Gannon smiles an arrogant smile that’s entirely too attractive for such a pain in the ass. His dark hair drifts down over his ear, and he shoves it impatiently back in a move that would make me look like a hot mess, but simply makes him look—well, hot.
I clear my throat and try to stave off the flush I feel climbing up my chest.
“Are you doing okay with everything?” he asks me, genuine concern radiating in his eyes and tone.
I’m touched by the earnest warmth he’s showing me, but I’m annoyed by the question all the same. I shove the blanket off me and gather up my empty donut bowl.
“I wish people would stop asking me that,” I grumble, abandoning him in the living room and wandering into the kitchen in search of something to do other than fester under his intense stare. “What does it even mean anyway?” I lob over my shoulder while I turn on the sink and start rinsing the dishes.
“Well, last time I looked in my big boy dictionary, it’s a question that checks someone’s emotional temperature,” Gannon answers, ditching his comfy seat in the living room to follow me into the kitchen. His bare feet make almost no sound on the wood floors, even to my newly sensitive ears.
I scoff and roll my eyes. “You want to check my emotional temperature?”
“I figured this would be easier than the old-fashioned method of shoving a feelings thermometer up your ass, but if you’re old school, I’m up for it.”
I shoot Gannon an unamused look and leave my dishes in the sink, turning on the water and plucking a sponge from its fancy little holder on the counter. Leave it to Ruger to have a top-of-the-line setup just for washing dishes.
“You’d be the last person I’d let shove anything up my ass,” I snark, soaping up my bowl and then a mixing bowl that was left to soak in the sink.
“You keep telling yourself that, kitten,” he counters without missing a beat.
Gannon moves closer, much closer, and I stiffen when he brushes up against me. I open my mouth, ready to tear into the presumptuous prick, when he reaches up and opens a cabinet next to me. His torso skims my back in a way that’s hella fucking distracting. My breath catches just as he presses in further, pinning my hips to the counter.
What’s he doing? Images of him grabbing my hips, spinning me around, and kissing the life out of me flicker through my head.
He pulls out a rolled drying mat and sets it next to the sink.
Bastard.
I expect him to step away then, anticipating the separation. I ignore the disappointment that flickers through me at that thought. But his body continues to bracket mine.
Awareness heightened, those shifter hormones that have been flaring all day start buzzing impatiently. His left arm reaches around in front of me…
And joins his right arm as he unrolls the drying mat.
“Ruger doesn’t like water spots on his counters,” he practically whispers in my ear, and goose bumps skitter up my arms at his tantalizing tone and proximity, the words themselves irrelevant. My fingers grasp the bowl so tightly that I’m surprised it doesn’t crack.
My eyes become glued to the way the veins in his forearm move and his muscles stretch as he takes the bowl out of my hands and puts it onto the mat.
I’m panting by the time he steps back.
Spraying a can of Raid on the butterflies fluttering around my stomach, I take a deep breath to center myself and try to think of something else other than how good he smells.
“How did that wolf in the woods mindspeak to me?” I ask, proud of how steady my tone is as I scoop my mind out of the gutter it’s trying to slink into. My libido hisses at me. That wanton hussy doesn’t want to crawl out of that trench, she wants to swim in it, lounge around in every debauched, obscene moment she can think of.
Not on my watch.
I turn to study Gannon, who’s leaning back against the island countertop, arms crossed over his wrinkle-free white T-shirt that’s clearly been ironed to perfection. Weirdo.
His brow furrows at my question as if he’s confused.
“I thought you all said mindspeak didn’t work with just anyone,” I explain. “We can use it because your den bit me. But I thought it required a connection between wolves. Unless you’re the alpha. How did that wolf talk to me today? Is he an alpha?”
I’ve asked this question before to Alpha Morgan, and he said he wasn’t sure, but they have to have some theory or guess, and it’s bugging the shit out of me. I don’t want those bastards in my head.
Gannon’s muscles tighten with anger, and fury settles in his eyes. “There’s no way another alpha entered Arcan territory without us knowing. That would be an act of war.”
I gulp but can’t quite manage to swallow down the boulder that appears in my throat. I have to speak around it, voice narrow and strained as I ask, “Okay…then how?”
His lips twist in frustration. “I don’t know,” he admits, echoing Alpha Morgan, the last word more snarl than speech. I get the impression that Gannon likes unanswered questions about as much as I do. “He shouldn’t have been able to,” he adds, fist clenching and then unclenching.
My stomach dips. Some of that fear that I couldn’t seem to muster up when all four men were in the room wriggles through the cracks in my defenses. It widens them and makes them bigger fractures full of worry.
I grab a dish towel from the island and start drying the bowls, trying to contain the barrage of possibilities floating through my mind.
“Does…does that mean they could be my mates, like he said?” I ask hesitantly, my stomach knotting up at the thought.
The silence stretches out so long that I end up repeating my question, under my breath, almost to myself. “Could they be my mates?”
“No,” Gannon answers resolutely.
“But how do you know?” I challenge, annoyance riding my tone.
“Because I know. That’s not how this works,” he gestures from me to him. “You were claimed by our den. Unless another den bites you and overrides that claim, your connection is to us, no one else.”
“Could they have bitten me when they attacked me? Before they left me in the forest?”
“Even if they did, it doesn’t matter. Because I bit you. And right then and there, our claim, our bite, would override any others. Trust me. You’re ours, Noah. No one else’s. I don’t give a shit what some mongrel says. If they wanted to claim you the honorable way, they could challenge our den. They haven’t and they won’t. And that tells me all I need to know about these spineless fuckers.”
The declaration and his vehemence has heat dipping low in my stomach and warming me from the inside out. I start wiping the counters with the dish towel in my hands, fighting against the toe-curling sensation that washes through me.
Why do I like that so much?
My inner thighs tremble at the idea that he’s staking a claim.
Gannon shadows me, following me around the kitchen, but keeping his distance. I can’t tell if he’s stalking me or being protective. Maybe both. But it makes some primal desire rise up. My cheeks heat as I pretend not to notice what he’s doing, pretend to be casual as I walk over to the far counter next to one of the fridges and wipe away imaginary specks of dust.