Rocco let out a furious snarl, stepping between me and his buddy.
Dax’s gaze dipped to the wolf. “Shit. One second.”
The door closed, and the wolf’s snarls cut off. He looked pissed though, as he stepped back beside me.
My heart was still pounding rapidly, awkwardness and stress raging.
Why the hell was I afraid of him? A hot guy was just a person, same as the rest of us. I did not understand my anxiety, but still couldn’t get the shit to leave me alone.
When the door opened again, wolf-Rocco stepped in front of me, his body between mine and Dax’s. I wasn’t sure whether he was trying to keep me away from the other guy or was responding to my anxiety, but I was glad anyway.
“Hey, Del. Sorry about that. Elliot’s usually the only one who knocks this late.” His expression was a bit sheepish. “What’s up?”
“Rocco has this massive stack of furniture that needs to be built, and I’m not buff enough to haul it up the stairs myself,” I admitted. “I was hoping you could come help me carry it up, but obviously you were just sleeping, so I can just go…” I bit my lip, awkwardly taking another step back.
“I’m already up, might as well help.” He shot me a quick, small smile.
Rocco growled at him.
I glanced down at the wolf, grimacing. “Sorry, I don’t know what his problem is. He didn’t growl at all until I tried to leave the house without pants on.”
Dax chuckled, stepping out on the porch and shutting the door behind himself. “No need to apologize. His problem is that he’s a wolf.”
I shot him a confused frown as we started walking back to Rocco’s place, the wolf standing between us at all times and growling at Dax whenever he got anywhere near me.
“They’re possessive. Well, we’re possessive. In general, werewolves as a whole are. If you tried to hug Jesse, Tea would have to fight the urge to claw your eyes out. The other day, Tea threw something at Ford, and Ebony snarled at her even though they were all in human form.”
I snorted. “Seriously?”
“Yep.” Dax wore an expression that was somewhere between a grin and a grimace.
A grinmace, I guess.
“Since Rocco’s hunting you right now, he’ll be really possessive. If you’d knocked on my door without pants on, he’d probably have attacked me, and Rocco’s one of the most laid-back guys in the pack.”
My eyebrows shot upward. “Damn.”
I did like the sound of being mated to one of the most laid-back guys in the pack, though. Laid-back, I could dig.
“Yeah. It’s a shitshow if you’re coming from the human world, but it’s just life around here. Ebony and Tea don’t have any hard feelings toward each other after their possessiveness dies down, and neither do us guys. We expect it; it’s natural.”
“Not for me.” We reached my porch, and I gestured Dax in first, just so wolf-Rocco didn’t flip out about Dax seeing my ass when I walked in before him.
I followed Dax inside, feeling much more comfortable with the guy than I’d expected to.
“Damn. You fixed this place up fast,” Dax whistled, his gaze sweeping the house.
“Eh, it really wasn’t that dirty to begin with. The dishes were really out of hand, but other than that, most of it was fine. The papers were assignments from his students, I think, and the clothes were mostly clean.”
“I wondered about that. I saw him hauling a couple of rolls of carpet in the other day,” he remarked.
“You think he changed his own carpet?” My eyebrows shot upward. “Why?
“Rocco’s pretty handy. His dad fixes and renovates houses for a living, so Rocco and his brother learned to do almost everything when it comes to that kind of thing. He mentioned that the nesting instincts have been driving him crazy, and it’s not hard to believe that changing the carpet out might have been part of it.”
My nose wrinkled as I closed the door behind us. “Nesting? Like a bird?”
“More like a pregnant lady.” Dax flashed me a small grin, and we both ignored wolf-Rocco’s growl. I did scratch the poor guy behind his ears though, to make up for ignoring him.