by E. M. Moore
I tilt my head back, knowing I can make it last longer if I don’t watch. “Fuck. You’re so good at this,” I whisper.
He squeezes my ass. “And you’re good at taking it.”
I grind all over his face, delving my fingers into his hair as I leave my mouth open in forbidden, silent cries.
“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this, Mia. How many times I dreamed of doing this. When you were crying over him, I wanted to slip into your bed and fuck you senseless. I nutted over the anticipation of leaving my seed inside you.”
“Nathan....” I gasp. He glances up to meet my eyes. He’s so raw, honest, open. There’s nothing barricaded off. He’s there for me to see, and I love that feeling.
“Mia, I love you.”
His admission makes my heart stop a moment, then I crash into a climax that he has to quiet with his hand over my mouth again. I buck against him, my head pounding out his words. After several long seconds, he sets me on my feet and drops a kiss to my forehead.
My heart beats unsteadily, like he’s somehow set me on a different rhythm. With his lips still against my forehead, he says, “Don’t answer yet. I’m sorry I’m so selfish. You deserve better.”
My eyelids flutter closed as he moves away. When I open them again, he’s slipping from the shower and strolling naked through the door that leads to his room.
Oh shit.
I place my hand over my chest, waiting for my heart to pump normally again, but it doesn’t come. There’s an extra beat, one reserved for Nathan.
Swallowing the emotion clogging my brain, I move with new determination. I turn the shower off and step out to stand in front of the mirror. Wiping the fog away, I can see myself in the clear spot. I look the same as I always have. It’s not as if there’s a sign above my head that says Nathan Loves Mia, but I feel different.
A knock comes on my side of the bathroom, and I squeak, almost jumping.
“Mia?” Nathan asks.
At the same time, another male voice asks, “Mia, are you in there?”
Sean. Fuck.
“Yeah,” I call out. “Sean, I’m in here.”
“Are you almost ready?”
A thump comes from inside Nathan’s room, and I cringe. Fuckity, fuck-fuck. “Yeah. Want to wait for me downstairs?”
“Sure.”
The door to my room opens and closes, and after that, Nathan’s opens and closes, too. Holy shit. I light a fire under my ass and run around to get ready. The last thing I want is to have Nathan deal with Sean.
I do the quickest blow-drying job of my life. My makeup is applied with shaking fingers before I run out of the room to find I still have fifteen minutes before he was supposed to pick me up. Sean’s early. Of course he fucking is.
I slip my party clothes on, giving myself a last-minute check in the mirror before deciding I’m good enough to go on a date with, and then I head downstairs to find Sean and Nathan sitting at the island together. Nathan pours Sean a shot and pushes it to him over the smooth countertop.
“Dude, I just had two,” Sean protests.
“I thought we were going to a party?”
Sean chuckles and closes his eyes, shooting the shot back. Nathan winks at me.
Like always, we’re on the same team.
15
There’s nothing romantic about shirking mate laws. It is dark, gritty, and…sexy, if you’re into that kind of thing.
Apparently, I’m into that kind of thing.
The chill in the air pricks my skin. It’s as if I should feel cold, but I don’t. I can tell it’s there, but it doesn’t touch me. Being a shifter can be so cool sometimes.
Despite the weird fucking foursome we make, me, Nathan, Sean, and Gayle hang out at the party. There are so many shifters here that I grew up with that it almost seems like old times. The liquor is flowing. The bass is thumping. Even the setting, in the middle of Crescentwood Forest, is familiar, like pulling on an old shirt.
Under any other circumstances, I could trick myself into believing that there isn’t anything I have to deal with outside of this.
Nathan is eyeballing my fated mate like he wants to kill him every time he’s within touching distance of me. A fact that makes me feel incredibly sexy. That, and I may have partaken in a couple of shots before we even left the house. Now that I’ve been here for at least an hour, I’ve added to that total.
Sean fills up my cup. “I thought you said you hadn’t drank in a while?”
