Page 99 of Dominion
You’re a sorry excuse for a wolf. You’ll never amount to anything. The only female who would ever lower herself to mate you is a human.His father’s sneering prediction the night he’d tossed him out on his ass at age sixteen came ringing back in his ears.
He stabbed his fingers through his hair. Not even a human woman would have an asshole like him. Despite all these years of trying to prove he could make it his own way, he was still as bad as that wild teenage wolf his father hadn’t seen fit to keep in his pack.
“I’m sorry, Melissa. I didn’t mean to force myself on you. Are you okay?”
Her head wobbled around on her neck, and she opened her lips, but no sound came out. He hated seeing her like that, wanted the uppity little real estate agent to return and insult him. But it was probably just as well she kept silent. If they went back to their verbal sparring, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold back—she had his lust on a knife’s edge as it was.
Even with his brain back in function, his cock strained painfully at his jeans.
He walked to his dresser and pulled out a t-shirt and pair of boxer briefs and tossed them near her on the bed. “You can wear these for now. I’ll get you some clothes in the morning.”
She didn’t answer or move. Her breath pumped rapidly in her chest, berry lips parted.
“Are you hungry?”
He half expected her not to answer—he’d deserve the silent treatment after what he’d almost done, but she nodded immediately. He tried to think what he had in the house. Not much. He’d have to go grocery shopping for her too.
Taking care of anyone besides himself was an entirely foreign proposition. As alpha, he’d lay down his life for any of his pack mates, but that didn’t mean he had to worry about their basic needs. They were all young and tough like him.
This little human, though? She required more. A lot more. While part of him rebelled at the obligation, some other part needed him to be the one who took care of her. Like no one else on Earth would do it right.
But that didn’t make any sense, since he had no idea what protecting and caring for a human female entailed.
Great, as if he wasn’t already on edge enough.
Melissa shuckedher blouse and pulled on Cody’s clothes with shaking fingers.
What had just happened?
She’d almost been taken. Except she knew Cody hadn’t meant to hurt her. He’d half-shifted—teeth long, irises sky blue. She remembered that had happened to Ben before he marked Ashley, and he’d been devastated about what he’d done. Maybe this was why humans and shifters didn’t mix.
What would’ve happened if she’d been a wolf? Or afullwolf, because she and Ashley were one quarter wolf. They hadn’t known it, but their grandfather had been a shifter. After Ben had marked Ashley and she recovered more quickly than expected, they’d taken a road trip up to Wyoming to visit their Grandma Jane to uncover the family secret. She hadn’t said much—the memory seemed painful to her—but she’d confirmed the man they knew as their grandfather hadn’t sired her father. He’d been conceived by a shifter, whose pack had forced him to abandon her because she was human. He’d left her before he knew she was pregnant and she never made any attempt to tell him.
They told Grandma Jane about Ben, but the three had agreed to keep Ashley and Melissa’s parents in the dark about it all unless there became a compelling need for them to know.
Would a full wolf have welcomed Cody’s ‘attack’? No, the situation never would have happened, because she would’ve known better than to run.
She slid her fingers through her tangled hair. Honestly, until she saw the lengthened teeth, shehadwanted him. She would’ve parted her legs and let him plunge his huge cock—she was only guessing, but based on the size of the bulge in his jeans, it had to be—right into her core.
So what did the teeth mean? Surely he wasn’t going to mark her. That would mean they were mated for life, and Cody didn’t seem to evenlikeher, apart from the sexual attraction between them.
Regardless of what it all meant, one thing had been confirmed—her instinct that this bad boy was as much trouble as her last boyfriend was dead on. She needed to keep her head, cross her legs, and wait this out. Soon, Ben and Ashley would be back and she could leave the protection of the silver wolf and find someone totally normal. And human.
Except those thoughts fell flat and thin as a crepe. She’d never be happy with normal, would she?
Sighing, she pushed open the bedroom door, the rumble in her empty stomach becoming more insistent than her desire to avoid Cody.
He stood at the stove, somehow managing to look both manly and incredibly sexy as he flipped something in a pan with a spatula. His broad shoulders rippled with muscle, and his torso tapered to a narrow waist followed by the best ass she’d ever seen on a man. There was something about those ripped, worn-out jeans.
Yum. Just yum.
She cleared her throat. “What are you making?”
The way he paused before speaking told her he’d known the whole time that she’d been standing there watching. Well, of course he had. He probably had extrasensory wolf instincts. She wondered what other gifts wolves possessed, apart from being able to jump from two-story windows, catch one hundred twenty-five pounds of falling woman, and drive a motorcycle like the 1970s hotshot Evel Knievel.
“Grilled cheese.”
She snorted. “I should’ve figured that, Walmart boy.” It was a low blow. Actually, she loved grilled cheese, but Cody had decided she was some kind of diva, so she figured she’d play the part just to goad him. It worked.