by Nalini Singh
“Zach!” She walked over to hug him. “What’re you doing here?”
His expression was solemn. “I need to talk to you.”
Her stomach knotted. “Oh.” She stepped back, trying to appear calm.
“Mercy was right,” he said.
Annie knew who Mercy was, having met the sentinel at the picnic. “About what?”
“You’re waiting for me to leave you.”
The world fell out from under her feet. She trembled, unable to move, as he closed the door and walked to her. “I will never leave you, Annie.” Cupping her cheeks in his hands, he bent so his forehead pressed against hers. “Not unless you ask me to.” He frowned. “Actually, I won’t leave you then, either. Just so you know.”
“Wh-what?”
“You’re my mate,” he said simply. “You’re in my blood, in my heart, in my soul. To walk away from you would cut me to pieces.”
The room spun around her. “I need to sit down.”
He let her go, let her lean against her desk.
“Mate?” she whispered.
“Yes.” His face grew bleak. “It’s a lifetime commitment. Mercy was right about one thing, but I’m right about this—you’re not too keen on that, are you?”
She didn’t answer his question, her mind spinning. “Are you sure that I’m…?”
“Baby, I was sure the first day we met. You fit me.”
It brought tears to her eyes, because he fit her, too. Perfectly. “Zach, I…” She blinked, trying to think past the rushing thunder of emotion. “I never thought I’d marry,” she admitted. “But it’s not the commitment I have a problem with. It’s what comes after.” A confession made in a voice that threatened to break. “It’s this cold terror that the promise, the love, will one day turn into a trap.”
“I know.”
“She still waits,” Annie found herself saying. “For a Valentine or a birthday present or just a loving word. She still waits.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” He tried to come closer, but she held up her hand, fighting to think, to understand.
“I could survive you leaving me,” she said, “but I couldn’t survive you stopping to ‘see’ me.” And the mating bond would leave her with no way out. It truly was forever.
“That’s something you never have to fear,” Zach said, the declaration resolute. “It’s not possible for mates to ignore each other.”
“But—”
“No buts,” he said, slashing out a hand. “I will never stop seeing you, never stop loving you. Mates can’t shut each other out.”
Part of her wanted to grab that promise and never let go. But another part of her, the part that had been trapped first by injury, then a mother’s fear, was hesitant. Was she ready to take this chance on the faith of a man’s promise? Was she ready to give up the freedom she’d fought a lifetime to attain? “I’m so afraid, Zach.”
“Ah, Annie. Don’t you know? My cat is devoted to you. If you asked me to crawl, I’d crawl.”
It shattered her, the way he’d just ripped open his heart and laid it at her feet. Trembling, she placed two fingers against his lips. “I would never ask that.”
“Neither would I.” His lips moved against her touch. “Trust me.”
There it was, the crux of it. She adored him, loved him beyond reason, but trust…trust was a harder thing. Then she looked into that proud face, into the wild heart of the leopard within, and knew there could be only one answer. She refused to let fear cheat her out of the promise of glory.
“I do,” she said, cutting the last safety rope that had held her suspended above the fathomless depths of the abyss. “I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone.” Something tightened in her chest at that second and then snapped, leaving her breathless. She clung instinctively to Zach, and he held her tight, burying his face in the curve of her neck. When she could breathe again, she tangled her fingers gently in his hair. “Zach?”
He shuddered. “God, I was so scared you were going to say no.”
She felt it then—his terror, his love, his devotion. It was as if she had a direct line to his soul. The beauty of it staggered. “Oh my God.” There was no way this bond would ever let either of them ignore each other. “Zach, I adore you.” She could finally admit that, needed to admit it, needed to tell him that he wasn’t alone.
“I know.” He squeezed her even as a wave of love flavored with the primal fury of the cat came down the bond between them. “I can feel you inside me.”
So could she, she thought in mute wonder, so could she.
