to my groin.
As I stand there motionless, the sounds that follow draw a picture that quickens the blood in my veins all over again. A rustle of fabric. A whisper of hair against a pillow. A murmur of a groan, muffled as if against a bitten lip.
The fire inside that I tried so hard to expel and then extinguish flares up all over again. My wolf rears its head, urging me on with its animal appetites.
I walk to the door and push it open. When my gaze falls on Talia, she’s lying still beneath the sheet, her head tipped to the side, her expression innocent. But the faint daylight that spills around the edges of my curtain reveals a deep blush in her ivory cheeks.
My dead eye conjures a ghostly image that swims over her face for a moment: those same features turned wanton with a carnal hunger. A thicker tang of arousal scents the air. As I breathe it in, I lose my grip on the vast majority of my good intentions.
I prowl over to my side of the bed, holding her gaze. The words roll scorching over my tongue. “And what have you been up to, my little human?”
Her eyes widen. Her own tongue flicks across her lips, and by all that is dust, I’m hard again. “I—Nothing,” she stammers. “I just woke up.”
I sit down and reach across the mattress to slide my hand under the sheet. My fingers curl around her arm. Tugging by the elbow, I raise it to bring her fingers level with my nose.
Her cheeks flame hotter when she realizes what I’m after, and her arm twitches as if to yank away. I’ve already gotten the whiff I expected, the musk of the slickness that must be seeping from her sex. I raise my eyebrows at her as if to say, Care to try again?
I wouldn’t have thought her face could turn any more red, but it’s nearly as bright as her hair now. “I was only— I woke up, and I felt so… wanting, and I thought maybe if I took care of it myself— I didn’t know how quickly you’d be back.”
She was taking the same tack I did. Not quite so inexperienced in these pleasures as I assumed, it seems. I wonder if it would have worked any better for her than it has for me. It’s taking every shred of control I have left not to lick those fingertips and then bury my face between her legs to see how much more of that exquisite nectar I can draw out of her.
“And where did you learn how to do that?” I ask teasingly, not really expecting much of an answer.
Talia wets her lips again. “August showed me.”
With a skip of my heart, my vision goes red. Every instinct in my body clangs with the need to claim and defend what is mine. My lips are already curling back from my teeth, fangs emerging, before I catch hold of myself enough to register the anxiety flickering across the girl’s face.
I manage not to outright snarl, but the question comes out plenty harsh as it is. “He did what?”
She flinches, and seeing that, I suppress a little of my burst of temper under the shame of scaring her.
“It—it was in the pool,” she says, her voice falling into the whisper that was all she could manage when we first found her. “He just told me how I could use the jets and my hand… He didn’t even watch or anything—he was behind the folding screen the whole time.”
That doesn’t explain why he was making suggestions like that in the first place. That impertinent whelp—I’ll cuff him across the head so hard his ears ring for a week.
I inhale slowly, settling my inner animal as well as I can for the girl’s benefit, not August’s. My voice comes out still fierce but not quite as curt. “Is that all?” Did she come here last night planning to act out what he’s already shown her? My gums itch to set my fangs free.
She lowers her eyes. “He kissed me. Only once, and only very quickly. He made it sound like he didn’t think he should have done even that.”
Another snarl rises in my throat. He shouldn’t have done it. And he never bothered to mention his partial seduction of our convalescent guest to me? In that moment, the transgression angers me more than his secret gift of salt.
And I’m man enough to admit