by Layla Nash
My thighs parted slightly to encourage him to dip lower, and Dodge lifted his head to give me a knowing look. I flushed but tried to play it off, lacing my hands behind my head and trying to look completely unaffected by his ministrations. “Oh, go ahead. Take your time.”
He snorted and took my nipple in his teeth, the pinch just hard enough to justify a sharp inhale and the spike of pure need that raced from his mouth straight to my core. Dodge slid his hand up the inside of my thigh, his knuckles grazing the outer lips of my sex. He went back to the heated pressure on my breasts, alternating the wet heaven of his mouth with the sharper pressure of his teeth. It wasn’t long until I tossed my head and reached for him, aching to feel him closer. “Dodge. Please.”
His fingers finally dipped into me, pressing in shallowly and then retreating to draw lazy circles up to my clit. A fire raged within. I needed him. I wanted him so desperately my hips lifted into the anticipation of his touch. I wanted to feel him, to have his weight on me, to connect with him again so that everything felt right in the world.
He grumbled and kissed his way down my body until he lay between my now wide-open thighs. His giant hands slid under my ass and grabbed generous handfuls, kneading the flesh until I moaned in anticipation. My God, the strength in his grip... He held my hips in place as his tongue delved deeper. My head tilted back and I gasped for air as pleasure flared up everywhere he touched me. Desire roared to life and I lifted to meet him.
Dodge teased me mercilessly, dragging me to the edge of completion but then backing off before I could finally find my release, over and over and over until I was a sweaty, helpless mess. My thighs clamped around his head and I groaned. “Please. For the love of God...”
He laughed and maneuvered free from my legs, nibbling on the inside of my thigh. “Please what? We have a lot of time to make up for.”
“I want to feel you,” I murmured, and reached for his hand. I tugged on his wrist, knowing the fire that lit his eyes meant I’d said the right thing. I drew him up until his elbows dented the mattress next to my shoulders and I could run my fingers through the smattering of hair across his chest and down his flat belly. “All of you. I can’t wait.”
He growled, low and intense, and goosebumps rose all over me. I should have been afraid that the animal would take over again, but I knew in my heart he’d never hurt me. I craned my neck to kiss him, to taste him and the hint of whiskey that still clung to his breath. My hands slid up his sides and around to his back. I wanted to cling to him forever.
Dodge groaned and kissed me deeply, his cock already nudging at my slick folds. “I like hearing you moan and beg, though.”
“Jerk,” I muttered, arching my back until my breasts pressed to his chest and the hair caused enough friction that I had to hold on and rub against him in ecstasy. “There’s a better way to do that, you know.”
“Oh, I know,” he said, his chuckle deep and dark. I shivered as his mouth descended and his teeth dragged against my throat and down to my shoulder. “But I’m not sure I should fuck my pregnant mate as hard as she wants.”
I sucked in a breath, my hands framing his face. “What?”
“You are my mate,” he said. He sucked on my neck, hard enough to leave a hickey, and squeezed my thigh to lift my leg up and out. “The other half of my soul. You’re everything I never knew I always wanted. What I always needed. You make me complete.”
He said it all as if it was just an everyday thing, a casual conversation. But my heart stuttered in my chest, and not because of the way his cock slipped and pressed against my sensitive flesh. The other half of his soul?
“You hold my heart in your hands,” Dodge went on. His cock parted me and entered shallowly, then withdrew before I even had time to clench around him. He groaned under his breath and repeated the soft nudge, keeping himself balanced above me with his weight on his elbows. A few beads of sweat tracked down his back and sides, and a few slid from his chest to mine. He dipped to kiss me as he sank deeper, his hips pushing my thighs even farther apart. “You are my world. The center of my universe. My true north.”
“That’s a lot,” I said, though it came out in a gasp instead of the steady voice I’d hoped for. My head tilted back and I sighed as his stomach met mine, my body stretching around his intrusion in a semi-familiar ache.
He held back as I adjusted and moved my hips. Dodge grunted and sank deeper, his voice rocky as he sucked on the other side of my neck. “It’s everything, Persephone. You are everything. My everything.”
Pleasure sparked and built as he retreated and my breath caught. Dodge started a slow, steady rhythm that stoked the fire. Tendrils of heat curled through my veins and wrapped around me until it felt like I floated. He was the whole world to me, too. I brought my legs up and tried to lock them around his hips, but Dodge chuckled and reached down to hook my knee in the crook of his elbow. I moaned as the angle changed and suddenly the fire he’d kindled raged into an inferno.
Dodge moved faster as I lifted to meet him, suddenly consumed with the need to find release. He’d driven me to the edge already so many times that it didn’t take much to push me over. He pulled out suddenly and rolled me over, then lifted my hips and gripped them tightly as I pushed up on my elbows and looked back at him.
He reared up behind me, big and imposing and scarred, and his palm smacked my ass just before he slid into me once more in a single stroke. I gripped handfuls of the sheets and cried out, pushing back because I wanted more. I needed more. Dodge leaned over me, letting me feel his weight against my back, and he growled in my ear, “Are you close?”