• • •
A week later, Annie sat down in Zach’s lap, blocking his view of the football game. He reached up to kiss her. “Want to play, Teach?”
She always wanted to play with him. But they had things to discuss. “No, this is business.”
He turned off the game. “So?”
“So we have to have a wedding.”
“We’re mated.” A growl poured out of his mouth. “Why the hell do we need to have a wedding? Those things drive everyone crazy—last year, I saw a grown man cry during the buildup.”
Once, she would’ve wondered how on earth changeling women dared stand up to their mates when the men got all growly. Now she knew—just like her, those women knew that heaven might fall and the earth might crumble, but their mates would never hurt them. “Didn’t you say we were going to have a mating ceremony?”
“It’s not really a ceremony.” He scowled. “More a celebration of our being together.”
She couldn’t help it. She reached out to stroke her fingers through his hair. “It’s getting stronger,” she said.
“It’ll keep doing that.” His scowl turned into a smile that hit her right in the heart. “Even when we’re a hundred and twenty, I’ll still want to crawl all over you.”
“Zach, you’re a menace.” And she loved him for it. Was starting to truly see what she’d gotten when she accepted the mating. It was a powerful, almost vicious need, but it was also a bond of the deepest, most unflinching love. Even when he wasn’t with her, she felt him loving her deep inside. “We need to have a wedding,” she said, coaxing him with a slow kiss, “because my parents need to see me married, and Caro’s already picked out a matron of honor dress.” Then she dealt what she knew would be the deathblow to any further objections. “Their happiness is important to me.”
He blew out a breath. “Fine. When?”
“I was thinking spring for both ceremonies.”
“That’s a while away.” He slid his hands under her sweater, touching skin. “We could do it at Christmas. A present for both of us.”
“No,” she said, stroking his nape with her fingertips. “It has to be spring. I want everything alive and growing.” As she felt she was growing, opening, becoming. “And I already have my present.”
Eyes the color of the deepest ocean gleamed with feline curiosity. “Yeah?”
“A long time ago, during the Christmas I lay in hospital,” she told him, retrieving a memory that had once been painful, but was now full of wonder, “I wished for someone who would be mine, someone I could play with and share all my secrets.” Never could she have imagined the astonishing final outcome of that long-ago wish.
He moved his hands down to close over her thighs. “Are you calling me your gift?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “How do you feel about that?”
“Like it’s my turn to be unwrapped.” He nibbled at her mouth. “Do it slow.”
Her laughter mingled with his and the sound felt like starlight on her skin, like the promise of forever…like a lick of “majick.”
Declaration of Courtship
Chapter 1
COOPER HAD BEEN good.
Very good.
More good than he’d ever before been in his life.
He’d stayed away from his sexy new systems-maintenance engineer for over six months. Six months. It might as well have been a decade, as far as he was concerned. A dominant predatory
changeling male did not do patient when he decided on a woman, but circumstances had forced patience on him, and it was a patience that had worn his wolf’s temper to a feral edge.
With her curvy body and that soft ebony hair he wanted to fist in his hands while he used his mouth, his teeth, to mark her creamy skin, she spoke to his every male instinct. The wolf who was his other half was in full agreement. Both sides of him wanted to claim her until no one had any doubts that she belonged to him.
He’d gritted his teeth and fought the primal urge, however, aware that as the lieutenant in charge of the satellite SnowDancer den located on the northern edge of the San Gabriel Mountains, Grace was under his protection. His status wouldn’t have put the brakes on his pursuit had she been even a moderately strong dominant, but Grace was one of the most submissive wolves in SnowDancer. Cooper knew damn well submissives didn’t automatically obey dominants, but the impulse was a visceral one.
Added to that, Grace had been deeply vulnerable immediately after shifting into a new den. Cooper had known he couldn’t go after her until she’d formed new friendships, created a support system that would give her the strength to reject him if his courtship was unwelcome.