I tip the cup to him. “That’s probably why this is all going to my head. I’m afraid I’ll get sloppy soon.”
Honestly, Sean’s presence is only annoying me at this point. Nathan put it into perspective: If he’s not saving me, he’s willfully hurting me. In my mind, that’s unforgiveable. He knows the stakes as well as I do.
I’m kind of hoping Nathan does take his head off. We could slip into the woods and run away.
That’s definitely the alcohol talking. Land of wasted wishes.
It doesn’t help that Sean is being particularly touchy tonight. Gayle is ignoring us both, which is fine by me since every time I see her I want to gouge her eyes out.
So far, I’ve successfully avoided dancing or even swaying with Sean, but by doing so, I’m pretty sure I’m putting off vibes I shouldn’t be. Turns out drunk Mia doesn’t like to fuck around with particulars.
The alcohol numbs my responsibilities. It shreds my inhibitions. Not to the point where I’d go streaking through the party or anything—that’s never on my radar—but to the point where ignoring Sean seems like a good idea.
“When are we going to have that dinner at your parents’ house?”
“If I could get my mom to text me, that might happen,” I tell him.
He frowns. “Sorry about that.”
I snort. Literally snort. “Sorry. Not sure that cuts it.”
“I guess I didn’t think about all the consequences.”
“How about now?” I shout over the music. “How about after I told you I’ll have to go Feral?”
My dumbass happens to shout that just as the song changes. Everyone within a few feet radius turns to look at me, and I tip my cup to them.
“Jesus, Mia,” Sean grinds out.
Nathan peers over at me. He watches my body language, no doubt noticing that I’ve probably had a little too much.
I look away. “What? It’s the truth.”
“That wasn’t my decision.”
I laugh, the sound harsh on a liquor high. “Well, it certainly wasn’t mine.” I down the rest of the drink, and Sean is there filling it up again.
He looks off to the side and nods his head. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but his forehead is pinched in concentration. “Let’s take a walk.”
I shrug. “Are we actually going to do some real talking? If not, I’d rather stay here.”
He pulls me up, and I fall into his chest. Luckily, I save my cup from spilling. I have a feeling I’m going to need it after this conversation. “Yes. Real talk.”
“Excellent,” I say, though it doesn’t come out that way at all. My tongue is thick and buzzing. I shrug to myself, taking another drink.
Without looking back, I walk in the opposite direction with Sean. Nathan, I’m sure, will see where we’re going. If we’re going to have a real talk, I’ll definitely be asking him about Gayle.
I shift my cup to my other hand as we start for the tree line. With my free hand, I pull out my phone and bring up a recording app that Nathan made me download for occasions such as this. He thinks he’s a ninja or something.
I laugh, and Sean peers over at me. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” I say sweetly before I put my phone back in my pocket.
As soon as we enter the forest, it’s like we walk into another realm. My shifter sight instinctually takes over. I search for my wolf, but I’ve no doubt drank her into a numb silence. If I push away the cobwebs, I can feel her anxiety over being away from Nathan—some
thing that’s definitely not supposed to happen.
The further we go, the more it feels as if someone is tilting the ground this way and that. The edges of my vision start to blur, and I shake my head. I didn’t think I had that much to drink. Enough to feel it and probably puke tonight, sure, but my feet are so heavy, they can barely move.
“Mia?”
I try to answer Sean, but when I open my mouth, nothing comes out. He scoops me up and I close my eyes. I assume he’s taking me back to the party to sleep it off, but the next time I’m coherent enough to understand my surroundings, I’m lying in a clearing with tall grass swaying in the moon above me. “Wha....”
“Don’t worry, Mia. I’m here. I’m going to fix everything.”
The voice is all wrong, though. It’s Sean, not the man who will actually fix everything. I try to get up, but my hands won’t come apart. Peering down, I find a disgusting, smelly stain down the front of my shirt and rope binding my hands together. Panic crashes inside me. “Sean?”
My gaze flicks up to find him pacing in front of me, sucking on the pad of his thumb. “I said don’t worry. I’m handling this.”
