Fixed: Fur Play Read Free Page A

little make up, but red, puffy, bloodshot eyes would take a lot more effort to conceal than she felt capable of just now.
    “Damn you, Dad.”
    The curse had somehow become her mantra over the past three days. Damn him for dying, damn him for leaving her his business, his pack and his problems all in one fell swoop, and damn him again just on general principles. The bastard deserved every extra second he spent in whatever passed for hell these days.
    Pushing away from the door, Honor paused for a few seconds, swaying gently with the rush of fatigue and nerves that seemed to plague her constantly now. She could barely remember what it felt like to relax. And to think the fun of leading the pack was just beginning. Wheeeeeeeeee!
    She padded across the floor toward the bathroom, thinking that a shower sounded better than sex or chocolate. Or sex involving chocolate. The smell of blood and sweat and soil lingered on her skin and clothes, and she felt pretty sure she carried enough small twigs and dried leaves in her hair for a decent fire.
    She doubted the ability of soap and hot water to make her feel clean, but at least it could get rid of the surface detritus.
    Ignoring the cavernous room, looking even bigger now that it had been stripped of all her father’s personal possessions and the stamp of his decidedly masculine tastes, she pushed into the bath and flipped on the lights. She turned on the shower and let the water heat while she stripped. Her clothes landed in 15

    Christine Warren
    the wastebasket rather than the hamper. She’d never be able to bring herself to wear them again, so why bother scrubbing out the stains?
    When she stepped under the stinging spray, she hissed at the scalding heat and felt her skin immediately pinken to a rosy glow. She kept her eyes squeezed shut as the water sluiced off the worst of the blood and dirt, not wanting to see the water turn as pink as her skin as it circled down the drain. The steel fence she had erected to cage in the memories of this afternoon still had a few weak spots, and she couldn’t afford to encourage any escaping thoughts.
    She lingered in the shower, scrubbing herself from head to toe with a loofah three times before she could stand the feel of her own skin. That’s when she opened her eyes and reached for the conditioner. She applied it liberally to the mess of knots and debris that passed for her hair and let the thick liquid ease everything free. When she couldn’t feel any more pieces of bark or clumps of mud, she rinsed and applied a generous handful of shampoo. She lathered, rinsed and even repeated twice before she could make herself stop. Then she conditioned again and turned off the water.
    Hesitating for a long moment on the bathmat, dripping water onto the porous rectangle, she contemplated grabbing a towel, but found herself heading for the bathtub instead. She still didn’t feel really clean, but the shower had done the best it could. Time to give the big Jacuzzi and her favorite scented bath salts a shot.
    She set the tub to fill, grateful for her father’s ridiculously large water heater, and wrapped a towel around her hair before dumping two huge handfuls of spicy-floral salts into the tub and turning on the jets. She slipped in before the tub was full, leaning back against its sloped side and left the water running until she was submerged up to her chin. Then she used her foot to turn off the water and let the rumble of the jets lull her into a half-trance.
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    That was her first big mistake. As soon as her body began to relax from the pounding streams of water around her, her mind began to wander. And, of course, it went directly to the places she didn’t want it to go.
    Damn Paul Clarke, anyway. Why had he needed to play the big man with her? Why now? They’d been friends since they were whelped, for God’s sake.
    They’d spent their childhoods playing fetch and chase together, their teen years learning to hunt side by