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The door opens, and Ridge walks in holding a small tray that bears a steaming mug and a plate. His ash-brown hair is rumpled and the black t-shirt he’s wearing molds to his muscles, giving him a strong, dangerous air that makes my heart rate ratchet. I have to remind myself he’s a friend who has no intention of hurting me.
Even so, when he gives me a tentative smile, his honeyed eyes on mine as he sets the tray over my legs, panic rears its ugly head.
“I hope you like eggs and bacon,” he says, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. “It’s all I had.”
His closeness strikes a chord of leftover terror in me. Coupled with the panic, it sends me into a spiral, and I scoot away, sloshing coffee over the edge of the mug as I jar the tray with my legs.
Ridge’s eyes soften, and he gets up, walking to the pile of laundry in the corner where he extracts a dirty shirt. He keeps his movements slow and both of his hands in my field of vision as he mops up the spilled coffee.
“I didn’t know if you liked milk and sugar in your coffee,” he says, carefully dabbing up the last of the liquid. “So I brought you both.”
I swallow hard as he moves away. He tosses the shirt back into the laundry pile, then moves to the very bottom of the bed, choosing the side that puts him as far away from me as possible.
A lump rises in my throat at his generosity, and at the way he seems to understand what I need just from my crazy reactions. The rapid thudding of my heart slows, and as it does, my stomach lets out an unholy growl.
Jesus. How long has it actually been since I last ate? I’ve lost track of time almost completely, but this is the second day I’ve woken up in this man’s bed. He must’ve gotten me to at least drink some water after my panic attack yesterday, because my mouth doesn’t feel too dry and cottony.
Ridge gives me a gentle, somewhat amused smile as I press a hand over my stomach. The way one corner of his lips tilts a little higher than the other makes him look rugged and slightly rough around the edges, just like everything else about him.
Dragging my gaze away from his full lips, I reach out and tentatively pick up a piece of bacon. The plate is a plain turquoise with a darker bottom and looks handmade, while the small coffee mug declares MONTANA in bold lettering, with an artistic rendering of the state’s natural features below that. Neither dish goes together aesthetically, yet somehow, they work.
“What’s your name?” Ridge asks softly, drawing my attention back to him.
I hesitate, then bite into the bacon, tearing off half the strip. I take my time chewing, my gaze fixed on the steam rising from my mug. I’m not sure I should tell him my name, although I can’t exactly pinpoint where that worry comes from.
What kind of power would he have over me if I did? What if Clint has missing person posters up and Ridge turns me over?
But some tiny part of me that goes against my own sense of self-preservation wants to trust this man. Something inside me is drawn to him, feels safe with him—almost as if I’ve known him for years instead of less than forty-eight hours.
I swallow my bacon past a throat that’s gone dry as the desert, then flick my gaze up to meet his as I say, “I’m Sable.”
Ridge’s eyes darken as he hears my name, the amber color shifting to a hue like burnished gold, and the change sends another tingle over me. Exactly how I felt when I thought of him seeing me naked when he changed my clothes. Something warm and intoxicating deep in my body.
I know what it is, I think. It’s just not something I’ve ever really felt before.
And I still have no idea what it means. So I deflect with the most burning question I’ve had since yesterday afternoon.
“Was it real?” I ask, reaching for another strip of bacon. “The wolf in your living room? He was a man… and then he was a wolf.”
Ridge narrows his eyes at me, not in anger like Uncle Clint used to, but as if he’s carefully constructing his next statement. I can’t really blame him for seeming to walk on eggshells around me—I haven’t proven to be the most stable of individuals since he opened his home to me. Even now, balancing on this precarious ledge where he’s about to tell me whether I hallucinated that or not, I’m on the borderline of losing my nerve again.
“What you saw really happened,” he finally says, clearly deciding not to try to sugarcoat or dance around the truth.
I suck in a breath, putting the bacon back down quickly before my shaking fingers drop it on the clean sheets. “Jesus.”
“I need you to understand that you’re safe here,” he rushes to add. He places a palm on the mattress between us, as if he wishes he could place it on my arm in comfort. I manage to keep myself from shrinking away again, although maybe that’s just because my brain is too busy trying to wrap its head around what he just told me.
“Are you… a wolf too?”
The words come out strangled. The first revelation already threatened to overwhelm me, but if the answer to this is yes…
I have an itch to run. Again. How can I be safer in the hands of weird man-wolf hybrids than I would be alone in the wilderness?
“Yes, I’m a wolf shifter. But we’re not a threat to you.” Ridge’s deep vo
ice is calm and measured. “We pose no threat to human communities. My pack is peaceful. We keep to ourselves mostly, and we keep our existence secret from ordinary humans. It’s safer for everybody that way.”
Threatened with an overload of emotion, I focus on the one thing that really sticks out. “Your pack. There’s more than one pack?”
