Page 9 of An Unending Claim
“So you’ve said.”
“Have I?” I couldn’t remember telling him that before. Was the pregnancy brain messing with my eidetic memory?
“Every time you gasp, moan, scream, call my name, and orgasm, you praise my magic hands,” he quipped smugly.
I started to say something snarky but changed my mind before speaking. “Impressive. And how did you learn to translate sex talk?”
Nathan laughed, and I smiled because that had been exactly what I was aiming for. I loved the rich timbre of the sound. “I’m only fluent in your dialect,” he joked, kneading his way down to my lower back.
I dropped my head forward and moaned. He paused for a beat, then continued without comment and we sat in silence for a few minutes.
After fifteen minutes, he slid his arms around me, placing his palms on my baby bump. “You really need to stop making a habit of this.” He used a light tone, but he wasn’t teasing.
“No argument here.” I wasn’t any happier about the way I seemed to be attracting danger lately.
Nathan rested his forehead on my shoulder and took a deep breath.
“Can I ask you something?” I blurted.
“If it’s to make you come, then you’ll have to wait until we are done talking.”
His response both amused and irritated me, but since it didn’t have anything to do with my question, I ignored it. “Earlier. In the woods. Did… did your wolf birthmark…?”
He raised his head and set his chin on my shoulder. “It tingled.”
“Yeah, me too. That’s strange, right?”
“Baby, have you found one thing about the process of our mating that isn’t?”
“You have a point.”
He lifted me like I weighed nothing at all, carried me back to my chair and gently set me down. Then he pulled over one of the padded ottomans and sat, facing me.
I started to curl my legs beneath me, but he captured my ankles and set my feet in his lap. “Tell me what happened this morning,” he requested, rather than demanded, and I almost giggled at the pained expression on his face.
He began kneading one foot and I forgot all about what he’d said.
“Peyton.”
There was an edge of impatience when he said my name and I realized just how hard he was trying to hold back. I owed him the same amount of effort, but I wracked my brain to find some other way to reciprocate. I wanted to find an alternative to spilling my emotional guts.
“Don’t dance around my questions, Peyton. Honesty, remember? What am I saying?Of course,you remember.” The last part dripped with sarcasm, and I bristled. “Stop shutting me out, baby. I need to know why you went running headlong into a perilous situation, ditching your bodyguards. You promised me you wouldn’t do that anymore. I want you to prove I was right when I didn’t jump to conclusions, choosing to trust you instead.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” I started, then stopped and rephrased, “Well, it was, but notme.”
Nathan’s brows rose. “Your panther?”
I nodded and twisted the ring on my thumb.
“You lost control of her?” He frowned and his eyes became concerned and wary.
“No,” I hurried to assure him. “I mean, I did, but not like you’re thinking. I’m in no danger of going rogue.”
The worry in his eyes receded a bit, but he still watched me carefully.
“It was just that… she smelled all the blood and she—she froze for a second and then she took off. I didn’t know why exactly—”
“You didn’t…” Nathan trailed off as his silver eyes narrowed. “We are our animals, Peyton. Two halves of a whole. There is no way in hell you didn’t know what was going through your panther’s mind unless you lost complete control of her. And even then you’d still know, you just wouldn’t be able to pull her back.”