My stomach drops. “What?”
“I don’t know. Something—” His hand moves from my thigh to my stomach. Rests there, flat, his palm spread below my navel — the same place his thumb rested that morning in the forest. His expression shifts. Concentrating. Reading something. “You feel different. Warmer. There’s something—”
I push him back. Gently — not the violent shove of the clearing. Just enough space to get my feet on the floor, my jeans pulled up, and my shirt straightened.
“I need to go,” I say. “Brenna will be looking for me.”
“Briar.”
“Don’t.” I’m at the door. Fingers on the bolt. “Don’t ask me what’s different. Not now.”
He’s quiet. Standing in the dark storage room, belt undone, his shirt pulled half off one shoulder where I dragged it. Looking at me with that expression — the one with no performance in it. The one that terrifies me.
I do something I don’t plan. I reach out and straighten his collar. Tuck the shirt back onto his shoulder. Smooth the fabric flat. The gesture is small and domestic and so at odds with everything we are that it hangs in the air between us like a question neither of us can answer.
His hand catches mine. Holds it for a second against his chest. His heartbeat is under my palm. Fast. Still coming down.
“Go,” I say. “Fix your belt. Go back to your people.”
“My people.” A breath that might be a laugh if it had more air in it. “Right.”
I slide the bolt and open the door. The corridor is empty. I step through, and I don’t look back, and I walk to the washroom and lock myself in. I press my hands against the washbasin and stare at my reflection.
My lips are swollen. My cheeks are flushed. There’s a mark on my neck where his mouth found the bite scar, red against thesilver. I look like a woman who just had sex in a closet with a man she’s supposed to hate.
I look like a woman who chose it.
My hands go to my stomach. The place where his palm rested a minute ago, the same place my wolf keeps curling toward, the place where something is growing that he sensed without knowing what it is.
I straighten my collar, wash my hands, and walk back to the hearing like nothing happened.
Brenna gives me a look when I sit down. The kind of look that says she knows I’ve been gone too long, and the explanation had better be good.
“Security check,” I say.
She doesn’t believe me. Of course she doesn’t; the scent of sex is rolling off me in waves. But she lets it go.
The hearing resumes. Garrett is back in his seat. His collar is straight. His belt is fixed. He doesn’t look at me.
But under the table, his hand opens and closes once. Slowly. As if he’s still feeling my heartbeat against his palm.
Chapter 22
Garrett
I drive back slowly. It’s four hours from the neutral ground to the compound, and I take every mile of it because stopping the truck means arriving, and arriving means the afternoon catches up with me. I’m not ready for it to catch up.
“You good?” asks Dawes.
“Sure.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Nope.”
He nods, then wedges himself into the corner of the passenger side, tugs the brim of his hat down over his eyes, and drops his head back against the window.
Message received.