Dawson Bride (Wolf Brides Book 3) by T. S. Joyce Read Free Book Online Page B

beneath me once again. I wanted to reach out like I had before and rest my hand on his side. My hand tingled with the wanting, but the coward in me had outgrown the brave. I clenched my hand until my nails dug into the palm of it.
    “Are you mad at me?” My voice sounded very small even to me, but I was on the precipice of not seeing him for weeks and I didn’t want to spend the last night together with an unsettled feeling.
    He turned with a slight frown. “Why do you think I’m angry with you?”
    A thousand things swirled around in my head and none of them made coherent sense. It was like reading a page from my favorite book in a language I didn’t know. I shrugged miserably.
    “Well, I ain’t.” He grabbed my hand in a move so fast, his skin seemed to blur. He pressed my palm against his lips and kissed it lightly before he rolled back over and gave me his back.
    I let my hand hang there in midair. It wasn’t uncommon for gentlemen to kiss the back of my hand in greeting, but this was different. This moment that came and passed in the blink of an eye was the most intimate of my life. Even more so than when he raked his eyes over my bare skin minutes ago. Tiny needles rose and fell on the skin where his lips touched it. I ran a fingertip over the smoothness there and clutched it to my chest.
    Ralston had been murderously vengeful when I angered him. It was a base instinct that came from the most primal parts of his hardened soul. If something angered him, he snuffed that imperfection right out of his life by bleeding it. It was awful and sickening what he’d taken away from me in a gentleman’s temper tantrum, but it was black and white. Cut and clear.
    With Gable, I didn’t understand his reactions. He was overly honest with some things and shared nothing of other parts of his life for reasons I couldn’t fathom. I ran a thumb absently over and over the palm of my hand.
    If this was his reaction when he was put off by something I’d done, I would really have to try and irritate him more often.

Chapter Six
    Lucianna
     
    The sounds of the streets outside were what woke me up just as the first lights of morning graced the tops of the cluttered rows of buildings. The streets were narrow and cobbled, and the clatter of horses upon them and men fighting and yelling for space to steer their carts, was enough to wake the dead.
    Gable lay tensed and twitching on the floor beside me and when I leaned over and tried to wake him from his bad dream, he shot up and grabbed my wrist in a move so fast, I didn’t see it. One moment he was sleeping beneath me and the next, he was crushing the frail bones in my arm with the most terrifying look in his eyes.
    “You’re hurting me,” I breathed.
    “Luc?” He blinked and scanned the room. His hand released its iron grip and I rubbed my wrist like it would make the ache better somehow. “I thought…I thought I was somewhere else.”
    “Where?”
    He frowned at the leg of the bed. “The woods. Get dressed.”
    He didn’t seem to be much of a morning person. I’d always liked to get up with the dawn and start my day, but some people didn’t feel the same. From the way he grumbled as he splashed water over his face, I thought Gable Dawson was one of those people.
    The shift I wore was soft against my skin, but the entirety of my body itched and was covered in little raised bumps. “I’ve been bitten!”
    He slid a glance to me and nodded at the bed. “You probably slept with a hundred critters in there last night.”
    “Ahh!” I yelped unbecomingly. I flew from the bed and wiped my skin off as best I could. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “I thought you saw them. They were crawling all over the covers when we came in last night.”
    “Oh. I guess I was too tired to notice.” I squinted at the covers. In fact, I still couldn’t see them.
    Gable leaned against the washbasin table and the muscles in his arms flexed as he gripped the side. “Woman, if you