He fell to his knees and buried his face against her belly. Her scent surrounded him, buffeted him, made him all right. Her fingers slid through his hair, against his scalp, down his neck.
She sighed and he felt her resistance melt, and resolved to do whatever it took to make things right. To love her the way she was meant to be loved instead of the way he’d made her feel until then.
“Open yourself then. To me. Come inside and let me touch you and your wolf.”
Overjoyed and awed by her strength, he stood on shaky legs and grabbed his bag.
“If you come through this door, you’re going to do this right? Because honestly I can’t take it if you reject me.”
He kissed her, softly, just a breath of his lips against hers. “I’m fucking freaked out, but I trust you. I can’t promise it’ll be easy but I want to do this and I want you to help me. I just don’t know how.”
“Come on then. Let me show you.”
* * *
Her hands shook as she closed the door and locked it. “Come in. Why don’t you put your bag over there.” She indicated a space next to her couch. She wasn’t ready to invite him to unload in the bedroom yet.
He did and turned to her. “I am so sorry. I...” He shrugged and she knew. She understood. But knowing didn’t mean she was ready to just let him hurt her again. She had to be sure he was ready to stand at her side.
She touched him, his energy vibrated through his skin, his muscles taut against her palm. “Let’s take this one step at a time, all right?”
They sat and he pulled her to him, holding her, breathing her in and she relaxed, needing the contact as much as he did.
“Why are you here? Now instead of two weeks ago?”
“Let me go back more okay? When I met you, when I claimed you, I wanted you. It wasn’t just about fucking you, no matter what you think. I let my wolf take over in a way I hadn’t in many years, not more than a handful of times over my life. But then, okay so you came to my house and you held a mirror up to me and it sucked. You’re this fully formed person! I am not. I couldn’t handle it. So I pushed you away and then you left and I should have stopped you then but I didn’t. And then my dad and Sid came to me and they said a lot of stuff that made sense and it gave me an excuse to finally reach out and call you and then of course I got to know you and the more I got to know you, the more I fell for you.”
She wanted to interrupt, to tell him he was fully formed but being stupid, but instead she let him talk. The way he rushed through his sentences told her if she interrupted he’d never get out what he needed to say.
So she threaded her fingers through his and let him talk.
“And I came up here and you were just so vivid. So full of life and so self-assured. You move with purpose, Megan. You take everything head on and that is so amazing, so sexy. I’m in awe of it. That night when you wanted to run with me? I wanted to so badly but I couldn’t get it out of my head. My foreignness. What if I did it wrong? What if you were better at it than I was? What if you were disgusted by me?”
He paused and she heard him swallow. She ached for him, wanted to shake his mother and show her what she’d done to her child.
“And so I opened myself to you the only way I felt I could and still be good at it. I don’t know! When we were together in bed, I felt like we were totally connected but now I see you must have felt used, like it’s all I cared about. But that’s not how it was. Not how it is.
“Back in Vegas I went to my parents’ house, a few days ago, and I confronted my mother about her call to you. When she told me what she’d said, I, my God, I didn’t know what to do or say to her. My father apologized for the way I was raised and urged me to come to you. I left and did some planning. But I went back to him the next day and we ran. As wolves. The last time we did that I was twenty-two! He apologized for not being a stronger force in my life, offered to come up here with me to help.”
“If I ask you to run with me right now, would you?” She turned to look him in the eye.
“Yes. I’d... I’ll admit I’m worried but yes, I would. I will. I want to have this with you. Do you think I want to hate what I am?”
She shook her head. “I hope not. I love what you are. We can go slow. You ran with your father, that’s awesome. I want that with you. It’s important to me, I won’t lie. But we can take little steps. However, I can’t do this long-distance thing. I just can’t. All cards on the table, I want a mate. I want a husband at my side. You don’t have to come to Pack gatherings and do all the wolf stuff if it makes you uncomfortable but I am a werewolf and I am one openly. I want children, I won’t raise them to fear what they are.”
“I made some calls over the last several days. I’m going to apply for my license to practice up here. I have some friends from medical school and Grace said she’d help me too. You were right, I did like her. She’s very much your advocate.” He grimaced. “She schooled me a bit on you. And then today, Nina, man oh man! She chewed me up and spit me out before she finally told me you weren’t at the coast at all but here. Anyway, I want to be here with you. I want to be your husband. I’ve never been in a Pack before. I’m not even particularly close to my family so I can’t promise it’s going to be smooth or easy but I want to try.”
“Why? Why now? Two weeks ago you didn’t. Two weeks before that you didn’t. Why now?”
“I’ve tried living without you and it sucks. I like you, Megan. And what’s more, I love you. The more I thought about you, about what we could have, the more I thought about what I didn’t have. I don’t have a full life, I do when I’m with you. And you know, Layla and my father and you too, you all served me some harsh truths about how I was raised and who I was taught to be. I’m choosing to not hate myself. I can be that with you. At your side I can be who I am. Or you make me want to work at it, at the very least.”
