Page 33 of Tamed Wolf

“Well, there goes that plan. You like to walk? Let’s see. You’re probably just crawling now, huh? Here, you can stand on my feet, and I’ll help you take some steps. Just don’t tell your daddies I taught you better ways to get in trouble.”

He starts giggling and it just completely lifts my mood. Eventually he starts fussing and straining towards a light up aquarium toy that’s sitting in another pile, so I set him down and let him crawl over there, digging for it. I turn it on for him and watch as he sits there, mesmerized as the glitter floats around inside and a simple melody plays.

“That is pretty cool, I can see why you love it so much. Oh, for me? Thank you, Rowan.” I press the button and then hand it back, only for him to repeat the process when it goes off again.

It’s very entertaining until he sees my socks, and then suddenly he’s desperate to grab onto them so he can try to pull them off.

The guys are all in their rooms, so I don’t think much about taking the sock off and showing it to him. It’s dirty from walking around their place so I’m not going to let him hold it, but he’s fascinated as I put it back on. Of course, he just wants it off again. “Really wish I could be so easily entertained. Things would be far better if I could.”

“What the fuck happened to your foot?”

I freeze and then slowly slide the sock back on, but Blake is there scooping me up, throwing me on his lap while he sits on the sofa nearby. He grips my ankle gently and pulls my sock off, probing around the injury.

“This looks like fucking silver. How many times they burned you here?”

“Not a lot of places they can injure me when I’m usually wearing next to nothing and making them money. Customers don’t like blemishes. Shoes are easy enough to slide on though, I just can’t wear the platforms with the clear straps on them. Hardly bothers me anymore, I’m used to it. You don’t need to worry about it.”

His voice gets low, and it’s so fucked up that it makes me shiver with need.

“We’re way beyond worrying right now, Lark. I see a stunning woman with a spirit that’s been crushed over and over it seems, yet she continues to be able to shine so fucking bright. If you were mine…fuck. If you were mine, you’d be so fucking worshipped, Lark. We might have been talking out of our asses when you were dancing for us yesterday, but only because you came on so fucking potent. I don’t think you realize half of the allure you have. You want to know what I was thinking but was too chicken shit to say while you were dancing for us?”

I try to wiggle, desperate to put a little space between us because this just got heavy so damn quick, and all the others are in the room now as well, witnessing everything happening, and it’s…too much like a pack. “I don’t think I want to, actually. Whether you’re just playing with me because I seem like easy prey, or whether I’m something pretty you want to play with for a bit and try to fix before moving on, this isn’t going to go anywhere good for me. I really appreciate the help last night, but I think I need to get home.”

“Wrong answer,” Beckett says as he falls to his knees in front of me. He cups my face and tilts my head, so I’m forced to watch him strike the blow. “I was so damn confused by how fucking incredible you smelled, and the way you called to my wolf the second you entered that room, I was thinking you looked a hell of a lot like you were mine. We spent the rest of the night stupidly trying to catch a glimpse of you, and if you’d have walked back into that room once you walked out, you’d have found us more or less face down on the floor because the way you worked us up and connected to us fucking wrecked every damn one of us.”

I clear my throat, desperate to cut some of this tension. “Aren’t you uh, at least a little worried about your kid learning some of this vulgar language?”

“You’re not getting out of this that easily,” Blake says as he catches my attention again. His thumb is rubbing along the arch of my foot softly, his long fingers wrapped around my ankle, and fucking hell it feels like he’s stroking me in much more intimate places.

“This is about more than playing with something pretty; we’ve had pretty and it fucking sucked. The three of us didn’t really have the time to talk about what it was we all really felt when you walked in that room, but I’m on the same page as him. I was confused why you hit so hard when I already had the chance to have a mate.”

“I actually needed to remember I had proof that Arabella was our mate,” Brooks admits as he bounces Rowan on his hip. “It was… I don’t know what it was, but it got me deep. Are you telling us you didn’t feel it? Are we just totally coming off as obsessed creeps that fell in love at first sight?”

“L-love?” I choke out. “You don’t know the first thing about me, and there’s just so much…” I lose words and freeze, and then it just washes over me and completely drowns out anything I wanted to argue.

I can’t lie and tell them I felt nothing, because there was a damn good reason I was so eager to snatch up the phone I found with the three of them on the wallpaper. It’s just cruel that somebody is finally trying to make a big, romantic gesture when I’m way past my prime and have lived through so much shit already. I’ll never be able to give them what they need, and that really fucking sucks.

“Woah, woah, woah, why are you crying, angel?”

“Why couldn’t you guys have been around when I was younger? I hate that it’s taken me this long to finally be interested in another wolf, only for the timing to be so incredibly off. You’re what, 25, 26? I’ll be 40 in a few months. I don’t like being tempted by things I can’t actually have.”

“Baby, we are 100% available.”

“You aren’t getting it. Let’s just…can we get out of here? Take me home, or…whatever it is you are convinced we need to do?”

“We’re going to win you over, Lark, mark my words. We’ve got some time to prove it. We’re just going to make sure you know we’re serious. That starts with taking care of this issue with your asshole exes. How many we talking here, by the way?”

“Two. I don’t see much of Ivan anymore; I think he at some point realized he wasn’t doing me any favors. Trevor though…Trevor you need to watch out for. He can get nasty. You guys have a baby to worry about; I really wish you’d just let this go and keep him away from all this.”

“That sucks. Because we want Rowan to grow up knowing you always do the right thing, especially if you think you can help someone who needs it. We’ll keep him safe. And we’ll do it while we get you to fall for us.”

Chapter Fourteen

Beckett, Now

We spend way too much damn time combing through records that day, and the only consolation has been that while our parents have been all too happy to play with Rowan while we look, Lark has been getting more and more comfortable with us touching her.

I know we’re all pushing our luck here, stepping up too close behind her as we reach for something, sitting too close on couches, blatantly pulling her legs over our laps, but at some point during the day, she stopped flinching or freezing when it happened.

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