All Chapters of Knotting the Hunter: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Dax"That was nine. You said ten."Bex glares at me over the loaded bar like I robbed her personally."You're cheating me out of reps, coach.""I would never.""You lost count."I did lose count. Somewhere around six."Reset your grip and pull. Chest up. There. That's ten. Ish."She racks it, disgusted, and stalks off to find someone who'll pay attention.Fair. My head's not in it.My head's on my office couch, seven hours ago, a hunter coming apart with my name in his mouth.Ours, the wolf says, smug as a cat in sunlight. They should know.Not today, buddy.They’ll find out anyway. Wolves are terrible at secrets. It’s one of our best qualities.Yeah, well, human-me's not exactly setting records either.Best night of our life, the wolf says, sprawled fat and smug behind my ribs. You're welcome. I told you to keep him.You told me to bite him. Not the same thing.Details.The whole gym still smells like him.Like us.My scent all over a Hunter, his all over me, neither of us slept and

Dax"For the record, your sister extorts people better than most professionals. And I think she’s scarier than you are.""You're not helping.""I'm complimenting. The whole broody, bitchy do-as-I-say-or-I’ll-end-you thing seems to be a family trait. She’s just better at it than you are."Noah takes his eyes off the road for exactly long enough to look like he's considering the ditch for both of us.I grin at him.Can't help it.Haven't been able to help much of anything since he put his hands on me the night before last.Ours, says the wolf, stretched out and pleased with himself, a king reviewing his territory.The territory is the man driving.Make him pull over.We're working.Work after.Later. Maybe. Probably.Noah's window is cracked and the whole cab smells like him.Cedar and cold air, and it's still new enough to catch me off guard.The sharp green thing that used to live under his scent packed up and left the day he stopped lying to himself and his ex, and what's underneath

DaxNoah's front door barely survives us.He's got the key in the lock and my mouth on the back of his neck and the combination isn't working for either task.When the door finally gives we go through it in a tangle, wet boots and lake stink and his hands already under my shirt.HIS DEN, the wolf announces, at full volume, like a trumpet section. He brought us to his DEN. Do you understand what this means?I do. I really do.It’s overwhelming and humbling to be here.Noah Hunter guards his privacy like a state secret.Six weeks I've known where he lives and never seen past the parking lot, and now I'm inside his apartment with his tongue in my mouth, and the wolf is strutting around my ribcage like we've been crowned.Small apartment.Neat to the point of OCD.Smells like him everywhere, wall to wall, undiluted, and it goes to my head faster than the adrenaline did.He shoves me into the wall by the light switch.I let him.Letting him is the new favorite lie I tell myself.The truth

Noah"We don't eat until your father sits," my mother says, which is how every Sunday of my life has started, and I put the fork back down like a good soldier.Tori, across the table, mouths KILL ME. I mouth back SEEN AND NOT HEARD. She flips me off below the tablecloth with real feeling.Dad's on the phone in the hall, running somebody down in that tone that never rises and never needs to.Mom hovers by the roast with the carving knife, not carving, because carving is his job.My collar itches.I picked the highest one I own tonight, buttoned to the throat, because somewhere under it there's a mark shaped like a mouth, and I'm eating pot roast six feet from a man who’d carve me up if he knew who put it there.That's not a figure of speech. That's the actual table I'm sitting at.Dad comes in, drops into the head chair, and the house exhales into its assigned positions."Kowalski," he says, to no one, meaning the phone call."Had a leech cornered outside Barrie and let it talk its way

DaxThe forest is screwing with us and I'm the only one bothered by it."We passed that stump already.""We didn't."Noah takes a left at a deer trail that wasn't there thirty seconds ago."She's deciding whether to let you in.""Me? You're here too. And she told you to bring me.""I'm always allowed in. You're new."He ducks under a branch."Try to smell trustworthy."The trees are watching us, the wolf says, hackles up, turning circles inside my chest. Trees should not watch.Agreed.My whole territory, every acre of it, I know by smell.This place smells like nothing. Like a held breath. Like the woods put a hand over their own mouth when we walked in.Then the track simply gives up being coy and there's a clearing, a cottage, smoke, herbs drying under the eaves, and a goat looking at me like it’s considering its plan of attack."Morning," I tell the goat.The goat maintains eye contact and urinates."He likes you," Noah says.The door opens before either of us is close enough to k