“I was waiting for you to notice.”
“Did I say that out loud again?” I asked.
“Nope, but I can smell your scent. The only thing keeping me on this bed is the hiding Rob would give me if I tore off your clothes rather than help you get them into a bag.”
I watched his lips move, unable to process what was being said. I’d spent so many hours in class looking over at him without making it obvious, catching stolen glimpses of the side of his face or the lean muscles in his forearm as he wrote down his notes. I would have stepped over my own grandmother to hear him say anything like what he was right now.
“Yeah?” I replied. I know, Ms Erudite 2020 here.
“Yeah. But at my place, you’re sleeping in my bed. With me,” he added when he saw me respond. “We don’t have to do anything else, but you’ll be in my arms tonight, Shannon Bruce. I don’t give a shit who I have to fight to get that, even you.”
Right. Well. I picked up the dropped T-shirt to the sound of his chuckle, dropping it into my bag, shoving handful after handful of clothes into it. When I got to my undies drawer, I stared him down as I held a clump of granny panties up while letting them fall into the bag in a messy grey pile. I had some very nice pieces at the back of my drawer, thank you very much, saved for a special occasion. This well and truly fit the bill, but I wasn’t dragging them out. As if this wasn’t insanely intimate as it was. But damn if he didn’t look at me like I was packing the finest of French knickers. He had that slight smile men do when they are very much enjoying something, so much so the reaction is muted due to their focus. And that was enough to make teenage me do cartwheels inside, while adult me tried reeeally hard to keep my cool.
I looked around the room, searching for more stuff I might need, despite the fact that I had several bags ready to go.
“None of this is going anywhere,” Jai reminded gently. “You need anything? We’ll come back for it.”
“Yep, you’re right.” I nodded and then took one last look around the room. “I better say goodbye to the dogs. I’ll have to see if Nick can take them when Janey moves out.”
“I’ve got it,” he said when I went to grab my bags, his fingers brushing against mine. I pulled my hand away as if stung, the warmth of his skin burning. He shook his head, then snorted, and down the stairs we went.
My heart sank when we got there. Buster and Max had been off roaming when we got home. The dogs and Jai, it was an uneasy thing for them and the pack. Max was the one who seemed to like them the most, almost like he understood what they were, but Buster’s mind when I touched it was a mass of confusion around him. But right now, their tails were down, their ears were back, and they were watching me with mournful eyes. Somehow, they knew.
“Hey,” I said, opening my hands up, and the both of them approached, tails wagging, thrusting their heads under them to be patted. I scratched behind their ears, finding myself focussing on the way their fur felt under my fingertips. “It won’t be long, I promise. I’ll be back.”
I knelt down as I felt it swell, that rush of love and need and pleasure the dogs got from any attention. It just seemed to rise and rise, their bodies growing more insistent as they shoved themselves into me, wanting to be on top of me, pressing in close, a furry huddle of love. I closed my eyes as I heard Jai’s sigh. The pack worked with dogs on farms, but they didn’t keep them, as they didn’t like what we did to canines through domestication.
“Put them in the ute,” he said finally.
“What? Rob won’t let me bring them to his house.”
“Put the dogs in the ute. We’ll drop them and the bags off at my place.”
I looked up at him through narrowed eyes, feeling a curious mixture of hope, suspicion, and something else. Obviously, I’d had boyfriends before, since I wasn’t going to moon around the house waiting for bloody Jai to see me, and some had even been serious before this. But I’d never really been… Wooed was an old-fashioned word, but that’s what it felt like. He was doing something he didn’t really want to, to please me, because he saw how much I’d miss the dogs. He even dropped down to give Max a tummy scratch, seeming to know that was his favourite.
“This is just a ploy to get me to stay at your place,” I said, wanting to be wrong but unable to stop myself from asking.
“And? I told you. We’ll go at your pace. I said I’m serious about us, and they’re part of the deal, so if having the little brothers around helps you feel comfortable staying at my place?” He shrugged. “I can make that work. Having someone to keep an eye on the house wouldn’t be a bad idea either. C’mon, stop stalling.”
“I’m not stalling,” I snapped, clicking my fingers to the dogs. “I need to grab some dog food then.”
“I’ll grab it. You just tell me where it is.”
“And leads and—”
“Show me, then get in the car, Shannon.”
“So this is it,” I said, standing in the lounge room of Jai’s place. The dogs were running around wildly, sniffing at everything they could get their noses on. Wolf! they pushed at me. I could see their hackles rising, their eyes bright as they scanned the room while they sniffed. Max jumped up on the couch, burying his head in the leather cushions.
“Max! Get down!”
“It’s OK,” Jai said. “They can’t hurt it, and I sit up there in fur sometimes.”
“Yeah? Is that like…relaxing or something?” I thought about the animals in their cages back at the institute. Did they stay in fur permanently?
“It can be. Both skins, they kinda itch after a while, letting me know it’s ready to let go of one for the other. Look, I’m gonna run this upstairs and then change the sheets so they’re fresh for tonight.”
Bed. Jai. I swallowed hard, something he noted with a bright grin. I was low-key freaking out. Actually, scratch the low-key part. But he just smiled that shit-eating grin, daring me to contradict him. The fear washed away as my eyes narrowed, my back straightened. He was just a guy, and it was just a bed. Rob would skin him and leave his hide on the fence to dry if he touched me without my permission. I had nothing to fear here.
“I’ll give you a hand,” I said.
I paused at the doorway. I’m about to boldly go where so many women have gone before… I thought, casting an eye over the room. It wasn’t quite the bachelor pad I thought it would be, a large heavy wood framed bed dominating the room, an old chair acting as a bedside table, with a phone charger, a lamp, and an old magazine sitting on top of it. His pillows and quilt lay in a messy sprawl across the bed, something he dislodged as he stripped the bed. I was momentarily transfixed by the way the muscles moved, revealed by his rolled-up sleeves, but when he shot me a quick amused look, I got moving, pulling the sheets off. We worked quickly to put the fresh ones on, my hands spending way too long in smoothing the cotton out, because when I stood up, there he was.
I found his expression completely foreign and needed a moment to work it out. He just looked at me across the bed, eyes scanning my body so closely, it was if I could feel them move across my skin.
“Shan…” he said.