were little shreds of purple silk littering the floor around us. It looked like pastel confetti. Very expensive pastel confetti.
“You destroyed my underwear,” I said.
“Well, yeah, it was in my way,” Cooper said, as if that justified mutilating La Perla.
“You just destroyed four hundred dollars’ worth of underwear,” I told him.
Cooper paled. “You pay four hundred dollars for underwear?”
“Yes.”
Cooper chewed on his lip. “I would say that’s ridiculous, but really, it’s worth every penny.” His grin was, well, wolfish. “You’d better start a tab for me.”
“Oh, no,” I said, poking him in the chest. “You will treat my lingerie with the reverence it deserves. Next time, you will stop and appreciate—hell, you’ll marvel at the miracle of my ass clad in silk.”
“Next time, huh?”
“Oh, shut up, you know there’s going to be a next time,” I muttered. I looked down at his lap, and my eyes widened. “Well, it’s a little sooner than I thought it would be . . .”
Cooper pulled me under him, pinning me to the floor. “Quick recovery time. One of the perks.”
I sighed as he began a long, slow slide inside me.
Werewolves could be such horndogs.
IN THE MORNING, I woke in my bed to find Cooper curled around me, his body warming me even with the blankets kicked to the floor.
I yawned and stretched, enjoying the new twinges and aches. My muscles screamed, We had sex, lots and lots of athletic sex!
Cooper snuffled in his sleep and threw an arm around me when he felt me move. I chuckled, inhaling the sleepy scent of his skin. He drew my back against his chest and tucked his chin over my shoulder, which was quickly becoming my favorite way to be held. “Morning,” he grumbled, his voice just as gruff as you’d expect a werewolf’s to be first thing in the morning.
“Hi,” I said, enjoying the way his stubble gently scratched at my neck. “Hungry?”
“Always,” he said, yawning as I clambered out of bed.
I shrugged into my robe. Cooper wrapped a sheet around his waist, as he’d apparently abandoned his pants somewhere in the woods. We raided my fridge for a breakfast of French toast and bacon. I laid out two full packages of bacon to fry, more than I could eat in weeks. But I’d seen the way Cooper could throw down the pork products at the saloon. I was going to have to spend a lot more on groceries if he hung around often.
I tamped that thought down. Making plans for Cooper was dangerous. As far as I knew, this was a one-time thing. Still, I was already certain that I wouldn’t sleep with another man while I was here. What was the point now? Brad Pitt could be stranded outside my door in a blizzard, begging me to use my body heat to prevent him from getting hypothermia, and any number of tricks he could come up with would not compare to Cooper and the Mighty Morphin Power Penis. Alert the male population of Grundy: I was ruined for all other men.
Of course, the number of orgasms I’d had in the last nine hours would probably keep me for the next year, so I was grateful either way.
So, instead of calculating my sexual schedule or lack thereof over the next few months, I mixed the French toast batter and thought of Evie, of how smug she would be if she knew how completely her Cooper-related predictions had come true. And how absolutely unnerved I was by Cooper’s intent interest in my movements around the kitchen, something that didn’t go unnoticed by Cooper.
“So I guess I make you a little nervous, huh?” he asked, smirking.
“No,” I said, huffing out a laugh. “Why would you say that?”
“Because you’re putting garlic in the French toast,” he said, nodding toward the bowl, where I was indeed sprinkling garlic salt with beaten eggs, vanilla, and brown sugar. I smiled, rolled my eyes, and dumped the bowl into the sink to start over.
“That was not because of you, that was because I don’t have my glasses on,” I told him primly.
“Yeah, yeah, futile denials of my animal magnetism don’t put French toast in my belly. Hurry up, woman.”
“Nice.” I snorted, cracking more eggs. “So, you realize that we can never tell Evie about this, because she will gloat for all time.”
“I’m willing to enter the sexual witness-relocation program as long as they place us in the same city.”
“Agreed.”
“So, what do you want to do today?” he asked, watching as I slid the first slices of battered bread into the frying pan. I tried to hide the trill of happy nerves. He wanted to stay. The proud intellectual portion of my brain made well-organized, thoughtful arguments for us to get to know each other better, while the hornier, dumber cranial lobes screamed, Sex! More sex! Let’s hear more of Cooper’s orgasm noises! Naked Cooper, now!
I tried to be more eloquent than my id.
“Well, pardon me for pointing this out, but you don’t have any clothes here,” I said, trying to look innocent. “It kind of limits our options.”
He grinned. “I was hoping you’d notice.”
“You know, you don’t have to put up a ‘dating guy’ front with me. If you want to spend the day having sex, that’s all you have to say.”
“We may have to call in the National Guard to airlift us more condoms,” Cooper said, snickering and pulling me into his lap.
“I bought the economy pack at Bulk Wonderland,” I told him. “I think we’re covered.” Cooper’s expression flip-flopped from paralyzed fear to outright joy. I shrugged. “I like to be prepared.”
WHEN I WOKE on Monday morning, Cooper was gone. He’d left a note on his pillow saying he had to meet an elk-hunting party at Becker Ridge. The weather was stable, if a bit cold, and as long as it held, he would be gone for three or four days. He promised to come back as soon as possible. “Do me a favor,” he wrote. “Don’t wash me away. Wash your hair, your face, anything but the scent of me from your body. It’s a wolf thing. I’ll explain when I get back.”
“Ew,” I said, wrinkling my nose. Cooper was going to have to deal with my indifference to “wolf things,” because I was not taking a three-day bathing break. “Surely, this is some sort of practical joke at my expense,” I said to myself.
I stepped into the shower and reached for my body wash. And I found I didn’t want to wash him away. Not because he told me not to, but I liked being able to smell him on my skin, that musky woodruff and spice flavor. And I hoped, wherever he was, he hadn’t washed me away, either, that I would stay with him.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I grumbled, shutting off the shower and moving over to the sink. I ran the water hot and shampooed my hair carefully. I took what I considered a conscientious sponge bath and prayed I wouldn’t develop noticeable BO over the next few days.
I dressed for work and bundled into one of my “mid-range” coats for milder winter weather. It was only supposed to get down into the twenties that day. I loved how the locals said “only in the twenties,” as if it was no big deal. In Mississippi, a half-inch of snow would close the schools for three days and cause a panic at Wal-Mart. There is some sort of instinct coded into Southern DNA that sends us all running for the bread and milk aisle at the slightest sign of frozen precipitation. Snow days were a rare and precious thing when I was growing up. So it seemed wrong, somehow, to be getting ready for a workday when I could see a blanket of white out of my window. But work would keep my mind off Cooper, which was a much-preferred alternative to mooning and cabin fever.
I stepped out onto the porch. The ground was covered in an increasingly fluffy blanket of white. The air seemed cleaner. The day was quieter, the earth and its sounds slightly muffled. Everything crackled and shone in the bright but somehow shallow light. I stood still for a long minute, taking it all in. I felt blessed to be able to see that sort of beauty, to know that this was home. I was grateful to Tim for breaking off our engagement. Hell, I was grateful to my parents for driving me across the continent, if it meant I could wake up to this. Charmed, I took one step off of my porch andFWIP! Splat!
I was laid out on my back like a rag doll. I lay there for a long, silent moment, staring at the foot-long, obscenely shaped icicles that clung to the edge of my porch roof, and flashed back to the scene in A Christmas Story, where Ralphie Parker fakes an ice-related eye injury. Was Mrs. Parker right? Did people really die from icicle injuries? This would be an extremely embarrassing way to meet one’s maker—impaled through the head with
