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Allen must have traded off with Tank sometime after dropping off my sister, because the latter nodded at me from his post beneath Kira’s window as I headed back up the steps to the shadowed front door. So Kira would have been fine if I’d kept my word and gone to Gunner’s as promised. Still...I wouldn’t sleep until I was sure that both my charges hadn’t been harmed while I was away.
So I padded through the living room and kitchen before giving in to the beckoning bedrooms. “Oyo?” I murmured into the darkness, rising on tiptoes to swipe a hand across the empty top of the refrigerator where the kitsune had first been found. The space was bare, unsurprisingly. After all, our guest was too smart to hole up anywhere so obvious. Still, various other nooks and crannies were equally unoccupied. So perhaps the missing female had gotten smart and snuggled up with Kira on her bed?
Retracing my footsteps through the living room, I turned right this time into the hallway that led to the two bedrooms beyond. And there I stopped as I caught sight of a lump on the floor in front of Kira’s door. A body swaddled in blankets as if Oyo had been afraid to choose a bedroom and had instead made herself a pallet. It clenched my stomach to think of her sleeping on the floor.
“Oyo?” I whispered, not wanting to wake my sister but aware that a kitsune can be dangerous to startle in the darkness.
And the sleeper woke instantly, rising upwards while shedding blankets right and left. Only this wasn’t Oyo. This was Gunner, shirtless and so handsome the vision stole my breath. “Our guest is hiding in the laundry room,” he offered, making me frown for one split second as I considered the fact that I hadn’t even realized my new home possessed a washer and dryer let alone a room to keep them in.
“Laundry nook,” he corrected himself as he stood and took three long strides forward to meet me halfway down the hall. “Behind the folding doors off the kitchen.”
Oh, right. I’d assumed that was a pantry and hadn’t bothered to look inside it. Not a very comfortable spot to spend the night...but whatever made Oyo feel safe.
We were eye to eye now, and Gunner’s proximity was sending messages to my battered body that I was hard-pressed to fight against. Leaning forward, I murmured, “Sorry I didn’t show up for the bubble bath.”
“I saw you had your hands full when you contacted me through the pack bond,” Gunner answered, his own hands rising to rub firm circles of pleasure across shoulders that ached then soothed. “I figured I’d finish cleaning up your cottage since you were cleaning up my pack for me.”
So he wasn’t angry about the mob scene? I was glad...and also subtly disappointed. Maybe I’d gotten a little too used to an alpha werewolf’s overprotective streak.
Perhaps that’s why I didn’t fill him in about the as-yet-unanswered text from his brother. Or perhaps it was the warm comfort of Gunner’s fingers on my skin sidetracking me from that line of thinking. His hand slid beneath my shirt’s collar, skimming lines of fire sideways across my upper chest while giving other parts of my body intriguing notions I was suddenly ready to act upon.
“Perhaps...” Gunner started.
Then his nail caught on a bandaid and his wolf emerged behind his eyes with a growl. “What exactly,” the alpha demanded, forgetting to be quiet for the sake of my sleeping sister, “happened to you?”
***
“CALM DOWN.”
Okay, so even I knew that was no way to start a conversation with an angry werewolf. Still, I was desperate to finish what we’d started. Desperate enough to tug Gunner back toward the pallet of blankets and muffle my own admonition by pressing lips against bare skin.
I kissed my way up his fingers, his arm, and onto his neck, the whole time trying to make myself believe that Gunner was still riding the same libidinous train I was. But his muscles were not only hard, they were unyielding. The discovery of my bandaids had thoroughly derailed us from the pleasure-seeking track.
Eventually, I settled back on my heels, accepting that Gunner’s interest wasn’t going to flick back on until we’d dealt with his outrage. And when he spoke, his voice was quieter but no less intense as he demanded the same information in a slightly different way.
“Who injured you?”
The hand I’d been kissing was still relaxed and open against my body. But his left fist, I noted, was so tightly clenched it was obvious that identifying my assailants would send Gunner rushing off to pound them into a pulp.
“You know it’s inevitable that I’ll get a little injured on occasion if I’m denning with werewolves,” I started, forcing his fist back into the shape of a hand even as I let my dreams for the evening fade into the dark. My goal now was to keep Gunner from slaughtering his pack mates. Getting lucky would have to wait for another night.
“I’ll kill them.”
I was very glad now that I’d taken advantage of Becky’s shower before running into Gunner. And also glad that, while hunting through the cottage for Oyo, I’d come up with a potential cure both for my contusions and for Gunner’s over-protective rage.
So I reached over to tip his head down until our eyes met, then I offered a partial solution. “If you’re willing, I think I can heal most of these wounds with a little turbocharge.”
“Blood, you mean?” Gunner hesitated, his urge to annihilate my opponents battling with his ever-present need to keep me safe.
“If you’re willing,” I repeated. And I could see the moment his softer side won out over his bloodlust.
“We’re not done talking about this,” he told me. But then he used his mouth for something more useful, ripping a small cut at the crook of his elbow and offering up the wound so I could take a sip.
We hadn’t shared blood in months, and the rightness of the experience was oddly arousing. My nipples tightened, my skin prickled, and I found myself smearing Gunner’s fluids over his face as I moved my head upward to steal a kiss.
I thought he was right there with me, too, until a sting on my shoulder alerted me to the removal of one of my bandaids. Then Gunner drew away from my lips and pulled the collar of my shirt sideways so we could both peer underneath.
There was nothing to see but clear skin, unblemished and smooth as if I’d never been hit in the first place. Meanwhile, aching muscles soothed as if I was enjoying that promised bubble bath after all.
And even though I hadn’t really done anything to make the healing happen, I could feel exhaustion cascading back over me. Which meant I was the one who shut down further shenanigans. I was the one who murmured a thank you even as I subsided back onto the blankets spread across the floor beneath us.
Still, I was awake enough to hear Gunner’s answer. “Thank you for sacrificing yourself for the pack’s problems,” he rumbled. Then, intertwined in each other’s arms, we fell deeply asleep.