I cried into his neck as I came and he cursed into mine as he did.
Perfect.
He left me for only a moment before coming back, pulling the covers slowly up my body and pulling me onto his chest, his hands sifting through my hair and down my spine.
"What?" I asked, sensing there was something weighing on the silence.
"The wolves backed down," he said cryptically, making me press up so I could look down at him.
"The wolves?" I asked, brows drawn together.
"Past couple of years, you've had wolves at your door, snarling, making you feel like you couldn't leave your house." He reached up, touching the side of my face, his eyes soft, but still somehow heavy with meaning. "They aren't snarling anymore."
He was right.
And, true, maybe psychologically, it was all exposure therapy, being forced out of the comfort zone enough to realize I wouldn't flip out or die outside of it.
But there had been one constant in each situation.
Ryan.
Perfect yet flawed, dominant yet sweet, sexy yet unassuming, understanding yet encouraging.
And I had a strong feeling somewhere deep inside that the snarling didn't necessarily stop because of some force inside of me.
It was him.
My own personal wolf tamer.
EPILOGUE
Dusty- 1 day
"I wouldn't have had Mark drop all this shit off if I realized the cookies wouldn't be for me," Ryan informed me from his position leaned against the counter, wearing only thick gray sweatpants and one of his white tees, his hair casually disheveled. That was all my fault. I had disheveled it. Happily. Enthusiastically. Roughly.
Sex was obviously involved.
"I am saving you some," I insisted, pouring the oil into the pan and putting the burner on under it.
I was making chruscikis, mainly because it was the only recipe I had made often enough to know it by heart since I didn't have my little recipe cards with me at the residence.
And I had just informed him that the plan was to drop some off to his neighbor, the elusive and enigmatic Ross Ward.
"Some?" he pressed, obviously the kind of man who thought with his stomach at times. It was something I found charming.
"Fine. Half," I conceded, dropping a few of the little bowties into the hot oil and watching them sizzle.
There was a real art and science to these cookies. They had to be perfectly cooked or they tasted like crap as soon as they cooled off.
"I really don't think Ward is the kind of man who eats powder sugar covered Polish cookies."
"Regardless," I said, shaking my head at him, making a few strands of my hair fall down from my clip, "I think I owe him a tray of them as a thank you for preventing my rape and murder. You know, a gesture," I said, giving him a smile over my shoulder.
"Well," he said, coming up behind me, wrapping an arm around my belly and resting his head on my shoulder, "I guess that would be the right thing to do."
So, twenty minutes later, my belly in knots but not overly nauseating after I fussed with my clothes, hair, and makeup for an embarrassingly long time, we walked into the hall and I knocked on Ross Ward's door.
"Harder," Ryan demanded, standing a few feet back. "He works all night. He's probably sleeping."
"Why didn't you tell me that before I charged over here with cookies and woke him up?" I hissed, big-eying him.
"You were a woman on a mission," he shrugged.
"But what kind of 'thank you' gesture is it to drag a man out of bed when he works all night?" I demanded, voice a whisper-yell.
And apparently Ryan liked that because his smile was radiant. "Like the teeth, honey," he informed me as the door pulled open roughly.
There stood Ross Ward.
Though, unlike Ryan's suspicions, he hadn't been sleeping.
I knew this because he was dripping wet and only in a towel.
Now, I might have been heading headfirst in love with Ryan, but that didn't mean I didn't know a good looking man when I saw one.
Ross Ward was a good looking man.
Other descriptors that came to mind: solid, muscular, scarred, dark, dangerous, ruthless.
That was what you took from one look at his dark hair, dark eyes, dark stubble as well as the broad shoulders, strong chest, impressive abdominal muscles, and general 'what the fuck do you want' aura he had about him.
He said nothing either, just stared at me.
