I raise a brow.
“You said to be myself.”
My eyes drop to his hand which keeps going higher. “You’re just lucky there aren’t any kids nearby.”
“Are you threatening me?” he challenges.
“I don’t threaten people.” My tone drops. “But this is a holiday show.”
“There’s a reason all the kids sit up front.” He bounces his eyebrows.
“No one would dare get intimate with kids around.”
He chuckles. “Oh, Angel, you don’t know my pack very well. They’re strategic about everything. Forty or so feet behind us is the tall grass. You want action, you sit back there.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Want to go explore with me?”
He is serious. Aboutme. I love this side of him, and yet I’m not quite ready for his pack to know we’ve been intimate.
The day he agreed to train me, I built a wall around myself, because it was the only way to get through the training without the guilt eating away at me. I broke through that wall today, gave in to my feelings for him.
Now, here I am, with a shifter I’m crazy about, and a broken wall. What if he peeks through and sees my insecurity? What if he realizes I don’t belong here?
“Sadie Lynn’s maneuvering the kids into position,” Tess announces.
Sure enough, all of Santa’s reindeer are lined up in two rows, the taller kids in back. One little girl turns until her back faces theaudience. Sadie Lynn rushes over and nudges her in the right direction. The little girl turns right back, resulting in chuckling from the audience.
“That’s Helena,” I tell Garrett. “I think she has stage fright.”
“Or a bad sense of direction,” Damien says.
I swat Garrett’s arm.
“What are you hitting me for? Damien said it.”
“You were thinking it too.”
“Apologize for what you werethinking, Garrett,” Damien says from Tess’s other side.
“I will not. She has no idea what I was thinking.”
“What were you thinking?” I ask outright.
He hesitates, then says, “Drink your hot chocolate.”
“Knew it!” I tighten my hold on his arm. “I could see the judgment in your brain, you and your wolf teasing a child.”
“I would never?—”
“Then why did Damien say it?”
“How the hell am I being blamed for what he says?”
“You’re his cousin.”
“I fail to see?—”
