slid and her nipples grew visible and his mouth went dry with hunger.
He couldn’t look away from her. He’d been a fool to think her part of an evil conspiracy or that she’d be out roaming around in the middle of the night. His wolf wanted to make sure she spent the night safe and warm and protected from whatever had tried to distract him out in the city. Something had smelled like her out there, but it definitely wasn’t her. Maybe it was some other trick, some magical thing; he made a mental note to ask Deirdre about it later.
He jumped as a dozen fiery pinpricks dug into his calf, and stared down to find Cricket casually testing his claws against Henry’s leg. He shooed the cat away and in the moment he was distracted, Ophelia set the loom aside and crossed her arms over her chest. Henry clenched his jaw against a groan of disappointment as her breasts were hidden, then felt like a leering pervert.
Ophelia’s cheeks were decidedly pink as she glared at him. “What are you doing here? I was…busy.”
“I saw your light on,” he said. Because that was explanation enough. It was part of his job to make sure the pack was safe.
“And that gives you permission to throw open my door in the middle of the night and interrupt me?”
Henry struggled to find a response that would make sense to her, and found himself captivated as she turned her head and the gentle light defined the curve of her jaw and the long line of her throat as her hair moved. He ached to touch her shoulder, to work his fingers into her hair. All words deserted him and all he could do was look at her, struggling to find solid ground as the whole world unbalanced.
Chapter 17
Ophelia
I almost winged a curse at the door as it burst open and a tall, massive figure crowded the doorway. Only the fact that Cricket remained interested in my yarn and not the intruder gave me the confidence to stay seated. That and I’d just finally untangled the yarn on the shuttle and didn’t want to drop it again.
And then Henry stood there, wearing dark clothes and staring at me in consternation—as if he’d expected to find me doing something other than what I was.
The muscles in his arms bulged as he held the doorframe and studied me, and my whole face felt aflame as his attention settled on my boobs and I was suddenly, painfully aware that I didn’t have a bra on and the girls were fully on display. Not that Henry minded, from the way he adjusted his stance and kept looking.
I wanted to crawl under the bed and hide. What did he want? What could a man that handsome and powerful want in the middle of the night? Did he expect some kind of booty call? Was being up late at night automatically an invitation to fuck? I cleared my throat and debated getting to my feet, so at least some of the imbalance created by me sitting on the floor would have been corrected. But I didn’t want to put my breasts right under his nose, either.
At least Cricket showed his displeasure by sliding his claws into Henry’s leg; the wolf scowled at the house cat, who gave precisely zero shits and sauntered out into the hall to find a quieter place to sleep. I cleared my throat and tried to get some other kind of response out of the wolf, since he hadn’t bothered to answer my previous questions. “What do you want, Henry?”
Saying his name made him twitch. His blue eyes searched my face for a long time, then his hand tightened on the door until the wood creaked and I wondered if it would break apart in his hand. “I was on patrol outside and thought I smelled you. When I saw your light on, I was concerned.”
“So you decided to burst in here like the Kool-Aid Man?”
My doubt must have been clear, because the corner of his mouth twitched in a quickly hidden smile. He glanced over his shoulder at something he heard in the hall, then he stepped into the room and let the door mostly close behind him. I gulped for air, since I hadn’t meant for him to get closer. The wolf took up too much space in the comfortable guest room where I’d holed up for the previous few days. He was too... masculine