SIX MONTHS (A Seven Series Novel)

When I woke up, it was still dark and I felt the warmth of the wolf radiating against my back. I blinked, allowing my eyes to focus. It wasn’t predawn like I’d first thought. The sky was overcast and dawn was full of dark, rumbling clouds.

 

I reached over my hip to pet my wolf and froze. My fingers met with skin—more specifically, someone’s ass. A hard ass, and as I pulled away, I felt the familiar hairs of a man’s legs and peered over my shoulder at Reno. He moaned and hooked his arm around my side, caging me against him.

 

It didn’t make sense! The doors were locked and the only one in the house was the… Oh. My. God. What if last night hadn’t been a hallucination? Lexi had mentioned Shifters and Vampires conversationally and… No, this can’t be happening.

 

The idea of Reno curled up behind me—completely naked—did a number on my stomach.

 

A flip-flop, somersault with a twist.

 

Girl, are you really complaining about waking up next to a sumptuously naked man with a sinful body? my inner voice asked with a delicate yawn. Go back to sleep. Or better yet, don’t. Wake him up, she said with a wicked laugh in her voice.

 

“How did you get in here? This can’t be real.”

 

“It’s real,” he murmured in that sexy don’t-wake-me-up bedroom voice against the back of my neck. “You’re staying in bed for at least three more hours.”

 

“Why three?”

 

“Because you didn’t get enough sleep.”

 

I pushed at his arm. “Let me up. Let go of me!”

 

Then his hand slid between my legs and cupped my sex, lightly stroking as he answered me in a defiant voice. “No.”

 

“Yes.”

 

Then he inched up closer behind me, as if that word incited something in him.

 

“No,” he said firmly.

 

Then his fingers worked a little harder, pressing against my panties until I found myself getting wet. He felt it. I felt it.

 

“Yes,” I said in a breathy voice.

 

Then everything changed between us.

 

Not like I had expected it to. Reno stopped and curved his arms around me so tightly that I couldn’t tell we were even separate bodies. I felt him everywhere, from the nape of my neck to the tips of my toes. Reno’s naked body against mine was insatiable.

 

A tremor rolled through him. Subtle, but I felt it. He lightly nipped my shoulder as if it meant something.

 

“Do you remember what happened last night? It wasn’t the drugs, April. We’re Shifters, and I belong to a pack of wolves.”

 

I laughed at first. My heart raced at the admission of what I had already suspected but couldn’t quite believe. “Don’t be absurd. That kind of thing isn’t real.”

 

“You saw it, and I can prove it if you still want to hide beneath a cloak of doubt. There are things in this world that are real whether you want to believe in them or not.”

 

Deep down, I knew it to be true. It explained something I thought I had imagined as a child—a man running toward the woods and transforming into a deer. For years, I’d assumed I was an imaginative child, but part of me knew what I had witnessed actually happened. But having seen a man transform right in front of me—I didn’t know how to process it. Maybe the drugs had given me hallucinations, but then why would Reno lie? Perhaps he left his straightjacket at home, my inner voice suggested.

 

Reno’s body felt like a hard mass of muscle behind me, and I had to confess I liked it. For the first time in a long time, someone made me feel safe and protected. Before I considered doing something I’d regret, I quickly sat up and pushed him away. Reno was as naked as a jaybird and shifted his left leg forward to hide a little bit of that fact.

 

Didn’t hide much.

 

“You’re the wolf? My wolf?”

 

Maybe I shouldn’t have said the last bit because his pupils dilated and he got that heated look in his eyes—a possessive look.

 

“The wolf that got hurt,” I corrected.

 

Too late.

 

Reno sat up and slid his hand around the nape of my neck and his eyes turned stony. “How do you know about my wolf getting hurt?”

 

“He’s been hanging around here lately. He showed up at my doorstep with a screwdriver in his leg.”

 

“A screwdriver,” he breathed. Reno turned his arm, looking at the scar, and that’s when I noticed it for the first time. “So that’s what it was. Do you know what happened?”

 

“No. I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. It’s animal crackers, Reno. You can’t be a wolf! Can’t!”

 

In a blur of motion, he shifted into a brown wolf and I flew out of the bed, stumbling to the floor and covering my mouth. The wolf barked and showed me his sharp fangs as he shook his coat. Before I could formulate a thought in my head, he shifted back.

 

A shrill scream flew out of my mouth and I shut my eyes, as if that would make him disappear. “This can’t be real. Can’t be. Can’t be!”

 

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