the center. Now, I'm no baby expert, but I knew a piss stain when I saw one.
Wolf hauled the bag up into a metal cart and moved toward a washer close to the door, looking over his shoulder at me because he had barked something about quarters to me as we walked in which I promptly forgot all about because I had spotted two dudes in the back corner doing a hand-off. Meaning... a drug deal. In broad daylight. In a laundromat.
"What's with the look?" he asked, head cocked to the side.
I wasn't aware I had a look, but given the level of disgust I was feeling, I imagined that was true. I also imagined said look intensified when I turned to him, holding up a hand. "You are not putting my clothes in that machine," I declared, making his brows raise and his lips twitch.
"This'll be good."
"Wolf that lady just put pee-stained sheets in that machine. I don't even want to think about how many different bodily fluids are floating around inside that washer when you turn it on."
"It's a washing machine."
"Yeah."
"Self cleaning."
"If we're following that logic. You know dishwashers?"
