Wild Invitation

in a fleeting but undeniably possessive caress. “You know Todd likes tea.”
    Yes, definitely possessive. “I’ve had meals with him and Vivienne lots of times.” She poured Cooper a cup of coffee, added cream from the little bottle she’d slipped in. “I also know a certain lieutenant,” she whispered, “doesn’t particularly care for Shamus’s manly black coffee.”
    His lips kicked up at the corners at the gentle tease as he accepted the cup, and it did something to her to know she’d made him smile. “Thank you, Grace.”
    Simple, everyday words, and yet they sounded akin to a caress. When Shamus asked him something, Grace chanced a look up, hungry to drink in the sight of him without worrying about matters of dominance. Except he looked back for a single electric second before returning his attention to the senior soldier.
    In that instant, Grace felt her entire body come to life…even as she once again caught the shadows of pain in the midnight depths of his gaze. Unable to understand how no one elsesaw the hurt he carried within, she waited until the others had headed back to work, with Cooper remaining behind—ostensibly to talk to her about a maintenance issue—to say, “Cooper? Are you okay?”
    An instant’s stillness before he handed her an empty thermos to pack away. “Sure. Little stressed with this slip, I guess.”
    His refusal to admit to his hurt was no surprise. Grace was well aware that often, the only way a woman could get a dominant male to open up was to ram at his defenses. Only she wasn’t the ramming kind, wasn’t even sure she had that right, their relationship a nascent thing. “Will you walk me back a little ways?”
    “Anytime.” He slung the bag over his shoulder.
    Grace stopped once they were around the corner and out of sight of the rest of the team. Then she did what came naturally to
her
in this situation and slipped her arms around the muscled heat of his body, the scent of clean, male sweat and Cooper in her lungs. “I’m sorry for whatever it is that’s put that look in your eyes.”
    His arms came around her, his cheek rubbing against her temple as her wolf rubbed up against his in an effort to offer comfort. In that instant, she felt no fear at this strength, only the need to temper his pain.
    “I’m fine,” he murmured. “Especially now that I’m holding you.”
    Frustration clawed through her at his stonewalling, but Cooper wasn’t a man who’d trust easily. That he’d accepted her need to care for him, accepted her affection when he had to be feeling vulnerable, it was a powerful step. So she just held him, stroking his back until she felt the final fragments of tension leave his body…and when he rubbed his nose playfully against her own, she shyly petted him with a slow dance of a kiss that made champagne bubble through her veins.
    •   •   •
    COOPER returned to the site of the slip feeling more himself than he had since waking from the nightmare. It wasn’t the first time a submissive wolf had done or said something to heal an emotional wound in a dominant—in their own way, they were as fiercely protective as the soldiers. But it was the first time Gracehad done the same for Cooper. More, it was the first time she’d initiated skin privileges, her kiss a luscious gift that gave him all sorts of ideas about winning another from her tonight at the dinner she’d promised to have with him.
    “Everything okay in the den?” Shamus asked when Cooper got back, wiping his face on the sleeve of his T-shirt. “You were with Grace awhile.”
    “Nothing the systems and tech teams can’t handle,” he said, and gestured to a post they were planning to sink to anchor the temporary retaining mesh. It wasn’t the best option, but with more rain on the horizon, they had to get something in place, at least for the next few days. “How’re we going to get that in without causing vibrations that might further destabilize this area?”
    “I have an idea. Spoke to Todd and he thinks it’ll work.”
    As the two of them got down to work, Cooper thought again of Grace. So perceptive, his highly intelligent, intuitive engineer; seeing what no one else had, what he’d thought he’d successfully submerged. Part of him didn’t want her to see, didn’t want her to know, but another part of him howled in delight, seeing in her insight the promise of a bond that would make her his on the most elemental, most primal level.

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