What in the hell yet again? I frowned.
“Not in the way you’re thinking.” Kat rolled her eyes.
“Honestly, as much as I love my brother, I’m not sure how I feel about him hanging out in your bedroom.” I reached over and brushed a few strands of her hair back behind her ear. She shivered at the slight touch, and I smiled. “I feel like I need to mark my territory.”
“Shut up.”
“Oh, I love it when you get all bossy pants. It’s sexy.”
“You’re incorrigible,” she said, grinning.
I inched closer, pressing my thigh against hers. “I’m glad your mom is snowed in elsewhere.”
She arched a brow. “Why?”
I raised a shoulder. “I doubt she’d be cool with this right now.”
“Oh, she wouldn’t.”
Shifting until there was barely an inch separating us, I let the peachy-vanilla scent that was all her surround me. “Has your mom said anything about Will?”
Unease crept across her expression, tipping the corners of her lips down. “Just what she said last week, that he was going out of town for a couple weeks on some kind of conference and visiting family, which we both know is a lie.”
Freaking manipulative asshole. “He obviously planned ahead so no one would question his absence.”
Her lashes lowered. “Do you think he’ll come back?”
I ran my knuckles down her silky soft cheek. “He’d be crazy.” But Will Michaels was already proven to be crazy.
Kat opened her eyes. “About Dawson…”
Pressure clamped and settled on my chest as I drew the back of my hand down her throat. “I don’t know what to do.”
Her breath caught.
My hand drifted over her shoulder, then down her arm, under the covers. “He won’t talk to me, and he barely talks to Dee. Most of the time, he’s locked up in his bedroom or out wandering the woods. I follow him, and he knows, but he…”
“He needs time, right?” She kissed the tip of my nose. “He’s been through a lot, Daemon.”
I smoothed my hand to her hip. “I know. Anyway…” Lying in bed with Kat, I didn’t want to focus on anything but her. Not now. We had a few precious moments when it was just her and me, and nothing else. I shifted toward Kat, rolling her onto her back. My hands were braced on either side of her head, holding my weight off her as I hovered above. “I’ve been remiss in my duties.”
Kat’s stormy gray eyes softened.
“I haven’t spent a lot of time with you.” I kissed her right temple and then her left. “But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about you.”
Her hands settled on my upper arms. “I know you’ve been occupied.”
I traced a path with my lips over the arch of her brow. “Do you?”
She nodded.
Moving my weight to my right arm, I lifted my other hand and cupped her chin, tilting her head back. Our eyes met. “How are you dealing?”
“I’m dealing,” she said. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
I swept my thumb under her full bottom lip. “Your voice…”
She cleared her throat with a wince. “It’s getting much better.”
It really wasn’t getting better. I moved my thumb to her jaw and chased the stubborn line. “Not enough, but it’s growing on me.”
Kat smiled, catching my heart. “It is?”
I nodded and then kissed her sweetly, a soft taste of what I wanted. “It’s kind of sexy.” Then again, I found everything about her sexy. I kissed her again, this time deeper. The tip of my tongue teased the seam of her lush mouth. “The whole raspy thing, but I wish—”
“Don’t.” She clasped my cheeks. “I’m okay. And we have enough things to worry about than my vocal cords. In the big scheme of things, that’s nowhere near the top of the list.”
I arched a brow.
Kat giggled and then sobered. “I have missed you.”
“I know. You can’t live without me.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Just admit it.”
“There you go. That ego of yours getting in the way,” she teased.
I kissed just below her jaw. “Of what?”
“The perfect package.”
I snorted. “Let me tell you, I have the perfect—”
“Don’t be gross.” She shivered, though, and I chuckled, having a feeling she really wanted to know about my “perfect package,” and I had no problem going there with her.
I slid my hand off her hip to her thigh. Hooking her leg around my hip, I loved the soft catch in her breath. “You have such a dirty mind,” I teased her. “I was going to say I’m perfect in all the ways that count.”
Laughing, she looped her arms around my neck. “Sure you were. Completely innocent, you are.”
“Oh, I’ve never claimed to be that nice.” Lowering my hips to hers, I swallowed a rough groan as she inhaled sharply. “I’m more—”
“Naughty?” Kat pressed her face into my neck, her chest rising against mine. “Yeah, I know, but you’re nice under the naughty. That’s why I love you.”