Page 54 of Bound to the Wolf
Nico was nodding like he understood any of that. Reece was pretty sure he hadn’t. But he was glad someone was on the case. He didn’t like the idea of being dependent on a witch for anything, but it wasn’t like he had the magical senses to figure this out.
No, he never had.
The witches left and took Nico with them, leaving Reece and Delainey alone. She took her suitcases into the bedroom without speaking to him. It was awkward.
He wanted to say he’d go for a run, but that wasn’t an option unless Delainey was willing to sprint right next to him. They had more than six feet now, but thirty feet was still a limit on its own.
She stuck her head out of the bedroom. “I’m going to take a shower now,” she said. “And I plan to possibly live in there forever, so if you need to use the bathroom, jump in.”
“I’m good,” he told her, settling onto the love seat and stretching one arm along the back of it, his legs too long for the short distance between the cushion and the coffee table.
She didn’t seem awkward at all. Maybe he was imagining the awkwardness; maybe he was the only one who felt this obsession brewing within him. His wolf grumbled, but Reece did his best to ignore it.
He heard the bathroom door open and close. A few minutes later, the water started running. Reece’s eyes sank shut, and he had to snap them open before he could imagine Delainey naked under the water.
It was the last thing he needed.
He couldn’t go for a run, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t shift.
Reece shrugged off his clothes and let the wolf take over, sinking into his furry skin and down onto four legs. The shift took his bones apart and rebuilt them in the space of three seconds, spine curving, shoulders dropping forward, fingers fusing into paw pads against the cool hardwood, his skull reshaping around a longer jaw until the cottage shrank around him and the smells of paint and cardboard and Delainey’s shampoo from the bathroom hit him.
The wolf’s brain was simpler. He didn’t need to overthink the way she smelled. He could just enjoy it in this form, and the man didn’t complicate things.
He nosed open the front door and kicked it closed behind him. He could still feel the tether in his skin and had to keep close to the edge of the house, to not outrun its limit.
He patrolled the perimeter, found a shaded place to lie down, and hoped his wolf could solve his problems.
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
Living with Nico was freaking torture.
After a week, Delainey had to consciously stop grinding her teeth as she picked werewolf fur off the couch cushion. She considered whether or not it would be ethical to entice Reece’s wolfy other half with Milk Bones.
She hadn’t been that surprised to find him stalking around the house in his wolf form when she came out of the shower a week ago. In fact, she had been kind of grateful for it.
They could now easily get further apart than six feet, which meant they could have some semblance of privacy, but they were still stuck in the same space. It was difficult to ignore another man who was right there.
A dog, on the other hand.
No, it was really weird. And she was still trying to figure out the appropriate way to treat him, because Reece wasn’t a dog.
He left muddy footprints by the front door when he came inside. She thought he was sneaking in to eat human food when she was asleep, and she had heard the shower running at strange hours, so he definitely wasn’t in his wolf form the entire time, but he could have fooled her.
It was getting a bit lonely, which was strange.
Yes, Delainey lived with four other women in something between a family home and a sorority house, but those were her sisters, her chosen family, her coven. Reece was not any of that.
She should have been happy that he had taken care of the situation. She should have been like, “Suit yourself.” It was almost like they weren’t bound together if they couldn’t discuss it.
Really, it was just like having a giant dog. A giant dog who could transform into an annoyingly attractive dude who she had let get her off in the woods a week ago.
Fuck. Why was she thinking about that?
Delainey glared at her phone. She had texted Aya for an update and received a frowning face emoji in response, which she took to mean they had made no progress.
Emerson was still hanging around the house, which Delainey didn’t like. He shouldn’t get to be there when she was stuck out here in the freaking woods, and she hoped whatever his work thing was ended soon, so he’d stop bothering her sisters.
