Bo spun around to face her. “What? Eew. No! She’s . . . she’s like . . .”

“Your mother. Oh, how sweet! You don’t want him defiling the woman who’s been like a mother to you.”

“Why are we having this conversation?”

“Because you freaked out over a half-used box of condoms.”

“Because you didn’t get out of the shower.”

“Are we back here again?”

“Yes!” he yelled. “We are!”

“Fine,” she said calmly. “Ignore the reality of your situation.”

“And what reality is that?”

“That we’re alone, naked, and with a half box of condoms.” She stood by him now and turned the box over, dumping the condoms at his big, bare feet. “See what you miss when you obsess over bullshit?”

Bo watched Blayne’s naked ass walk away. “Don’t sashay away from me,” he murmured, enjoying the view.

She gasped, stopped. “I do not sashay anywhere.” She talked with both hands now without facing him. “I may saunter. Even glide. But I do not sashay. That is for ladies of the night.”

He liked how she couldn’t—or maybe it was she simply wouldn’t—say “hookers.” Too demeaning for women probably. Too rude. Blayne hated rude.

“I don’t know,” he said, walking up to her. “Looked like a sashay to me.”

Bo brushed his fingers down her back. The damage from the accident was still there. Not nearly as healed up as his wounds were, but they were all superficial. Overall Blayne was healthy and strong, an athlete whose only limits were her own. She talked about his skills, but did she realize what she had?

He moved around her, his fingers sliding over smooth flesh. “So we have a storm outside, a house full of food, and half a box of condoms. What would you suggest we do with our time, Blayne Thorpe?”

“That’s easy. We paint each other’s toenails while talking about boys and watching John Hughes movies. If we’re feeling really adventurous we play the ‘stiff as a board, light as a feather’ game and then pray we haven’t woken up the undead.”

“I’m almost positive my uncle doesn’t have toenail polish or John Hughes movies and I don’t like talking about boys because they use me to do their homework, unaware how gorgeous I am until I take off my glasses and get that complete makeover set to a thumping eighties soundtrack.”

Her grin was wide. “Then I’m completely out of ideas.”

Bo stepped into her, nudging her back until she was plastered against the wall. “Then goddamnit, Blayne Thorpe, just fucking kiss me.”

She squinted up at him as if she were trying to see Jupiter. “I’ll need a ladder to make that happen.”

He grabbed her around the waist and lifted her up, enjoying her squealed giggles; herarms looping around his neck, her legs around his waist.

“And now?” he demanded.

“And now, I’d have to say, you have me where you want me, Marauder. Genghis would be proud.”

“Then you better kiss me quick before I burn your peasant village to the ground and take all your women as my concubines.”

“Oh, no,” she whispered, staring at his mouth. “I’m trapped between wanting to help my people and keep my innocence. What will I do?”

“What you always do, Blayne,” he told her honestly while pressing his body into hers. “Help everyone else.”

She leaned in, her hands moving from his shoulders to his face, her fingers stroking his jaw. “My God,” she whispered, her sweet breath brushing against his mouth, “the sacrifices I’m forced to make for my people.”

Blayne pressed her mouth against his, her lips parting, allowing him to slide his tongue inside and taste her. Their playful teasing stopped, both of them groaning, their hands clutching. Their heads tilting to opposite sides, allowing them to delve deeper inside the other.

Bo’s physical reaction to Blayne was immediate and powerful, instantly telling him that the best thing she’d done for either of them that first time they’d met was run from him. Because this feeling was as addictive as it could be destructive when first starting out in life. He’d have ignored everything around him simply so he could enjoy this woman’s taste and feel, again and again.

But, ten years later, there’d be no walking away. There’d be no worrying about the what ifs and the if onlys.

He finally had her, and the Marauder had no intention of ever letting her go.

Oh, man, was she in trouble. Huge trouble. “Call the priest for an exorcism, get the pope on the phone, have the police on standby” trouble.

Because this was not the sweet, patient kiss of a gentleman caller. Nor was this the more typical horny gropings of a guy she knew she’d be done with when the sun came up.

In fact, Blayne didn’t know what the hell this was, but she did know that “it” and Bo “The Marauder” Novikov were nothing but trouble. The best kind of trouble but trouble nonetheless.

Yet knowing that didn’t stop her from gripping him tighter with her legs while digging her hands into his hair. His mane had come back, tumbling down around his shoulders and to his back, and she knew the reappearance of that mane was because of her. And what red-blooded, all-American shifter girl could walk away from that? Not her that was for sure. And why should she? She was no longer the easily panicked seventeen-year-old who saw a lust-filled gaze as an unprovoked serial killer attack. No, this was something Blayne had been waiting for, for a very long time. Maybe even forever. And now that she had it in her hands, she wouldn’t turn away. She wouldn’t run.