Total pages in book: 190
Estimated words: 181992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 181992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
“That he has,” agreed Dax.
As he continued to speak with his brother, despite the dark emotions still roiling in my system, I found myself wanting to smile. Why? Because a few weeks ago, Dax wouldn’t have put the call on speakerphone. Hell, he might have even left the room to take the call; might have afterwards given me a bullet point version of it.
Tonight, he’d included me. Such a minor thing for others, but not for him. Not for this guarded, self-contained person who didn’t like—or feel the need—to involve people, even if his personal business in that case somehow related to them. He was just so solitary, such a go-it-alone individual.
Finally, Dax rounded up the conversation and hung up the phone. “I suppose I should have expected that Felicity would ask someone for my number.”
“I get that she’s upset—any mom would be if their son was beaten—and I don’t blame her for it. But I am pissed at her for the crap she spouted just now. People do that to you far too often.”
“What?”
“Skip over their part in why you targeted them; say stuff like you have no soul.” The kind of thing they’d also said about Michael Bale, as if Dax’s actions in any way compared to those of a goddamn mass murderer. “The weight of what happened tonight doesn’t fall on you.”
Dax pushed away from the counter, his expression unreadable. “Not the full weight, but some of it does. After all, I could have handled the situation any number of ways.”
“But Blaise knew what path you’d likely take; he knew what he was risking. He did it anyway.”
Dax tipped his head to the side. “You don’t wonder if maybe those people are right?” he asked, his voice flat. “You don’t wonder if maybe there’s something missing in me? I feel no guilt over what I did tonight. I never do after I hurt someone.”
“But you’re only ever striking back at them. You don’t go round kicking the shit out of random people. And no, I don’t wonder if something’s missing in you. There’s nothing at all wrong with you. And fuck anyone who says differently.”
Something built in his eyes—an emotion I couldn’t quite identify. He pointed at the floor in front of him. “Come here,” he softly bid.
Swallowing, I covered the distance between us in just four steps.
He took a strand of my damp hair and twined it around his finger. “Maybe you’re right. Or maybe, like Little Red Riding Hood, you don’t see the big, bad wolf in front of you. Maybe you don’t really want to see him, so you tell yourself he’s not there.”
I swiped my tongue along the inside of my bottom lip. “I see him. As wolves go, he’s pretty intimidating. Dangerous for sure. But not soulless. And, well, I kind of like him.”
His eyes fairly crackling with that indefinable emotion, Dax lowered his mouth to mine. Almost to mine. With mere inches between our lips, he said, “Good. He kind of likes you, too.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The hot spray of the shower raining down on me the next morning, I stared at Dax in utter confusion. He had a way of taking me off-guard. I wasn’t even sure he always did it on purpose. He just wasn’t a person whose actions or responses you could perfectly predict.
Take the current situation, for instance.
So far, he’d surprised me three times in the space of fifteen minutes. It had all started when he’d abruptly entered the shower stall. We never showered together. It wasn’t, like, an iron-clad rule. We just didn’t do it. But this morning, he’d joined me with the nonchalance of someone for whom this was a regular thing.
Not that he’d cozied up to me or anything. It wasn’t necessary—the stall was spacious, and the shower head was large. But we’d stood close as we’d separately soaped our bodies down and washed our own hair.
I hadn’t felt anything remotely close to casual. How could I? He might have kept his hands to himself, but the look in his eyes? It was feral. Indecent. Covetous. Like that of a starving predator on the hunt; one that was close to taking down its prey. The force and weight of his attention was so potent and palpable that I felt touched.
And yeah, I was damp. More, my hormones were in full-swing and my nerve-endings were all abuzz.
I’d thought maybe he was here for some shower sex—I could totally get behind that. But once he’d rinsed himself off, he’d backed away. That was surprise number two.
Disappointment had unfurled in the pit of my stomach. He hadn’t left the stall as I’d thought he intended to, though. Nope. He’d casually taken a seat on the shower bench—his legs spread, his cock hard, his posture all alpha—and then settled in to watch me finish showering. And so we’d arrived at surprise number three.