Masked By Danger by Christa Wick
Chapter Twelve
That last whispered sentence,however kind his intent, just confirmed for Iris that nothing had changed.
Cade would always be looking for her wolf, expecting it each time and disappointed each time, even if he didn’t show it and never spoke a word of admonition.
He didn’t want a latent or a witch. He wanted a wolf.
He wanted what she simply couldn’t be for him.
She shook her head, her gaze warily avoiding his face. "No, it won’t."
"Maybe not with all this silver on." He moved to kiss her, but Iris evaded his mouth.
Seeming to realize then that something wasn’t right, Cade looked at her, his dark gaze bouncing around the landmarks of her face as if trying to read her thoughts, pinpoint why she was pulling away emotionally, even though she couldn’t yet physically.
Turning her head, Iris stared at the empty bookshelf waiting to be filled by the room's next occupant.
"It won’t happen," she repeated, re-arming herself the only way she could. "I’m not like you, Cade. I’m not an animal."
Iris expected the words to push Cade away immediately, expected him to storm out. She sensed he wanted to. But, first, he had to unknot.
She tried to relax, tried to make his exit from her body easier. She closed her eyes, locked her jaw. Her thoughts skipped around.
She had left the clan when she was sixteen with nothing more than the shredded clothes on her back and a deep wound in her chest. But she wasn't naive about shifter sex.
Other young women in the clan liked to talk about it when she was around and the males weren't. "Balling the ball," they had called it, or the "anchor and the ladder."
They discussed often enough how best to keep teasing their mates, so the male would have to spend more time inside them.
Truthfully, Iris couldn't imagine anything more awkward once the tender affections were exhausted.
And there were certainly no tender affections in her borrowed bed.
Both her body and Cade's remained stiff as they waited in silence. Eyes still closed, she couldn't see him staring down at her, but she could feel his hard gaze.
Hoping to drive away the sensation, she replayed past lovers, paltry as the number was.
There was a one-night stand with a stranger she had made the mistake of bringing home. Then after that, the single time with her partner, Harper, the two of them desperately clinging together at the end of the first night of a terrible homicide investigation that had, for both of them, if only for the moment, erased their faith in humanity.
Both encounters had been awkward and tense, but at least she hadn't experienced "can't get my penis out of you" weird.
Until now.
Eventually, Cade could slide his still-hard, still-huge shaft out. And he did so in silence, pulling out, then sitting for a second on the bed, feet on the floor, elbows on his knees as his hands cupped the back of his head.
With a slitted gaze, she watched as a few more seconds passed before he reached for the towel, scooped it up, then stood.
He didn't bother to cover his nakedness or look at her. She studied the contours of his bare back, the broad, muscular shoulders, the torso tapering down to his waist, then the body expanding again at his powerful ass and thighs.
Half out of view in the bathroom, he reached into the shower and turned the water off then disappeared completely, the door to his room softly shutting.
Iris waited for the sound of the lock to click into place.
It didn't, but he left his room a few minutes later, his footsteps falling flat and heavy as they echoed down the hall.
Not wanting to feel Cade's release slicken her thighs when she stood, Iris waited with her eyes shut and her muscles slowly relaxing.
Sleep should not have visited her, but it did.
But with sleep came the old nightmare, its familiar hooks digging into her flesh and dragging her toward despair.
