Free A Werewolf's Valentine: BBW Wolf Shifter Paranormal Romance by Zoe Chant Page B

important.”
    For all the wrong reasons, McKenzi thought. But at fourteen, what were the right reasons?
    West said, “Self-defense it is. We can get a start on that when McKenzi has to go to work, okay?”
    “Thanks!” Rolf took off, as usual banging the door behind him.
    West said to McKenzi, “I wasn’t sure what to say there.”
    McKenzi said, “I was all ready to add that to the Valentine’s Day hate list, but it would be true for any dance. And it’s not all about impressing a girl. Yeah, he’s been getting into trouble, but mostly with his temper, and he did get into a shoving fight with a friend. But this Olsen kid is different. His dad used to hassle Uncle Lee back in their high school days, I know that much. And from everything Rolf has said, his kid sounds like a dedicated bully.”
    “That kind is usually motivated by anger,” West said. “And under that, as often as not, pain. If they aren’t mean by nature.”
    “I don’t know what the Olsens’ issues are. But I’d like to thank you in my own way. And as for work, I’ve got four hours, thirty minutes, and . . . twenty seconds?”
    His eyes widened, and glowed.
    The space around them seemed to shrink to its own world—no, it expanded all the way to the edge of the universe, all heat and light, thrumming to the syncopated beat of their hearts. She spread her fingers, wanting to touch all of him as her questions vanished like smoke. He was life, and all life was him—
    She arched as his hands cupped and kneaded her breasts, then stroked down over the softness of her belly to her hips. She’d always been content in her body—any guy who didn’t like her size was an instant turnoff—but with West she felt beautiful, every contour radiant from the tender savoring of his touch.
    His hot breath scorched her lips before they came together in a shaking, devouring kiss, annihilating space and time. No boundary existed between them; every communication, every negotiation, carried out in the dance of press, release, demand, surrender: tongues and fingers, lips and teeth, his two-day stubble and her long hair, each sparked sensations that added to the conflagration burning in her core higher, and yet impossibly higher, as she whimpered with want, far beyond mere words.
    That was when he slid his fingers up between her legs, pausing to caress, ever so slowly, the tender skin inside her thighs. When he finally cupped her hot, throbbing sex, her core had become the pulse point of the entire world.
    As she opened to him, his thumb found her clit. Again he sent her shooting skyward into blinding ecstasy. He took her from behind, and then she rode him, and finally they finished in the shower, and stumbled to the bed, boneless with contentment.
    When it was time to dress for work, she picked up the apron, now fresh from the dryer. When she looked at it, she no longer saw Pepto-Bismol pink hearts and ruffles. She saw his heated gray gaze, felt the tender command of his hands, remembered her delicious surrender.
    And he’d be there when she came home.
    She left with a smile.
     
     

 
    Eight
     
     
    West
     
     
     
    He watched McKenzi go out to her car, enjoying the prowling cat swing of her delightfully curvy hips, and the little prancy lilt in her walk, emphasized by the contrasting parabola of her glossy hair swishing against her shoulder blades. She was so very . . . cat.
    He had never been captivated by a cat—but this one filled his entire world.
    When her car vanished down the lane toward the center of town, he retreated back inside. Rolf would show up any minute, but right now all he could think about was McKenzi. His wolf stirred in him, contentment harmonizing with West’s own sense of completion and contentment.
    It wasn’t just the afternoon of fantastic sex, though he deeply appreciated the fact that he’d had more sex in the last couple of days than in the last few months. It was the intensity of it, the her of it. In the past he’d