Page 6 of Brazen

Instead of jumping, JT imitated the way I had done it, swinging down off the beam to hang by his fingertips.

Cute kid. I already loved him.

“JT!” Clio cried, and I could only grin.

“I got you,” I encouraged.

The boy let go of the beam and dropped through the air.

His mom screamed.

I caught him, swooping him around in a circle to break the fall and make it fun. “Good job, buddy.”

He whooped and laughed.

I handed him to Clio, who glared at me as she hugged him tightly. Her eyes were wild still, but she exhaled, and her shoulders dropped about three inches. Seeing her like this, as a fierce mother protecting her own, made my dick so fucking hard.

Mine, my wolf growled.

The women I was used to flaunted what they had. Tight jeans, snug tops, eager pussies. That was what turned me on.

Before.

Now, seeing a woman in dirty, belted coveralls hugging her child made me want to come in my pants. There was no question she was mine. My wolf agreed as he preened and howled deep inside me.

“You both are nuts!” she exclaimed.

Happy in a way I never imagined, I grinned, then got serious. “I would never let anything happen to your little boy.”

I wouldn’t.

There was no choice. No option. Clio belonged to me. And that meant the boy was mine, too.

3

CLIO

* * *

“I’m really sorry, Mommy.” JT swirled his arms back and forth over the bubbles in the tub, his blue eyes focused on them.

I sat on the lowered toilet seat lid while he took his bath.

“It’s okay, lovebug,” I said, ruffling his hair. He’d been apologizing the rest of the afternoon about climbing up onto the rafter. Even over dinner a little while ago. After I closed up the shop, we came upstairs, and I made his favorite dinner, spaghetti and meatballs.

In the tub, I’d gotten the sauce off his face that the napkin had missed.

“But we’ve got to be careful.” I wasn’t going to tell him how scared I’d been. It was in his nature to do these things that would be considered reckless in regular children. Regular, as in human. The bigger he got, the more I learned about what he thought was fun. He hadn’t been reckless, he’d been… JT.

Half the bubbles had popped, but he kept trying to tower them up. I scooped a handful and placed them atop his head.

He giggled. “I wasn’t going to fall.”

I rolled my eyes. “You fell out of that tree before we moved.”

“That’s ‘cause there was bird poop, and I didn’t want it on my hands.”

“What if there was bird poop on that rafter in the shop?”