Hunt Me! I Crave the Chase (Spooky Boys #3)

Why he melted, every single time.

My body felt like putty as the tension seeped away and Mutt rumbled his approval. He pinched harder, and finally, I began to relax. “It has been a long day, hasn’t it? You are tired, and have given so much to me already. You need to rest.”

Every day was a long day, but I didn’t tell him that.

I nodded, still refusing to open my eyes because everything was too bright, too much, too-too-too. I wished the tears would come, but they didn’t. I couldn’t remember the last time they had.

Maybe it had been when I was nine? When I realized my mistake and that no one would be coming to save me. That because I’d left my family behind in Elmwood and gone along with Lydia, it had facilitated her plan to frame Blair’s parents for my death and allowed Blair to be kidnapped too.

People had died because of me.

That it was my fault.

Or maybe…

Maybe it had been the first time Lydia had taken me monster hunting. After I’d stared at the carcass of the goblin I’d killed and promptly thrown up all over my new white sneakers.

No…no.

I remembered now. It had been when I’d come home that night this last spring to the blood smears in our kitchen. When Blair’s car had been gone. When I’d called him, and called him, and called him, and he hadn’t picked up the phone—and I’d thought?—

I’d thought she’d finally killed him.

That he was gone.

That I’d never see him again.

“Oh my, sweet one,” Mutt’s arms shifted, his hands sliding away. For a moment I was weightless as he pulled me up easily, my legs automatically wrapping around his waist. “You are hurting.”

I was.

I was.

I was?—

And I couldn’t seem to stop.

It wasn’t fair. I should be basking in my orgasm. I should be snuggling him because it had been what I’d wanted for weeks now, not because I was falling apart at the worst possible moment.

“Sweet, sweet Jeffrey.” I did not feel sweet, I felt wretched. “So good, so perfect.” I did not feel perfect. I did not feel good. I did not— “It will be okay.” My heart ached and I shuddered, dropping my head against Mutt’s shoulder as he pushed the bathroom door open, somehow, and we made the journey down the small dark hallway to my bedroom. “You will see.”

I didn’t understand why he was here.

Why he’d stayed after the sex was done.

I didn’t understand him.

I didn’t.

But I was grateful all the same as he laid me on my bed and tucked the blankets around me. The window was cracked open and the wind whistled through it as Mutt climbed onto the mattress behind me and curled himself around my body like a giant hairy cocoon.

He held me.

No one had ever held me before.

He was a man. He was a werewolf. I shouldn’t feel the way I did about him. I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t—but I did. I pressed into him, I buried my shame against the sheets, and he kissed the back of my neck over and over and over again.

Patient.