He’d removed his blazer and dropped it on the floor, leaving only the tight stretch of his white T-shirt across his pecs as he crossed his arms over them. His eyes, so deep and blue, grew concerned. “Okay, now you’re worrying me. Never speak again? That’s insane. Are you going to shift? Because I already told you, I don’t care what you look like in shift, Calla. I’ve seen werewolves before.”
Licking her lips, she took a deep breath, her chest expanding. “No…it’s more…it’s something else.”
With that, she pulled the tie on her belt and let the most amazing dress she’d ever worn slip to the floor, leaving only her bra, panties, and heels.
Nash hissed his pleasure, a pleasure so obvious his eyes darkened in response, but he remained quiet as she’d requested.
The moment the dress hit the floor was the moment her confidence followed right behind it. Her shoulders deflated and her stomach rolled.
“Calla?”
Oh God, what had she been thinking? This was a mistake. She should have told him before doing this bizarre version of show-and-tell.
No. She’d done that before and it had exploded in her face. Seeing was so much different than hearing the words.
You must do this, Calla. You can’t go on denying yourself—and Nash—the level of intimacy you both so desperately want. Sex is part of every healthy relationship, and you need to know if this is something Nash can handle because if it’s not, you’re moving on faster than you can say “yeehaw”.
Kicking off her shoes, Calla unsnapped the front closure on her bra and let it fall open—the soft gel prosthetic in the left cup dropping to the floor.
Instantly, her hands went to protect, to cover the space where she should have a breast, but then Nash was there, gripping her wrists and holding her arms away from her body.
He looked down at her, examining every square inch of her exposed flesh until she thought she would crumble at his feet, until her limbs shook and her heart throbbed hard against her ribs.
And then Nash looked into her eyes, searching them, reading her emotions, letting her hands go in favor of wiping the single tear dripping from the corner.
Calla held her breath as she tried to hold his gaze. She wasn’t ashamed of her deformity, for lack of a better word. She wasn’t even ashamed that her pack considered her inferior.
She was ashamed that anyone considered her body less than—that, for its lack of proportion, it deserved more critical attention than her brain or her heart. She was ashamed that she had once thought those same things, too—that she’d allowed anyone to crawl inside her head and twist her sense of self.
But she wasn’t ashamed anymore, and even the small niggle of fear Nash would reject her, would find her repulsive, didn’t keep her from standing up straighter and wiping those thoughts from her mind.
This was who she was, but it wasn’t all she was.
If Nash turned her away, it was on him. She was more than a missing piece of flesh.
“This? This is what’s been troubling you all this time?”
Her mouth went dry at his astonishment. “I was born this way, and I can’t have a surgical implant because the silicone and my shifts would never mesh,” she blurted.
“And?”
He’d caught her off guard, knocking the wind out of her sails. She’d expected surprise, anticipated disgust, maybe even a bit of fear. But he gave off none of those things.
“A…and what?”
“And so what?”
Relief, in all its knee-melting, limp-limbed glory, washed over her. “You don’t care?”
His eyes flashed brilliant colors under the moon he’d created; his jaw was tight and clenched. “I care about you, Calla. You. Your heart. Your mind, the way you treat the people of this town. The way you baked cupcakes for old man Patterson’s birthday because his son was stuck in Hong Kong on business. I care about your strong ties to your grandfather, your loyalty to your friends, the wall full of pictures you encourage the kids to color for you at the center. The way you patiently tell Gus he absolutely cannot look up your skirt without breaking a sweat. I won’t say your body isn’t a big part of your appeal, and I won’t tell you that part of that is the way you fill out a pair of jeans, because I’d be lying. I’m insanely attracted to you. But that attraction has many, many layers, Calla. Only one of which is your body.”
Calla gulped, speechless. She’d only had a few lovers in her rather long lifetime, and while a couple truly hadn’t cared about her breast, they hadn’t cared about her, either. Not the way Nash did. So it hadn’t mattered if they’d accepted her in her entirety because she hadn’t wanted them for forever.
“Do you hear me, Calla? If this is part of the reason you’ve held off making love with me, then we have no reasons left not to, do we? Because I don’t care,” he repeated, sliding the straps of her bra over her shoulders and down along her arms until she was almost entirely naked.
Another tear slipped from her eye, but Nash wiped it away with his callused thumb. “I love you, Calla Allen. You could have no breasts, two heads, three eyeballs, and I’d still love you.”