Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3) - Nalini Singh Page 0,99
of trouble—and he didn’t care. Not tonight.
When Memory tugged him into a girly and overstuffed trinket shop he’d usually avoid like the plague, he threatened mutiny—but they both knew he was only playing. Tonight, he was Memory’s.
She came out of the shop with a pair of earrings in the shape of paper parasols. “I need to get my ears pierced like the girl who sold me these.”
Alexei pointed to a sign for an all-night drugstore. “Might find a clerk trained in ear piercing there.” He frowned. “But how about we put off making holes in your body until—”
But Memory was already laughing and tugging him across the street.
Five minutes later, he folded his arms and told himself not to strangle the slender male who was about to hurt Memory.
“Go glare at something else in the store,” Memory ordered with a glare of her own. “Do you want his hand to shake?”
Growling, Alexei turned on his heel and stood by the door.
“Thanks,” the clerk whispered. “I hate it when the dominants come in with their mates or cubs. Half the time I think they want to take the piercing tool and pop a hole between my eyes.”
“Trust me, he’s all growl and only small bites.”
“Um, sure,” the clerk responded dubiously, which pleased Alexei’s wolf and confirmed the clerk was in possession of his brain cells. Alexei would have to talk to his E about convincing people that he wasn’t scary. A man had a reputation to protect.
His muscles locked when she hissed twice.
“Alexei, it’s over,” she called out a second later.
He turned to see her sliding in the earrings while admiring herself in the mirror. Then she looked at him with a huge smile. Walking over, she rose on tiptoe to kiss a line along his jaw. “Thank you for not eating the clerk.”
And his heart, it fell.
Hard.
* * *
• • •
ALEXEI didn’t want this night out of time to end. As long as it didn’t, he could ignore the voices yelling at the back of his head, the ones that reminded him of finding Etta’s torn-apart body. She’d been so slender, so broken. But even magical nights didn’t last forever. Daylight would come all too soon, and with it the history that haunted him.
Reaching his vehicle—still parked down the street from Vashti’s home—he pressed Memory against it and nuzzled the side of her face, taking just another second, just another taste.
She curled her entire body into him. “That feels so good.”
A strange ache in her voice made him raise his head, focus on her face.
The searing hunger in her eyes punched him in the gut.
“You’re touch-starved,” he gritted out, furious with himself for not having caught it earlier. He’d thought she was skittish, getting used to people, hadn’t wanted to overwhelm her.
“It’s better now.” She continued to pet his chest. “My skin used to hurt like tiny things were cutting me, but it hardly does that these days.”
Alexei wanted to yell at her for not telling him of her hurt, barely managed to contain the urge—and was glad he had when she whispered, “I didn’t know.” Eyes going obsidian with shimmers of a dark rainbow, lovely and unique. “I thought that was just the way everyone was, with that need inside them.”
Alexei’s wolf stood motionless, its anger no match for its protectiveness. For fifteen long years, his E’d had no one to ask such private questions. No one she trusted enough to reveal her pain. “Jump in the Jeep,” he said, and because his voice came out harsh, he brushed his lips against hers so she’d know he wasn’t mad at her.
She twisted her lips, her hands fisting on his sweater. “I suppose we have to go home.”
“Not just yet.” Alexei tugged a wayward curl, and the way her face lit up, it made him feel like a fucking god. “Let’s go make a little trouble.”
Memory pointed out myriad beauties of life as he drove: the carpet of stars in the ebony sky, the way the waters of the Bay gleamed like black opals under the moonlight, the glowing windows of homes where families slept safe and warm.
“Will you take me out at night again?” she asked partway through their journey. “I always dreamed about the sun, but I never realized the loveliness of the moonlight.”
“I’m a wolf.” He threw in a growl because his wolf wanted to be part of the conversation. “Howling up at the moon is a favorite leisure activity.”