Page 185 of Tenderfoot

“It is not. Trust me, I’d notice,” I replied.

He grinned roguishly.

I rolled my eyes.

His grin died and he threaded his fingers into the side of my hair.

“You good?”

I smiled brightly at him. “Did you not hear me mention your boy parts are healthy and functioning, something I very recently tested out?”

His lips twitched but his voice lowered. “They’re celebrating your brother’s birthday right now.”

Ugh.

I did a face plant in his chest.

As I did, he allowed his fingers to sift through my hair to cup the back of my head.

“You’re not good,” he muttered.

I turned so my cheek was to his chest and said, “I’d be lying if I told you I haven’t been thinking about it all evening.” I switched positions again to rest my chin on the back of my stacked hands so I could catch his eyes. “But I made my decision. If cutting the toxicity out of your life was easy, people would do it without thinking about it. The thing is, it’s not. You just have to stay the course.”

“Yeah, you do,” he said softly, then he did fabulous things to my girl parts (and my heart) when his deep voice veritably crooned, “My good girl with a spine of steel, staying the course.”

“Stop making me want to cry,” I demanded. Or orgasm, I did not say.

“Okay, then, how’d it go when you, your girls and my boys went to confront my father?”

I couldn’t stop my eyes from going really, really big.

But of course, he’d figure it out.

I was in the midst of trying to decide if I should lie to him (for now) or come clean (I had to schedule my How to Deal with an Alpha classes, tout de suite), when he wrapped his arms around me and rolled us so I was on my back and he was mostly on me, just down my side.

“I knew it was going to happen the minute I lost it after I shut the door on them this morning,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I know I promised not to do it, but I just…you were just…”

“Babe, I had a word with your dad yesterday. I get what you were just.”

So, he did do it.

Yikes.

And.

Yay!

He was so totally falling for me too!

“How’d that go?” I asked.

“You first,” he countered.

Ugh again.

“Julia was there,” I started.

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