Harley promised herself she wasn’t going to cry, but when Sawyer gently pulled her onto his lap, she did just that, the tears she’d never let fall back then coming after all these years. She waited for the embarrassment to come, but it didn’t happen. Instead, as Sawyer’s big hand came around to rub her back, she felt like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
He let her cry for a long time before tenderly wiping the tears away from her face with his fingers. The intimate touch felt like the most natural thing in the world.
“Did you go back to uni after you left home?” he asked.
She should probably climb off his lap, but being in his arms felt too good.
She shook her head. “The idea of going back to school and becoming a teacher was out. All I could imagine was losing control in the middle of a classroom and slashing up a bunch of kids.”
“You’d never do anything like that,” he said firmly.
“Now I wouldn’t, but back then, when I was fighting the change with everything I had in me, I wasn’t so sure. Regardless, I took every penny I had left in my bank account and disappeared.”
“Where did you go?” he asked, his face so close to hers she could feel his warm breath on her skin, the scent of cinnamon coffee cake surrounding her, and it was all she could do to keep from shoving her nose into his neck so she could inhale even more of it. How had she not realized the delicious scent was coming from him the first time she’d experienced it?
Harley took another breath, letting it out in a long sigh before shaking her head to clear her senses. “A better question would be where didn’t I go? I was so scared of being found out again, I never stayed in any one place for too long. Before joining STAT, I spent time in nearly every state in the continental U.S. Except Colorado. I never went back there.”
As she relaxed against Sawyer’s muscular chest, she realized it’d been an exceedingly long time since she’d been in a man’s arms. It was amazing how comforting it was.
“Speaking of STAT, how did you end up working for them?” he asked. “Did they find you, or did you find them?”
She laughed a little at that. “It was definitely the latter. While I got very good at hiding the more obvious aspects of my werewolf nature, I constantly found myself in situations where someone needed help, and the next thing I knew, I’d toss someone through a window, or get shot at or run over by a car. It’s like I was a magnet for trouble.”
“That’s your innate alpha instincts,” Sawyer murmured, rubbing soothing circles along her back. “Your inner wolf sees someone who needs your help and you can’t help but get involved.”
She snorted. “I guess. Regardless, that’s how STAT found me. I was waitressing at a diner in Omaha when McKay sat down at a table and offered me a job. They heard about all the situations I’d gotten myself into and figured out I was a werewolf. I was terrified when he told me, but in the end, knowing there were other people like me out there who’d accept me for what I am was too good an opportunity to pass up.”
“Have you talked to your family since you left?” Sawyer asked.
Harley felt tears fill her eyes again and Sawyer’s big hand moved up and down her back until she relaxed. Damn, he had really good hands.
“Jenna is the only one I’ve kept in contact with.” She wiped away a stray tear. “I text her a few times a week and talked to her twice. She was eight when I left, and while she saw what happened, she doesn’t get why I can’t go home. She thinks it’s as simple as apologizing to Mom and Dad. I’d do it in a heartbeat if I thought they’d forgive me, but I’m nothing but a monster to them now.”
Even though she knew how they’d felt about her for years, there was something about saying it out loud that made her feel more hollow and wrung out than ever. She was on the verge of losing it again, fighting the tears that threatened to overwhelm her, when she felt Sawyer’s hands on her hips, lifting and repositioning her on his lap until she was sitting astride him. It was an intimate position, there was no denying that, but as she rested her hands on the hard planes of his chest, she decided it was exactly where she wanted to be right then.
“You aren’t a monster,” he said. “After the run-ins we’ve had with the traffickers and the supernaturals who fight with them, I know a monster when I see one, and you aren’t even close. I’m not going to apologize for your parents’ behavior. They turned their backs on you and that’s on them. But what they believe doesn’t matter. You’re a werewolf—a beautiful, perfect werewolf.”
His words made her—and her inner wolf—feel warm all over. She wasn’t sure how it happened, but one moment she was gazing at Sawyer, wondering if it was magic that had caused her to stumble across the most amazing man in the world, and the next, she was kissing him.
It was merely a gentle brush of the lips at first, like he was giving her the chance to pull back if this wasn’t what she wanted. If that was the case, he’d be waiting a long damn time.
She slipped both hands into his hair, weaving her fingers into it as she opened her mouth to his teasing tongue with a moan. He tasted even better than the cinnamon coffee cake he smelled so reminiscent of.
Harley was so into him, she didn’t even realize his fangs were out until they grazed her tongue. The sensation sent sparks of arousal through her body, making heat pool between her legs. She moaned as his burning hot lips traced their way along her jaw and down her neck. And when his fangs grazed the sensitive skin there, she growled a little—something she never ever did.
It wasn’t until his big hands slipped under the hem of her shirt, the warmth of his fingertips gliding along the sides of her ribs, that she felt her gums and fingertips begin to tingle like her fangs and claws were trying to make an appearance. She had a sudden vision of herself tearing Sawyer’s shirt open and latching on to the muscles at the junction of his neck and shoulder and biting him. Excitement pulsed between her legs at the image.
Okay, where the hell did that come from?
She didn’t have a lot of time to figure it out because her hands were too interested in the front of his button-down, preparing to tear it open. Her inner wolf knew what it wanted and at least a part of that involved getting Sawyer naked.
Harley was more than ready to give in to the werewolf inside when she heard a noise outside the villa.
She was off Sawyer’s lap in a second, pulling her gun and spinning around to face the door even as Sawyer did the same. That was when she picked up a handful of familiar scents drifting into the room. She wasn’t sure what was more surprising—that her nose was working so well it could ID people through a closed door, or that she’d smelled their scents even before Sawyer had.
Both she and Sawyer had put their weapons away by the time Caleb, Erin, and Forrest walked in. Harley thought they did a good job hiding what they’d just been doing, but if the look on Caleb’s face was any indication, he’d realized they’d been up to something. She prayed his crappy omega nose wouldn’t tell him that she and Sawyer had been making out. Beside her, Sawyer looked like he was wondering the same thing.