Shiver

A soft touch on my neck made me whirl around, defensive, and Sam jumped back, laughing, hands up in the air. “Easy!”

I swallowed the growl in my throat, feeling stupid, and rubbed the still-tingling skin on my neck where he’d kissed it. “You should make some noise.” I gestured to the photo, still feeling uncharitable toward the unnamed girl beside him. “Who’s that?”

Sam lowered his hands and stood behind me, wrapping his arms around my stomach. His clothing smelled clean and soapy; his skin gave off hints of wolf from his near-transformation earlier. “Shelby.” He leaned his head on my shoulder, his cheek against mine.

I kept my voice light. “She’s pretty.”

Sam growled in a soft, wild way that made my gut tense with longing. He pressed his lips against my neck, not quite a kiss. “You’ve met her, you know.”

It didn’t take rocket science to figure it out. “The white she- wolf.” And then I just asked it, because I wanted to know. “Why is she looking at you like that?”

“Oh, Grace,” he said, taking his lips from my neck. “I don’t know. She’s—I don’t know. She thinks she’s in love with me. She wants to be in love with me.”

“Why?” I asked.

He gave a little laugh, not at all amused. “Why do you ask such hard questions? I don’t know. She had a bad life, I think, before she came to the pack. She likes being a wolf. She likes belonging. I guess maybe she sees how Beck and I are around each other and thinks that being with me would make her belong even more.”

“It is possible to be in love with you just because of who you are,” I pointed out.

Sam’s body tensed behind me. “But it’s not because of who I am. It’s…obsession.”

“I’m obsessed,” I said.

Sam let out a long breath and pulled away from me.

I sighed. “Shhhhh. You didn’t have to move.”

“I’m trying to be a gentleman.”

I leaned back against him, smiling at his worried eyes. “You don’t have to try so hard.”

He sucked in his breath, waited a long moment, and then carefully kissed my neck, just underneath my jawbone. I turned around in his arms so I could kiss his lips, still charmingly hesitant.

“I was thinking about the refrigerator,” I whispered.

Sam pulled back, ever so slightly, without removing himself from my arms. “You were thinking about the refrigerator?”

“Yes. I was thinking about how you didn’t know if the power would be turned on here for the winter. But it is.”

He frowned at me, and I rubbed the crease between his eyebrows.

“So who pays the power bill? Beck?” When he nodded, I went on, “There was milk in the fridge, Sam. It was only a few weeks old. Someone has been in here. Recently.”

Sam’s arms around me had loosened and his sad eyes had gone even sadder. His entire expression was complicated, his face a book in a language I didn’t understand.

“Sam,” I said, wanting to bring him back to me.

But his body had gone stiff. “I should get you home. Your parents will be worried.”

I laughed, short and humorless. “Yeah. I’m sure. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Sam shook his head, but he was clearly distracted. “I mean, not nothing. It’s been a hell of a day, that’s all. I’m just—I’m just tired, I guess.”

He did look tired, something dark and somber in his expression. I wondered if almost changing had affected him, or if I should’ve just stayed quiet about Shelby and Beck. “You’re coming home with me, then.”

He jerked his chin toward the house around him.

“C’mon,” I said. “I’m still worried that you’ll disappear.”

“I won’t disappear.”

Inadvertently, I thought of him on the floor in the hallway, curled up, making a soft noise as he struggled to stay human. I immediately wished I hadn’t. “You can’t promise that. I don’t want to go home. Not unless you’re coming with me.”

Sam groaned softly. His palms brushed the bare skin at the bottom edge of my T-shirt, his thumbs tracing desire on my sides. “Don’t tempt me.”

I didn’t say anything; just stood in his arms looking up at him.

He pushed his face against my shoulder and groaned again. “It’s so hard to behave myself around you.” He pushed away from me. “I don’t know if I should keep staying with you. God, you’re only, what—you’re only seventeen.”

“And you’re so old, right?” I said, suddenly defensive.

“Eighteen,” he said, as if it were something to be sad about. “At least I’m legal.”

I actually laughed, though nothing was funny. My cheeks felt hot and my heart pounded in my chest. “Are you kidding me?”

“Grace,” he said, and the sound of my name slowed my heart immediately. He took my arm. “I just want to do things right, okay? I only get this one chance to do things right with you.”

I looked at him. The room was silent except for the rattle of leaves blowing up against the windows. I wondered what my face looked like just then, turned up at Sam. Was it the same intense gaze that Shelby wore in the photograph? Obsession?

The frigid night pressed up against the window beside us, a threat that had become abruptly real tonight. This wasn’t about lust. It was about fear.

“Please come back with me,” I said. I didn’t know what I’d do if he said no. I couldn’t stand to return here tomorrow and find him a wolf.

Sam must have seen it in my eyes, because he just nodded and picked up the slim-jim.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN • SAM

38°F

Grace’s parents were home.

“They’re never home,” Grace said, her voice clearly spelling out her annoyance. But there they were, or at least their cars: her father’s Taurus, looking either silver or blue in the moonlight, and her mother’s little VW Rabbit tucked in front of it.

“Don’t even think of saying ‘I told you so,’” Grace said. “I’m going to go inside and see where they are, and then I’ll come back out to debrief.”

“You mean, for me to debrief you,” I corrected, tensing my muscles to keep from shivering. Whether from nerves or the memory of cold, I didn’t know.

“Yes,” Grace replied, turning off the headlights. “That. Right back.”