For long moments she opened herself to their link. Letting herself feel just what he was saying openly and fully. She hadn’t done it since they first made the bond and he rushed through her, dizzying her, making her slightly drunk with him.
Hope burst through her from the dying embers of just an hour before. And then desire.
“Megan?” His pupils nearly swallowed all the color in his eyes. “I know you felt like I was just using you for sex before and I’m sorry. But I’d love to...fuck, I’m dying to be inside you. I’ve been thinking of you nonstop, you know? Not just of you naked and beneath me but of your voice, the way your hair catches the light. Everything. But I can’t deny I don’t love to be with you naked and sweaty.”
She stood and held a hand out. “Come on, I just put new sheets on the bed and the air conditioner is on in there. Let’s get sweaty.”
* * *
The room was cool and the curtains had been drawn so it was dark, a refuge from the outside world. Even in the dark he could see her clearly as she reached to turn on a small bedside lamp.
Without words she crossed the room and drew him closer to the bed. Slowly, she pulled his shirt up and over his head, her mouth leaving wet, hot kisses across his chest. Every place she touched burned, tingled with the electricity of their bond.
He groaned, wanting her more, needing to crawl into her, taking refuge, being one with her in a way he’d craved since the very first moment he saw her at LAX. She called to him physically and emotionally from the start. It was more than the bond, it was simply her.
“I love how you look. You’re so masculine, so handsome and strong.” Her lips moved against the sensitive skin of his neck as her hands smoothed down his back and grabbed hold of his ass, pulling him closer.
“You’re going to kill me,” he moaned.
“You’ll die happy,” she murmured as she dropped to her knees and unzipped his jeans.
All the blood in his body rushed away from his head and straight to his co
ck as she pulled it free from his boxers. Eagerly, he kicked out of the pants and underwear, standing totally naked in front of her as she knelt.
Beautiful.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, she leaned in and slid her tongue through the slick bead of pre-come on the head of his cock. Zings of sensation arced through him at the wet heat of her mouth as she surrounded his cock with it.
He braced his knees as she continued to suck him all the way in and then pull back, her fingers doing amazing things to his balls as she worked. Over and over and over again until he couldn’t feel anything but that, the pleasure of it, of all her attention being on him. He nearly lost it, had nearly given up on this? He was ten kinds of fool.
She hummed, a deep sound of arousal around his cock and it vibrated up his spine, right to his brain.
“Christ!” he hissed as she sucked very hard and dug the tip of her tongue into that nerve-laden sweet spot just below the head. And before he could say anything else he came hard, so hard he saw stars paint his vision as it felt like his whole body rushed out the head of his cock, filling her with him.
He thought he would fall boneless to her bed until she pulled her mouth back, looked up into his face and licked her lips. It was round two and right then, as he picked her up by the upper arms and kissed her, hard.
* * *
His mouth never left hers even as his hands tore at her clothes, sending them all over the place until she was as naked as he. His hands were everywhere at once, kneading, stroking, pinching and, ahhh his hand slid between her thighs, finding her clit. Her hips jutted forward of their own accord.
He made a sound, laced with need and want and pleasure. She swallowed it eagerly. He’d come to her, really come to her. Feeling him now, the difference was palpable. There was nothing between them anymore. Every nerve ending in her body sang as he loved her. Miraculous. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this onslaught of sensation. It marked her, changed her utterly.
Her eyes fluttered open as she lost his body heat when he pulled away. His smile was wicked. “Don’t look so alarmed, I want to lick you. Everywhere.”
“Oh. Well, I like that idea.” Simply forming a smile took so much effort when all she wanted was his hands and mouth on her again.
She liked it even more when he lay down. He was a big, chiseled hunk of man there and she wanted to take a big bite.
“Come on up here.” He indicated she straddle his chest but she stood and looked at him some more.
“I really like looking at you this way. I really think this is what I should see every time I come home.”
He smiled. “I’ll do my very best to make that happen. Now, pardon my crudity but I want to taste your pussy and I can’t do it unless it’s right here above my face.”
Whoa. She shivered. “You should be illegal in thirty states,” she managed to stammer. She hadn’t felt this bowled over by him before. Turned on, yes, but he was just so overwhelming right then.
Not so overwhelming she was unable to move up and position herself the way he suggested with a waggle of his brows. Broad, strong hands smoothed up the outside of her thighs.
“You might want to hold on to the headboard,” he said right before he grabbed her hips and pulled her to his mouth. His mouth, sweet heavens, that mouth of his went to work with lips and tongue and the slight scrape of teeth. Devastating, taking over, filling her with nothing but the memory of the way he loved her.
The tip of his tongue flicked and danced against her clit in just the right way. His fingers, digging into the muscle of her thighs and ass, held her just where he wanted so her only option was to grip the headboard and let him do his work.
Closer and closer he drew her in, every few long moments he’d change up, stab his tongue deep into her body or suck just so lightly on her clit. Build it into the overall rhythm until she hurtled toward orgasm so fast and so hard her entire body seized as she hissed out his name.
