I opened it, amazed at the green profusion of singles that sprang forth from its confines. "What the-?"
"Well, my guys took bets on the fight. You won on fourteen-to-one odds. That's a pretty decent cut of the proceeds."
"Fourteen to one? That's kind of hurtful," I said, staring down at the envelope of crumpled bills. "I tell you what, why don't you give my share to Trixie?" I said, pressing the money back into his hand. "Tell her it's to help with her medical bills. It's my fault for exposing her to the crab anyway."
"You're good people, Tina." Abe nodded and produced a bloody raw steak from behind his back. Before I could protest, he slapped it against my bruised eye.
I yelped. "There's no medical proof that this works."
Caleb snorted. "Steak is Abe's answer to most problems. You know, I keep trying to keep you out of situations where people are swinging at you. And you keep jumping right back into them. I give up. Jump away. Maybe if you're actively trying to get hurt, you'll stay safe, like reverse psychology."
"I really didn't mean for it to happen this time. But it was oddly therapeutic. Getting hit and getting back up," I said. "It's like facing my biggest phobia."
"Don't go doing any more ‘therapy' for a while, OK?" he grumbled, before observing in wonder, "You gave Trixie your cut."
"Yeah, it felt weird taking money for beating someone up. Also, there were some questionable stains on some of the bills," I said, shuddering.
It took some convincing to prevent Caleb from actually carrying me out of the bar. He drove me right back to the motel and started the shower, helping me out of my clothes and tsking over my bruises.
"I'm not going to just jump you this time," he rumbled. "This is me, very slowly, very deliberately, going about the business of us having sex. We're going to talk about your ‘no-fly zones' and protection and the possibility of you getting pregnant, since there's a really good chance of that happening, what with the werewolf sperm and all-"
I cut him off with a kiss. "Please stop talking."
He nodded sharply, muttering into my mouth, "Oh, thank God."
And with that, he lunged at my mouth, kissing and licking and biting, until he'd explored every inch of it. We slid under the blissfully warm spray, and I winced as it beat against my face. I braced my arms against the wall, letting the water sluice down my back.
Warm hands brushed down the length of my spine. I jumped, nearly knocking my head into the wall, but Caleb's hand cradled my skull and guarded it from the impact. I turned, my feet slipping a little on the tub surface as I wound my arms around his neck. I pressed my head into the hollow of his throat while his hands stroked my back.
The water cascaded over us, rippling over his skin. I ran my fingers along the line of his ribs, making him jump. I giggled, making him grin as he gently poked at my ticklish sides. He swallowed my indignant squeal. His fingers curled around my hip, and he hitched my legs around his waist. Already encased in a condom, he lined up our bodies and slid forward with aching hesitation. I gasped, and his tongue darted into my mouth, the water moving over our mouths.
I tipped my head back against the door, breathing hard, pinned there like a butterfly. Caleb's hair was dripping over his forehead, inky black, as he loomed over me. His eyelashes stuck together, spiky and wet. I nodded, moving my hips up to meet him. He relaxed, grinding me into the wall, sliding me up and down as we moaned in unison.
Just when we'd worked out an easy rhythm, the water ran cold, and I practically vaulted us out of the shower. Laughing, he carried me to the bed, gently dropped me onto the bedspread, and crawled over me.
As if he wanted to remind me that I was dealing with a dangerous supernatural creature, he bit down on my bottom lip. I dragged my nails down his back, making him hiss. His skin was so hot. It practically radiated against my palms as I stroked his back.
His fingers pressed down over my hips, pulling me back, aligning me with him. I felt him between my thighs, warm and hard and thick. I leaned forward and bit the skin of his hand, the delicate web between his thumb and forefinger.
He yowled in protest, but he didn't stop. His fingers cupped the back of my neck, cradling my throat and pulling me back against his chest, nipping and biting the sensitive skin. His hands trailed over my arms, pressing my palms against the bedspread as his teeth sank just a bit deeper. I cried out, freeing one hand to reach back into his hair, and yanked before he could break the skin.
