“Are you feeling okay?” Bradley asked, already sitting down at the table when she arrived.
“What? Yes. I just needed some down time, I guess.”
“You’ve been busy lately, between the ranch and the house, which is looking great. How about I take you into town for some lunch and shopping tomorrow? We don’t get out enough.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she replied.
“Don’t be silly. We’ll get up early, tend the necessary chores and take the rest of the day off. It’s Saturday, so why not?”
“Are you sure?” she replied, feeling a little less bleak.
“Absolutely.”CHAPTER EIGHTSaturday morning seemed to arrive after only a few hours of sleep that night. Kay could think of nothing but what Maggie had said and could only wonder at all the things she had not said. What had happened to her sister and how involved with her had Bradley been? She wasn’t sure why it was of such interest to her, but it was stuck in her mind for most of the night.
Still, when the alarm sounded, she was up and about. She made her way into the bathroom, half asleep, only to find herself walking in on Bradley as he stepped out of the shower. She gasped and hurried back out, shutting the door and leaning against it.
“I’m sorry, Bradley. I should have knocked,” she managed to say through the door.
“No. I’m sorry. I thought I locked it. I’ll be out in a moment and you can have it.”
“O...okay,” she stammered, moving away from the door.
She tried to push the visual of Bradley’s perfect physique from her head as she sifted through the contents of her closet for something to wear. He had been stark naked, beads of water glistening on his sun-ripened skin. It had been a while since she had seen a man naked now, even Cullen. He had been hopelessly disinterested in her, unless he was drinking and then he usually didn’t even bother to fully undress. At any rate, he lacked the ripped abs and broad shoulders that Bradley possessed.
“All done,” he called out to her from the bathroom.
Kay tried to shake off thoughts of him standing naked outside the shower as she made her way inside the bathroom and stripped down for her own bath. Closing her eyes, she stood beneath the steamy water and did her best to push the thoughts away, even as her fingers roamed across her warm, wet flesh, finding their way downward to ease an ache that had been building for a very long time.
“Kay?” Bradley called out from outside the door, jerking her back into reality.
“Yes?” she replied, shutting off the water and climbing from the tub to dry off.
“I don’t mean to rush you, but you’ve been in there a while. We need to get going if we’re going to get things done here and have a day out.”
Kay looked around, catching sight of the clock. Good grief. I’ve been in here for almost thirty minutes, she thought.
It had been a very long time since she had let herself feel sexual. She was surprised at her reaction to having seen Bradley in the buff, though he hadn’t seemed all that bothered by her intrusion. Of course, it wasn’t uncommon for shifters to see one another naked. It happened quite often during shifting, when they would strip down to the buff to take part in events as their animal counterparts.
Though most clans were almost completely bears, there were always some in the group who were a different animal when they shifted, or were even able to shift into multiple animals. They came in handy when someone was needed to do a task not easily completed by a large animal like a bear. Wolves, for instance, were handy for scouting ahead. They were lower to the ground and faster. Multi-shifters were able to shift into things like alley cats or even insects to observe without being noticed as anything other than what they appeared.
Shaking the thoughts off, Kay threw on a pair of old jeans and a t-shirt, leaving the nicer clothes she had selected for later on laid out on her bed before heading out through the main bedroom. Her progress was impeded as she crashed into Bradley on the other side of the bathroom exit. She took a step back, startled by the unexpected encounter and, in the process, managed to lose her balance. His hands were out immediately, catching her before she could fall completely to the floor.
“Whoa. We aren’t in that big a hurry. You’ll give yourself a concussion,” he joked.
“Sorry. I figured you had gone out already,” she said, pulling free of his hands and righting herself again.
“No. I was waiting for you. Good thing too,” he said.
“Why is that?”
“You don’t have on any shoes,” he replied.
Kay’s gaze fell down toward her feet. What was wrong with her? “Shit. I’ll be right back.”