“You’re not due until at least June, Sis.” Malyah sat next to her and hugged her. “This’ll be fine.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but I know Joaquin and Beck wouldn’t lie to us. If they were worried, they’d be honest with us. Not that they could keep it from us if they were. And I haven’t sensed anything like that from Joaquin.”
Nami took a deep breath and tried to… metabolize her little sister’s words.
Because in her brain, Nami absolutely knew Malyah was right.
In her heart, however…
It wasn’t sinking in.
“Let’s enjoy this time,” Malyah said. “Our first really big Christmas, ever. We’ve got our men, we’ve got Duncan and Badger—we’ve got that big family we always wished we had. And it’s a storybook land! Snow, a romantic ski lodge, and dreams come true. How is this not the best Christmas ever?”
“You’re right.” Nami forced a smile. “I just can’t help…worrying.”
Or the fact that there was something gnawing at her. An instinct that something was…off.
She didn’t know if it was because of Tamsin’s plight, or something else.
Or maybe even just in her head, because years of worrying wasn’t a habit she could simply set down overnight and quit cold-turkey.
“I don’t know about you,” Malyah said, “but I want to explore a little. You coming?”
Nami nodded. “Yeah. Let me grab my coat and change shoes.” She stood and walked over to the window. “It is gorgeous land, isn’t it?”
“Right?” Malyah joined her there. “I see why they have their compound out here. It’s beautiful and safe. It feels peaceful out here. I don’t mind admitting I wouldn’t mind spending more time out here with all of them. Did you hear Asia’s kids calling us their aunties?” She sighed, but it sounded happy. “We’re aunties to a bunch of kids now. It’s great!”
“Yeah, it is,” Nami agreed. “It’s the best Christmas ever.”
Chapter Six
When Dewi and Ken arrived home, they found Badger still awake and at work on his laptop in the office.
“Anything I need to know about?” Dewi asked.
He sat back, smiling. “Nothin’ bad happenin’, Dew. Enjoy the rest o’ yer night off, ye lovebirds.”
Ken laced fingers with her to lead her upstairs to their bedroom. As they climbed the stairs, she once again thought about how she’d lived here for years, never really feeling like it was home until just a few months ago.
After she met Ken.
Before, she could travel as she needed—ironically needing Badger or Beck with her before she turned eighteen, even though she was the one in charge and she terrified people who knew who and what she was—and never felt like she was missing anything. One bed was just as good as any other, as long as it wasn’t hard as a rock.
She never felt homesick for her bed.
There were no particular emotions attached to the building, other than it was safe, a known quantity, and would be annoying as fuck if she ever had to move or if something happened to it, like a hurricane or fire.
Now?
There were an explosively growing number of memories, cherished memories, she associated with not just these geo-coordinates, but with the structure that once did nothing more than keep her housed.
This was where she taught Ken how to swim. Where they made love the morning she accidentally got pregnant.
Where he first told her he loved her.
Where Peyton actually came to them—something unheard of for the pack Alpha to do—and she formally presented Ken to him as her claimed mate in the living room.
Where she asked Ken to claim her, after he’d killed Endquist.
Additionally, where Nami and Beck mated, expanding their family.
Where her long-lost grandfather, Duncan, had returned from Idaho with them to live with them.
Yes, even annoying Joaquin had showed up at her front door, leading to him mating with Malyah in Idaho.
Now when Dewi walked in the door, her lungs automatically filled, scenting her mate, her family.
Her home.
Once they were behind their closed bedroom door and she’d kicked off her heels, Ken pulled her into his arms and smiled down at her. “Hope you saved a little energy for me,” he said.
She draped her arms around his neck. “Always, mate.”
“Mmm.” He nuzzled the side of her neck, a hint of teeth teasing her as she felt his cock once again harden in his slacks. “Does it make me weird that it always makes me hard when you say it like that?”
She giggled. “No. It makes you even sexier.” She wiggled her hips against him, loving the soft, needy groan it earned her in reply. “This is why you’re the perfect mate for me.”
He nibbled on her neck as his hands cupped her ass, fingers digging into her cheeks the way she loved. Using the traction, he rocked his hips against her, now teasing her as his bulge rubbed along the front of her mound. Even like this their bodies fit together perfectly.
Passion flared inside her, echoed within Ken’s soul. His lips closed over hers in a crushing kiss that threatened to totally shut off her brain. Such a huge difference now from those first days where he fumbled and worried about what he was doing.
Now?
Ken was a confident lover, dominant for her in all the good ways, tender and playful, allowing her to let go of everything else in her brain for a short, precious time.
Her mental and emotional vacation from the rest of the world.
Her home.
Home was him.
She’d told him she was fine if he wanted to travel to Idaho with everyone else so he could enjoy the ski trip, but he declined, because he wanted to be with her.
One more way he could effortlessly melt her into a gooey puddle inside. Because when he’d said it, she felt it was because he didn’t want to miss a day of her pregnancy, of being with her.
