For a moment, he just stood there, the forgotten sweater dangling from one hand as he took her in. She was wearing a plain beige bra, but Aaron didn’t seem to mind. He looked at her like a man regarding a marvel. Or a miracle. The sweater dropped from his hand and he reached out to touch her skin, his fingers tracing along the contours of her hips, her waist, her ribcage. His large hands wrapped around her waist, his thumbs skating over her belly, awakening ripples of sensation there.
And Lyla gave herself over to the feel of it. Aaron never faltered. His hands moved slowly over her, relieving her of her clothing and divesting himself of his. He helped her down on the bed and came down next to her. Gently he stroked her, awakening the desire that had waited, just below the surface, kissing her, running his hands over her breasts, igniting a blazing storm of sensation there before replacing his hands with his mouth and sliding his touch lower, carefully tracing over her slippery wetness, creating delicious rivers of pleasure until she was panting, and squirming, and begging—and always, the whole time, making sure she was with him, before finally, finally lowering himself over her, entering her, completing her in a way she had never known was possible. It was slow and careful and exquisite, and she remembered, suddenly, that it had been like this the last time too. At least in the beginning. Before it changed. And she realized that maybe Aaron hadn’t been trying to control her. Perhaps he had simply lost control of himself.
And then there was no more time for thinking, because all the velvet sensations were coming together in a way that demanded her attention, building higher and higher, until they burst, sending showers of pleasure spiraling through her—Aaron right behind her, with a muffled groaning growl, as he held himself rigid inside her, panting into her neck.
Lyla wrapped her arms around him, holding him to her, gently stroking the tense muscles of his back.
“Aaron, are you okay?”
He gave a muffled laugh and levered himself up higher on his elbows so he could gaze down at her. “I think that was supposed to be my line.”
His eyes were soft, and he had a happy, satisfied little smile on his lips. It looked really good on him. And Lyla realize just how tense he had been these past few days.
She reached up to run a finger along his jaw. “I asked you first. That wasn’t too… tame for you?”
His smile broadened. “No, ma’am. It was not. Not at all.”
“Oh, good,” Lyla said, careful to keep her face neutral, “cause there’s this thing called tantric that I’ve always wanted to try—”
Aaron gave a deep belly laugh and slid out of her, rolling over to lie beside her, one arm up over his face, still laughing. “Lyla,” he said after a moment. “That might just kill me.”
He slid an arm under her and pulled her so she was lying half on his chest. “Just think how bad you’d feel about that,” he said, smiling playfully. “Have mercy.”
Lyla pulled gently on the curly golden hair on his chest. The man was positively furry. In a good way. “Mercy, hmm? I’ll think about it.”
Aaron chuckled and kissed the top of her head. “How do you feel? Is your neck okay?”
“It’s fine,” she said, although actually it was throbbing. He had been very careful not to brush the bandage. Even now, she was lying so that the wound was facing up, but it still hurt. “How long has it been? Do you think it’s time for another pain pill?”
“I do. I’ll get it.” He slipped out from under her and padded off to the bathroom, presumably to get her some water. Lyla enjoyed the view as he walked away. The cheeks of his butt were very round, the skin a pale vulnerable white. So eminently male. And adorable. Lyla bit her lip and drew in a deep breath. Forever and always. Maybe they could.
Later, much later, after Aaron had convinced her to let him give her a back rub—during which he mostly nibbled on the back of her neck, the good side, and stroked the back of her thighs and butt until she was squirming, and then made slow, sweet love to her again—and they were resting, Aaron ran a hand down her arm. She was lying on her back, feeling her heart rate settling back to normal, and he was lying on his side, watching her.
“You never told me exactly what happened with your ex that last time.”
Damn. She’d thought she’d managed to avoid this. “Just, you know, typical… stuff. He liked to prove he was in control.”
“What did he do, Lyla?” Aaron’s voice was quiet.
