He walked to the bathroom and stood outside it, his arms folded over his chest and he did just that. He waited.

Blayne couldn’t wait until she got Gwen and Mitch to try some of this stuff. The shampoo cleaned her hair without stripping it, and the conditioner currently sitting on her head was absolute perfection! Allowing her to detangle her hair without ripping it completely from her head. She couldn’t be happier. While she let the conditioner do its work, she got around to actually showering the rest of her body, humming while she did. To be honest, she had no idea how long she was in but, as usual when it came to her “hair washing time,” Blayne didn’t notice little things like time.

Too bad some other people currently in her life weren’t as comfortable.

“Are you done yet?”

Blayne squeaked. “Are . . . are you in the bathroom with me?”

“What are you doing in there? You’re taking too long!”

Gasping in outrage, Blayne snarled, “Fuck off! I’ll be done when I’m done!”

“When is that? Another five minutes? Another ten?”

“Can’t you take a bath or something?”

“No.”

It amazed her how certain he always was. No doubt ever.

“Then I guess you’ll have to wait until I’m done.”

“Which will be when?”

Now he was pissing her off. “When. I’m. Done.”

And that’s when the insane hybrid bellowed, “Too long!” from the other side of the shower door. Blayne spun around when the door slammed open and watched through the one eye that didn’t have honey-infused conditioner in it as Bold Novikov stepped into the shower with her.

“Have you lost your mind?” she screamed, trying to get the conditioner out of her eyes and cover her naked body at the same time.

“You’re taking too long!”

“Too long for what? Did we have plans I’m not aware of?”

The shower, an exquisite bit of bathroom engineering, had five showerheads that could be individually adjusted by temperature and water pressure. Yet Blayne only had three going at the moment, each adjusted to what she—and her hair—needed. And the shower that was so wonderful and big was now way too small since it not only had a seven-one cranky polar-lion hybrid in it but his big dick, too!

“Look—” she began.

“Don’t ‘look’ me. I’ve been standing out there for a good fifteen minutes. More than enough time for a normal human being to shower—”

“Normal?”

“—but instead of getting in and out you stay in here and abuse the Ursus County water supply!”

“First off”—she yelled over the now five pumping showerheads and her exploding rage, busytrying to get all the conditioner out of her hair—“I am as normal as anyone else who can shift into a half African wild dog and half wolf! And second, I wasn’t abusing anything! I’m a girl! A girl with a lot of hair that likes to be pampered and loved!”

“Are you giving your hair its own personality?”

“Yessss,” she hissed at him as he scrubbed himself clean, attempting to prove how fast he could do it. Goddamn show off! “Because my hair is that amazing! And third, don’t blame me for your obsessive compulsive disorder! You have a schedule to keep—that’s on you. Not me! So suck it up, Genghis! This is one peasant who’s not running from your OCD boar-rage!” She turned away from him and then spun back. “And use some goddamn conditioner on that mop!”

And to help him with that, she threw one of her new and industrial-size, thirty-two-ounce bottles of conditioner at him. The one with the wheat protein added. She had good aim, too. Hit him right in the face.

Blayne knew, too, that if she’d seen anger or rage, she would have run. But there was none of that. No. Instead, she saw that he had the same expression he’d had right before he cross-checked a rookie who’d been moving up behind him during his last game.

She saw determination.

Blayne took a step back and she knew instantly that had been the wrong move. His gaze narrowed, watching her close, his eyes turning from bright, light blue to gold in a split second.

Lion-male gold.

She was no longer Blayne. She was prey. And they both knew it.

Bo watched Blayne’s claws unleash from her hands while fangs extended from her gums. She braced her legs apart and waited for him to move first. He liked that. It was bold. Like his name.

In the thirty seconds since that bottle of product slammed into his face with the power of a baseball thrown by a major league pitcher, Bo’s mane had grown until it practically covered his eyes and tumbled past his shoulders and to his pecks in an unruly mass of light and dark browns.

Knowing she’d wait, he made a classic hockey move by dropping his head as if he was going to move to his left to circle around her. Blayne saw it and went for the shower door to his right. He caught her there, as he knew he would since no one in the game was as good at “deking” or head-faking, as he was. But he forgot he wasn’t dealing with some nonplayer. She may not play hockey, but she was a derby girl. When he had her around the waist, Blayne let her weight come back on him, surprising him. In the process, she brought her elbow down and slammed it into his collar bone. Bo slipped backward and into the opposite wall, Blayne still in his arms, but she twisted and head-butted him. True, she only got him in the jaw, but it rang his bell. Then she was out of his arms and gone.