Tangle of Need (Psy-Changeling #11)(14)

He shrugged those glorious shoulders and put down his mug on top of the small set of shelves that had once stood beside the door to her single-occupancy room, the scent of his coffee rich and evocative. “Okay.”

Fine, she admitted in a grumpy internal mutter, that hadn’t exactly been a big battle. Her gorgeous, maddening mate lived in T-shirts and jeans—though when he did put on a suit … the word was “delectable.” “Also,” she said, refusing to be derailed from her bad mood, “stop stealing my coffee.” It was a special blend Drew always brought back for her from a very specific shop in San Diego.

Hawke grinned and took another sip before returning the mug—gifted to him by Marlee, after her niece had painted a somewhat wolflike creature on the ceramic—to its resting spot. “It’s good coffee.” Stripping off the sweatpants he’d put on after his shower, he pulled on some jeans, his lips curving in a smile that made her breath catch. “You look good in my T-shirt.”

Groaning, she sat down on the bed, resisting the temptation to walk over and rub her cheek against the soft pelt of hair that covered his chest, her need for him a gut-deep pulse. “I sound demented.” Shrewish and spoiled. “Of course you can have the coffee.” She’d made enough for two, was utterly delighted by the fact he enjoyed the way she brewed it.

He waited for her to make it every morning, always kissed the curve of her neck in thanks. The same way she waited for him to slice the bread he picked up a couple of times a week from a bakery just outside den territory, when she could as easily do the task herself. Little rituals. Little pieces of their lives. The idea that they were laying the foundations of their shared history … it made her so happy it hurt. Which was why she was bewildered by her fit of temper. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Hey.” Expression suddenly solemn, he came down on his haunches in front of her, his jeans only partly buttoned and all distracting. “I know what’s happening.”

She raised her eyes from his chest—and lower—to his face. “You do?”

“Yeah, baby, I do.” A sheepish look. “I’m crowding you, pushing you, even in our quarters, but I swear I’m not doing it on purpose.”

She had zero resistance against him when he got like this, when she could see both man and wolf watching her with a tenderness that quite simply, undid her. Closing her hands over the warm silk of his shoulders, she stroked and petted until a lazy growl rumbled in his chest. “I’m glad,” she said. “I’d hate it if you were holding back with me.”

“Impossible.” He angled his neck in a silent request, and she gently massaged a spot that would’ve made him purr had he been a cat.

Mine.

The possessive thought was familiar—Hawke brought out her most primitive instincts. “Just so you know, when I get really mad, I might singe your eyebrows,” she murmured, because she knew if she gave an inch, he’d take not a mile, but the entire road.

“Fine.” Lashes lifting, he curved his hand around her neck to tug her down. “Then we can kiss and make up. Twice.”

She laughed into the slow, deep seduction of his kiss, her breasts tightening against the soft cotton of the T-shirt she’d grabbed when she woke—the whole idea of a nightgown or pajamas was ridiculous with an alpha wolf in bed with her. Nothing ever stayed on. Half the time, the nightclothes ended up shredded. So now she just stole his T-shirts when she woke. He, of course, was pure changeling, had no problem with nudity.

Not that she minded the view.

Breaking the kiss to take a breath, she brushed back the damp thickness of his hair, her thighs spread on either side of his body, his hands warm and possessive below the hem of the T-shirt. “What do you have planned today?” she asked, her heart wrenching at the perfection of this moment where she had the right to touch him, to care for him, to call him her own.

He nipped at her fingers before answering, the wolf playing with her. “I think I’ll spend most of the day with Felix and his team.”

She couldn’t help her instinctive flinch at the memory of exactly how the area being replanted had become so barren, every tiny blade of grass turned to ash.

Hawke’s response was to bite sharply at her lower lip. “I told you not to do that.”

Scowling, she rubbed at the sting. “I’m allowed to think about what I did.”

“What you did was save the lives of your packmates.” Tugging her close, he suckled the spot he’d bitten, soothing the momentary hurt. “That’s what counts.”

“I’m not sorry I did what I did.” It had been a choice made in battle, against an enemy that wouldn’t stop. No matter how many years she lived, she would never forget the crunching, ugly sound of a hundred guns smashing into the skulls of dazed and wounded SnowDancers. Her act had been the right one at that time, in that place. “It’s just…” She’d annihilated the Pure Psy army, killed so many men and women who’d had the misfortune to pick the wrong side.

Her wolf held her gaze. “Talk to me.”

So she did. And he listened. He understood. Until she could breathe again, her chest expanding with each inhale. It wasn’t the first time they’d spoken of that terrible day, neither would it be the last—but knowing that he’d be there anytime she needed him, it was everything.