“Um.” She cleared her throat. She could feel her body tense. She didn’t want to talk about this. Didn’t even want to think about it. Lyla squeezed her eyes shut.
“There was… a knife.”
“A knife?” Aaron’s voice was sharp. “What do you mean, a knife? He cut you?”
She nodded.
“Bad?” Aaron sounded angry.
She shook her head. “No. Mostly he just wanted to scare me.” And he’d succeeded. Her voice was shaking. Tears tried to clog her throat, but she swallowed them down. There’d been something in his eyes. His expression. She hadn’t known if he would stop. She shuddered.
“What’s his name? I’m going to kill him.”
Lyla sat up. “Aaron, you can’t. It was consensual.”
“It was consensual?”
Lyla flinched back, and Aaron realized he might have roared that last word. He pulled in a deep breath and just held it for a minute.
“Lyla. He tied you up and then he cut you. That wasn’t consensual. Am I right about that?”
Lyla bit her lip. “Well… um. He convinced me to let him tie me up, so that part was… consensual.”
“Not consensual enough,” he growled. “I can still kill him.”
A hard knot of rage settled in his stomach. He was going to track down that bastard, and kill him. Slowly. He liked blood? He’d give him blood—
“Aaron. Stop. You can’t kill him. I don’t want you to kill him.” She sounded serious, maybe even worried, but he wasn’t paying a lot of attention.
“I divorced him. And I don’t want to talk about him anymore. I don’t want to talk about him, I don’t want to think about him, and you have to promise not to kill him. Or do anything to him. Or have anyone else do anything. Or— Or this isn’t going to work.”
Aaron ground his teeth, his fists clenching in impotent fury. He wanted nothing more than to get down to his command center, look this bastard up, and then go pay him a little visit.
“Aaron! Promise me.”
Aaron stared at the wall, trying to get his emotions under control. That anyone, anyone, would do that to Lyla—his Lyla—
“Aaron. Please. Promise me.”
He flopped back down on the bed, grumbling. “I’ll promise you. I’ll promise to rip out his throat—”
“Aaron.”
“Fine,” he said, still not meeting her eyes. “I promise I won’t go after him.” He’d have to leave her to do that anyway, and he wasn’t doing that. “But if he ever comes anywhere near you,” he turned his head to meet her eyes, “he had better hope he’s a very good runner.”
“No killing.”
Aaron stared up at the ceiling for a long moment. “Fine. No killing.”
It was against the Law anyway— he probably couldn’t get away with it. You couldn’t kill a human unless it was self-defense, or defense of the pack. And exile was not an option. He didn’t want Lyla without pack protection.
It was a long time before he could relax, but Lyla’s insistence that he hold her, and the warmth of her skin against his, finally eased the tension from his body. He made himself remember that this was a good night. Lyla had let him in, told him what the problem was, and now he could fix it. And he had her back in his arms. He did his best to concentrate on that as the minutes ticked by into the deepest part of the night. Eventually, he drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 19
Lucas sat at the kitchen island watching Elizabeth stir the contents of a clear glass pitcher. Mari poked her head out of the pantry after replacing the tequila on the shelf. Appar
ently, the women were going to have ‘margarita night.’ And they planned to read through Lyla’s books on magic for clues on the prophecy while they did it. Plus try to find a way to combat that lure thing Aaron had described.
He rubbed the back of his neck. Just the idea of magic made him uneasy. He’d feel better if Dean was going to be up there keeping an eye on them, or at least on Lyla, but that wasn’t going to happen. The facility he’d just raided with Dean and Jesse had yielded a set of blood samples, and since then, his young Lore Master showed no interest in anything else. Lucas couldn’t get the man to tear himself away from the makeshift lab they’d set up. Not even to eat.
Elizabeth set the wooden spoon in the sink and turned to face him. Very deliberately, she put one hand on her hip and stared into his eyes. A direct challenge. These humans were going to drive him crazy. If the rest of his pack didn’t beat them to it.