His claws pricked the insides of his skin at the thought, but man and wolf both knew that if she said no, he had to back off. At once. Because where a dominant female might run to incite a man to chase her in a challenge that came from the wild heart of her wolf, if a submissive ran and it wasn’t open play, she was trying to escape.
Don’t run from me, sweetheart, he thought as he took the final steps to her. I only bite a little. Not quite true, but he was planning to be on his best behavior until she trusted him enough to handle the aggressive sensuality that was an integral aspect of his nature. “Grace.”
• • •
GRACE felt her heart kick against her ribs at the sound of that deep masculine voice as darkly delicious as it was dangerous to her senses.
Get a grip, Grace. You’re being ridiculous.
It was the same thing she’d been telling herself over and over since her first day in the San Gabriel den, when Cooper had welcomed her to the region. Big and deadly and gorgeous as he was, it wasn’t hard to see why he’d knocked the breath out of her at first sight. The man was a living, breathing aphrodisiac. If they’d been alone, she wasn’t sure she’d have survived that meeting without doing something very stupid.
Like attempting to claim skin privileges from a male she was certain no one dared touch without his explicit permission.
Yet even in her stunned state, she’d known the attraction to be a wild impossibility. While dominants mated or bonded with submissives often enough that it wasn’t considered unusual, the dominance gap between her and Cooper was too wide. They were literally at opposite ends of the hierarchy—her wolf knew Cooper could chew her up and spit her out without noticing.
And still, every time he came near her, her entire body went taut with expectation.
“Hi,” she said, without looking up from her kneeling position in a corner, beside a heating conduit that needed a minor refit.
Akin to the den in the San Rafael Mountains where she’d spent her teenage years, and on a smaller scale than the central den in the Sierra Nevada mountains, this den had literally been carved into and below a mountain, then reinforced with stone walls. The tunnels were wide and spacious, the rooms generous, but underneath the raw natural beauty of the stone pierced with threads of glittering mineral lay a highly complex technological heartbeat, one that Grace helped maintain.
“Has there been a malfunction in one of the critical systems?” she asked, guessing that was why Cooper had taken the time to personally track her down. With both the chief and deputy chief of her department away at different tech conferences, Grace was currently the one in charge. “I can look at it straight away—this isn’t urgent.”
“No, everything’s fine.” He crouched down beside her, immediately taking up all available air in the vicinity.
Concentrate on the job, she ordered herself, attempting to focus on the digital wrench she was using to remove a fried tube…but her entire body was attuned to his every breath, her muscles strung tight.
“How’s it going in this section?” he asked, his voice pitched at a level she recognized as “careful.”
She fought the suicidal urge to throw a tool at his head. Her place in the hierarchy didn’t determine her entire personality. As with every other dominance level, submissives could be shy or exuberant, cheerful or moody, sensual or reserved. Grace might be quiet and a little shy in comparison to the majority of her packmates, but she could handle loud voices just fine—growing up with two older adoptive siblings, dominants who’d inherited a hair-trigger temper from their father, she’d heard more than her share.
“We’re about halfway through the overhaul,” she said, wishing he’d forget her place in the hierarchy and see her simply as a woman…a woman he wanted.
If he did, what would you do?
Probably run very fast in the other direction.
She twisted the wrench a fraction too hard and almost broke the tube. “Damn.” Cheeks burning, she flexed her fingers, took a deep breath, and completed the extraction with care, hotly conscious of Cooper’s watchful gaze. “There. We can recycle the components.”
“Removed without a scratch. Impressive.” He picked up the burned-out tube. “Did you get the new shipment you wanted?”
She tore her eyes away from his hands, face heating even further at the raw images that had formed unbidden in her mind—of those big hands on her body, on her breasts, his skin exquisitely rough against her own. Never had she responded to a man in such a way, and that it was a man whose mere presence made her wolf acutely uncomfortable? Surely, fate was having a good laugh at Grace’s expense.
