Page 15 of Trees Take the Long View

Well, wolves are warm. It's one of our better qualities.

On a cold night. Maybe not in the middle of summer. I reached out and licked his palm as an apology.Mm. Sweat.

He couldn't quite hide the curve of his smile as he turned away from me a little, answering the phone.

Since it wasn't polite to listen in (I'm really very noble that way), I padded away from him and headed into the tiny hotel bathroom to shift, shower, and try to wake up enough to find us something to eat. I was really quite hungry this morning. It was nice to feel hungry so consistently, and actually want to eat. It wasn't an annoying duty anymore. Having Dean in my life had revived my desire for life, food—everything.

I studied myself in the mirror as I finger-combed my hair after the shower. The hair was a bit long, a rather pale, uninteresting sort of brown, not like my fur as a wolf (a much more interesting mix of brown and gray, thank you very much). My eyes looked a bit wary this morning. Possibly because I could hear Dean packing in a hurry.

Best to face it. I wasn't ready for him to leave. But I had to find out if he was having second thoughts about us, or if it was the phone call necessitating the rush-off.

Finally I opened the door and stepped out.

He looked over at me, hands busy with packing, face worried—and then he froze. Swallowed visibly. And spoke in a raspy voice. "You're not, uh, wearing anything."

"Take you long to figure that out, genius?" I strode over to join him, trying to exude a lot more calm confidence than I actually felt. I plucked a t-shirt out of his bag and pulled it on. If he was going to try to leave me, I wanted to make it as obvious as possible that I wasn't ready to say goodbye.

Wordlessly, he handed me a pair of his underpants, and then some jeans. I hadn't seen him in jeans yet. Would I ever get that chance? I dressed, and he watched.

"So, uh, I got a phone call."

I nodded, feeling depressed. He was talking about the call, but he was clearly thinking how to word it, so maybe this was about wanting to leave me, too. I looked at him, squinting a little, trying not to let too much show on my face.

"So you know I'm a troubleshooter," he finally said. "I have some trouble to shoot. It can't wait, I'm afraid."

"Sure. How soon should I be ready?"

He'd been turning away from me, but when I spoke, whirled back. "What?"

I looked him in the eye. "You really think I'm going to just say 'See you around' and let you walk out of here? Dude, I feel like you could be my mate. I'd follow you to the ends of the earth till we sorted that out."

"You mean—" He sat down suddenly, as if he felt weak. His hair still stuck up adorably, but in a different way than before, as if he'd been grabbing at it distractedly while I was out of the room.

"—I'd leave behind my cushy life as a part-time wall-builder?" I asked sarcastically. I sat down beside him, close, and took one of his hands to hold on my lap. "I really want to give this a chance. Don't say no—please."

I held my breath—then reminded myself to breathe. The thing is, if it wasn't about the job, if he really just wanted to get away, then blaming the job was a good excuse. But he smelled conflicted, not like he wanted to get away from me. And he definitely wasn't trying to get his hand free.

"Okay, well, uh, let me get a shower," he said. "Won't you mind leaving your fruit trees?"

"They're not mine, they're the forest's," I explained.

He blinked once, then nodded. "I suppose so. Well, you'll have to call your boss, and let him know you're quitting." He looked at me, trying to see something in my face.

I grinned. "He can figure it out when the wall doesn't get built."

Dean clicked his tongue. "And you a responsible adult."

"Who ever said anything about being responsible?" I got in a quick kiss before he could pull away and go to take his shower.

"I don't know whatmyboss is going to say," said Dean, rather helplessly as he pulled away from me.

"He can say, 'Hello, Dean's mate' the same as everyone else." I gave him a cheeky, overconfident grin. "If that's how it turns out, of course. If it doesn't, he'll probably never meet me."

"True." This time he moved in for the kiss, hungrily.

"You'll never get your shower if you can't control yourself," I warned him, heavy-lidded and a little bit drunk on kissing.

"Well," said Dean. "There are worse things." He wrapped his arms around my waist and held me close to him. I could feel how interested he was becoming. It was definitely a nice feeling, and one I wanted to explore. But I'd like it to be less rushed, and to have maybe an actual conversation about the future before we went there. Didn't want any regrets—on either side. Not that I thought I could regret sleeping with the man but I could definitely regret not being his mate, if that's how it turned out. That's why we needed to have the conversation—eventually.