“Good. Because I want to stay too.” He kissed the tip of my nose.
I climbed into my bed and scooted over to make room for him. He clicked off the lamp on my nightstand, then molded his body around mine.
“How did it go… with the elders?” I asked him as he played with my hair.
“I now know everything there is to know about being an Alpha.”
“I can’t believe you’re Alpha. My Alpha.”
“I like the sound of that.” He slid his nose down the nape of my neck.
I shivered. “Do they know where Everest went?”
“They located his car in Denver.”
I turned to face Liam. “Denver? What would he be doing in Denver?”
“Don’t know.”
Did my cousin know someone in Denver? Maybe Megan, that last girl he’d cozied up with, the one he’d met at the music festival and then kissed at Tracy’s Bar and Grille, maybe she was from Denver? She was a student at UCB-the only thing I knew about her besides that she was a shapely blonde. Maybe there was a way to check the college’s directory?
Liam’s eyes were smudged with exhaustion. He needed sleep, not a cross-examination, but I couldn’t help but ask about the hateful gender selection tool.
“Did you destroy the stick, Liam?”
“The stick?”
“The fossilized root.”
His mouth solidified into a straight line. “I’m not going to destroy it.”
I added space between our bodies. “Why not?”
“Because it has value, and valuable things are worth holding on to.”
“Value?” I squeaked. “It’s just vile, smelly, and criminal.”
“Ness”-there was an edge of exasperation to his tone-“please, let’s not fight about it. Not tonight. I’ll never use it, I promise.” He rolled onto his back and scrubbed both his hands down the length of his face.
“But someone else might.” I propped myself up.
“Ness,” he growled.
“Did you ever stop to consider that if your dad’s generation hadn’t used it, more girls would’ve been born, and maybe one of them would’ve been your mate?”
Liam’s eyes glowed as bright as a Harvest moon. “Then I’m happy it was used, because I don’t want a mate. I want you. Temper and all, I want you.”
He pushed on the elbow propping me up until I collapsed back onto the mattress. Then he threw one of his legs over my lower body and settled on top, bracing himself on his forearms. As he dipped his face toward mine, I forgot all about the Boulder relic, all about Everest, all about breathing.
“I don’t have that much of a temper,” I murmured.
He smiled as he gazed down at me. “Just like a thunderstorm doesn’t have that much rain.”
“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”
He slanted his mouth over mine, but before breaching the distance, he whispered, “From a man who loves storms, it is the greatest compliment.” And then he kissed me until our bodies became as exhausted as our minds.
When I awoke the following morning, Liam was already gone and the bedsheets were cold. I checked the time on my phone: six-thirty. The meager hours of sleep I’d gotten would have to do. There was an inn to run and an uncle to check up on.
I ran a brush through my hair, then applied the tiniest bit of concealer to hide the circles beneath my eyes. I had my mother’s eyes-cornflower blue-but where hers had always glittered, mine seemed as dull as smudged glass these days.
After tying up my hair in a ponytail, donning jeans and a black V-neck, I fluffed my pillows, straightened my sheets with military precision, and tucked my comforter. I hoped no guests had come down for breakfast yet. I was sure we had the basics, but without Evelyn, the offerings would be modest: toast, jam, butter. Evelyn and Mom had taught me how to cook, but I wasn’t especially good at it. I’d mastered the basics though.
I quickened my pace toward the kitchen, expecting it to be empty and dark, but light leaked from under the door, and the scent of caramelizing onions clung to the air. Was my uncle making himself a snack? I pushed my shoulder into the swinging door and froze at the sight of Evelyn bent over the stovetop.
Her merlot-tinted lips arched up. “Morning, querida.”
The door smacked my back-not hard, but hard enough to make me stumble forward. I caught myself on the steel island. “I thought-”
“That I would leave you to run this place on your own? I made Frank drop me off an hour ago.” She shook her head, and her bottle-black hair danced over the apron protecting her jeans and red top. She seemed happy. Happier than I’d ever seen her. Blissful. “Can you fetch the warming trays?”
As I went to retrieve them from the shelving in the back of the kitchen, I checked over my shoulder a few times to make sure Evelyn was real.
“Liam spent the night?”
I dropped one of the tray lids, and it clattered loudly against the tiled floor.
As I crouched to retrieve the fallen lid, she added, “I am not judging. I am simply enquiring.”
I cleared my throat. “He-but nothing… ”
Evelyn laid the tongs she was flipping the thick slabs of bacon with on the spoon rest and walked over to me. She grabbed both my hands. “Querida, you are almost eighteen. You are allowed to have sleepovers with boys. Just promise me that you will not settle for a man who is anything but kind to you. You deserve kindness and respect.”
The memory of last night flashed through my mind, and then another memory, an unwelcome one settled over it like tracing paper-the night of the engagement party when I’d stopped by his place and he’d let his bestial nature override his human one. Was I being naïve to place the blame on the wolf inside him? Were our wolf natures so different from our two-legged ones?
Evelyn’s black gaze tracked over my face. “Ness? You are worrying me.”
I shook my head. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
“I will always worry about you. I love you too much not to worry.”
The image of her tied to a chair flashed behind my lids. I gritted my teeth, trying to stop my canines from sharpening. I longed to visit Eric’s basement and sink my teeth into Lucy’s fleshy, pale throat.
My aunt hadn’t hurt Evelyn, or so Evelyn had claimed, but she was the type to bear her pain in silence. She’d never complained about the arthritis that locked up her joints or the old bullet wound in her legs that still made her limp.
Breakfast went off without a hitch.
Emmy, one of the women who worked at the inn, arrived shortly after me and insisted on handling the service. She asked where Lucy was, and I mentioned she’d gone after her heartbroken son. Emmy shot me a pained smile. She’d worked long enough at the inn to be up to date on Clark family gossip. What she didn’t know-or at least I didn’t think she knew-was the dual nature of her employers.