“Keep it. You still look cold.”
I sighed and shrugged it off anyway. The smell of him was driving me insane and I didn’t want people to assume that we were together, especially when Tucker so obviously was not that into me. My chest ached painfully at that thought. Something in me had changed today and I was realizing that I really, really wanted him to want me back. With the same intense desire with which I wanted him. I’d felt the earth move when he kissed me. Apparently, it was one sided.
I went to the living room and found Carolyn slipping in a DVD. She looked back at us and smiled.
“There you two are. I’m putting in a Christmas movie. I want the kids to wake up to it.” She nodded towards the loveseat. “You two sit down.”
I sat at the edge of the couch and tried to be as small as possible. Tucker looked over at me, yet again, and frowned.
“You okay?”
I nodded. “Just feeling tired.”
He leaned in closer. “You’re a terrible liar.”
I frowned at him and looked towards the TV. “The movie’s starting.”
He leaned back and let me silently stew in my thoughts while the movie played. I stared at the screen, but didn’t see anything. My mind was trapped in thoughts of Tucker rejecting me and the kids being taken to a shelter. Halfway through the movie, Bear woke up and crawled into my lap and I realized for a second that I would be devastated if they were taken away.
The kids had all woken up by the time the movie ended, but Carolyn quickly put in a second to distract them while she got gifts together. She’d explained to me earlier, while we were in the kitchen, that they’d only let the kids open a few gifts that morning and still had a ton to go through. They waited until Christmas night and gathered around the tree to open the majority of them. She’d also mentioned that Abby, Joey, and Bear had plenty of gifts to open, as well.
I owed her so much. Without batting an eye, she’d made Christmas special for three abandoned kids, like they were her own.
Abby crawled in between me and Tucker and rested her head against me. “It’s nice here.”
I looked up at Tucker and he smiled. “Yeah?”
She nodded. “I know Joey and Bear want to go back home because they’re little, but I don’t want to. Mom is mean. She never did stuff like this for us. I want to stay with you.”
I hugged her to my chest and squeezed her. “We’ll figure something out, Abby.”
She sighed. “Okay. Miss Carolyn brought in a lot of presents.”
I wanted to kiss Carolyn, I was so thankful that she’d thought of the kids. “Some of them are even for you and the boys.”
“Really?!”
I nodded. “Yeah. You’ll have to be sure to give Miss Carolyn a big hug and tell her thank you. You can make the boys do it, too.”
She jumped up, pulled Bear up with her, and ran over to Carolyn, leaving me alone with Tucker again. Everyone was waking up and moving around, so the couch felt much less secluded.
“Want to come get a snack with me before they open presents?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Sure. If that’s what you want.”
He gave me a weird look but caught my hand and pulled me after him. In the kitchen, a Christmas CD played and the smell of freshly popped popcorn hung around.
I leaned against the island and toyed with an unlit Holiday candle. When I looked up, Tucker was just staring at me. “What?”
He took in a big breath and then moved closer to me. “How have I never noticed the way you smell before?”
I pressed my back harder into the counter, feeling completely at a loss. I knew what I wanted, but I was confused about what he wanted. When he stared at me with so much fire in his eyes, though, I couldn’t help but imagine that the flames were for me.
He stepped into me, his body just a hair’s width away, and took a deep breath in again. “You’re intoxicating.”
I dropped the candle in my hand and it hit the floor with a loud crashing sound. I knew it’d shattered, but I was frozen there, pinned to the counter our eyes locked and the hint of Tucker’s body brushing against mine.
“What do I smell like to you?” he asked.
The light blue in his eyes was glowing, like he was going to shift. I’d been around enough male shifters to know it meant he was aroused. I swallowed so loudly that he had to hear it and then blinked a few times. I could hardly remember what planet we were on. “You want me to smell you?”
His tongue flicked out and then was gone. “Yes.”
I had no way of stopping it. Not that I wanted to. I wanted Tucker with everything in me. I needed him, for some insane reason. I’d never felt anything like the heat building in me and he wasn’t even touching me.