by Sam Hall
“You drown out the taste!” Nan fussed. “You always did.”
“A girl wants what a girl wants, I guess,” Lorcan said, cutting into the butter soft lamb. “Don’t they, April?”
I felt like somehow I’d been transported into some kind of period drama or something. Everyone was being so polite, but no one actually said what they meant. My head ached from trying to decode all the double-talk, especially the light fencing of words between Zack and Lorcan. Zack ended the contest though, moving in close and brushing his nose against my neck. Nothing too handsy and likely to upset Nan, but it stopped the other man cold. He just stared, watching the two of us without blinking, and it took Nan glancing up to break the spell. But I saw the stark look in his eyes, flicking sideways at me until the end of the meal.
“So do you two remember running around all nicky noodle when you were little?” Nan asked with a chuckle. ‘Nicky noodle’ was naked apparently. “I’d turn the sprinkler on to water the grass, and you two would be naked as the day you were born, out there playing with it before I could take my next breath.”
“Um…no,” I said, focussing on my plate.
“I always thought that was some kind of repressed trauma or something,” Lorcan said.
“Silly boy. You used to squeal just as loud as Paige here. You liked to pick up the blasted thing and run at her with it, splashing her with the sprinkler just to hear her scream, I think. Then not to be outdone, Madam here would snatch it off you and do the same until I’d have to come running out to see what all the fuss was.”
Something rose at her words, just little fragments. Bleached out sunny days. Grass that crunched underfoot, gone dry under the merciless Aussie sun. The smell of water hitting sun-baked earth and him. My head jerked up and I frowned, for a second seeing a blurry image of a little boy where the man currently sat, but when it faded, Lorcan was still there.
“Well, that was an amazing lunch,” Zack said, patting his stomach. “Why do I feel like falling asleep on the couch in front of the footy now?”
Nan flushed at that. He was golden now. New grandson-in-law, and he complimented her cooking? No quicker way to get to her heart.
“Why don’t you boys go in the lounge room and turn the telly on while Paige and I do the cleaning up.”
“We can help,” Lorcan replied, getting to his feet and collecting his plate.
“No, no, I know it’s all modern now, with men doing the cooking and cleaning, but you’ll just make me cranky, putting things in the wrong drawers. Shoo! You two can have a little chat, talk about whatever nonsense men go on about, and I’ll be back soon with some apple pie afterwards.”
“Well c’mon then, mate,” Zack said, standing up. “You can tell me more about what a rascal Paige was when she was little.”
“So,” Nan said, always an ominous start to a conversation. “What do you think of Lorcan? You liked him very much when you were a little girl, and I heard you asked him back to the alpha residence yesterday.”
“Are you…? Nan, are you trying to set me up with a family friend?”
I thrust my hands into the soapy water, scrubbing the plates like they’d personally offended me, then dumping them into the sink.
“Careful now. Those are your great grandmother’s plates. Might be yours or one of Rose or Lynn’s girls one day. Well, I just remembered how well you two got on together.”
“I don’t.”
“For a while there, we thought… Well, your mother wasn’t happy. Lorcan’s a good boy, but that family of his. Not his fault he was born into a pack of villains, and everyone assuming the worst of him. He came back home, once his dad died, hoping to make a fresh start.”
“Nan, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Lorcan is a Roth on his father’s side, but an Engel on his mother’s.”
My sponge came to a halt. Everyone knew the Engels. Hard to run an organised crime family in a small town without people knowing, so it was a disorganised one instead. Right or wrong, if something went missing, a car stolen, a cow poached, everyone looked to the Engels. The Engel girls were vicious at school, taking down anyone they thought ‘messed with them.’
“Shit, so how did I end up hanging out with the kid of the local crime lord?”
“Paige, language!” Nan dried off the plate she was holding with a practised motion, then picked up another. “Delia Roth, Lorcan’s paternal grandmother, was a dear friend of mine. One of life’s little injustices that her boy found his true mate in an Engel, but the Mother wills what she wills. She asked me to keep an eye on him, their house being only a few doors down. Was such a pretty place when they first bought it.” She shook her head. “I offered to help young Lorcan with it, try to put it to rights after his bloody cousins went through it.” I cocked an eyebrow at that. “But too proud by half that boy.” Her eyes slid to me. “He needs a mate is what he needs, and a good one.”
