Page 77 of Bound to the Wolf
The need to stay in this house together, to sleep in this bed together.
She might miss being unable to walk away.
Reece was peppering soft kisses against her shoulders, and she couldn’t stop running her hands over him. She liked a good cuddle, and over the past couple of weeks, Reece hadn’t let her down in that department, but this was different.
Everything about now felt different.
A small part of Delainey thought she should be putting up her walls and turning away from this, to protect herself from whatever was to come in the future. But Reece had opened up to her, and he was looking at her right now like he was hers. She wasn’t shocked to realize that was exactly what she wanted.
Oh God, she had it bad.
“I don’t want this to end,” Reece admitted, like the words were being torn out of him. “When we can finally leave the cottage, I mean.” He spoke with his mouth still close to her shoulder, his breath warm against her skin, one big hand spread flat across her stomach where it rose and fell with her breathing.
“Are you asking todateme?” It came out in a teasing tone, but she was serious, and Reece’s smile was soft.
“Yeah, I am.” He pressed his lips to the curve of her shoulder and lingered there, his stubble scratching lightly against her skin. “You don’t realize how lucky that makes you.”
She scoffed. “Me? Ha! You’re the lucky one.”
His soft smile turned into a grin that she knew was plastered across her face just the same.
The grin turned into a kiss. Delainey realized she could get used to this.
Chapter
Thirty-Five
Reece didn’t argue about going to the coven house, though he had wanted to point out that they had a perfectly functional bed right in their room, and plenty of food to get them through the next day or week or year, with no need to face the outside world. They could spend it in bed with very few responsibilities or distractions.
But Reece was a good boyfriend, and Delainey wanted to see her sisters, so her sisters she would see.
He was going to dinner with his girlfriend’s coven.
His mouth kept wanting to curve into a smile, and he was forcing it down, trying to look tough, but he didn’t know why he was even making the effort. Delainey could see through him, like whatever walls he put up were made of cellophane, and he was trying his damnedest not to hide from her.
As a good boyfriend, he hadn’t argued when Delainey decided she was driving them. He folded himself into the passenger seat of his own car, knees pressed up near the glove box the way they always were when she drove, and watched her adjust the rearview mirror even though she was the last one who’d touched it.
She reached out and took his hand, intertwining their fingers.
“Are you going to be cool with hanging out there?” She glanced at him sideways, one hand on the steering wheel. “Given everything.”
They hadn’t discussed his history much more, but sharing it had lightened something inside him. He was glad she knew.
“I understand that not all covens are the same,” he said, turning their joined hands over so his thumb could trace the ridge of her knuckles, his broad palm dwarfing hers.
Though the fact that the understanding only came after he had fallen for a witch might have rung a little hollow to some. Reece told any judgmental bastard who might be reading his mind to mind their own damn business.
“And your parents were dicks,” Delainey added.
At least she wasn’t treating him with kid gloves. They might not have discussed his childhood trauma much more, but Reece would be lying if he said he hadn’t been thinking about it.
“Maybe they don’t deserve to be called that,” he said.
“Dicks?” Delainey looked ready to go to war.
Reece squeezed her hand.
“No. Parents.” He didn’t have kids. He didn’t know if he ever would. Some of that would depend on what Delainey wanted, but he didn’t know if there was anything that could have forced him to send them away, especially when they needed him the most.