"Ward," Ryan cut in, saving me from choking on my own heart that was suddenly in my throat, forced there by the sheer intimidation of the man before me. "This is Dusty," he explained, giving me a look that suggested I untie my tongue and speak. "Dusty, Ross Ward."
"Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt your shower. I just, um, well, I, ah... I made you cookies," I said, thrusting the decorative serving dish at him, hitting him in the stomach as his hand moved out to grab it from me. "As a sort of thank you for calling Ryan and, well, saving me from being raped and murdered."
There.
It was out.
I could run away now, right?
He was definitely the kind of man any decent person ran far, far away from.
"Looks like I didn't save you from everything," he said, reaching his free hand out and putting his forefinger under my chin, turning my face each way.
"Oh, this," I said, waving a hand, attempting levity. He was so damn intense. "This was from a couple days ago," I added with a wobbly smile.
Ross' hand dropped and he shot Ryan a look with a ever-so slight brow raise. "Every woman in your family come with a boatload of trouble?" he asked, moving backward into his apartment without waiting for an answer and reaching for the door, obviously rushing me on.
"Okay, yeah, we won't keep you. Those are still warm and they're usually better when..."
"Know how to eat chruscikis, doll," he interrupted me.
"Oh, okay. Great. Well, thanks again. Sorry to disturb you."
He didn't say it was no problem or anytime or, well, anything at all.
He jerked his chin at me then shut the door in my face.
"He's not exactly a people person," Ryan told me, trying to soften the blow. "Come on, I have an idea."
His idea involved a chrusciki placed right on the triangle above my sex and powdered sugar sprinkled all over my body.
Which he licked off.
Dusty- 1 week
"You sure about this?" Bry asked from the hallway back in my apartment building, but facing Ryan's... where I had been living. "You can take another week if you need it."
"That's the worst thing I could do," I said, shrugging into my jacket. "Now that I can handle it, I think it's best to get out as much as possible as soon as possible. Rocky," I said, turning back to where he was propped oh-so innocently on the island. But I knew the second I closed the door, he was going to create some kind of problem. While he never messed up my old apartment, he apparently got a kick out of messing up Ryan's. "If you knock down any more of those freaking glasses, I am going to do something truly heinous. Like bathe you," I said with a nod as I grabbed my wallet and moved into the hall with Bry.
We moved toward the exit. The stairs, not the elevator. I might have been making progress, but I was no Wonder Woman. That one was going to take some time. I tried to talk Bry into meeting me down, taking the elevator, because he was still favoring his side something fierce from where he had broken two ribs.
But Bry being Bry, he wouldn't hear of it.
So we went down the stairs as slowly as he needed until we moved outside.
We were going to go make good on my idea for trying to do lunch again, but not for another hour and a half. There was one stop first and it was what had my belly doing strange little insistent flip-flops as we got into the car and drove into town.
The office was what one might expect- neat, neutral, comforting but impersonal.
I was standing at the desk, Bry refusing to listen to my telling him I was fine and he could run and get coffee if he wanted, was sitting reading some woodworking magazine on the table.
And then there was a voice I'd have recognized anyywhere, having heard it as much as I had. "Danielle, you have Miss McRae as my one o'clock. You must have this wrong. She is always a video..."
"Hey Amy," I interrupted her, using the name she preferred.
Her head snapped up from her papers, her mouth falling open, her eyes going huge. "Dusty? What... how..." She shook her head hard, clearing it, slipping her professional mask back on. "When you cancelled your last few video sessions, I figured you were going through a rough patch," she admitted, concern clear in her voice.
I figured that being a therapist had to have been boring a fair amount of the time- people whining and moaning about the most banal, uninteresting things for hours on end, not actually having mental issues, but essentially needed to pay someone to listen to them because no one else would ever want to do it for free. But there had to have been patients here and there who really touched them, made them want to help.
I was pretty sure I was one of those patients to Dr. Amy Robertson.
"I actually had a lot going on," I admitted as she moved to open the locked door toward the back of the office and let me through.