“And so because I’m ‘touched,’ I can just take him on board? Nan, it doesn’t work like that.”
“No, it doesn’t. From my readings, it’s much the same as any other mate bond. You feel that inexorable pull that just starts out small. A look, a touch” —for a moment, I was thrust back into Dad’s office, Lorcan’s lips on my skin— “but suddenly, so suddenly and yet it feels like a lifetime, you know.” For a moment, Nan wasn’t an old woman whose mate was long in the grave. Age, experience, it all wafted away, leaving a young woman with radiant eyes. “Just as you knew with your Zack. They’re a part of you, the other half of your heart. Or in your case, one bit of it.”
“Maybe he’s the only bit. Maybe I only need one partner. It’s what all the other women in my family have done.”
“Then you best look to the Spehr history then, to find out how well that went.” She patted me on the arm. “Don’t fret, love. Lorcan’s a good boy and probably just as mortified as you are by all of this. If you don’t feel the pull, then there’s nothing to worry about, is there? We’ll have some pie and ice cream, and I’ll send him on his way.”
The problem was he’d rolled up his sleeves while we were in the kitchen.
The thing I liked most about the internet was it normalised some pretty crazy shit. There were posts and forums and Tumblr accounts all dedicated to the beauty of the male forearm. I’d tried to explain to the girls at the gym how hot Eliott Stabler’s forearms were in Law and Order: SVU when he rolled up his sleeves, but the girls just cited that as further evidence of my daddy issues. Right now, I wasn’t thinking about Daddy.
My eyes followed those long muscles all the way up to long, artistic fingers that held the spoon Nan gave him with a very masculine nonchalance I’d never be able to mimic. He twitched it as he talked about some shit. I couldn’t focus, could I? He had that really lean look that some guys seem to manage and gym junkies always want to emulate, like the skin was wrapped tight around the muscles, showing every line, every vein, and my eyes could only watch them move as his hands twitched.
“Not hungry?”
I was jerked out of my daze by an amused aside from Zack. Nan’s apple pie was to freaking die for, but I had a bowl full of it, the ice cream slowly melting into the soft, sweet mess, untouched. Zack’s eyes were slightly silvered when he leant over, as if to brush his lips against my ear.
“You’re needing,” he whispered, little more than a breath out. “I can smell it. So can he.”
I glared at my mate, knowing what this was, where he was going with it, and he just smirked and turned back to his bowl. Me? I went to pick up the spoon, shovel the food in my mouth, but it was bone-dry, would turn to glue if I did. Instead, I watched that twitch, twitch, twitch until finally my hand shot out and I closed my grip around Lorcan’s wrist. The man looked stung in response. I couldn’t have shocked him more if I’d gotten naked and danced on the table.
“Paige?” Nan asked quietly.
“Sorry, the twitching, it was bugging me.” I pulled my hand back as I felt my cheeks flush hot.
“I’m just a bit…”
Everyone turned back to their food and ate the glorious bounty Nan had prepared, but those green eyes flicked to me over and over, managing to catch me staring every time.
“I should go. I’ve got a ton of stuff to get done around the house. Thanks again, April,” Lorcan said, getting to his feet, and I felt actual relief. I was being weird, in my Nan’s kitchen, and I couldn’t seem to stop.
“We should too,” Zack prompted, tapping me on the shoulder.
“We’ve got to pack away Dad’s papers first.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I haven’t got much on today,” Nan said. “Just a little puttering around in the garden. I’ll look after them. But you can always come by and take a look at them, love, you know that.”
So we ended up saying our goodbyes together, awkwardly crammed in Nan’s hall, and when we emerged out onto the street, I felt like I could take my first few breaths.
“Where’s your place?” Zack asked, causing Lorcan to spin around, an eyebrow cocked.
