“I liked him.” I recall my dance with his oldest brother. “He’s nice, and he seems funny.”
“Yeah, he tries to keep it light. But the truth is, he’s had to sacrifice a lot. He’s had the thankless job of raising the rest of us.”
That admission falls down from my chest to the pit of my stomach. “So your parents are…gone?” I ask.
He gives me a nod, and I don’t press any further.
“Anyway, you won so…” He stands from the bed.
Having him on the bed with me doesn’t cause me any uneasiness. The opposite, in fact, and I don’t want him to leave. “Well, you actually answered two questions.” The words rush out of me before I know what I’m doing. “You only had to answer one so…”
He turns back my way slowly, a curious look etched across his face.
I reach to my left, patting the empty side of the bed, letting him piece together what I’m trying to say.
He looks at the mattress and back up at me. “You’re really all right with it?”
“Yeah.” My response comes out breathy as I try my best to convey that this is no big deal.
Wolf looks down at the space I offer him and then gestures with a flick of his chin. “Move over so I can have this side.” He glances to where I’m sitting.
“Why?”
“It’s closer to the stairs.” He tilts his head in that direction.
“Okay…” I hesitantly scooch over to the other side. I’m going to have to get him to explain that one later. Maybe he’s a night roamer or something.
The mattress dips with Wolf’s weight, and an overwhelming rush of languorous contentment envelopes me when his body heat radiates from him. His closeness as he stretches out next to me, even with the respectable foot of space he leaves between us, gives me a pleasantly confused feeling of longing. When he bends his arm to shift it beneath the pillow under his head he flashes the defined ridge of his bicep, which adds a garnish of lust, and I almost reluctantly turn to click off the light on my nightstand.
This will be the first time in ages I go to sleep without the TV on, and for a moment, I worry that the sounds of the solid man I just married breathing next to me will keep me up with a newfound excitement all night. But instead, sleep finds me so fast that I almost forget about it.
Almost.
16
WOLF
Ican’t stand trying to make small talk with a woman in a bar or at a barbeque. Ten minutes in, and I feel like sticking my head in a meat grinder. So how is it that sitting on a bed and playing cards with Molly felt so damn easy? Probably because she took the expectation away.
I was resistant, and then something changed in her eyes while she was looking at me. It was like we were two kids playing hide and seek and when she found me, she put the covering back on and pretended she never saw me. And then it was just quiet, and I wanted to go sit with her, to sleep next to her. I sat on the bed, and every stress or worry I had seconds before seemed to melt away. Nothing was left but a comfort that felt more natural than sitting under my favorite tree.
Now, a week later, I watch her as she bustles around the kitchen in a pair of pink scrub pants and a top that has cartoon cats with bandaged heads. Ridiculous, yet on her it’s somehow fucking sexy. She takes a dainty slurp from her coffee before scooping a measuring cup into a big bag of flour on the counter.
“Jesus Christ, is this more of that stress-relief baking? Should I go into town and clean out the bakery aisle for you? Or maybe take you fishing so you can chill out a little?”
Without a beat she says, “So you can point out how many regulations I’m breaking the whole time? Yeah, sounds really relaxing.”
The corner of my mouth turns upward—she’s feisty.
“And no,” she goes on, dumping the flour in a big metal mixing bowl, “I’m just making some brownies to take into work.”
“So what are you going to do tonight then? Come home and bake some more?”
Molly stops what she’s doing to glare at me with narrowed eyes, her hands resting on the countertop like she’s ready to have a face off. “Baking is not all I do, you know.”
“I know,” I say, a faint wave of a white flag in my voice.
“Anyway, I’ll probably come home and read a book or watch a movie or maybe even wash my hair.” She takes a whisk to the mixture in her bowl.
