Beauty Dates the Beast(30)

He grinned and licked the tip of my breast.

“So … what now?” I asked, shivering.

“Now, we take it slow.”

Oh boy.

He got to his feet and reached for my hands. “Let’s take a shower.”

“And are you going to wash me?”

The dark look returned to his eyes. “Absolutely.”

Oh, my. My pulse fluttered as I put my hand in his.





Chapter Fourteen





One of the things I liked best about Beau’s rustic cabin was his anything-but-rustic bathroom. There was a glassed-in shower that was larger than every closet in my house and a sunken marble tub in the corner.



I’d given the shower a couple of runs so far, but not the bathtub, and it was more tempting at the moment. So when he took my hand and steered me to the shower, I steered him back to the tub. “Bubbles.”

Beau took my cue and began to fill up the tub, adding bubble bath—a light strawberry scent that I suspected he’d bought for me. As the tub began to fill, I smiled. “Pink bubbles? Your masculinity is in grave danger, sir,”

“Can you blame a man for wanting to see you covered in suds?” His hand slid down to cup my ass.

I wiggled out of his grasp. “So what are you going to do while I take a bath?”

“Get in there with you and wash your back.” He pressed a kiss to the top of my head and then climbed into the tub, sitting at the far end. It was absurd—the big, masculine were-cougar surrounded by a frothy pink bath, and I bit my lip to keep from letting a wild giggle escape.

He patted his lap and a wave of bubbles splashed the side of the tub. “Come sit here, sweet thing.”

I frowned at him. “We’re both not going to fit.”

“That’s mighty flattering of you to say so,” he rumbled, his voice mixed with a low purr, “but I assure you that your luscious ass will always fit on my lap. Now get over here.”

As I stood at the edge, hesitating, he grabbed me by the waist and dragged me in. I shrieked at the loss of control and the slop of water over the edge of the tub, but he didn’t seem to care. He spread his legs until my butt slid between his thighs, and I felt the heat of his cock against the cleft of my ass. He wiggled a little, getting comfortable, and then his legs wrapped around my waist, pinning me against him. “See? Cozy.”

I snorted at that, pushing at his knee. “I told you we wouldn’t fit.”

“You’re too focused on what shouldn’t be, you know that? Now be quiet and let me wash your hair.” And with that, he dumped a handful of water on my head.

I sputtered, wiping the trickles of water out of my eyes as he did the same thing over and over again. “You realize it’s going to take you a million years to wet all my hair with your little handfuls?”

The answer? A huge gush of water over my head that left my sodden hair plastered over my face. I twisted around to look at his hand, and he held a plastic pitcher in it. I could hear him chuckling. “Where did that come from?”

“I put it in here last night. All part of the big romantic day I had planned.”

I heard the shampoo bottle squirt and then Beau’s hands were in my hair, massaging my scalp. The scent of strawberries filled the air. “I take it you like strawberries?” I said, closing my eyes and relaxing.

I could feel the rumble of his laugh. “Not until recently. You make me think of a strawberry. Soft, sweet, and luscious.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” I teased. “Keep this up and I might let you get to third base.”

“I already had my hand on third base,” he said, and a bolt of desire shot through me. I grew very aware of the hard line of his cock against my bottom. The heat was still strong within him, and it gave me a little shiver of excitement.

“It’s so strange,” I said. “I’ve known you for just a week and here we are in a tub together.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I feel like we should know each other a little better,” I said, wiggling my toes in the water.

Beau pressed a kiss to my neck. “That’s easily fixed. So tell me about you.”

I hated talking about me. Talking about me led to Sara, and there were too many secrets to keep. I scooped up a handful of bubbles and pretended to blow them off of my palm. “What’s there to tell?”

“Why were you a virgin at twenty-five?”

I splashed him. “You do not ask a girl that.”

“Fair enough,” he said, chuckling. His soapy hands slid from my hair to my shoulders, rubbing the tension out of them. “It occurred to me that I don’t know anything about you other than you like math and you work for Giselle. Do you have a big family?”

“Sara’s the only one I claim.” I kept my answer short and breezy. “What about you? Family?”

“Yes.” His fingers ran up and down my back in a relaxing motion. “But we’re talking about you right now. Your parents are dead?”

I sighed. “One is.”

Those magical hands resumed their kneading, and I wanted to lean in and let him do that for hours. I sighed in bliss.

“Out of contact with them?” he asked in a low, easy voice.

“You could say that,” I admitted. “I haven’t seen my dad in ten years.” When his fingers didn’t pause, I decided to tell him just enough to get him off my case. “My birth mother died not long after I was born, and my dad married Sara’s mom when I was three. She didn’t like me much—Sara was still a baby and my dad left almost as soon as the honeymoon was over. He drove a truck for a living, so he was gone a lot, and after a while he just stopped coming home. I took care of Sara when we were kids. When my stepmom wasn’t at one of her jobs, she was piss-drunk. So I learned how to keep house and take care of things early. I did the laundry, I went grocery shopping, I went to Sara’s teacher-parent meetings. I did everything for Sara.”

His hands had stilled on my back.

Sara’s drunk of a mother wasn’t able to understand what happened to Sara. When she saw her daughter turn into a wolf, she went after her with a frying pan. And when I saved Sara from that, her mom tried to turn Sara over to the police for being a monster. Luckily they were familiar with drunk Mrs. Ward and her stories, so they dismissed her tales of her werewolf daughter. The betrayal devastated Sara. I was perfectly happy never to see that awful woman again.

I picked up another handful of suds, staring at it blindly. “Sara’s always been everything to me.”

He began to pour water over my hair. “Is that why you put her ahead of your own needs?” He didn’t sound like he was judging.

“Mmm.”

“And is that why you don’t date?”

I shifted in the tub, uncomfortable. “Can we talk about something else?”

“I’m curious. You’re lovely, smart, and delicious. Why weren’t you snatched up by some human long ago?”

I gave him a scowl over my shoulder. “Can you drop it? Maybe I just don’t like to be touched.” I always worried about Sara’s scent every time someone touched me.

His hands stilled on my back. “Do you want me to stop touching you?”

I sensed the tension in his body, and I knew that if I said a word otherwise, he’d never touch me again unless I asked for it.

“Actually,” I said, sliding a hand down the thigh pressed against my side, “I like it when you touch me. I don’t want you to stop.”

His hands skimmed down my spine, making me shiver. “That’s very good, because I have no desire to stop.”

“So what about you? How was your home life?”

“Remember, I told you that my dad was the leader of the Russell clan—he actually started it. Between that and the multiple jobs he held down, he was rarely at home. Since I was the oldest, it was up to me to take care of the family. My father was always picking up stray members of the Alliance without homes and setting them up someplace they could be safe. It was a loose clan, even if we didn’t have an official designation. Were-badgers and were-eagles and all kinds of creatures. It was a rough time for a supe on their own: they had to pay protection to the vampires or the wolves. So if you weren’t lucky enough to be born into a clan, you had a hard, poor life. My father wanted to stop that, and he came pretty close.”

Only close? The Russell clan seemed well established, so that surprised me. “He didn’t succeed?”

Silence. Beau poured more water through my hair, rinsing it off. “When I was in high school, my father stepped into a fight between my best friend and Savannah. My friend had hurt her, and he thought it was his right as a male to claim a female. My dad disagreed. JT ripped out Dad’s throat.” A pause filled the air, and I wondered if I should speak. But Beau continued. “So Dad didn’t get a chance to finish achieving his dream.”