He was still kissing her as she helped him shrug off his jacket. He discarded it off to the side, letting it land on the floor, where it was soon joined by his tie, shirt, and undershirt. He toed off his loafers and finally stepped back so he could step out of his slacks and briefs and remove his socks.
She turned so he could unzip her dress for her. His lips kissed a scorching trail down the nape of her neck and tracing along her spine as he lowered the zipper and the fabric parted to reveal her flesh. His fingers easily unfastened her bra, and as everything joined his clothes on the floor, she turned to face him.
Another smile, playfully evil this time. He dropped to his knees in front of her, feathering kisses over her tummy, lower, until his fingers hooked her panties and eased them down her legs.
He leaned in, teasing her between her legs while her fingers twined in his brown hair. Even making love with him felt better than with anyone ever before. Connected. It left her craving him even when they weren’t together.
When he swiped his tongue along her clit she whimpered, knowing when his hands clamped around the backs of her thighs that he was settling in to tease her for a while.
Because it amused him to have her helpless and needy because of what he was doing to her.
It made him happy.
Her hands ended up resting on his shoulders to balance herself, because she already knew from frequent experience that when he decided to bring her over for the first time, it’d be an explosive release that would probably threaten to take her knees out from under her.
Again, something else no one else had ever been able to do to her before.
Thank you, Goddess.
Ken spent several long minutes teasing Dewi while her mind spun down into that sweet, happy place where she could let go to him and simply exist for a few blessed moments. Where she could focus on nothing but him and what he was doing to her, the pleasure he was giving her.
His tongue swirled around her clit, making her rock her hips in time with his motions and trying to encourage him to get her o
ver, but tonight he wouldn’t be rushed. She sensed his growing amusement, too, as her need rose.
“Please!” she finally gasped.
Dewi felt it as he growled against her before latching his lips around her clit and gently sucking.
Pleasure slammed into her, knocking her over the edge. Her fingers tightened around his shoulders and she moaned even as he pulled her pussy tight against her mouth.
“Got you now,” he thought to her through their mate bond, and that only amped every sensation, prolonging her climax to the point her knees trembled and she was gasping for mercy.
Finally, he sat back and looked up at her, smug satisfaction in his smile. Then he rose and, in one fluid motion, scooped her up and playfully dumped her on the bed. Ken climbed in after her, on all fours, stalking up her body to kiss her. His erection rubbed against her as he kissed her, until she finally squirmed and wiggled and wrapped her legs around him so she could capture his cock between her thighs and work him inside her slick pussy.
He sucked on her tongue. “Fuuuck,” he thought to her before his own conscious mind disappeared as he started moving inside her.
Despite her trying to make him go faster, he took his time this way, too. With his hands braced on the bed on either side of Dewi’s head, Ken kissed her as he slowly thrust.
She knew what he wanted, too. To get another one out of her like this.
Not difficult for him to do, either, with the way his shaft perfectly glided against her with every stroke he took.
Utter perfection in every way.
Ken knew her body better than she did in some ways. With her arms and legs wrapped around him he patiently thrust, building her up again, reading her body.
He nibbled his way along her jaw to the side of her neck, down, to her shoulder. When he bit her, clamping his teeth over her flesh, another orgasm exploded and spiraled within her.
“Yes!” she gasped.
* * * *
Ken managed to hold back his own climax until after he felt the last flutters of hers washing through her and squeezing him, where he was buried inside her. Only then did he stop holding back, slamming his cock home with several deep, hard thrusts until his balls tightened and he spilled. As it always did, it felt like he wouldn’t survive the force of his orgasm, like some deep, primal energy source was ripped open and unleashed within him. Until, finally, it subsided, and he fell still with his cock going soft inside her.
He released his bite and licked the spot. It’d taken him a little while to get used to the fact that she not only wanted him to bite her that hard, but she enjoyed it when he did.
“Now I’m ready to go to sleep,” she mumbled, sounding like she was already halfway there.
He chuckled and rolled to his side, taking her with him until she laid on top of him, her head tucked under his chin.
“I love you,” she said.
Ken nuzzled the top of her head, deeply inhaling and absorbing her scent. “Love you, too, baby. So damn much.”
Dewi almost immediately crashed into sleep. He was close, but not quite. As he closed his eyes, his mind trying to unspin from the long, eventful morning they’d had, his thoughts once again drifted to the ever-present bright spot drifting through his brain.
Their daughter.
I made a human.
He couldn’t comprehend that. It didn’t feel…real.
Didn’t help that there remained a little dark whisper that always poked its head out of the bowels of his brain and told him bad things always happened to him. That good didn’t last in his life.
That just when he thought everything was brilliant and perfect, that’s usually when shit went sideways.
He graduated from high school…and his step-father killed his mother.
He met Dewi…and Endquist damn near killed them.
He was about to get married…and had to drive off the side of a mountain and go on the run to stay alive.
Those were just the highlights. He could name dozens more examples.
It’s called life, idiot.
That was the logical part of his brain.
