my door.
He came easily, which said a lot about his desperation to get away from those men, since I'd definitely been the one he'd been trying to retreat from earlier.
Maybe that says something about him. Why is the man always trying to run from people half his size?
"What's going on?" I asked after shutting the door behind me and throwing the lock… just in case.
"They're grooming me."
"Oh." I said stupidly, slowly blinking at him. "Like making you into what they want you to be so they can… have the perfect alpha when you're old enough to marry?"
That didn't really make any sense, but not much of this day had, so I was just going to go with the flow.
"What? No." He shook his head, reaching up to scratch at his beard. "Like grooming."
"Oh." I nodded slowly, chuckling. "You don't like grooming?"
"My face is exposed." He ran his hands over the much shorter beard and over the apples of his cheeks, pursing his lips.
"Among other things," I mumbled, letting my gaze fall to his bare chest.
He looked down, gasping slightly and covering what he could with his hands and looking extremely uncomfortable. "They stole my shirt! When I wouldn't take it off, Riley got irritated and cut it off of me."
I'd honestly thought about doing that a few times, so I really couldn’t say that I blamed the man.
I sighed, tilting my head and looking him over dreamily. "That good, are you?"
"Huh?"
What?
Snapping my head back up, I cleared my throat, giving him an innocent smile. "Why did they do that?"
"They were getting ready to wax me," he grumbled, still covering his chest.
"What?" I said, my voice going high pitched. "Why?"
He sighed, shrugging and dropping his hands away from his body, looking almost ashamed. "I'm really hairy."
I nodded, swallowing hard as I once again ran my eyes over his delicious form. "Uh huh."
"I pretended I needed to piss and snuck out of the apartment," he said, just as I drew my bottom lip between my teeth, groaning slightly at the clear line of his dick. Those pants had to be super soft, because the ridge running around the head was visible, and looked incredibly lickable. "Are you okay?"
The things I could do to that body.
"Bates?"
"So warm," I whispered, imagining what it would be like to be pressed against him with those thick arms wrapped around me.
"What?" he asked, and it was the strained tone in his voice that finally drew my attention to his face.
"What?" I cleared my throat, nodding. "Yes. Fine. Do you want to take your pants off?"
Both eyebrows rose slowly on his face.
I ran my question over in my head, gasping. "What? Did I just…" I groaned, before laughing uncomfortably. "I meant do you want to hang out here until they leave?"
Probably not now, dipshit. Why was I so damn good at making myself look like an idiot in front of him?
"Is that okay? Are you busy?"
"No. I mean yes and then no." I groaned, shaking my head. "Yes, it's okay, and no, I'm not busy. I––" Gasping, I turned to the camera sitting on my coffee table, live streaming the whole damn thing. "Oh shit!"
I jumped over the back of the couch, glad I'd somehow managed to clear the thing, since I was pretty sure I'd already made enough of an ass out of myself in front of Grant and all my followers on my vlog stream. "Sorry, guys. As you can see, something came up. I'll be back on later tonight."
I clicked it off quickly, only catching a few of the comments that had been popping up and groaning at the content. At least some people thought my bumbling was adorable. I was pretty sure Grant wasn't as appreciative of it, and neither was I, to be frank.
"Everything okay?" he asked, coming up behind me, and I groaned, cringing as I turned to look at him.
"I really hope you're okay with being on live internet, because you just were."
He glanced at the camera and then down at himself, shrugging slightly. "Uh, that's fine. Were you working?"
What was with the slight uptick in his voice, before he cleared his throat?
"Kinda," I answered honestly, not wanting to lie, but also not wanting him to think it was all that big of a deal, since I could do that any time. "But it can wait, I promise."
I really wanted him to stay, and I knew if he thought he was interrupting something, he would insist on leaving.
There was a hard