“Lucas, he is not going to be homeschooled. And that’s final.”
They’d been having this argument for at least fifteen minutes, and Lucas was running out of patience. The subject of their discussion, the newest—youngest—member of his pack, was currently out back washing every vehicle in their fleet, including the snowmobiles, under the watchful eyes of Aaron’s brothers, Boaz and Zeke.
“Elizabeth, it’s not safe for him to go to public school. He needs to be here forming his bond with the pack.”
“He needs the socialization. You can’t keep him here with only adults for company and expect him to be normal. Be reasonable, Lucas.”
“He’s not normal. He’s Pack. He will get his socialization from the pack.”
“He’s a seventeen-year-old kid, who needs to be with other seventeen-year-old kids. He’s been out on his own for too long. He needs to find normal.” Elizabeth huffed out an exasperated breath and glanced to Mari for support. Mari stared back at her with big, frightened eyes.
Lucas sighed. “You don’t understand. Pack stays together. We stay— apart.”
Elizabeth leaned her elbows on the counter directly across from him. “I don’t understand. Is it a trust thing? You don’t trust him out there?”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “It’s partly a trust thing. It’s partly a—” he broke off. He couldn’t go into it all. Not with Mari right there. He didn’t even want to think about how Mari would react when she found out about the Sickness. And the dangers associated with it. If she found out. Because Lucas was going to do his best to make sure she never did. That she never needed to. “It’s partly a safety thing. It might not be safe for him out there.”
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes at him. She shot a quick glance at Mari before continuing. Elizabeth was too smart by half. “Fine. We’ll leave it for now. Mari and I have an appointment with Lyla and this nice pitcher of margaritas. But don’t think this is over.”
She gave him one last appraising look, picked up the pitcher, and marched away. Mari scurried after her, carrying the glasses. She shot him an apologetic look over her shoulder as she left.
Well, that was something. At least Mari wasn’t arguing with him. She seemed to have forgiven him for his harsh treatment of Lyla. Or at least, she wasn’t giving him the silent treatment anymore. She’d greeted him politely when he’d returned this morning. Not as warmly as he would have liked, but still, it was a relief. Never in his life had anyone refused to speak to him before. He wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. That just wasn’t something the People did.
He stood and crossed the living room, going out onto the front porch. Standing at the railing, he gazed out at the valley spread before him. The late evening shadows were beginning to gather under the trees, but their topmost branches were still lit with bright golden light.
It was a peaceful scene. Too bad Lucas didn’t feel peaceful.
There was something disturbing about the research they’d found at this last facility. The way the researchers were combining DNA sequencing and fertility treatment had Dean in some kind of frenzy. He’d insisted on confiscating all the samples, any research materials he could find, including the hard drives of all the computers—which Aaron was working on breaking into right now—and stealing whatever lab equipment wasn’t nailed down. Which was a surprising amount.
Lucas lowered himself into an Adirondack chair and propped his feet up on the footrest. He needed to gather his thoughts. When they first started connecting the dots Aster was leaving with her clues, it seemed like the company was focused on genetic markers and the way they affected low-libido issues. Now they seemed to have expanded into fertility treatments.
The past few places Aster’s clues had led them had clearly been short-term research facilities. One was set up in what, from the outside, looked like an empty storefront in a strip mall. The windows had been convincingly covered in brown paper, and a Coming Soon! sign graced the front door. Clearly, they didn’t want anyone guessing what they were working on inside. The same had been true of the last two places they’d visited, including the warehouse in Brooklyn.
But at this last one, set up in an abandoned Italian restaurant of all things, Dean had been like a thing possessed. He had them remove everything research-related, including the entire mini-fridge holding the blood samples. Lucas wasn’t sure what all the rest of the equipment did, but they’d filled the back of both his Explorer and Dean’s Cherokee with the stuff. Again, at Dean’s insistence, they’d set a fire to destroy anything left behind, including any evidence of their theft. It was a simple thing to make sure it looked like arson. If they were lucky, investigators would suspect insurance fraud.
