Page 94 of Rocky Top

If I hadn’t run to him, if I’d been just a few minutes later, Flint’s betrayal could’ve taken everything from me before I had the chance to even claim it.

Rocky let out a soft groan and blinked up at me, blue eyes cloudy from sleep but locking on to mine with laser focus.

“Mornin’, sunshine,” he rasped, his voice wrecking me.

I pulled the sheet tighter around me as I climbed out of bed, padding barefoot across the hardwood floor of his childhood home. Thinking of him living here as a kid. That made something flutter deep in my belly.

“You hungry?” I called over my shoulder.

He chuckled. “Always. But not for food.”

“Behave.”

“Make me.”

I rolled my eyes and opened the fridge. Predictably, since he didn’t live here, it held exactly one carton of eggs, a bottle of hot sauce, two beers, and an unopened jar of pickles. I grabbed the eggs.

“Scrambled okay?” I asked.

He groaned. “Woman, you makin’ me breakfast in my bed, naked? I might propose.”

I turnedand gave him a playful glare. “You so much as mention jewelry and I swear to God I’ll burn these eggs.”

“Fine,” he muttered. “But I get to pick the music.”

He pulled his phone off the charger and soon enough the speakers kicked on with an old country song that fit the moment just right. Something about ridin’ or dyin’ or shootin’ a man over love.

Romantic.

I cracked eggs into the skillet, trying to focus on breakfast and not the fact that I still felt Rocky inside me.

Not just from last night.

But in that deeper, scarier way.

In the bond.

The mark.

I touched the faint indentation where his wolf had claimed me. It was already healing, but I could feel it humming with power, heat curling under my skin like embers under ash.

He came up behind me, shirtless, in nothing but jeans slung low on his hips, and wrapped his arms around my waist.

“You’re thinkin’ loud,” he said, mouth brushing my neck.

“You can hear me?”

“Notin words.”

“Even now?”

He pressed his hand over my chest, where my heart stuttered.

“Especially now.”

I turned in his arms, forgetting the eggs, and looked up at him.

“Is this what being claimed means?” I asked. “Feeling each other like this?”

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