Austin leaned in closer and slowly pushed my bowl toward me. “It’s not good to starve your wolf,” he warned. “They get angry and pace until they’re ready to take over. Don’t try to deny what you are, Lexi. It won’t go away just because you choose to ignore it. I need to talk to you later about this—tonight. I’m here because I’ve been keeping an eye on you today. I don’t want anything upsetting you or else you might shift.”
I licked my dry lips and held my breath. Something in me was starting to believe him and I didn’t know if it was brainwashing or insanity.
“Could that happen?”
Austin slid my salad to the side and leaned across the short table, curling his finger for me to do the same. I leaned in and his mouth grazed against my ear.
“I’m a bounty hunter, Lexi, and I protect what’s mine. You don’t have anything to worry about, because if you shifted in this room, I’d lay to waste any man who tried to capture or kill your wolf. Are we clear?”
My cheeks flushed and the bristles of his jaw immediately rubbed against my skin. Something had changed in Austin, all right. There was raw power in not only his words, but in his presence. I felt it, just as sure as I felt his whiskers prickling against my cheek. A thick tension built between us and something inside me began to pace.
Austin was offering me more than his friendship—he was offering protection.
“Just so we’re clear,” I pointed out, “I’m not yours.”
I felt his smile stretch across my cheek and his breath melted against my ear like hot wax. “What time do you get off work? I want you to meet my pack.”
***
“This is where you live?”
I scanned our surroundings in the dark woods, leaning against Austin’s black Dodge Challenger. The gravel road led to a rather large house nestled in the middle of nowhere. The front yard was dirt and pebbles, and to the right, a couple of cars were parked beside horseshoes and a rusty metal pin staked into the ground. A crooked light pole lit up the side of the house and the woods were thick with native trees. I cupped my elbows and a twig snapped beneath my foot.
Austin chuckled. “Come on, Lexi. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
He took a few steps and looked over his shoulder at me. It was out of character for me to be so timid, so he walked up and held my face with his strong hands. “You’re always safe with me, Lexi. I want you to know I won’t let anything bad happen to you. My brothers are good guys, even if they are rough around the edges. You can trust them.”
“Pack or brothers?”
“What’s the difference?”
Austin took my hand and led me to the front door. A motion sensor light clicked on and he slid the key in the lock. I could already hear rowdy chatter inside and found myself gripping his hand tighter.
The door swung open and I stared into an entryway with a view of an atrium that was in the middle of the house. It was a small, grassy enclosure with a barbecue grill in one of the corners. I might not have seen it had the light outside not been flipped on, and there was no roof, so it was open. The wall on the right stopped at an entrance to another room, but I hadn’t moved from the front door because I was a bundle of nerves.
“That must be Austin,” someone said from the room on the right. “Hey, Aus, I hope you brought some beer because dickhead drank the last of it.”
I stepped back a little and Austin shut the door, kicking off his shoes and adding them to the pile in the corner. As a courtesy, I took off my white tennies.
A barefoot guy who looked about my age walked up on us. “What’s up?”
Austin smirked. “Lexi, this is my brother, Denver. He can serve a mean drink, but don’t ask him how to heat up a can of soup because he doesn’t have a clue. Denver, this is Alexia Knight, Wes’s little sister.”
Denver jerked his head back in surprise. He was an inch shorter than Austin, and his stylish, dark blond hair was arranged in disheveled chunks all over his head. He had the sort of face that was handsome and soft with smiling eyes—like a man who didn’t take life seriously. I tried not to look, but there was a scar on his temple about three inches long, right above his left eye, angling from the hairline toward his left ear. But his indigo eyes melted away any curiosity about a scar that barely marred his handsome face.
“How’s it going?”
I shrugged.
“I take it you didn’t bring beer?” His smile morphed into a contagious grin—definitely the pretty boy in the family. Denver had acquired the genes that propelled him to runway-model status.
“Gather the boys up, Denver. There’s something we need to talk about.”
“The boys are all out. Only the men are here,” he said with a cocksure grin. Then he touched his scar when he realized Austin was serious. “It’s just me and Jericho. They’re having another ladies’ night down at the bar and you know how that riles up all the uh…” He looked at me and switched up the last word. “Men.”
“That’s fine. It’s Jericho I need to see; Lexi can meet everyone else later.”
Denver shrugged and disappeared around the wall to the right.