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sticking to my side of the bed considering the circumstances.”
    Twilight dimmed the room, but she saw his teeth gleam in his dark face, a ghost of the smile she’d seen on his face so many times during their ride to the ranch. “Don’t laugh,” she muttered. “This isn’t funny.”
    “No, it’s natural. Come on. Is it so bad to sleep close to me? I promise to not touch you. Well, not with my hands. See?”
    He shifted to tuck his hands beneath his head. Mel rolled onto her side to watch the thick muscles in his biceps bunch and the taut swell of his pectorals smooth nearly flat with his arms in that position. Some women preferred a tall man with a slender, lightly muscular build, but she liked his broad shoulders and thick chest. And since she was only five feet five, his five-feet-eight height was fine with her. He was young and strong.
    A thought struck her. “Snake? How old are you?”
    “Twenty-six.” His brows pulled low. “No, twenty-seven.” He turned his head on the pillow to look at her. “Why?”
    A few years older than she was. “You said you didn’t see any women up close until you were twenty.”
    “Yeah. My mom died when I was five.”
    A pang of sympathy warmed her. “My brother told me about how almost all the women in your family were stolen and killed. Was she one of those?”
    He was quiet for a moment. “Yeah.” His voice was rough and low. “I don’t remember her too well. After that, there were only a few women in the Clan. I went to live with Taye and the Pack when I was eight or so. They live in an old building with lots of rooms. Back in the Times Before they called it a motel. Taye’s mother died a few years after that. She was the last woman to ever hug me until Taye mated Carla. And then there was Tami. And then, Lisa.”
    A new note of warmth came into his voice when he said the last name, and Mel was shocked to feel a little niggle of jealousy. “Who’s Lisa?”
    A gleam of white in the dark revealed his smile. Mel cursed herself and rolled to her back to glare up at the ceiling, arms folded over her chest.
    “Lisa is my sister. She adopted me after she left her husband and came to live at the den. His name is Eddie Madison.”
    Mel’s crossed arms loosened a bit. “You don’t like him.”
    “I didn’t like him then. He was a…a…”
    “Jerk?” she suggested. “Asshole?”
    “Yeah. He was so selfish he didn’t even know he was hurting her. Jerk.”
    Mel clamped a hand on the edge of the bed to hold her fury inside. “Did he beat her?”
    “If he’d ever laid a hand on her, he wouldn’t be alive now,” Snake snarled. “Even if Lisa begged me to not hurt him, I would have killed him.”
    Why did women stay with men who mistreated them? Mel would never put up with that. Hell, she hadn’t put up with it. Just ask Rob.
    “He’s better now.” Snake sounded reluctant to admit it, but he went on. “Since she agreed to return to him, he treats her fine. Better than fine. I know they’re happy. Even a wolf with a bad sense of smell can scent their happiness, and my sense of smell isn’t that bad. They have three little boys now, all as pretty as angels, just like their mom and dad. Lisa is the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, and Madison is good looking too.”
    Mel refused to compare herself to beautiful women. She was at best pretty. But Snake was beautiful. She half sat, leaning on an elbow to look at him. She tightened her grip on the edge of the mattress to keep from tumbling on top of him. In the near dark Mel felt her cheeks flush. How stupid, to think of a man as beautiful. But he was. Not pretty. Not even quite handsome. His nose was maybe a little too craggy for that, his cheekbones too pronounced, his eyebrows too thick and low. No, not a pretty boy, but his mouth was full and soft, a startling contrast to his hard features. She could bend over right now and kiss it to find out if his lips were as soft as they looked.
    It was an