Page 59 of Bad Girl
“Good evening, Nika. Welcome to my home.” He moved closer.“Yes, I’m fine.”
So close that we almost touched.
The cologne reached me first.
His fingers curled beneath my palm before he raised it to his lips.
“Thank you for gracing my home with such beauty and charisma,” he murmured, his gaze locked with mine.
Clear green eyes. Sincere.
His lips brushed the back of my hand. The touch was so—gentle. Warm—and it travelled further up my arm than it had any right to for something that brief.
He’s a smooth operator, Bad Girl interrupted.Now pull your hand away and stop staring at him like that.
I tugged my hand free.
“You’re welcome,” I murmured.
“Drink?”
God. I needed a cold one.
No, don’t drink. We need a clear—
“Yes, please. Gin and tonic,” I said, cutting Bad Girl off mid-sentence.
I needed something for my nerves.
Hard liquor before dinner. Not sure if it was the done thing—but he nodded without hesitation and moved to a cabinet at the back of the room that I hadn’t noticed doubled as a bar. The view had beckoned me the moment I’d walked in.
The room settled around us into something quieter than silence. The kind that had weight to it.
My eyes never left him and I didn’t know if it was to keep watch on him and his wolf or something more.
“You live amongst wolves,” I stated.
His hand paused over the ice bucket. The tiny silver tongs hovered mid-air.
He’s protective of the wolves, Bad Girl said.
They might be family, I mused.
Not all of them. I could smell them. There are too many.
“Most of my pack live here,” he said, as the ice cube dropped into the glass with a small clean sound.
“What’s it like being part of a pack?”
His eyes flicked up. Curious.
“You don’t have one?”
I wondered how much I should tell him as I shook my head.
“Being part of a pack is like having an endless extended family—but when it counts we all stand together. Young, old, and no matter what position you hold. My family have led the Cúallaidh Pack for generations.”
He was talking but his hands were moving. Gin. Tonic. Lime slices cut clean. A gentle stir in the highball glass. Everything so—proper. The careful precision of a man whose hands knew exactly what they were doing while the rest of him pretended this was an ordinary drink for an ordinary guest.
