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“Dell?”
    “Aisha,” he corrected. “I can wait for Dell to arrive before I leave if you want.”
    Aisha and Graeson. Alone. In the dark. My question came out sharp. “Where are you going?”
    “To handle pack business.” He reached up and ran his fingers through my much shorter hair. No longer brushing my lower back, it barely tickled the undersides of my shoulder blades now. “I like your hair this length.”
    Feet cemented in place as he toyed with the frizzy ends, I crushed his clothing tighter against my chest. “Yes, well, I had to get it trimmed.” I worked up a scowl. “Someone cut a chunk of my hair off. I couldn’t just leave it jagged.”
    “You donated to a good cause,” he assured me, lifting his arm. “See?”
    A thick bracelet of black leather circled his wrist, almost melding with the wide bands of ink, the design brightening its center an intricate braid of honey-blonde hair. My hair. Of all the things I had imagined him doing with the chunk of hair he’d sliced off with a sharpened nail, turning it into a fashion statement wasn’t one of them.
    “The wolf wasn’t wearing any jewelry.” That much I was certain. “How is it you kept it through the change?”
    “The stronger the wolf, the more control he has over his change.” He let me run my finger across the design. “I can hold on to one or two small items.”
    I squinted up at him. “Like underwear?”
    “Probably.” A grin split his cheeks. “But where’s the fun in that?”
    “Exhibitionist,” I grumbled.
    “Nudity is part of our culture. I won’t say we don’t notice each other’s bodies, because that would be a lie. Our souls are spliced with wolves, and wolves have strong mating instincts. We’re not immune to the lure of perfect breasts or…” his gaze swept down me, and his tongue darted out to moisten his lips, “…soft curves, but we learn early the difference between nudity and intimacy.”
    A flush riding my cheeks, I dropped my hand and glanced down at my bare toes.
    “Dell’s here,” he sounded distracted. “I should get going.”
    “I don’t trust her.” I didn’t have to specify the her in question.
    He crowded me, smooshing his clothes between us. “Worried about me, Ellis?”
    “My interest in your well-being is strictly professional.” I managed a cool tone. “I need your help tracking down Charybdis.” My throat tightened. “We’re running out of time.”
    Graeson pressed warm lips to my forehead. “We’ll find Harlow.”
    I nodded when the words got stuck in my throat.
    “Aisha is waiting,” Dell huffed out as she slowed to a walk and leaned against the trailer’s exterior.
    “Another minute won’t hurt her,” he said, loud enough it carried.
    Dell fidgeted with the buttons on her sleeveless shirt, her lips a flat line. “Be careful tonight.”
    He palmed her shoulder, bare skin to bare skin, and that contact appeared to soothe the restlessness in her. She left the threadbare buttons alone and sucked in a deep breath that she released in a slow gust.
    Physical contact was important to wargs on a level I didn’t fully grasp. The thought of Aisha touching Graeson…it did dangerous things to my blood pressure. But the way he was with Dell, and with the other female pack member who had followed him to Mississippi, didn’t ruffle my feathers at all. The males slapped backs and bumped shoulders more than humans or most fae did. Those observations helped put our interactions into perspective. What I viewed as an invasion of personal space, he saw as a welcome and necessary part of our social interactions. It made me wonder if he pushed so hard at times because I wasn’t fulfilling his need for touch. And then I wondered if that lack was one I wanted to rectify.
    Non-warg-to-warg etiquette was something to ask Dell about later, where even if he overheard our conversation through the bond, at least I didn’t have to look him in the eye while figuring out if I had to pet him to