A Highland Werewolf Wedding - By Terry Spear Page 0,23
plastered against her rigid nipples or the way he could even see the indent in her belly button, which was just as sexy. “You’d freeze to death.”
“I accept your apology,” she quickly said, brows raised, challenging him to contradict her.
One corner of his mouth quirked up.
“I’ll be fine. What about yourself?” she continued, as if he had admitted he had apologized to her and the issue was no longer important.
He smiled. The she-wolf was a treasure.
“Wool kilt. Water repellent. I’ll remove my jacket and vest.”
She sighed, eyeing his torso. “You could take off your shirt.” She focused her brown eyes on his shirt, as if she was ready to help him remove it and wanted to see how he looked in just a kilt.
She could take off her dress, too, he was thinking.
What he found most engaging was that she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
When he didn’t say anything, waiting for her to look into his gaze and fighting the urge to grin at her, she looked up, her eyes wide and innocent. There was no earthly way that the lass had been thinking purely innocent thoughts.
Her cheeks blossomed with color. “It’s not waterproof. Your shirt, I mean,” she explained.
“A good point.” He was still smiling, loving the way he could read her feelings so easily.
“All right.” She slipped off her soaking-wet pumps and pulled on her boots while he struggled to get out of his jacket and vest in the confined space between the driver’s seat and steering wheel. She tugged the raincoat over her arms and buttoned it up, glancing at him to see if he’d removed his shirt yet.
He was in the process of unbuttoning it, but when she looked at him with such keen interest and anticipation, he felt his pheromones taking over again. Just her watching him strip half naked had the darnedest effect on him. He would have felt smug, hearing the way her heartbeat had accelerated, indicating her intrigue, except that his heart was thumping just as rapidly, revealing how much he was just as intrigued.
As if she was reminding him of where this was going—and that this was not something more, like him removing his kilt next and then her coat and dress—she pulled the hood of her coat over her head.
That made him remember how the hood of her cloak had hid most of her features when she was but a young lass. In that instant, he felt the fates had smiled on him. He couldn’t have protected her before, but he would help her this time.
He pulled off his shirt, and her gaze shifted to his torso. For an instant, he felt like he was on a wolf’s version of the marriage mart. A mate mart instead. Did he meet her expectations?
Keeping a straight face, he flexed his muscles a bit, and her gaze shot up to his. Her cheeks instantly filled with color again. She might be an alpha wolf, but he realized how much he flustered her.
He tried to minimize his smile, but he was having a hard time doing so. He was having even more trouble keeping his kilt from tenting under his sporran.
She quickly said, “We could run as wolves. It’s raining hard enough and no one’s parked here, so no one would see us.”
Her suggestion completely took him by surprise. In part because his other head was thinking for him and he needed a minute to focus on what she was saying.
“Our wolf coats would keep us drier. We’d be more sure-footed and could travel faster and farther,” she added.
“Are you game?” He couldn’t remove the rest of his clothes while he sat behind the steering wheel. She could climb into the backseat and take off her clothes and shift, then he could follow her.
“Not sure. What do you think?” she asked.
He’d much prefer to run as a wolf. They could smell the scents up close, nose to the ground, which they couldn’t do walking upright as humans. But he was surprised she’d ask his advice. Any young girl who could escape him and his brothers while they were attempting to track her down—not to mention Lord Whittington, once he’d received the news that she was in the port city, as well as her kin, who were trying to get hold of her—seemed able to get along without seeking anyone’s opinion about anything. She evaded all of them, which meant she had been a lot more capable than he’d given her credit for.