Page 95 of Silver Claw

“Did you fuck him in our bed?”

I stared at her, silent.

She gave a bitter laugh. “I mean, you knew the way to the bedroom, so obviously you’ve been in there. I always thought it was one-sided. I knew Rick had a thing for you the first time I saw the way he looked at you. But until I saw you sitting beside him, touching him like his body was yours to touch, and looking at him the same way…” She shrugged, but her lips trembled. “So I ask again. Did you fuck him in our bed?”

Jared squeezed my arm. “Let’s go,” he said, but gently.

But I wasn’t quite ready to go. “I didn’t fuck him at all,” I told Beth. “Not in his bed, not in his house, not anywhere.” Then I smiled. “Yet.”

Jared sighed.

“You should go back to Colorado,” I told her. “This is not a good place for you.”

“You don’t care how bad a place it is for me,” she said. “You just want me away from my husband.”

“Go home, Beth,” I said, but tiredly. I really had no desire to argue with her.

“If he chooses me,” she said, “you will stay out of our lives.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I will.”

Then I left the house with Jared, thinking how odd it was that Jared had learned maybe more than he wanted to know that night, but the whole time, it seemed somehow natural.

But when we were in his car and he was driving us down the highway toward Shadowfield and Rick, I understood that my alpha had known all along how I felt about my detective.

“Jared,” I said. “You know that you’re the love of my life.”

He glanced at me, then lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed my fingers. “I’m not afraid of Rick, or of your feelings for him. Rick is part of you. He loves you. He’ll take care of you if something happens to me. You need someone in the human world.”

I blinked back tears. “He said he knows you’re my supernatural world man,” I murmured. “And that he’s my human world man.”

He only nodded.

Finally, with my hand securely in his, I laid my head back against the seat and fell immediately to sleep. I needed my brain to go somewhere else, even if only for a little while.

And just before we reached Shadowfield, Gavin Voss called and woke me up.

Chapter Thirty-Six

I took the call and put him on speaker.

“Kait,” he said when I didn’t speak. “I guess you’re probably pretty mad at me right now.” He paused. “Oh, okay, typical woman, giving a man the silent treatment. You know men never do that, right? That’s okay, honey. You just sit there and listen.”

I hung up on him.

Jared grinned, then pulled up in front of his house and shut off the car. We sat there waiting for Voss to call back, because we knew he would.

He did.

“You’re kind of a bitch, aren’t you?” he said, but there was a grudging admiration in his voice. “Makes me even more eager to settle your ass down. So anyway, about the police detective. We should talk about him, don’t you think?”

I put my window down and stared up at the moon, bathing in her beauty and magic. The moon calmed me, even as it filled me with energy.

“How’d you do it, Voss? I know you have magic, but putting someone to sleep like you’re a fucking wicked witch with a big juicy apple, that’s something I’ve never seen.”

“Youshouldbe impressed,” he said. “And you should know how I did it. The full moon. You’re a wolf. You feel it.”

I shivered. The full moon hung huge and powerful in the night sky, and its effect was magical. On someone like him, the effects would be even more extreme. It was making him—and his magic—stronger. It was taking an already warped supernatural to a whole new level.