I nodded, too lost to even speak, and my body clenched around his cock. He groaned, his thrusts growing erratic, and his grip on my hips tightened even more until I almost thought I’d have bruises. I was so close. I hovered on the edge of a roaring climax; I felt it building and building like a tsunami, the tension coiling through every inch of me until I almost cried with the need to finish.
“Come for me,” he said. He thrust deeper, faster, harder. Hard enough I moved on the mattress and braced my hands against the headboard.
Dodge groaned and hauled me back against him in hard jerks, driving me closer and closer to the edge as I held onto the bed and struggled to find my release. Exhausted, I couldn’t make it. The ecstasy hovered just out of reach. I exhaled my frustration.
“No you don’t,” he muttered, then suddenly his hand slid across my stomach as he reached under me. I sucked in a breath but then his fingers pressed against the top of my slit, seeking out the hard bud of nerves, and stars sparked in my vision until the world went white.
A moan ripped from me that sounded close to a shriek, but I didn’t care. He grunted in satisfaction, growling more instructions for me to climax all over his hand. Dodge stretched out over me and drove still harder. His devilish fingers moved faster until his hips jerked unevenly and the whole world collapsed around me. The tsunami arrived, carrying me out into nothingness, as ripples of sheer need and ecstasy rolled through me and stole what remained of my strength.
I collapsed onto the pillows as Dodge pressed deep and groaned, followed by a few quick in-and-outs that ignited more tremors until my muscles clutched at him and tried to keep him inside me. He shifted his chest to lay to the side, though his hips kept me pinned to the bed, and he kissed my shoulder with a tenderness I’d grown to love. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, my eyes still closed, as I let the delicious melting sensation work its way through my body. Every time he moved or his chest hair brushed against my back, little shivers trembled through me in an echo of the tsunami that had just thrown me into another place.
Dodge chuckled and kissed the side of my neck, letting me feel his teeth as he nipped and nuzzled. “Good.”
And then he hesitated. I could tell he wanted to say more but stopped himself. I turned my head to look at him. “What?”
Dodge rubbed my back absently, then rolled to his side. I felt his absence in a rush
of cool air and the curious emptiness of where he’d just occupied. I grumbled as I turned onto my side to face him. His palm rested against my ribs, and something serious lurked in his expression. I swallowed the knot in my throat and struggled to focus on his face; every time he touched me I wanted to stretch and cling to him.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” he said slowly, and whatever remained of the peace and contentment that had cradled me dissipated.
I took a deep breath and pulled the sheets up to cover my chest, trying to protect myself. “Okay.”
My mind ran wild with all the possible, awful things he could tell me. I braced for the worst.
Chapter 55
Percy
When Dodge didn’t immediately go on, I clenched my hands in the sheet and tried to sound calm. “Whatever it is, say it. Waiting just makes it worse.”
He reached out and brushed the hair out of my face, his knuckles trailing gently against my cheek. “Hear me out, okay?”
I managed to nod but didn’t trust my voice to speak. What if he regretted agreeing to stay with me? What if he’d been hiding it and his animal side was still in control?
Dodge picked up my left hand and stroked my fingers, toying with them as if to distract us both. “In the hospital, you were dying. They couldn’t give you enough regular blood, it just... drained away. You were so pale and still, and I thought... I thought...”
His voice caught, and he cleared his throat a few times before he went on, words so soft I had to lean closer to hear. “I thought you were gone. I thought you were dying and I could do something to save you.”
My heartbeat thumped loudly in my ears. I still lived, so did that mean...? “What did you do?”
His gold eyes flashed to mine and then went back to studying how my hair curled around his fingers. “I told the doctors to give you my blood. The shifter blood means we heal faster. I thought a little would be enough to save your life but not... contaminate you. I didn’t want to risk you turning into something you hated.”
I swallowed the knot in my throat.
Dodge touched my shoulder, smoothing from my shoulder to my elbow with his palm. I wished he would talk faster, to just spit out what he’d done. What did it mean that he gave me some of his blood?
“But it wasn’t enough,” he went on. Dodge rested his fingertips on my sternum, right where my heart beat on steadily. “I would have had them drain me to save you, but Evershaw called them off. He donated blood. The rest of the pack donated blood. It didn’t stay in you very long, but eventually it became clear that it started to help. It started to heal you, bit by bit, from the inside.”
It didn’t sound terrible. He’d saved my life after all, even if it was a weird ass way of doing it.
“The problem is, we don’t really know how much shifter blood actually stayed in you. You didn’t heal completely, so it’s not like you’ve already turned, but there’s a possibility...” Dodge finally dragged his eyes up to mine, real regret shining in his gaze. “I’m sorry, Persephone. I knew you didn’t want anything to do with supernaturals and I still... I told them to give you my blood, knowing it would contaminate you. There might not be any permanent changes, or at least the doctors and Deirdre haven’t seen any sign of any, but it wasn’t right.”
I massaged my temples and sat up against the squashed pillows and the headboard. Hard to imagine I’d been hanging on for dear life and sweating all over the pillows only a few minutes earlier. The man gave me emotional whiplash, that was for damn certain. “Let me get this straight.”
