“Oh, right,” Kim said. “I’m standing in a courtroom, trying to think on my feet while the prosecution is laughing its butt off at me, but that’s all right—at least my underwear is sexy.”
Liam leaned on his arm, trying hard not to laugh. He heard Dylan retreat, quietly, into his bedroom. Sean, too, departed, chuckling. Connor folded his arms around his knees, watching this female display in puzzlement.
“Why do you have them, then?” Liam asked.
“Friends buy them for me, all right?” Kim snapped.
“And you hang on to them?”
“I don’t want to hurt their feelings. They think they’re doing me a favor.”
Liam let his grin break through. “They think it’s a favor to let you…how did you put it…wear a string up your ass all day?”
Kim rolled her eyes. “Never mind. I’m taking a shower and going home. You got rid of the feral Shifter, so it’s not like he’s coming back. I’ll be perfectly safe.”
Liam felt Connor’s tension behind him, his troubled worry. Liam relaxed his stance to try to convey to Connor that everything was under control. Right. “Kim, love, I’ll make you breakfast, and you write out a list of what you need. I’ll send someone ’round to retrieve it all for you. Someone female this time. How will that be with you?”
Kim planted her fists on her hips. She shouldn’t have done that; the movement thrust out her br**sts and let the T-shirt outline her ni**les. “Are you still insisting that you won’t let me leave?”
“Not yet. It’s not safe.”
“It’s perfectly safe. The feral Shifter is dead, and you had the lock on my door fixed. Make your damn pancakes if you want to, and then I’m leaving. I won’t tell anyone what happened last night or repeat what you told me about the Collars. I know how to keep a secret, all right? And you can just get over it.”
She stomped back down the stairs and slammed her own door so hard the sturdy walls rattled. Liam sensed her beneath the boards at his feet—her rage; her frustration; her warm, pliant body filling out his shirt. Her closed door would be no barrier to him if he chose to charge in and confront her.
Connor was watching Liam with concern. “What are you going to do?”
He meant, was Liam going to subdue her, and would he hurt Kim doing it? Connor was young, still uncomfortable with his own instincts, not yet certain where he fit in the clan and pride hierarchies. Things were more difficult for him than they had been for Liam or Sean, because Connor had grown up a captive Shifter, and boundaries were fuzzier now than they’d been in the wild. Connor didn’t yet understand when you showed dominance and when you tolerated, and what you tolerated. Plus, he’d been raised by mateless males and had never seen an example of an intimate relationship.
Not that anything Liam had with Kim was going to be straightforward. Educational, maybe. Straightforward, no.
Liam tamped down his own instincts, dousing the pheromones that were putting Connor on edge. “What am I going to do?” He shrugged and headed for the attic bathroom. “What she asked me to. I’m going to make her pancakes.”
Kim descended to the kitchen, showered but still irritated. Liam’s friends had packed not only the underwear she never wore, but also her shortest skirts and lowest-cut tops, a garter belt, and a bunch of stockings. Nothing remotely comfortable, not even shorts and sandals for surviving Austin in the summer.
She paused at the kitchen doorway, surprise cutting through her annoyance. Liam in a tight T-shirt and jeans, spatula in hand, glared at a griddle full of pancakes. Behind him in the narrow kitchen, Sean scrubbed dishes in the sink.
Every woman’s dream—two gorgeous men in the kitchen, cooking and cleaning.
Dylan sat at the table, tipping his chair back on two legs while he watched a sports report on a television that had to be twenty years old. Connor sat next to him, flipping through a car magazine. The air was somewhat tense, as though words had been cut off when they’d heard her coming.
Something else wasn’t right about this domestic picture, apart from tall, muscular men working in the kitchen to fix her breakfast. Kim realized that Connor didn’t have his nose in the Internet or a video game or a cell phone. Nor did he have an iPod glued to his ears.
Were those more technologies forbidden to Shifters? Or could the Morrisseys simply not afford them? She knew that Liam had a job, which he seemed to take casually. What about Sean and Dylan? Did they work? They seemed in no hurry to rush to an office. Abel was always out of bed as soon as the alarm went off, through the shower and into his suit and tie in fifteen minutes. “Come on, honey, we’re going to be late.” No time for pancakes, coffee, or a chat, never mind a morning cuddle.
Liam took a plate from the stack next to him and flipped pancakes onto it. “These are done. You’re supposed to have the table ready, Connor.” Liam smiled at Kim, but something in him seemed subdued, the sparkle that had been in his eyes earlier that morning gone. What was going on?
Connor hauled his tall form out of the chair and shuffled to the kitchen. When his body filled out, he’d be as muscular as his two uncles and Dylan. He looked unfinished right now, like a young horse, all arms and legs. But he was handsome enough, probably already drove girls crazy.
“I’ll help,” Kim offered. She took the bottles of syrup Connor had snatched out of the cupboard and carried them to the table.
Dylan rose. “Sit down, Kim. You’re a guest.”
Kim opened her mouth to say, No, guests are allowed to leave, but she shut it again. There was plenty of time to argue, and besides, the pancakes smelled terrific.
In any case, she had no intention of arguing with them. She’d simply get into her car and leave.
The pancakes tasted as good as they smelled, tangy, sweet, and laced with cinnamon. Damn Liam for being so gorgeous and skilled at cooking too.
“Did you sleep well, Kim?” Connor asked her around a mouthful.
Kim had fallen into a heavy sleep and dreamed about two things—being attacked by feral Shifters and kissing Liam. Both experiences had been intense.
“Sort of.”
“Liam didn’t,” Connor said. “He thrashed all night. The springs on my extra bed squeak something awful. Drove me mad.”
“I wasn’t used to the bed,” Liam said, sitting down next to Kim with his pancakes.
For a man who’d slept restlessly, especially after claiming to be in excruciating pain, Liam looked damn good. His face was freshly shaved, his hair still damp from his shower. She smelled soap and shaving cream on him, which sent her imagination into the shower with him, his body dripping wet and soapy.