His hips pushed me into the rhythm he needed without keeping me from what gave me pleasure. His warm, deft fingers trailed down my back, around my hip, and between my thighs, to find that special little bundle of nerves. My hips stuttered as he teased me there, and the very small part of my brain still capable of thinking vowed horrible, anatomically specific revenge if he didn't continue doing exactly that for, oh, maybe a month.
A wonderful pressure rippled down my spine, through my belly, and I was falling, rising, spinning, all at once. I lost all sense of balance, falling forward and clawing at the arm around my waist as dark, pulsing shudders racked my body. Caleb pitched forward and nearly knocked me facedown onto the comforter. He hitched me up, hugging me to his chest and balancing me on his lap, while he guided my hips up and down. Because I didn't have the coordination to do that for myself.
I felt him shake and give a long, guttural moan before flopping to his side, pulling me down with him. Our breathing evened out, and I could move my legs again, rolling my ankles from side to side just so I could feel the pleasant little aftershocks that fired down to my toes.
Caleb was staring at me in that analytical way of his, trying to gauge my reaction.
"And suddenly, sex happened," I muttered into the pillow.
Caleb's mussed head popped up over my shoulder. "Slower, sweeter, romantic-comedy sex will happen later, I promise. Sorry most of it was against a shower wall."
"Actually, it's probably the cleanest surface in the room."
He was particularly interested in my tattoos, now that he was seeing them up close. He wanted to know why I'd chosen that design, when I'd started them, and whether I planned to get more. He traced the length of my spine with his lips, biting lightly at the ridge of each vertebra.
"It's my personal star chart," I murmured into the pillows. "It's how I keep track of where I've been."
"Don't most people use stars to keep track of where they are?" he asked, chuckling into my skin, tracing the outline of one with his tongue. I think he was somewhere near the Topeka star.
"Well, I was going to do push-pins, but they weren't as pretty."
"You don't strike me as the tattoo kind of girl."
"I wasn't, but that was sort of the point. Don't you have any?"
"I had a very strict mother," he said, smiling into my skin.
"I think you would look awesome with a tattoo," I told him, rolling over so I was facing him. "You could get a butterfly, right here." I stroked the tramp-stamp area of his lower back. He chuckled again, jerking a little as my fingers stroked a particularly ticklish section of his back. "Or something tribal." He snorted. "The Chinese symbols for love and strength . . . which inevitably will translate to ‘cliché tattoo.' "
"It's a little alarming that you came up with those ideas so quickly."
"Spent a lot of time thinking about it."
"You are a very strange girl."
I rolled over, balancing my chin on his chest. "Did you really have a strict mother?"
It seemed a little wrong, asking about his runaway human mom when I knew a little bit of the history. But I wanted to hear more about Caleb from his own mouth, his own version. The story I'd heard about cruel, thoughtless Lydia Graham, who had forgotten the promises involved in mating and left her husband and child to themselves, had been twisted in the telling by so many indignant werewolf housewives that I didn't know if I could trust it.
He blanched a bit at the question. "Oh, I don't know. I mean, she didn't stick around long enough for me to figure her out. She left when I was five. Dad met her when he was traveling in Washington State. He told her that he lived in the middle of nowhere, Alaska, but I don't think she really got it until she moved there. And then she was stuck. Not stuck the way you were," he clarified carefully. "I don't remember them fighting or yelling or Dad being anything but good to her. It was seeing the same people every day, having the same conversations. Dad said he thought it drove her a little crazy. So she waited until I was in school one morning and ran for it."
As a woman who had once run for it, I could sympathize with Lydia and the desperation she must have felt to have taken such a step. But at the same time, how could she leave her little boy behind? I was thankful, at least, that she'd left him with other werewolves so he wouldn't go through his transformation without that support. And in some remote, gloomy corner of my mind, I couldn't help but think that he was repeating his father's cycle all over again, choosing a woman-however temporarily-who would inevitably leave him. Freud would have a field day with Caleb Graham.