AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My eyelids fluttered open, revealing the cutest little chef-slash-fighter I had ever seen.
“A bit,” I agreed while smiling. “But you seemed to handle it just fine, Lottie.”
She blinked with surprise. “You’ve never called me that.”
“Should I not call you that?”
“I think I might like you calling me that.”
Those words were the water that made my smile grow like a starving plant. “Do you? Really?”
“I said, Imightlike it.”
“Ah, there lies the problem, right?”
She frowned, though it was more playful than disappointed. After shaking her head she waved for me to follow her, leading me through the maze of hallways past the bar door and toward the kitchen. Water sloshed in the sink as pans clattered. A medley of the usual smells licked my nose: herbs, spices, grilled meat.
My stomach growled, causing Charlotte to giggle. She turned to me and said, “Already hungry?”
“That’s just what you do to me, cherry.”
She paused in the doorway of the kitchen to fix me with a surprised expression, a mixture of lust and hesitation all coiled up in her features like a snake waiting in tall grass for something tasty to skitter by. And maybe I was the one she was about to strike.
But maybe that didn’t bother me much. Maybe not at all.
One handsome grin later, she had me trailing after her into her office where I stared pointedly at the table near the door. “Oh, you cleaned it.”
She blushed. “Why wouldn’t I clean it, Adam? That’s kind of where I eat.”
“It’s where I ate, too.”
That squeak she made sounded like the same sound that would come out of a chew toy. There were plenty of other jokes I could have made based on that thought alone, but I disregarded my comedian side and shut the door, marching across what little space Charlotte had dared to put between us.
As I took her lips, everything crashed around us. The world bent to my will, becoming precisely what I wanted it to be—which was nothing. No more war, no more bloodshed, no more running from that ridiculous unknown, the black hole of aggression having already swallowed so much of what I loved.
Her responding moan told me she wanted this as much as me even though I was actively fighting every bone in my body. My muscles took on a life of their own, prompting my movements. To deny the call of my wolf would put me in danger of being alone forever. I knew that. I fought that.
But it wasn’t going to protect me.
Slowly, hesitantly, I released her lips, gasping when she sought to return. Her limbs wrapped around my body like ivy climbing a tree, loose and limber, ready for action. Just feeling the heat radiating from between her thighs made me lose it, my eyes rolling back so hard that I could have sworn I saw brain tissue.
No thoughts. Just Charlotte.
“Cherry,” I whispered when I was able to break the kiss. “We can’t…”
“Yes, we can.”
Her heart thumped when she hugged me to her chest. And with that simple motion, our blood synchronized, rushing red rivers circulating in unison while a song rose from my wolf, a howl that I had never heard in my life.
Marina never made me feel this way, I thought. An alarm swelled inside me.Oh, gods,nobodyhas ever made me feel this way.
Charlotte shifted to perch her chin on my chest while looking up at me. She was so tiny in my arms, a minuscule form that could fool anyone into thinking she couldn’t do damage. But it wasn’t her fists that would cause harm. It was her words. And her body. And herlips…
“It’s getting bad, Lottie,” I told her. “This shit is leaking right into your inn. I’m worried about you.”
“Sounds like you care.”
I rested my chin on the top of her head, causing her to turn her head and rest her cheek on my sternum. “Don’t read too much into that.”
