She trotted over and nuzzled against his chin, licking his mouth.
“If you want to make out with me, you’re going to have to shift.” He stroked her face and looked deep into her green eyes. “Come on, baby. We’ll figure this out together. I’m not going anywhere and neither are you. I know you’re freaking out in there and that’s why your she-devil wolf is on the prowl, but she’s not going to fix your problems, and you can’t hide from them forever. Maybe you’re scared. After what just happened with Hawk, I don’t blame you. But you need to trust me.”
Her wolf sat down and cocked her head. Yeah, something was wrong. Isabelle had a badass wolf, but she’d never been stubborn with him. She also wasn’t acting herself. Usually her wolf liked to dig in the dirt and roll around, but she stayed calm and almost protective of Jericho as she turned her back and kept her eyes sharp and alert.
Jericho glanced back at the house and saw Lynn had switched off the lights.
Maybe Isabelle was mad at him and not ready to come out. When he’d ditched her to make a run to town, he didn’t have any concerns about leaving her alone. She wasn’t a child. That human stood no chance against her wolf, but he wondered if Isabelle had fought him in human form. That seed planted in his head and made his wolf stir with anger. He surged to his feet, wiping the dirt off his pants. What he really wanted to do was take care of her problems by finding the piece of shit who went by the name Delgado.
Isabelle had been through enough, subjected to the worst kind of betrayal by an asshole boyfriend she’d thought she could trust.
Then again, who was Jericho to talk? He had turned his back on their friendship for drugs and women.
He clenched his fists and paced. They better have taken care of everything with the dead human, because killing a human was against the law. Self-defense had to be proven, and no one had found a weapon on the body. The higher authority could arrest Isabelle and charge her with murder.
The protective instinct was too powerful to resist, and Jericho’s wolf emerged.
Chapter 20
My back itched. When I rolled to my side, I could feel blades of grass stuck to my skin. I squinted as the morning light pierced my eyes like a reckoning, and I shielded my face with my arm.
There I was, lying naked in front of the Weston pack’s house. Super.
When I sat up and twisted around, Denver waved from a chair on the front porch.
All I could think about was my uncontrollable craving for popcorn. Every wolf had a different craving after shifting back to human form, and nobody could explain why. I once knew a girl who had a thing for green olives, and a Shifter I’d met up in Topeka had an expensive craving for caviar. He told me he’d never eaten caviar, and it took eight years after he’d gone through the change before he finally figured out what his body desired. Someone offered him an appetizer at a fancy party and after one small bite, he recognized a flavor he’d never tasted before. Who knows? Maybe we’ve all led past lives.
My craving was popcorn, but specifically cheese popcorn. I licked my lips.
“Craving?” Denver said with a snicker. He popped a knuckle and then swatted at a gnat.
I dusted the grass from the back of my thigh and rubbed dirt off my face. “Can you get me something to put on? Where’s Jericho? What happened?”
He stood up and took a few steps, tossing me a dress. It looked like something Ivy would wear—strapless cotton the color of chocolate. I slipped it on while Denver took a bottle of bubbles from the porch step and set them on a table by the door.
“It looks like Jericho took off. Austin called and said not to let you in the house. I came home as soon as I got off work. You’ve got a mean wolf, Izzy.”
“I’ve heard.” I tied the little strings around the waist and wiped more blades of grass, which had left imprints on my skin, off my arm. After I got myself together, I walked up the steps onto the porch.
The front door swung open and Maizy ran outside, as vibrant and full of spirit as any girl of six or seven. Her blond hair swung in two little ponytails, and she had on a pair of jean overalls and a pink shirt.
“Denny, can I come outside now? The lady isn’t naked anymore.”
I quietly laughed. Denver rubbed his chin and looked over at her from his chair, his dirty-blond hair disheveled. “Did you eat breakfast, Peanut?”
“Yep,” she said, taking a seat beside him. I noticed how she imitated the way Denver was sitting—her right leg stretched out, leaning on her left arm.
“And what did you eat?”
“Um…”
“Get inside and eat some cereal. Then you can come out and play.”
She stuck out her pink bottom lip. “But I want to be outside with you.”
He relaxed his posture and smiled at her. “Don’t make me the bad guy. You get inside and eat three pieces of bacon and toast.”
“But I’m not hungry.”