“Look, mate, I dunno what you’ve heard, but my cousins were kicked out and aren’t in the ’roid game anyway.”
“’Roids?” Zack snorted. “You think I take them? Nah, mate, they make your dick shrink. So where do you live? I’m assuming it’s either left or right.”
“What the fuck do you want with me when you’ve got her? She smells…”
Lorcan’s head moved restively, as if questing for my scent and pulling away from it at the same time.
“I know how she smells. She smells like that for you. Something you did back then tripped her trigger, and I want to know why.”
“Zack, we don’t need to do this,” I hissed. “We can’t just bring Lorcan into this.”
“We can’t just bring Lorcan into what?” Lorcan scanned the two of us, taking in the scar, Zack’s arm around me, where I rested against his chest. “Are you…? Is it true?” He moved closer, then stopped himself, just holding himself very still before breathing me in. “Fuck…”
“Where is your place? I don’t want to do this out on the street.”
“Worried about her reputation? If she’s seen walking into number thirteen, that’s gone anyway.”
“Thirteen, huh? So this way.”
Zack’s hand closed over mine and dragged me up the road, Lorcan keeping pace with us.
“Sorry about the…well, fucking everything,” he said when we walked into the front garden. Someone was obviously fixing the place up, the foot-high grass slashed roughly down to the ground, piles of cuttings from overgrown shrubs in a neat pile. “If you’re gonna do this, you may as well come in then.”
Lorcan unlocked the door and then led us in.
I saw why he wasn’t keen on having us over. Someone had trashed this place. You could see the remnants of graffiti under the undercoated walls, the couch looked like it’d gone ten rounds in a prize fight, and the windows were smashed into spiderwebs of fragments.
“I’d offer you a drink, but I don’t think that’s what you’re here for. What are you here for again?”
Lorcan’s jaw worked, and his hair was no longer so neat, his hand raking through it. He shifted on the heel of his feet, back and forth, but that’s not what caught my eyes. It was those fucking hands, complete with knuckle tattoos, a large silver skull ring on one. They were blunt tipped, long and pale, and they scrubbed so furiously at his scalp. His bicep bulged under his shirt as he moved too damn much.
I wanted to still him, knew that if I stepped forward and put my hand on that beautifully wrought forearm, he’d go still, so very still. And then I could trace every inch of those very pretty arms as he stood there, looking down at me, quivering.
“Hungry now, princess?” Zack’s voice was a low buzz that jerked us out of this trance.
“Is that what this is?” Lorcan snapped. “You gotta hard-on for whoring out your mate?”
“Don’t use that fucking word around her.”
The growl, the clear and obvious menace there stopped both of us still.
“So what is this, then?” he shot back. “You got the girl. She marked you. Lemme say something true, mate. If it was her fangs on my throat, I sure as shit wouldn’t be sharing her with you.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
This wasn’t my Zack, my sweet, caring, growly mate. This was a devil at the crossroads, offering you riches and gold if you just signed over your pesky soul.
Lorcan shifted where he stood, his eyes going greener, brighter.
“I wouldn’t be giving her to some bloke I met off the street, and I sure as shit wouldn’t be bringing her to a shithole like this. She deserves a lot more.”
“What are you doing, Zack? You’re just rubbing shit in Lorcan’s face, stirring up trouble,” I growled out.
“I want to know.”
“Want to know what? Where he lives? How we used to play together as kids? Both of us can barely remember that.”
“Well you mightn’t, but I do.” I felt bad. Lorcan looked stung, like I’d slapped his face or something. “It took me a bit for me to connect the dots. April coming by, talking about her granddaughter and how she used to look after us helped me realise who you were. Those days were one of the few pleasures of my childhood. I carried them around in my heart and pulled them out when shit was going down like other people would family snaps. And then there was the fucking dreams.”
He swallowed hard, shaking his head.
“Came on with adolescence, just these intense fragments. The smell of her hair, the feel of her fingers in mine, her breath on my skin. Spent my time at high school fucking a whole lotta girls to try and find her.” His eyes narrowed down. “It’s you. I shoulda fucking known when you came to town. That feeling that woke me up was so bloody familiar, wasn’t it?”
