Moon Glamour Aimee Easterling (reading women TXT) 📖

if I was twelve bags of groceries waiting to be unloaded out of the car.

Chapter 14

Tank’s way of dealing with logistics was heavy-handed. “Athena will spend the night here. I’ll watch her.”

“Watch her?” Ryder’s eyebrows waggled. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

“Go home,” Tank growled. And I must have been tireder than I thought because when my eyes blinked back open, he and I were alone.

Alright then. I hadn’t invited Tank into my home, but this was better than packing up and leaving while my ankle throbbed like the pounding of a heavy-metal drummer. I would make the best of the cards I’d been dealt.

“There’s an air mattress in the closet.” I sucked in a deep breath and started hobbling in that direction, but Tank was in front of me. Immovable. He didn’t bring his hands down on my shoulders this time, but he did sidestep to prevent me from walking around him.

“The couch,” he rumbled, “will be fine.”

“It’s ratty. I mean, not actually ratty. No vermin. But this isn’t the cabin in the woods I always wanted.” I tended to run at the mouth when tired, and now was no exception.

Arms swept me up as Tank asked, “What would your dream cabin look like?”

One of his hands was beneath my knees as if I was a child; the other cradled my back. I was airborne. Tingling everywhere his fingers touched. And, at the same time, relaxing in a way I hadn’t since my mother died.

Perhaps that’s why I answered his nosy question. “There’d be light. Lots of light for painting.”

Tank hummed as he carried me toward my bedroom without asking for instructions. He’d already scouted it out while I was locked in the hallway, I gathered. Plus, it wasn’t as if there were many doors to choose between.

“What else?” Tank rumbled.

I tried to squash my lips shut, but they kept flapping. “A potbelly stove. The roar of a waterfall rather than traffic outside.”

Tank was silent as he lowered me onto the bed, mattress so soft it almost made up for my ankle throbbing. I blinked. How exactly had Tank managed to pull the sheets and blankets down while holding me? Everything was turning fuzzy, the weight of the day and my choices falling down on my head.

“Do you need both of these pillows?” Tank demanded.

“What?” I pried my eyes open with an effort. I couldn’t believe I’d fallen asleep with Tank looming over me. I needed to wait until he was out in the living room then push my dresser under the door knob. The effort wouldn’t keep me safe, but it might slow Tank down in case his animal nature came to the fore in the night....

“Do you,” Tank repeated more slowly, “need both of these pillows?”

There was no animal in his eyes. Or what I could see of his eyes before he twisted his head away from me. That habitual gesture drove me crazy. I might have growled, just a little bit.

“Athena?”

Right. The pillow. I fumbled for the spare I’d bought so Harper would stop bugging me. “If you only own one pillow, you’re telling the world you want to sleep alone for the rest of your life.”

“Here,” I said, handing my sister-silencing pillow over to the first man I’d willingly allowed to visit my apartment since moving here. Of course he wouldn’t want to bed down with only couch cushions to support him. “There are sheets in the closet....”

My jaw cracked as I lost words to a yawn so intense it brought tears to my eyes. And when I wiped them away, Tank was gone.

No, not gone. His fingers settled on my injured ankle. Gentle as butterflies, they lifted my foot and slipped the sister-silencing pillow beneath it.

When exhausted, I lost my filter. That’s the only explanation I can give for the words that slipped out of my lips. “Mai is one lucky woman.”

“Mai?” I smelled Tank’s confusion one second before a huge hand settled on my forehead as gently as a cloud kissing a mountaintop. “You mean my alpha’s mate?”

Absurd as it was, his answer softened the mattress yet further. I’d forgotten, for a second, that Lupe wasn’t Tank’s alpha. That he answered to another shifter somewhere in a nearby territory.

But that wasn’t what my tired brain fixated on. Instead, it drew other connections.

Mai wasn’t Tank’s mate. Kira wasn’t his daughter.

A feather of breath fluttered against my forehead. “Dream about your cabin,” Tank murmured. “You’ll have it someday. You deserve it.”

I forgot about the dresser and the doorknob and let myself drift into the healing silence of sleep.

HOURS LATER, I WOKE to an empty apartment. Crutches leaned against my bedside, which should have chilled me. After all, it meant Tank had entered my room while I was sleeping and I hadn’t noticed. Instead, I leveraged myself to my feet, tested my ankle, then winced as swollen muscles twinged beneath my weight.

“Tank?” I called, sliding the crutches beneath my armpits.

No one answered. When I limped my way out into the combined kitchen/dining/living room, the only sign that he’d ever been there was a nearly invisible dent in the couch cushions.

Well, that’s not quite true. There were other signs when I widened my search perimeter.

For example, the reek of wolf urine in the entranceway had been replaced by the cheap chemical aroma of my dish soap. When I opened the repaired door, I discovered a metal plate on the inside of the door jamb, presumably to make it harder to kick in. And....

“Are you ready to go?”

The voice just out of sight in the hallway wasn’t Tank’s. I jumped, a bad idea with crutches. Especially when no helpful hands were there to catch me when I fell.

Luckily, the door was once again solid. I clung to the knob and got one crutch back under me while holding the other out like a weapon. “Who are you?”

Because the speaker was now visible. A well-dressed man stood just outside