Page 52 of Wolf Blood

Just messing around with him was fine, but I wasn't going to act like we could really be something.

Even if we didn't infuriate each other, and I wasn't going to die, that was a dealbreaker for me.

"You smell like my apartment," he said, before scraping his teeth over my collarbone in a way that made me rock against his erection.

"I touched everything in there."

"Of course you did."

"You aren't hoarding my dirty clothes the way Maverick did with Bloom's, so you're notthatpossessive of me."

He kissed his way back up my throat, then bit my earlobe. One of my earrings had snagged and torn through my ear during one of my crazed, devolved moments, so I'd taken the one in my other ear out too.

"That's a fate thing," he said. "You need to eat."

"I'm not hungry."

He tipped his head back, releasing my ass and my hair. "There's more color in your face since you had the taco. It's not up for debate."

I scowled.

But when he hauled me to my feet, I reluctantly walked down the hall with him.

We didn't talk about the kiss.

I didn't know if we ever would.

CHAPTER TEN

rhone

After another uncomfortable public meal,we went back to the top floor. Harper covered the keypad with her hand while she typed whatever the new code for my apartment door was.

I wanted the code, obviously. I didn’t appreciate being locked out.

But her locking me out and keeping it a secret was a good sign. She hadn’t done something like that since she’d been living in the tower.

"Tell me if you throw up," I said, itching to pull her into my apartment with me but knowing it wasn't what she wanted or needed.

She rolled her eyes at me.

Harper had managed a whole taco at dinner. She'd looked a little green since she took the last bite, but food was important, even for vampires.

She just needed to find a new normal. That was what I'd been trying to help her figure out since the beginning.

She couldn't be the same person she'd been as a human. She'd experienced too much.Changedtoo much. Going through hell was too fucking transformative.

Having her own place was the first real step toward figuring out how she was going to move on.

In some ways, I was making that more difficult, but my possessiveness was unavoidable.I'd tried to fight it. Denying it only made it worse.

She belonged to me. There was no other acceptable truth.

"I'll knock at seven in the morning, Trouble. Open the door when I do."

Harper saluted me with her middle finger and waltzed back into her room.

I watched her go.