“Yes,” she managed to say in response to his question, “I did. They were high quality, as promised.” Hearing a gentle click as he returned the tube to the floor, she put down the wrench and went to pick up a—
“Grace.” Fingers curling around her wrist.
Her pulse spiked as she stared at that strong, dark-skinned hand so warm and gentle, the calluses on his palm a sensual abrasion. She couldn’t speak, the rush of noise inside her head too loud, drowning out all else.
“Grace.” Softer this time. Coaxing. “Look at me.”
Swallowing, she chanced a peek, her wolf at rigid attention. If he’d commanded, she would’ve obeyed at once, her nature such that defiance of an order from a lieutenant stressed her on a primal level. The fact that she was a changeling rather than a wild wolf meant she had the capacity for such defiance, but it would require bone-deep disagreement on her part, enough for the human side of her nature to override the powerful instincts of her wolf.
But Cooper hadn’t commanded. He’d requested…in a way that made everything female in Grace come to trembling attention. Now, her eyes met the intense near black of his and skated away. When he did nothing but wait with a patience she’d never expected from him, she lifted her lashes again, her gaze locking with his.
It sent a thrill through her wolf. To hold the gaze of a lieutenant was a bold move for any wolf, but for a submissive, it went far beyond that. In any other circumstance, it could’ve been dangerous—just as she had her instincts, dominants had theirs. If one interpreted the eye contact as a challenge, it could end badly. The fact that in the majority of cases where such a thing had happened both parties had been in wolf form did nothing to negate the danger of triggering an inadvertent violent response.
Because a submissive would never come out the winner.
Cooper’s thumb brushed over the skittering pulse in her wrist. “There you are.” The low murmur touched her in a caress so intimate, it felt as if she was bare to the skin, exposed and vulnerable.
Inhaling a jerky breath, she broke the shocking eye contact, tugged gently at her wrist. When Cooper’s fingers tightened for an instant, her heart stuttered. He released her befor
e the next beat. Not certain of anything, she fell back on what she knew, picking up another one of her tools to do…something. Except her thoughts were jumbled, a burn of lingering heat around her wrist. She began working on a random nonessential section of the duct, where she could easily fix any errors later.
Beside her, Cooper shifted a fraction, the single inch he closed between them enough to have her wolf quivering and alert, with anticipation, desire, and a good dose of panic all mixed in.
“You don’t ever have to fear anything from me, Grace.” It was a rough murmur, a verbal pet of her senses. “If you want me to stop anytime, anywhere, the only word you ever need to use is ‘No.’ Okay?”
She jerked her head up and down, her throat as dry as the shimmering sands of the Mojave.
“But,” he continued, “I don’t intend to go away until you tell me to do so. I’m planning to court you.”
The tool fell from her nerveless fingers to clatter to the floor. Reaching over, Cooper picked it up, put it back into her toolbox. “I’ll leave you to your work…but Grace? I’ll be seeing you again soon.” With that promise, he rose and was gone, his powerful body moving with a wild strength kept in fierce check as he strode down the relatively narrow access corridor and out into the den proper.
Heart crashing against her ribs hard enough to hurt, her breath jagged in her throat, Grace collapsed against the smooth stone of the wall. “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.” Her chest rose and fell in a harsh, uneven rhythm as she attempted to take in air, clear her head.
The effort failed.
Reaching blindly for her water bottle, she swallowed.
The cool liquid wet her throat but did nothing to calm the fever in her blood.
“I’m planning to court you.”
Never in her wildest imaginings had she thought Cooper would speak those words to her. The furthest she’d dared had been improbable erotic fantasies that left her sweat-soaked and aching for completion, fantasies in which they lay skin to skin, her lips on his throat, his hands gripping her hips as he pinned her under him in readiness for his possession. In real life, she’d almost certainly panic if she was ever in that position, her wolf seizing her mind to present quiescent submission to the predator in bed with her, but the hard reality of the hierarchy didn’t matter in her fantasies.
