Head Hunter (City Shifters the Pack #3) - Layla Nash Page 0,29

launched me to the floor. Dodge shook with his mirth, barely catching me and pulling me tight to his chest before I rolled off. Dodge’s massive arms linked around me, holding me close. His fingers slid into my hair as his head turned and he breathed in from my neck. He chuckled, his beard tickling my cheek and throat. “No, babe, there’s no encyclopedia.”

I closed my eyes and resisted the urge to nuzzle into him. “Don’t be a jerk.”

He sighed and the hand not massaging my scalp slid down into the back of my pants, squeezing my ass under my panties. “I’m trying really hard to be a gentleman.”

I snorted and reached back to retrieve his hand from my so-called ‘six, maybe six and a half’ butt. “Not a chance. Thought you didn’t want to waste your time on a mere six?”

“Baby, you’re a perfect ten,” he grumbled, taking my earlobe in his teeth at the same time his hips moved in a slow, deliberate thrust that made it clear, even through his jeans, how very much he liked having me sprawled across him. “Every inch of you.”

“Thought you were going to keep on with your story,” I said. I dragged my attention away from the distracting friction where our hips met and the rough drag of the calluses on his palm up my back and around to my side so he could hold me even tighter. I pushed away from him, up on my elbows, so I could study his face.

Dodge’s eyebrows arched as he looked up at me, and those storm-clouds passed over his expression again. But he smiled with half his mouth and tugged on my hair. “Well. If you’d stop distracting me, Persephone, I will keep on with my story, thank you very much.”

He waited but I just smiled. Dodge went back to stroking my back but didn’t speak until I exhaled some of the tension and relaxed against him. I rested my cheek against his shoulder and listened to the thumping of his heart, the rough rasp of his voice as he went on. “They didn’t know she was a shifter, and they didn’t know I was. My father did, though. He’d considered having my mom turn him, but in the end, they didn’t have enough time.”

I didn’t know what to do with my arms. I didn’t want to dig my elbow into his shoulders or just splay across him like a deboned chicken. I slid my arms under his shoulders so I could touch his neck and play with his hair. Dodge growled in appreciation and his hands got bolder on the small of my back, returning to my ass without hesitation. He was totally, completely, and unapologetically an ass man. I closed my eyes and tried not to push my butt into his strong grip.

Despite the distractions, he managed to go on in a remarkably calm voice. “My father died before she had the chance to change him. If he’d been a shifter, he might have survived. As it was, he was there one minute and gone the next.”

I stilled, pushing up to see his face. “I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “It was a long time ago.”

“Doesn’t make it less hurtful and awful,” I said. I rested my chin on his chest. “Were you close?”

“Yeah.” His gaze went far away and he went quiet for a long time. Dodge finally shook himself and offered me a tight smile. “He was a good dad, especially because of the bullshit parents he had.”

“What happened after he passed?” I asked, when he didn’t immediately go on. I got a tight knot of anxiety in my stomach, like I didn’t want to know what had rocked his world as much as mine had been. If it compared to finding out that some people got chopped up and fed to retired circus tigers, maybe I really didn’t want to know.

Dodge toyed with my hair, his fingertips tracing along my cheekbone. “His parents found out about it, paid for the whole funeral, acted real nice to me and my mom. It lasted a few months. That was all they needed.”

I swallowed the knot in my throat. I didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to push, but it seemed like... he needed an audience. He needed someone to ask and pull the information out of him. To help excise those wounds, to get the poison out. It was a fucked up thing to talk about lying in bed together,