Dodge watched me, waiting. Bracing for a screaming fit or hysterical crying or a panicked run for the door. My thoughts jumbled together until I didn’t know which way was up. So not just two major life changes in a single day, he’d dealt me another one in the blink of an eye. I must have been crazy, but this last one didn’t feel like the biggest. “You saved my life by giving me shifter blood. And I might or might not turn into a shifter at some point?”
“Yes.”
And then he waited.
I sighed, gazing at him as he waited for me to pronounce judgment. I didn’t have it in me to get mad. I’d made my peace with packs, and shifters, and witches, at some point in the previous month as I lingered in my fancy new apartment and the pack took care of me when I couldn’t take care of myself. I took a deep breath and rested my chin on my fist as I studied him. I gestured at where our child had set up shop in my stomach, then my thighs and the lingering evidence of our passion. “Well, I already have a lot of you in me, so I guess some blood doesn’t make much of a difference.”
Dodge stared at me, his expression blank, and a smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. I patted his arm and wiggled closer so I could rest my head on his chest. “Can we talk about this later? Someone tired me out.”
He cleared his throat, then craned his neck to get a better look at my face. “I thought you’d be angry.”
“I’m annoyed,” I said, since it was mostly true. Particularly since he didn’t seem to know the consequences of what he’d done. “But at least I’m still alive to be annoyed.”
“So...”
I patted his stomach and closed my eyes. In the grand scale of things that had gone wrong in my life recently, it didn’t seem to rise to the top three. I was still alive and so far hadn’t turned into a wolf or even displayed wolfy tendencies. “Closest alligator to the boat, Dodge.”
He exhaled and all the tension drained out of him. He flipped the covers over us and curled around me like an electric blanket after turning off the lights. “We can wake up for dinner later.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said. I slid my leg over his as I pressed against his side, wanting to feel all of him against me. His body reacted in a rush as my thigh brushed against it.
Dodge groaned and grabbed my ass, hauling me on top of him so I straddled his hips. He set his teeth against my shoulder for a gentle love bite. “Or maybe we won’t sleep after all.”
I braced my hands on his shoulders and ground against him, already feeling that fire reignite. “You sure? You’re looking mighty tired.”
He laughed and dragged me down against his chest, squeezing me tightly. His hips pushed up against mine and I sighed and adjusted until we fit together perfectly. Dodge slapped my ass with a growl of approval. “Closest alligator to the boat.”
“I am not an alligator,” I said, just before I kissed him.
“You’re the only alligator I want near my boat.”
“Now you’re just getting ridiculous.” I laughed and released the rest of my worries.
For the time being, at least. There would be plenty more worries along the way. I had no doubt he’d drive me nuts, and I would probably drive him nuts, and eventually we would both be nuts – and parents. I closed my eyes and let myself feel every inch of him. I couldn’t believe how much my life had changed, how much it still would change. The next few months would undoubtedly stress me the hell out and test my handle on reality and sanity.
But Dodge was there. Dodge was my rock, my anchor. My true north. I still wasn’t sure I understood what being a mate meant, but it sounded perfect. And I looked forward to a lifetime of figuring out just what it meant for me, and for our family. Our pack.
Epilogue
I stood and braced my hands at the small of my back. I was only halfway and already it felt like I carried at least triplets. Possibly quads or quints. If there was only one in there, Dodge's baby was just burly as hell. The new manager at the animal sanctuary glanced at me with concern, but I waved her off, attempting a smile. "How is the moat digging going?"
She held out a checklist and showed me the latest progress for the new tiger enclosure. I mostly paid attention, since I'd taken over a lot of the responsibilities for running the animal sanctuary. Dodge purchased it while I was in the hospital; a week after I found out I was pregnant, he told me and asked me what I wanted to do.
It was an easy choice. It wasn't the animals' fault tha
t Ms. Bridger was an awful person and her intentions for setting up the sanctuary were devious instead of pure. It took me a little while to feel comfortable going back to the site of my injuries and that awful incident in the tiger enclosure, but Dodge stayed with me every second. Gradually, I put most of those memories behind me. I occasionally had nightmares, but they were fading as well.
As I supervised the crew building the new habitat for a trio of rescued and retired circus lions we would receive in a matter of weeks, I caught sight of Dodge in the corner of my eye. He sprawled like a cat on a bench nearby, soaking up the sun. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. He would hate the comparison to a feline, but it was the most apt one I could come up with. That or a lizard. Him and Silas, basking like alligators on rocks.
The other wolf went with us almost everywhere we went, and gradually the employees at the sanctuary grew accustomed to seeing the massive beast wandering around unsupervised. He liked to tease the big cats and play chase along the fences of their enclosures, providing no end of entertainment for the cats, as well as the humans. Deirdre still had not made any break-throughs on transforming him back to his human form, while keeping his human mind in control. The one time Evershaw tried to change him by brute force... Well, it was best left forgotten.
I stretched again and yawned, patting the new manager on the back. "The invoices..."
"Maybe we call it a day," Dodge said, folding his arms around me. He moved as quiet as a cat, too, when he wanted to. "You look tired."
"It's barely noon," I said with a huff.
He grumbled and kissed the side of my neck. "I know. You still look tired."
