“I don’t want a haircut. I’m enjoying my wild side.”
“There’s wild and there’s unruly. You don’t want unruly, do you?”
“There’s a difference?”
“You’re the guy with all the degrees. Shouldn’t you know that already?”
“Much to my parents’ disappointment, I only have one degree.”
“Pieces of paper,” she muttered, still playing with his hair. She seemed fascinated with the silver-tipped ends, studying them closely. “Seems to me you got more of an education in the military. Especially if you saw combat.” She leaned in closer, her studious gaze moving up the strands of hair. She smelled wonderful, especially with that damn honey shampoo she was using. “Did you see combat?” she asked.
“I wasn’t in a combat unit.” She turned her head to look at him and her mouth was so close. It took everything in him to not kiss her again, to not slip his tongue in her mouth and lick his way to heaven. “We’re stalkers. We hunt the ones who hunt us.”
“You were in the Unit?”
He nodded and she released the strands she held and picked up another handful. “You really do have amazing hair,” she said, not asking him anything further about his military past. “I know women who would pay a fortune for this kind of coloring.”
He didn’t think she was changing the subject because she was uncomfortable with it. Almost all shifters knew about the Unit and what their role in the full-human military was. Instead he got the feeling she was changing the subject because what he once did didn’t bother her one way or the other. At least not the way it bothered his parents. Then again, Gwen was a takeno-prisoners kind of female. That’s how she’d been raised, that was how she lived. He knew that from the way she’d brutally fought McNelly. No bluffing, no warning growls or cat scratches to get her point across. He could easily imagine the two females fighting until one or both were dead.
“What shampoo do you use?” she asked.
“Whatever’s on sale at the grocery store when I go shopping.”
Her mouth dropped open and she laughed. “My brother’s head would explode if he heard that. The first job he ever got when he was sixteen was so he could pay for his conditioner. And before you ask, yeah, it was that expensive.”
“I’m too lazy for all that.”
“You don’t have a mighty mane. A sign of a lion’s sexual maturity and power.”
Having had more than his fair share of male lions to deal with while in the military, Lock could do nothing but roll his eyes in disgust.
She lifted another handful of his hair. “It wouldn’t hurt to shape it a bit. I’ve got my clippers, I could do it here.”
“No.”
“If you’re worried, I’ve got my license.”
“As a plumber.”
“And stylist. When I work in Ma’s shop, I get a lot of guys coming in for me to cut their hair.” He bet they did. The bastards probably stampeded the door.
“You can do hair?”
She counted off on her fingers as she answered, “Hair, makeup, pedicures, manicures, and I can wax whatever part of the body you want me to.”
“You’re not waxing anything of mine.”
She leaned in, her thumb rubbing across his brow. “Maybe pluck a few stray hairs?”
“No.”
“Okay, but you’ll have to deal with it later.”
“Deal with what?”
“Your father is getting a unibrow. And since you two look so much alike…”
He brushed her hand away. “The world will have to deal with the horror of my old-man unibrow.”
“Fine. Be that way.”
“I will.” Lock studied her for a moment as she continued to exam his hair. “I don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“You don’t like doing hair, but you’re determined to cut mine?”
“I don’t like doing hair for money, every day. But I do my friends’ hair all the time. That’s fun. Besides, if we don’t clean this up a bit—” she combed his hair down until it covered his face and laughed “—you’re never going to get yourself a nice housesow to breed your cubs and make your dinner.”
He pushed her hands away and shook his hair out of his face. “Because that sounds hot.”
With her fingers resting against his chest, and those intense gold eyes watching closely, she asked, “If a nice housesow’s not to your taste…then what do you want?”
You. I want you.
Yet something told him this was not the right moment to say that, to admit how she was driving him and his poor cock crazy. So the answer was the much more mundane but safe, “Dinner. I want dinner.”
And to prove it, he reached to the side table and picked up the room service menu.
“Hope they have moose,” he muttered as she watched him closely but said nothing.
Gwen didn’t know who she was more pissed at. The bear, for resisting her charms, or herself, for trying to be charming in the first place.
She’d admit that she never bothered working hard to get a guy interested, mostly because there were none who made her feel as if they were worth it. For those she did feel were worthy, she’d put out signals that suggested she was interested in sex and most would respond in kind. Eventually they’d end up in bed together. If it was good, Gwen would usually go back for a little more. If it wasn’t, she wouldn’t bother.
Her life was usually so simple. Now it was complicated because she didn’t feel like she was going after this guy simply for sex.
Okay, she wouldn’t lie and say she wasn’t interested in having sex with him. Because, Christ! Was she interested. But there was more to it than that for both of them.
They ate their dinner at the dining table, but when it was time for dessert, Lock moved the table and coffee table out of the way and opened up the blinds. Removing their ice cream sundaes from the freezer, they sat on the floor, their backs against the couch, and stared out over the New York City skyline.
“Do you ever miss Jersey?” Gwen asked.
“How can I?” He gestured with a tilt of his head. “It’s right over there.”
She laughed. “Good point.”
“Besides, I was going to schools in Manhattan from the time I was ten.”
“From where you live in Jersey?” He nodded. “That must have been a hell of a daily haul for your mother.”
“Not when there’s a bus and subway system available.”
“When you were ten?” He nodded again and Gwen moved around until she could look at him without turning her head. “Your mother sent you into the city on your own at ten?”
“My mother is a big believer in self-sufficient children.”
“So is my mother, but she never put me on a bus alone at the age of ten.”
“But then how else would I have accidentally discovered the Bowery—and learned at such an early age exactly how fast bears can run?”
Gwen shrugged helplessly. “I have no response for that.”
“Yeah,” he said after swallowing another spoonful of his sundae. “Most people don’t.”
“I have to go,” Lock said.
Of course, he should have said it forty minutes ago, but they were having such a nice conversation about the ins and outs of copper plumbing, he hadn’t wanted to leave. But they’d run out of things to say and she was staring at him, waiting for him to make that move. That move to put him in her bed.
He knew his uncles would cuff him in the back of the head and ask him what the hell was wrong with him and “didn’t you learn anything from us? Or have you been listening to that idiot father of yours again?”
The truth was, Lock had learned a lot from his uncles, but there was one big difference between the MacRyrie bears of Jersey and Professor Brody MacRyrie—Brody had the woman he wanted. Had her and had managed for over thirty-seven years to hold on to a sow that everyone said would never be caught, much less kept. Lock didn’t know if that’s where things were going with Gwen, but if he hoped to have a chance in hell with her, something told him he needed to follow his father’s path down this road. Not his uncles’.