But he kept on, on and on, relentless until she tipped, hard, into another orgasm on the heels of the first, this one rendering her thigh muscles to burning, useless blobs. Before she collapsed, he flipped her onto her back and moved up her body, even as her pussy continued to spasm, seeking to be filled.
And he answered that need in one hard thrust as he held her open, keeping her thigh up at his waist. Thick, wet sounds filled the room, buffeted by indrawn breath and the frenzied meeting of flesh.
Need crawled through her veins, craving for him, for the man she was fated to belong to forever, the man she’d been born to love and be loved by. What a momentous thing it was to be with him, truly, completely with him as he pressed into her and withdrew all but the very tip of his cock, on and on.
In the course of a single day she’d moved from desolation and terrible loneliness to the sort of completeness she’d heard her sisters talk about but truly doubted she’d ever had lodged within her.
Her hands needed to touch every inch of his skin she could reach, needed to hear the way his breath changed as she did something he really liked. His skin broke into gooseflesh as she dragged her nails up his sides, his pupils enlarged and his breath caught. His nipples pebbled as she arched up to lick over one and then the other.
“God that feels good.”
She nipped at the sensitive skin before looking up at him. “You’re not doing so badly yourself.”
“I love you and I’m sorry I hurt you.”
Swallowing her emotion, she smiled and rolled her hips. “I have waited since the first moment you touched me for you to truly accept me and what this is.”
“I don’t deserve you. But I’m keeping you anyway. The bond saves my worthless ass from being tossed out onto the street.” He laughed as he thrust, changing his angle and dragging the entire line of his cock over her sensitized clit. She writhed against him with a sharp intake of breath.
“That’s right, your pussy feels so good around me like this. You’re so damned right. Beautiful. Mine.”
And it hit her, the feeling she’d been so hard pressed to define? It was that she belonged to him, truly and completely. How amazing was that? Tears welled in her eyes and the pain released, unfurling from a tight ball deep within her. She wept even as he made her come again, even as he came while raining kisses over her face, tasting her tears, whispering her name and that he loved her.
Deep gulping sobs wracked her entire body, every part of her released the grief stored within every cell. And he held her through it all, held her as she cried the pain away, replacing it with love, replacing it with understanding and caring, and he did not leave. He stayed there, still half inside her body, his own sheltering her as he did not hide from what he’d created, from what they’d created together.
And when she was done it was as if a switch had been thrown. She sniffled her last and looked up at him. He wore a half smile, his brow still etched with concern. “I can say I’m sorry again but it can’t make up for what you just went through.”
She touched his face as he fell to the side, still holding her. “No more of that. It’s over. This is day one and we can only move forward.”
Chapter Twelve
She looked at him, her wolf, her mate as he lay on his side, breath heaving from their run up the side of the hill. The small patch of white on his front leg pleased her as much as the glint of sharp white teeth.
The earth welcomed them as they’d run, welcomed them each night as they slipped their human skin and let warm loam and fresh pine crush beneath footpads. He howled, answered in the distance by another of their Pack. The strength of such unity rang through her, made her feel welcomed and safe, fiercely protective and proud.
Things were good. And right. The life within her stirred, the human flared, reminding the wolf of that other time when she lived within instead of on the outside. Her mate looked to her and stood. Nu
dging her, pushing her back to that place with the bright lights.
* * *
Shane watched as she found her human skin again. The swell of her once flat belly brought joy to him, their child grew there. After two years together, they’d created a baby, a baby he’d hold in his arms in just three months.
“You all right?” He kissed her temple as he handed her the fleece hooded sweatshirt.
She smiled, leaning into his body. “Yes, of course. Just a bit tired. Gestating is a tough job.”
“If you hadn’t insisted on weeding the entire back garden with Gabby and Nina you probably wouldn’t be so tired.” He laughed as they made their way back to the house just a few feet away.
Off in the distance, Lex and Nina’s place peeked through the trees. Their own house had been finished for about a year. His entrance into Cascadia had been slow but solid. Lex was overbearing and nosy but he loved his sister and as Shane did too, over time, the two of them built a solid friendship.
Layla and Sid were already on the back deck, holding out mugs of hot chocolate. Megan took hers and looked to Shane and rolled her eyes. “Go on. I’ll see you later.”
“You are so awesome.” He kissed her soundly and she laughed. Before he went off with his cousin to watch the movies he’d brought over, he caressed the bump on his wife’s belly and the corresponding squirm and kick against his palm made him look into her face again. “You are. I adore you. There isn’t a moment during my day when I don’t discover some new way to love you.”
Her amused look softened and she took his face in her hands. “Once I snared you, I wasn’t letting go. Now don’t eat too much popcorn.”
He left, satisfied, knowing his life only got better every day.
* * *
“You okay?” Layla pushed the footstool over so she could put her feet up.
“Absolutely okay. They looked like seven-year-olds running off to catch frogs or something.”
Layla laughed. “They did. How many times did Lex call you today?”