But now, he needed someplace to put it all. Currently it was ensconced in the mudroom, not an ideal situation. Dean refused to let anyone in there, forcing everyone to walk around to the front of the house to go in and out. Forget about doing laundry.
Lucas rubbed the back of his neck, kneading the tension building there. His little pack was growing. With Aaron’s brothers, who he hoped would stay, and now Jeffrey, he was running out of beds. As it was, Zeke and Eli would be sleeping on the couches down in the basement. At least Cray had kept the work on the new cabin going with the help of whichever of Aaron’s brothers hadn’t been watching Lyla’s shop. Well, Lyla wouldn’t be going in to work for a while—not while her store was a crime scene. He’d use the available labor to good effect and get that cabin finished.
Maybe Aster would finally show up, and Mari would be forced to move in with him. Lucas’s whole body ached at the idea. He missed having her in his bed. He wanted to feel the silk of her skin against his, wrap himself around her fragile body, and hold her safe in his arms. Sometimes in the dark of the night, alone, the sheets cool against his body, the longing would rise up and overwhelm him. Those few days had been more precious than he’d ever realized. Back before Gage had shown up on his doorstep and any control he had over his life had gone right out the window. Of course, Mari had been unconscious at the time, so she didn’t remember it, but lying there next to her, her scent enveloping him…
He heaved a sigh and settled back in his chair. There would be no rushing things with Mari. He just had to sit still and wait. And hope that—like the delicate woodland creature she resembled—she would come cautiously closer. But he knew, one false move and she would be gone. Like the white flash of a deer’s tail disappearing with one graceful bound into the trees.
Lucas gazed out past the porch. In the evening light, the lush grass of the meadow looked darker. The deer rarely grazed here anymore. They would smell the presence of the pack.
He pulled out his phone and started scrolling through websites. What he needed was a trailer. Something that could be wheeled onto the property, ready for immediate occupancy. He checked the price for a basic model and winced. He still had a healthy reserve after selling the Canadian furniture business, but with the way his pack was expanding—
At least the antique warehouse he’d been setting up with Elizabeth was taking off. The inventory was in fairly good shape, and the monthl
y auctions were starting to generate some buzz.
Maybe if he got a used trailer and renovated it... A few minutes later, he rose and went back through the house, knocking on the mudroom door.
“Dean, I need to show you something.”
Dean appeared in the door, then stepped back to let Lucas in. “Good. I was just going to come find you.”
The look on Dean’s face told him the news wouldn’t be good. Lucas wasn’t sure he could handle another problem right now. He held out his phone, hoping to put off the bad news for a few more minutes. “What do you think about something like this?”
Dean peered at the screen, which showed a somewhat dilapidated double-wide. But really, all they needed was something with four walls and roof that they could run water and electric to.
“We could strip it and set it up behind the garages. Would that be big enough to house your lab?”
Dean took the phone and scrolled intently through the pictures. “This one,” he said, picking a slightly less worn model. Dean’s eyes were serious as they met Lucas’s. “See if they can deliver it tomorrow. I need the lab set up immediately. And then I’m going to need blood samples from everyone.” He waved a hand, indicating the crimson vials, microscopes, and other unidentifiable equipment set up on the folding table. “I’m pretty sure most of these samples aren’t human. It looks like the DNA mapping they’ve been working on is for the People.”
Lucas closed his eyes briefly. Of course it was. No wonder Aster had been so interested in the labs. He blew out a breath and mentally added shutting down Special-T Pharmaceuticals to his to-do list.
“Right. I’ll call tomorrow and see how soon they can deliver.”
He rubbed his neck as he went back out the mudroom door. Maybe there was a little more of that margarita mix left. On second thought, Lucas headed down to the basement. What he really wanted right now was a brandy.
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