“What’s going on?”
With how fuzzy my brain is, I’m not sure if I’m actually talking or not. Hell, I’m not even sure that what’s happening is actually happening.
If the smell on my shirt is evidence, I don’t want it to be.
A low drum begins. I peer backward, trying to find the source, but it makes the ground move again, so I snap my head forward and wait for the earth to stop tilting. The drums don’t stop, though. They reverberate around me and are joined by a female voice humming in a language I don’t understand. Either that or it’s just a constant stream of consonants and vowels.
When it doesn’t feel like I’m going to throw up anymore, I slowly open my eyes again. Before Sean, a woman in a petite, white dress chants. With her free hand, she wafts smoke over him that’s coming from a charred clump of sticks. “Did you bring her hair?”
In the moonlight, I see him hand her a few strands of purple hair. I have no idea how he even got that.
“Your blood?”
“What the fuck?” My voice echoes in my pulsing head, making me moan.
Sean takes a dagger out of the woman’s hand and cuts his palm. Crimson spills over his fingers. “Fuck,” he hisses.
She holds out a bottle, catching some of it. “Now, your hair.”
He grabs a handful of his hair and yanks, sliding the strands into the glass bottle with the drops of blood.
“Lie down next to her,” the woman instructs. Her tone is ethereal, so soft and feminine—a contrast to the instructions she’s giving. The chant and the drums pick up again as Sean lies next to me.
“What are you doing?” I hiss.
“Ending this.”
Fear settles over my chest. “You’re killing me? What the fuck?”
“No,” he snaps. “I’m ending this torture.”
My head is still filled with cotton as I glance around the area, realizing this is all real. I puked on myself. I blacked out for God knows how long…. “Did you spike my drink?”
“I had to get you out here somehow.”
“You asshole,” I cry. To have lost time, to not know how you ended up somewhere or what happened when you were out of it, it’s like he shaved off a piece of me.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re always sorry. What in the fuck are you doing? Who is that?” I plead as the woman steps between us. I struggle against my restraints once more, but nothing happens. I curse myself inside my head. If I hadn’t drank so much—
No, Sean had this all planned. He put something in my drink. It wouldn’t have mattered how much I had. This would still be happening.
“She’s going to fix this,” he says.
“Fix what?”
“This stupid mate bond!”
The force of his voice is so strong that I cower away from him. Sean has never raised his voice to me. He’s never lifted a hand. He was always just indifferent.
“I’m so sick of fucking feeling things for you. I don’t want them. I hate the way my heart is not my own. I hate that my wolf will barely speak to me now. I can’t even shift. This bond fucked me over.”
I blink at him. It could be the effects of the drug he gave me, but I have no idea what he thinks he can do about it. It’s fate. It’s something that just is.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “It won’t hurt.” He glares at the woman who’s swishing our hair and his blood together.
She bends down, slicing my thigh, and I cry out. She holds the lip of the glass and collects some of my blood.
“I said don’t hurt her,” he protests, sitting up a little.
“I had to get her blood since you failed to do that part.”
Sean moves his gaze to me, and I swear if he apologizes, I’m going to shift and rip his throat out.
I close my eyes as the woman starts to chant. The wind picks up, whipping my hair in front of my face. There have always been stories about those who can work with magic. I believed them because shifters are also the stuff of legend, so why couldn’t magic users be real?
My skin starts to buzz, and I slow my breathing, searching for the one thing inside me that might be able to help. I hope whatever drugs Sean gave me haven’t made her sleepy, too. Falling deeper within myself, I search for that one area where she always is. I’m practically banging on her door as panic sets in. The woman’s chants grow louder.
I gasp as lightning streaks the sky. Her hands reach toward the clouds, the glass bottle glinting in the moonlight.
“Stop!” I yell. “Don’t!”
“It’s better this way,” Sean says.
“For you, you asshole. Fate put us together. The elders aren’t going to take your word that the bond is gone now. I’ll be Feral anyway.”
