Page 36 of Big Bad Wolf

“Blaine?!”

“You know his name?”

Ruby shook her head. “No, of course not. I’m just guessing. Do you know his name?”

“No.” He’d been trying to figure it out since he first saw him. But his pack didn’t exactly socialize with Highlanders.

“Okay, well, he looked like a Blaine. And I knew he was the evil villain sort.”

“Ruby, he knows where you work. He knows where you live. He was following you!”

“I could say the same about you.”

He realized he was still gripping her biceps. He let go and took a step back. She was right, but every instinct he had was screaming at him to protect her, to be near her, to never let her go.

But he was also trying very hard not to scare the crap out of her.

“There’s one difference between the two of you, though,” Ruby said with a little smirk. “You’ve never grabbed my ass.”

Rafe scoffed and shook his head. This woman.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Ruby, but I know something’s not right about any of this.”

He must have looked miserable because she took pity on him. “Fine,” she relented. “You can drive me if it means that much to you.”

“It does.”

“Okay, great. Your dreams of becoming an unpaid Uber driver are about to come true.”

“I’m thrilled,” he deadpanned and Ruby grinned.

“What are you going to tell your sister?”

“I told her you’re a friend.”

“A friend?”

Ruby laughed. “Sure, what else do you call a guy who crashes overnight in your garage, is desperate to protect you from bad dudes, and doesn’t grab your ass against your will?”

“Ruby—”

“Look,” she said, cutting him off, turning serious. “Lena doesn’t need to know about this, about what you are or about what happened last night. I don’t want to stress her out any more than she already is.”

Rafe had a feeling Lena was a bigger piece of this puzzle than Ruby wanted to believe, but he wasn’t going to push her on it. Not yet anyway. If she didn’t want her sister to know the truth about him, he wouldn’t tell her.

“Fine.” He nodded.

“Okay, deal.” Ruby let out a long breath, blowing the wisps of hair out of her face. “Now pour yourself another cup of coffee because I have a lot more werewolf questions.”

Chapter Fifteen

“So, can you change whenever you want or do you have to wait for a full moon?”

Rafe gave her an amused smile. They were sitting on her back deck; the late afternoon sun was low enough now that the trees at the edge of the woods cast long shadows across the backyard. Ruby could see the torn-up grass where Rafe had fought the other wolf. She didn’t let her gaze linger there. The rest of the yard was wild and unmowed. Black-eyed Susans, purple Asters and Goldenrod she’d never planted waved in the breeze. Her bare feet hung over the edge of the deck, the wood rough beneath her palms. They’d never bothered to put furniture out here.

“No, that’s a myth. I can change whenever I need to.”

Interesting that he said “need” instead of “want,” like he never changed just for the fun of it, but Ruby didn’t get to delve into that further. It was Rafe’s turn. They’d been trading questions for most of the afternoon.