Use her claws? She flicked out her fingers like wolverine, but nothing happened. “Fing,” she said on the next try, but still nothing.
“I didn’t mean literally, Anna,” a deep rumbling voice sounded from the corner of her cabin.
She screeched and skidded down the stairs, then landed hard on her butt on the very bottom one. The box landed in the dirt in front of her.
“Oh, my God, how have you survived up until now,” Jaxon said from right beside her.
He reached out to help her up, but she swatted away his giant paw and scrambled upright. “You’re supposed to ask if I’m okay after you put me on the ground.”
“I didn’t do that. You should’ve heard me coming. Can you not smell me, woman?”
“Well…” She sniffed delicately. It did smell heavily of Jaxon’s cologne and his bear’s fur. “Maybe I was distracted by presents and riddles.”
“Were you trying to make your claws come out of your human fingers?” he asked. “Because you can’t.”
Damn his amused smile, she wanted to claw that off. “You’re making me mad. And a little embarrassed. I thought for a second you meant I could be a badass like Cat Woman and just…make my weapons come out.”
“Speaking of your weapons.” Jaxon turned around and pulled his blue and black plaid lumberjack shirt up, along with his black T-shirt, and exposed two sets of angry-looking claw marks that were practically healed already.
She canted her head and tried to contain her smile. “If you’re waiting for an apology, I’m not sorry.”
“You remember that conversation?” he asked low as he settled his shirts back into place and leaned against the railing of her porch. That sexy man felt a dozen feet tall and nearly blocked out the damn sun behind him with his wide shoulders.
“Of course I remember. I have a bad habit of thinking I’m always doing the wrong thing, and so I apologize for things that I shouldn’t.”
“The first time you apologized, I was so confused. I was busy working. It was a bad day for the family business. A bad day for the Gray Backs, too. A bunch of shipments got messed up, and it brought angry humans into Damon’s Mountains. I was working to fix the mistakes, trying to keep some of the grizzlies from going territorial on the humans. I didn’t have time to breathe all day, much less look at my phone. I thought about you, but I just couldn’t get a second to text you during the chaos. It was bad. And when we finally got everything settled down, I went straight back to my trailer and checked my messages. There were a ton from you. They started out so cute. I was smiling because it felt so fucking good to read about your normal day when I’d just spent hours trying to keep Beaston and Jason and my dad from maiming some pissed-off humans. You’d taken a picture at a coffee shop of this mug that said You’re Hot. You took me shopping, took pictures and messaged me, and you went to the post office and took a selfie of this stuffed valentine’s bear. Aaand that’s when it hit me what day it was. February fourteenth, and my head had been so messed up since first thing that morning, I hadn’t realized the holiday. Your messages got worried. You asked if I was okay. There were a couple hours of silence, and then you apologized for bothering me.” Jaxon’s dark eyebrows lowered, and he shook his head. “As if you could bother me, Anna. Your messages were the best part of my day. I felt bad for not wishing you a happy Valentine’s Day, and I felt frustrated you thought you had to apologize for something so silly.”
“Yeah,” she murmured, remembering the pain of uncertainty that day. “I was hoping you would do something sweet, or send me a video and ask me to be your valentine. Totally lame, I know, but I was also depending on you for normal. And you were gentle but firm and told me to never apologize for anything unless I actually did something wrong. And for the rest of that night, I felt like I’d gotten in trouble by you.”
“I could tell. You got quiet, and when I messaged you asking if you were okay, you texted back I’m fine.” Jaxon stepped forward, brushed his hands through her hair, and cupped the back of her head, angled her face up toward him. “When my dad asks my ma that, and she answers ‘I’m fine,’ my brother, Jathan, and I always knew to get the hell out of dodge, because she would eventually explode and rip my dad a new asshole.” The corner of his lip curved up slightly in a smile that disappeared when he began talking again. “I waited for you to rip me, but you didn’t. You just got more quiet. For a couple of days, I was afraid I’d lost you, and I couldn’t understand why. I had all these visions of having to wake up without your messages, to go through my day not talking to you, and it sucked. I wasn’t ready to lose you. I even thought about calling you.”
“Wow, that’s some desperation. An actual phone call, Jax? You must’ve been scared.”
He chuckled and drew closer to her, massaging the back of her head gently with his fingertips. His eyes were striking in the saturated sunlight as he studied her face. They were caught between his human caramel brown and the green of his animal, and they glowed from the pupils out, ever so slightly. “I begged you to talk to me. To tell me what was wrong.”
“I needed time because I didn’t like getting in trouble for something I was already self-conscious about. I knew I had a problem with apologizing. Every boyfriend I’ve ever had has made a comment about how they hated that I did that. It was my go-to reaction for everything. I was mad that you’d pointed it out so early in the relationship we were building, and you weren’t even physically around me to hear me apologizing. You saw that about me too soon. I felt exposed and scared of what we were becoming and angry at myself for not having fixed that habit before. And when I explained it, you were so sweet, so understanding, but still firm in telling me I needed to work on it for me, not for you or for anyone else. But you said you wanted to see me strong, not groveling, not taking my reactions back, not saying sorry for things I shouldn’t feel any guilt over. And so from then on, I actually worked on it.”