I was a boneless heap on top of him as he lifted a hand to stroke through my hair. He was petting me much the same way I petted him and I realized we both had jagged, pointed pieces that could do with a little bit of soothing. I closed my eyes and absorbed what peace of mind and security in the arms of another person felt like. This was safety. This was the shelter I had been looking for in the storm of my life for so long.

“I’m supposed to take care of you, honey.” His voice was raspy from satisfaction and sleepiness. It was late and we’d been at each other since we stepped into the fancy hotel room.

I stifled a yawn and snuggled deeper into his chest. We were covered in sweat and sex but I didn’t care. I wanted to stay as close to him as possible. “And I’m supposed to take care of you, Hudson. That’s what being all in means.”

His fingers twisted in my hair and his breath feathered across my forehead and he let out a chuckle. “If you took any better care of me, I would be dead.”

That made me smile as pride and a sense of rightness settled around me like the warmest of blankets. His fingers moved to my spine and traced each and every bump before he yawned and told me, “I gotta get up and take care of business. We both should probably shower unless you want to be stuck together all night long.”

I rubbed my nose against the snarling wolf face and made a noise of protest as he rolled out from under me and extracted himself from my clinging limbs. “I want to be stuck together all night long.”

He lifted an eyebrow but didn’t say anything as he turned and walked toward the bathroom. It was like watching a canvas full of the most beautiful art ever created move. The way his ink flexed and shifted with his skin was something so fascinating I couldn’t look away from it and I wanted to ask him to stand still in front of me so I could examine it all and see if I could figure out what part of his story the picture told.

He thought his wolf was alone searching for its mate. I needed to tell him he was wrong; it was there to guard his soft heart and gentle soul from the ugliness of the world around him. He needed that beast to keep the bad things at bay.

The sight of him coming back to bed was even better than the one of him walking away. Of course, my gaze was drawn to the swirling ink that dipped low below his belly button and flanked either side of his mahogany-tinted happy trail. I couldn’t imagine how bad that had to hurt but the pain he must have endured was so worth it. All I could think of when I looked at the black ink was tracking every single line of it with my tongue. He was so different from anything I’d ever known in all the best ways and I desperately wanted him to know that I appreciated those differences on a very visceral and primitive level.

He was watching me with a knowing glint in his eyes and a grin on his face, which made me blush. I was getting ready to tell him to stop staring at me when the shrill sound of a phone going off broke the erotic haze that we had been surrounded in since I asked him to have sex with me. I still couldn’t believe I’d had the nerve to do it, but as muscles twinged with pleasant soreness, I was so glad that I had. He made me push past the fear. He wasn’t simply fighting my demons for me, he was giving me the strength to do battle with them on my own. I would do my best to slay them all and proudly step over their wilting bodies if it meant walking toward him and whatever a future filled with him and not fear would look like.

His phone had fallen when he stripped in the bathroom earlier; he was looking for it there when suddenly it stopped ringing only to start up right again. When he came back he was holding it with a pained expression on his face. “It’s Kallie.”

I could tell he was torn between wanting to answer it and wanting to pretend like he and I were the only two people in the world. I crawled underneath the blankets so that I was covered up and told him, “You need to answer. What if it has something to do with the baby?” Reality wasn’t exactly welcome but there was no getting around the fact that both of us had things in our lives that we were going to occasionally trip over. He was there to catch me when I stumbled earlier and I was determined to do the same for him.

His gaze shifted from me back to the phone, and when it started to ring for the third time he touched the screen with a sigh and sat naked on the edge of the bed as he offered up a strained, “Hey, Kallie, what’s up?”

He looked over his shoulder at me and I was surprised to see a heated red move into his cheeks as he blushed, his side of the conversation giving a clear indication that Kallie wanted to know why he didn’t answer the first time she called. “I was busy and it’s none of your business what I was doing. What’s so important that you’re blowing up my phone instead of sleeping?”

His comment had me looking over at the digital clock next to the bed. I was stunned when I saw that it was past midnight. No wonder I felt like I could hardly keep my eyes open.

Wheeler cleared his throat and lifted a hand so that he could run it over his face. “If you’re ready for that then I can be there. Your parents aren’t my biggest fans at the moment, though, so you might want to give them a heads-up you’re inviting me over.” His tone was sharp and there was no missing the accusation in his tone. He sighed again after listening to whatever the voice on the other end of the phone was saying for a long couple of minutes, then told his ex, “I told you I would be there and I will be. I really think things will be easier for everyone once the air is clear. Your family loves you.” He’d thought they loved him as well and it had taken something away from him when they shut him out after he canceled the wedding. Whatever he was walking into for his ex and their baby had to be a pretty big deal for him to willingly go where he knew he was no longer wanted. “All right, I’ll see you this weekend.” His gaze shifted to me and his lips twitched. “I have something I need to tell you too.”

He went quiet as Kallie questioned him, and when he spoke it made my heart speed up. “No, it’s got nothing to do with me and you, Kallie. Remember when I said I was fucking and not dating?” He winked at me as I kicked him lightly with my blanket-covered foot. “Well, I found a girl I want to do both with, and since I’m planning on keeping her around for the foreseeable future, I figured I would fill you in.” There were more words I couldn’t hear, which made him sigh again and roll his eyes toward the ceiling. “You don’t get a vote where my dick goes, Kallie. Like I said, we can talk about this later. I’ll see you Saturday.”