Still…as he managed to drift to sleep, he hoped he’d be up to the challenge of being a father, and not letting Dewi down as her husband or her mate.
Chapter Seven
Da’von wasn’t sure if this was really happening, or if he’d somehow gotten trapped inside a really good dream.
Except he felt Brianna’s warm breath against his chest, where her head now lay.
“Oh, my god,” Brianna softly said as she snuggled in Da’von’s arms. “That was…wow.”
“Wow is right,” Da’von muttered. He felt simultaneously peaceful and terrified and wasn’t quite sure how both those emotions could currently coexist within him the way they were.
Because if Nami and Mateo caught them together, he wasn’t sure which sibling was more liable to go batshit.
Except, overlaying that terror was a thick layer of contentment and certainty.
Like his entire life had shifted and now everything had slipped into the perfect grooves.
He nuzzled her forehead, deeply inhaling, until a worrisome thought hit him. “Oh, damn,” he said, wincing.
“What?”
“We didn’t use condoms. Please tell me you’re on the pill, or have one of those IUDs or something.”
“No, I’m not, and I don’t.”
“Shit.” Now he really felt stupid.
“Don’t worry—it’s safe for me right now.”
“Um, no offense, but I will worry. I’m not ready to be a dad.”
Yet even as he said that, something deep inside him rebelled. Maybe he wasn’t ready to be a dad quite yet, but every cell within him wanted Brianna to be the mother of his children, when he was ready.
What the hell?
This was…this was fricking crazy.
Make that crazy-dumb.
He didn’t even have a job. He was still in school.
Then her fingers lightly traced abstract patterns across his pecs and he thought he’d go insane if someone tried to pry her out of his arms.
“You and I need to have a really long talk,” she softly said.
“Tell me about it.”
She lifted her head to look into his eyes again, and he felt… lost. But in the best way possible. Lost to her.
“No, a really long, serious talk.”
He frowned, because he’d swear she spoke to him, except…
Her lips didn’t move.
I must have imagined it.
The corner of her mouth quirked up in a smile. “You didn’t imagine it. I did speak to you.”
But, again, her lips didn’t move.
“Holy shit!” Except he said that out loud.
She started to say something else but then a knock on his room door startled them.
Especially when the knock was followed by Nami’s voice. “We’re headin’ down to dinner. You comin’?”
Terror filled him. “I-I’ll be along in a minute, Sis. I just got outta the shower.”
“Okay. If you see Brianna, tell her we got Tamsin.”
Next to him, Brianna stifled her giggle. “I will,” he called out. He sat up and waited, listening, before he dropped his voice to a whisper. “You need to sneak out of here!”
She sat up and kissed him. “I’ll come back tonight once everyone’s asleep.”
He started to protest that they couldn’t but his body disagreed and he pulled her in for one more long, deep kiss. “I think I just lost my damn mind.”
Brianna cupped his cheek in her hand. “No, you didn’t. I’ll explain later.”
Then she climbed out of bed and started finding her clothes.
He watched her for a few seconds before he realized he needed to get up and get moving.
And he’d have to dig clean clothes out of his luggage. Otherwise, eagle-eyed Nami was likely to ask him why he put the same clothes back on if he took a shower.
Brianna hurriedly dress
ed and checked the hallway through the viewfinder. Then she gave him one last quick kiss and ducked out his door.
He watched her in the viewfinder as she rushed down the hall, back to her own room, and let herself in.
Finally, he shook himself and stepped into the bathroom, literally standing in the shower with the water on for only a couple of seconds, just long enough to not make it feel like his earlier lie was quite as much of one. Not even long enough for the water to get really hot.
Except something deep inside his soul also wanted to rebel at washing Brianna’s scent off him.
And what the hell was wrong with him that he imagined she spoke to him without moving her lips?
Maybe she was a ventriloquist or something.
Or maybe I fell asleep and dreamed the whole damn thing.
That had to be it.
Except when he got out of the shower to dry off, he glanced in the mirror and spotted a love bite on his right pec. When he turned to look at his shoulder, where she’d bit him, there was a mark there, too.
Shit!
He damn sure didn’t do that to himself in his sleep.
After he dried off, he rooted through his luggage for a different shirt to go with the jeans he’d had on.
That’d have to be good enough.
Less than five minutes after Nami had knocked, he was hurrying out the door and down the hall to find the dining room downstairs. He pounded down the staircase, instead of waiting for the elevator. Fortunately, the hostess hadn’t even seated the others yet by the time he emerged in the lobby and found the dining room.
Brianna was already standing there next to Tamsin and looking sweetly smug as she smiled at his approach.
“There he is, Nami,” Brianna said.
Nami turned. “Took you long enough, baby boy.”
He bristled at her term of endearment in a way he never had before. It also took every ounce of willpower he had not to drape his arm around Brianna’s shoulders and pull her against his side. “I told you, I took a shower.”
A Bleacke Christmas (Bleacke Shifters 5) Page 5