“Yeah, but at least I won’t feel bad about it.”
A growl rips through my body, and my fingers curl in on each other. On the heels of my outburst comes another as a dark wolf leaps over me, catching the goddess-like creature in the shoulder and ramming her to the ground.
Sean gets to his feet, hands outstretched. Hope surges through me when I see Nathan’s blue eyes staring back at me. He found me.
“Who the fuck are you?” Sean growls.
Nathan matches his anger and increases it. He pounces, nipping at Sean’s heels. My so-called mate leaps in the air and takes off. Nathan chases him all the way to the edge of the clearing as he runs like the coward he is.
He thought he could magic away our mate bond? He’s delusional. And desperate.
Limbs snap in the distance. Sean’s still telegraphing his retreat through the woods when Nathan runs up to me. He nuzzles my head, and I try to reach out with my bound hands but don’t get very far. A low, menacing growl emanates from his chest as he shifts back into his human form, ending in a crouch next to me. “Are you okay?”
My eyes heat. I nod as the woman behind Nathan gets to her feet. He peers over his shoulder and stalks toward her. She falls back and scrambles away. With his bare feet, Nathan stomps on the glass bottle, cracking it.
“Who are you?” he demands.
She thrusts her chin in the air. “Mistress Silverman of the Magick Folk.”
“What were you doing?”
“I was hired by that young man to break their mate bond.”
“Break their mate bond?” Nathan fumes. “That’s not even possible.”
She shrugs. “My people believe everything can be reversed aside from death. We use our will and powers from the universe to make whatever we want happen.”
“For other people, too?”
“If the price is right.”
At that, I growl at her, and she flicks her gaze to me. “What if I didn’t want the bond broken?”
She shrugs in response. “You didn’t hire me.”
Nathan prowls closer. He grabs her by the flimsy dress, tightening his fis
t in the fabric. “If I ever catch you close to Mia again, I’ll end you myself.”
She gives him a sly smile. “No need. I’ve already been paid.”
He roars in her face, but she’s seemingly unperturbed. When he retreats, she gets to her feet and starts a slow walk back to the opposite side of the forest. Nathan looms into view, using his sharp claws to cut through the rope I’m bound with. He hisses when he sees the injury on my thigh and glares in the direction Sean escaped.
He scoops me into his arms. “Are you okay?”
I blink at him, and my wolf finally makes herself known, as if she, too, is waking from a dream. “Maybe we should’ve let her do it.”
Nathan clutches me to him. “I don’t need a stupid spell to break the mate bond. I already have.”
16
Nathan refuses to set me down, carrying me through the forest on swift legs. We’re at least half a mile away from the party on a peak, grassy knoll. I tell him I can walk, but all he does is grunt at me as he slips easily back into thick trees and brush. His breath isn’t even labored when we hit the road. Clouds darken the moon, splaying shadows over Nathan’s face as he peers both ways.
I wiggle, wanting to walk on my own, but he merely holds me tighter. “Calm down. I’m trying to figure out what to do.”
“What can we do?” I ask.
“Well, I’m not taking you back to the fucking party. If he’s there, I’ll cut his throat. I don’t want to stay on the road because the only shifters out will be coming to and from the party, and we don’t want to be seen.”
“How did you get away? How did you know?”
He starts off in a direction, staying close to the trees. “The longer you were gone, the more I panicked. Then Gayle began to act funny, trying to get me to drink when I haven’t had a drop all night.”
I narrow my gaze at him. “You didn’t?”
“I’m not letting my guard down with them.”
“Wish I would’ve been that smart. He spiked my drink.”
A low rumble emanates from his chest. I press my hand against it as if I can get him to stop. He’s still naked as a newborn pup, so I filter my fingertips through his chest hair. The soothing motion must put me to sleep again because I wake up on a thin cot in the corner of a room. A single light on the bedside table illuminates most of the space. Bare bones is all I can call it. Two-by-fours flank the room with plywood screwed into them for makeshift walls.
