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“What did you find in the box?” Searle’s soft inquiry jarred me out of my thinking. He, carefully, lowered himself onto the bed next to me. Once again, he put his hand on my thigh, just above my knee.
I didn’t twitch this time. Was that a good sign or a bad sign? “I don’t know yet. I grabbed the contents and ran. They’ve had sealing wax poured all over them.”
Searle nodded once. Everything about him was so deceptively soft. Like moss on a quartz boulder. “Did you see him?”
“Him?” I asked, confused for a moment. Did he mean Hamid? We had just discussed Hamid.
“Him.”
Sterling. He meantSterling.
Bitter pain sliced through my ribboned soul. “That’s the first thing you think? Not were you seen? Were you pursued? Were you chased? Did you have difficulty?”
“He’s not here right now.”
“So?” Grief made my voice go up a few notches. “No, I didn’t see him!”
The lie wassoeasy. It felt like seeing Sterling had been a fever dream anyway. It hurt too much to even think about. Butso the fuck what if I saw my mate? Searle could get the fuck over it. In July, if Sterling died, I’d keep my promise and somehow be okay, though I’d never be okay again.
But not before. Until then, Searle had to share.
“He’s not here right now,” Searle said, “You understand my suspicions.”
“I have no idea where he is.” I gripped the box tighter. I wasn’t lying about that. I had no idea where Sterling was at that exact moment. Maybe the house in Seattle. Maybe on a run. Maybe on a plane. Maybe on a train. Maybe on a slow-moving bus.
Searle moved his gaze from head to toe. “You’ve showered. And I do not recognize the scent of the shampoo. And these weren’t the clothes you left in, and you didn’t take clothes with you.”
So Searle didn’t trust methatmuch. Smart wolf, and I might have been offended if I’d been innocent. But it didn’t take much for me to feel indignant and angry about him being salty. “We had to stop in Seattle to change air crews because of duty hour limits. I showered and changed in the private aviation executive lounge. Hamid brought me some changes of clothes. He took the old stuff as well.”
All of these things were true. And I had let Hamid take my dirty laundry and long coat and heels because they all would have smelled of Sterling.
“Even your panties?” He leaned forward and a bit lower to get a sniff. I resisted the violent urge to not shove him away from the orbit of my privates.
“Especiallymy panties. Day-old panties are manky.” Searle wasn’t a kissless virgin. I wasn’t a parched desert between my thighs. If Searle didn’t know females got a little damp or even wet without male provocation, time to up his education. “I thought you’d appreciate me being very careful to not bring clothes reeking of Alaska back with me.”
“Technically you were on a Chronicler missive, so the pack would expect you to come back smelling well-traveled and of other wolves. Coming in smelling like you’ve recently washed would be unusual.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing I stumbled back in the dead of night. And haven’t you ever heard of a rest stop? They’ve got showers there.” If Searle was unfamiliar with the concept of a truckstop shower, he needed to get out more.
“I do not approve of this human having your clothes, much less your panties. Why would he do that? Why would he have brought you more underthings?” Searle’s face bent into a frown and his scent turned angry.
Hamid was not some pervertcreeper. “Because it’s hisjob. And his particular job description includes making sure my life remains, neat, tidy, clean, and operating smoothly. It’s part of hisjobto make sure if I need something, he either has it, has arranged for it, or knows where to get it. He’s not doing it so he can make off with my panties or spank himself with my stiletto heels.”
Sterling would have put Hamid out on the curb and demanded Case send over someone who knew how to not check out my ass. Or whatever bodypart it was that Hamid fancied.
“I still do not approve of it, nor like it,” Searle said.
Fine. He could not like it and not approve all he wanted, I didn’t care, he could sod on off to breakfast. My shoulders and neck dipped under the weight of trying to keep them up.
Searle transferred one of his hands to my thigh, and touched my chin as if to lift it with the other. His touch was feather-light. I froze, mind blank but scrambling around inside my skull trying to process what he was doing.
“I don’tmeanto be harsh.” His fingertips lingered, sometimes brushing my skin and sometimes not. “I don’t trust you to not chase prey. And I don’t like being told I need to put my trust in a human I don’t know to return you to this pack without damage.”
Searle brushed his fingertips over my skin a final time before putting his hand back on his thigh, but he left his other hand where it was, just barely resting his fingertips and the heel of his palm on top of my leg. Closer to my knee than to my hip. “Are you going to open the seals?”
I tore my gaze down to the shoebox. “I’ll have to.”
“That scares you.”
