Chapter 22

TWENTY-TWO

RUTH

M y stomach grumbled at the scent of fried eggs filling the kitchen.

I sat at the tiny dining room table, marveling how this werewolf had come dangerously close to killing me last night, and now, here he was making me breakfast in nothing but sweatpants.

Ugh. Those freaking sweatpants.

When I woke up to find him in the kitchen, staring off into space, he must have been thinking about last night. His sweats did nothing to hide his hard-on.

And when he moved away from the stove, I just about swallowed my tongue. The turn he made for the fridge had the weight in his pants swinging. Yup, still hard.

His eyes flicked to mine, and his lips pressed into that smug smile. "There's a joke about sausage in here somewhere." He opened the fridge and produced a package of meat. "But all I have is bacon, so… joke ruined, I guess."

I couldn't help but smirk.

He arched a silver brow in my direction. "What?"

"You're just…" I smoothed my hands over his dining table with a sigh. "You're not what I expected. Like at all. Also, I'm a vegetarian."

He blinked. Once. Twice. Three times. Like I'd said something funny, and he was waiting for the punchline. "Vegetarian?"

By his reaction, you'd think I was speaking a different language.

"As in, I don't eat meat."

"Please tell me you're joking."

"Um, hello. I'm a rabbit shifter, remember? I've lived my whole life in a commune where we grow our own produce. And if we're feeling really spicy, we make our own granola. We're not into slaughtering innocent animals."

He snorted. "That's funny coming from you, Little Miss Ax Murderer."

My jaw set. "I said innocent animals. I'm sorry about your brother, but he sure as shit wasn't innocent."

Maybe it was the wrong thing to say, but being mated to this male had changed my feelings toward him.

I'd expected that on some level. What I didn't see coming was how close I'd feel to him. Even with his back turned and the two of us on opposite sides of the cabin.

I could practically feel his pulse and count each breath he sucked into his lungs. There wasn't just a physical connection, though. His emotions were right there, too, almost as recognizable as my own.

There was no trace of the hatred that had nearly choked the life from me last night.

I didn't hate him anymore, either. How could I?

I expected his wolf to be even more brutal than the rest of him. Instead, all I'd seen was a lonely monster who was kind and gentle in all the ways he needed to be.

The scent of something delicious ripped me from my thoughts, and I lifted my eyes to see him placing a steaming plate piled high with pancakes and scrambled eggs on the side.

There was a moment where all I could do was stare at the steaming food, my mouth watering. "You made all this for me?"

"Can't let you starve, can I?"

"You could, though there are more efficient ways to kill a bunny. But I don't have to tell a wolf that."

Taking a seat at the small table across from me, he watched as I ate like it was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen.

"Um. You're kinda making it hard to chew. You're still looking at me like you want to eat me for breakfast."

He licked his lips. "I kind of do."

Fuck.

"I'm no longer in heat. And I have your mark. So…" We both wanted to fuck again, that was obvious. The sexual tension was thick enough to gag on. He kept staring at my mouth while licking his own. "There's no reason for us to have sex again."

His responding smile bore an evil bend, his lips peeling to reveal sharp teeth. "Who said anything about sex?"

"Oh, please." I rolled my eyes. "You're not going to hurt me. Your wolf is smitten with me. Anyway, you said yourself that you don't need bunny blood like your pack mates."

His icy eyes darkened. "No, but I bet tasting yours would give me a hard-on."

I brandished a smile as cold as his gaze. "You're disgusting."

He snorted, not buying it for a second. "If you're so repulsed by me, why are you fucking soaking?"

My thighs squeezed together, but there was no hiding my scent—he knew how turned-on I was. "Look, can we cut the hate-boner banter? I'm going to eat these pancakes and jet."

"Where are you going to go?"

"I don't know. I can't go back home. Fuck those people."

"No family that you want to go back to?"

I stuffed another forkful of pancake into my mouth to cover the bitterness on my tongue. "My siblings deserve better. They're brainwashed into thinking this fucked up tradition is necessary to keep peace with the wolves."

Another stretch of silence settled before he hit me with another question. "So, are you going to tell me what that male rabbit did to you?"

My fork plunged into my scrambled eggs, and in a moment of rage, I imagined the fork going through Sawyer's eye socket instead. "I said I don't want to talk about it."

"He hurt you."

"What do you care?"

A vein jumped in his jaw. "I care because you care. We're bonded now. Like it or not, we're closer. Your hate is my hate. And I know you hate that male. I can almost fucking taste it, and I gotta say… I'm not enjoying the fact that it's washing away the taste of your pussy in my mouth."

His tone had my heart accelerating. He stamped a kiss to the pulse point below my jaw as if to calm it. "You're no one's prey, Rabbit."

His mouth crashed into mine, and this time, the kiss was different. "When you kiss me like that, I don't mind being your prey."

A low, delicious growl slipped from his mouth into mine. "Gods, don't tell me that…" He unbuttoned his flannel shirt—the only piece of clothing separating me from him. He bared my breasts, kissing each nipple gently before catching each one between his teeth and tugging on my piercings.

His lips continued their expedition down my body. Each kiss was slow, lingering and full of hunger. "I'll make good on all my threats to eat you…" Another kiss to my belly, then my pelvic bone. Lower and lower down my body with every kiss.

I tensed when he spread my legs, pressed his face between my thighs and slid his tongue through my folds. His eyes darted up, slit and blazing with something dark and possessive.

"I'll tongue fuck you into fucking oblivion."