It wasn’t like anyone threw me a big birthday bash on New Year’s Day anyhow. I used to watch the fireworks on New Year’s Eve and pretend they were all for me, celebrating my birthday.
“That’s so sad. I’m twenty-three. Um, is your favorite color green?”
I nodded just because it was easier than going through the other colors. Besides, I did like green, like the moss that grew along the trunks of trees after a bout of rain.
“That one was easy.”
I finished the onions and mushrooms and moved to the fire to slide them all into the pot with a swish of my knife across the board.
“I have another question for you, Jillian.”
He was right behind me, and I froze as his breath lightly grazed my ear and the side of my neck. Goose bumps flooded my skin, and I swore every cell flared to life like a pile of wood just set aflame. My breath hitched in my lungs, and I barely turned around.
He had to hear my heart beating. Everyone in the pack could probably hear it.
I nodded for him to go on. Even if I could speak, I wouldn’t have been able to in that moment. Now facing him, our noses almost touched. If my hands weren’t occupied by the knife and the cutting board I was still holding, I might dare to reach out and touch his skin. Let that warm, inviting, all-enveloping sensation roll over me like a tidal wave.
“I never asked you if you were okay with teaching me about shifting. You’re okay with me here?” As he said the wordhere, his gaze dipped to my lips.
I wondered what his lips would taste like. What they would feel like touching mine.
Oh, right, he asked me a question.
I nodded about a hundred times. It was like once my head got started, it was like one of those bobbers on the dash of Ruston’s truck.
“As long as you are good with it…”
The nodding never freaking stopped.
Overcome with heat that I was blaming on the fire but knew better, I rushed back to the notebook and scribbled something.
“Do you think it would be easier?” he asked, taking a moment to read my horrible writing. “If you shifted, and we could run together?”
This time my nod wasn’t out of nervousness. There was a chance, a slim one, but with Dean, I was willing to take it.