“She’s it for you,” Zack said in a low rumble.
“Of course she fucking is. Why would Mother Moon grant me a true mate I could actually have? How would this be any different to the endless skull fuck of my existence?” He strode forward, stopping just short of me, but his focus was all on Zack. “How can you fucking do this? How can you hold yourself back from her? Act like you’re oh so cool?”
“How can you?” Zack asked.
Lorcan’s eyes snapped to mine, his breath coming in hard, too hard for an argument. His fangs dropped down, his lips parting to give them room, and suddenly, I couldn’t think of anything else other than sliding my tongue into that gap.
“We need to know,” Zack said. “I’ll do what you want, it’ll just be you and me, babe. I’ll throw you in the car, buy you all new shit, move you into my place, and keep you tied to the bed, pleasuring you over and over until neither of us can move. You’ll be mine, all mine, and I will fucking glory in that. But I need to know that I’m not just another man stifling your nature, locking you down, putting you in a box that you’ve got no right being in. He’s drawn to you.”
Lorcan spluttered at that, shooting him a filthy look.
“Is that what you think it is? I want her more than my next fucking breath.”
“And what do you want, Paige?”
This will change things, I thought as both of them turned to me. I couldn’t come back from this, put this genie back in the bottle. I’d be taking a step towards…becoming something I had no preparation, no guide for. I should’ve waited, got on the Jungle group, talked to other people about whatever the hell they thought this nix thing was, and then discussed with Zack in a civil way about how to deal with the situation.
Instead, I went forward without any of that.
I felt like a tightrope walker without a safety net, making careful steps closer, sure at any point, I’d go plunging to my death. But I walked into the harbour created by their bodies, letting mine brush against Zack’s as I reached out for Lorcan’s.
He flinched when my fingers landed on the brachioradialis, the muscle that sits on the top of the forearm, but he didn’t pull away. He just watched me stroke my
hand along the surface, and it felt as smooth and firm as I thought it would.
“You rolled your sleeve up,” I said by way of explanation, but it didn’t work well. He looked at me in confusion. “I saw your arms, the muscles, the veins…” I turned his arm and stroked down the sensitive skin on the inside. “And suddenly, that’s all I could think about. You were tapping your spoon, making the muscles jump, and I…”
“And you what?” His eyes were silvering, his beast coming out in his hoarse voice.
“And I needed you to be still.” I shifted away from Zack, which hurt a little, but that was OK, Lorcan would kiss it all better, wouldn’t he? I stepped into his space, letting my fingers trail down to circle his wrist. “I needed you to stop so I could look at you.”
“You’re not looking right now, princess.”
“No, I’m not, am I?”
I tipped my head up, and he tracked my movement, his tongue flicking out to run along his bottom lip, and I wondered if he felt the small gap between his and mine. I jumped when his hands went to his shirt, unbuttoning it with a flattering swiftness and then wrenching it off like it offended him personally, and then there it was.
His body was very different to Zack’s but no less beautiful. It wasn’t the super heavy muscle developed through years of weight lifting. This was the hard body of one built through work or activity. I reached out, unable to stop from touching that pale skin, moving to the other arm with the sleeve tattoo, tracing the arabesques and curlicues, finding the savage wolves hiding in all that beauty
“Why weren’t you like this yesterday?” I asked.
“Because yesterday I hated the whole hoopla, hated this town, hated myself.”
“And today?”
“Still all of those things, but I want you more.” His hand went to my hair, his fingers digging in hard as he loomed above me. “Tell me you want me back. Tell me you want this, or you need to take you and your kinky arse boyfriend outta my house.”
“I…”
He smiled slightly, a look of sheer fucking mischief, and I thought he should’ve led with this yesterday. He was as magnetic as the sun, and I couldn’t look away, even though it hurt my eyes. I tried to lean up, to press my lips to his, but he held me where I was, though I could see he was pleased by it. He lowered his mouth closer, closer, and then said, “If this is when your boyfriend asks to ride my arse while I fuck you, I’m gonna be pissed.”
