Free Brock by Kathi S. Barton Page A

mesmerized by watching her brush it out after they’d gotten out of the shower that he’d taken her back to bed and made love to her again. He needed to curb himself though. He knew she was sore.
    “ She’s nervous about being around you all. She seems to think that one or all of you are going to pounce on her about her becoming my mate.” Jules looked at him oddly. “She’s a little insecure. Okay, a lot insecure. But if you knew her story like I did, you’d understand completely.”
    Jules laughed and handed him a package. He’d been handing them out since they ’d gotten there. He took it and set it aside. He needed to ask him something.
    “You’ve done some research on our history, right?” Jules nodded. “Something happened today that I don’t…I think I even scared Ryland. I’ve always known that I have more than one cat in me. One of them I call the beast and he’s very aggressive, but the other is my cat that I can control. The beast? Today I couldn’t control him. I mean, at all. He took me, and no matter how hard I tried to hold him back, he wouldn’t obey.”
    Jules looked at Em, then at him. “Who was with you? Her, I’m assuming, but whom else?”
    He told him what Peter was doing there and what they’d done. Jules didn’t speak for a long while, and Brock just let him run things through his mind. Jules was a thinker, and he was damned good at it. When he did turn to him, he looked confused.
    “Let me talk to Keith. He has everything about our history downloaded on the computer. Maybe…let me talk to him first. But as I can see whatever it is, it’s over, right?” Brock nodded. “I’ll get back to you.”
    He stood up and went to Keith. Before he could protest that he didn’t have to leave his party to look now, he was also worried that he felt compelled to do it right now. He reached for Em when she moved past him and pulled her into his lap. She looked up at him, and her eyes glazed over from need.
    “You’re not going to be able to walk if you look at me like that much longer.” She kissed his mouth quickly and tried to stand. “No. If you look at me like you’re hungry, then you have to give me a proper kiss.”
    “But a proper kiss to you involves a bed or shower and no clothes.” He wiggled his brows at her. “Behave or I’ll tell your mother what we did in her driveway before pulling all the way up here.”
    He growled low and nipped at her neck. “You mean when you came in my mouth, or when I came in yours?”
    He’d had to have her and pulled over and laid her back on the seat of his truck and tore her panties off her. He was glad she’d had on a little skirt or he might have had to take her shopping again. Christ, he just couldn’t get enough of her. When she tried to stand again, he let her. His mom was giving him the look that made him feel ten again.
    When she sat beside him , he knew that he was either in big trouble or…hell, he was in big trouble. She wrapped her arm around him, and he kissed her forehead. When she didn’t speak at first, he simply watched Ryland’s little girl as she played with the toys that hung over her as she lay on the floor.
    “Did you know that you’re the only child I had that I couldn’t control?” He looked at her. “When you were a child, even a baby, I was terrified you were going to get hurt. You did more often than not, but soon you learned to fall, and then more and more…or I guess less and less, you didn’t need me following you around with a first-aid kit.”
    “I need you. I always will.” He wrapped his arm around her just as she’d done to him. “Mom, I don’t know if you heard or not, but I had a problem today.”
    “ Ryland already asked me. And I don’t know. He said that…you frightened him, I think. He said you’d been more wild tiger than you normally were, and that your human side was nowhere he could find in the cat’s mind.” He nodded. That’s how it had felt too. He was there, but