“Thanks.” She ate the first cracker in two bites. “Would you drop me off at Cassie and Brice’s place? I’m staying with them.”
“Sure.”
Grace hooked her elbow around his arm. “We should talk sometime.”
“We’re talking now.”
“I mean talk talk.” Her eyes grew large and bright when they stopped at the Rover. “Wow, you got a new truck. Nice.”
Rafe opened the door and helped Grace inside. By the time he reached the driver’s side, she’d fallen asleep.
He brushed her hair from her forehead. Not even the tiniest mark remained of the ugly bump from the accident.
Wondering if everything else that followed had been erased as easily, he drove out of the parking lot, taking his time to reach their destination.
* * *
Eyes closed and holding on to that last little bit of sleep, Grace uncurled in a full-body stretch. She breathed in the fresh fragrance of lemons and roses, her favorite scents.
Neither of which permeated the air at the resort or Cassie’s new house.
Grace sat up in a room she’d never been in and yet was as familiar as her reflection in a mirror.
The larger walls were painted an eggshell color and the accent walls were blush rose. Floor-to-ceiling windows stretched the entire length of the master bedroom.
Even the comforter matched the one she’d clipped from a magazine when she was sixteen.
This has to be a dream.
She slid slowly from the bed, turning to study the head-and footboard. Every detail, perfect.
She ventured down the hallway. Each of the four bedrooms was exactly as she expected them to be.
The receiving room was minus the brocade curtains, but otherwise decorated to perfection.
Every color detail, down to the carpet shade, was perfect. On top of and around the dining room table were large gift-wrapped boxes. The name tags bore numbers. She picked up the one labeled 1, the smallest of them all and deceptively heavy.
She wanted to open the present but put it down since it didn’t have her name on it.
The large kitchen was functional and beautiful, and had large bay windows with a view of the river.
The French doors opened. Rafe stepped inside, saw her and smiled the kind of smile that sucked the breath right out of her.
Her pattering heart skipped a beat. She loved meeting Rafe in her dreams. Still, her stomach knotted. She was tired of wishing and dreaming and looking for something just beyond her grasp.
He gently took her arm and led her into the living room. Grace sat on the couch. Rafe started to sit on the coffee table in front of her, frowned at its delicate construction and sat on the stiff sofa with her. “It’s time for that talk you wanted.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” She turned toward him, drawing her legs beneath her. “This isn’t what our dream is for. I just want to be with you, without the heavy stuff getting in the way.”
“This isn’t a dream.” Rafe’s brow wrinkled. He leaned toward her. “Wait—you have the dreams, too?”
“Yeah, and we’re in one. How else would we be in the house I clipped from a magazine when I was twelve?”
“You left your scrapbook at Doc’s. So I thought...”
Grace sat there as Rafe’s words sank in.
“This is real?”
He shrugged uncomfortably.
“You did all this? For me?” She shook her head. “Why?”
“I love you,” Rafe said softly. “I want you to have a place to always come home to.”
Grace’s chest tightened as her heart swelled.
“I’d hoped we could start over. As friends, lovers, full-moon partners, whatever you wanted, with the understanding that I would be your only friend with bedroom privileges. I don’t share. Not you, at least.”
Grace swallowed hard.
“But I can’t.” He let out a tightly held breath. “I want the whole package, Grace. I want a wife, kids. Hell, I even want grandkids. I need to share my everyday life, not just moments.”
“Rafe, I...”
“I built this house for you, Grace. And I filled it with all the things you dreamed of having. I added one item that wasn’t on your list, a walking bridge built above the river. It leads to Brice and Cassie’s house.
“Ronni has your scrapbook. She’s finishing up the drapes for the living room. She’ll bring it to you when the drapes are ready.”
Rafe stood. “You have a home now. Whether you choose to stay, or use it only when you come to see Cassie and Brenna, it’s yours.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Emotion swelled in her throat. Rafe had taken her dreams and turned them into reality.
“I love you, Grace. More than you’ll ever know. And because I love you, I need to let you go. Goodbye, sweetheart.” He kissed the top of her head.
Grace had no idea how long she sat alone in utter shock and silence.
Finally, she dragged herself from the couch and stumbled to the dining room table. She picked up the box numbered 1 and opened it.
Her fingers glided over the pink handle of a sturdy claw hammer. She picked up the box of nails next to it. The note attached read, “Put holes anywhere you want, sweetheart.”
A single tear slipped down her check. She tore the paper off the rest of the boxes. Each was filled with framed prints, photos and a few paintings, all from her wish book.
Grace picked up her phone and scrolled through the contacts until she found the one she needed.
“Hi, it’s Grace,” she said when the call was answered. “I have a favor to ask.”
Chapter 44
Rafe glared at Grace’s text message.
Midnight emergency.
His damn wolf instinct to provide whatever she needed would drive him out of his goddamn mind if he didn’t give her what she wanted.
He grabbed the white fast-food bag next to him, climbed out of the Rover and slammed the door.
The porch light was on.
He mounted the eight steps, two at a time. A flowery wreath decorated the front door. He rapped his knuckles against the wood.
Grace answered, wearing his shirt over a pink tank top and the pink pajama bottoms with cat faces.
He held the bag in front of her nose.
“What’s this for?” She took the bag but didn’t open it.
“You texted a midnight emergency.”
“Right, a midnight emergency. Not a midnight snack emergency.”
“There’s a difference?”
Grace giggled. A smile as bright as the night’s full moon lit her face.
Everything in him begged him to forget the lamebrained decision to let her go. He wanted her, needed her. Unfortunately, Grace didn’t need the same.
She grabbed his arm and pulled him inside, not that he offered any resistance. Then she locked the door behind him.
“I need help hanging some pictures.” Behind the hope and excitement in her eyes, he saw uncertainty. A tinge of fear also tainted her scent.
He swallowed words that would’ve brought disappointment to her face. He was already there. What would it hurt to hang a few damn pictures?
“Show me.”
Grace’s smile went nova. Rafe’s heart raced, pumping blood, fast and furious, straight to his groin.
“Let’s start in the family room.”
His gut clenched. Wouldn’t someone uninterested in an actual family call it a den or TV room?
He followed her into the middle of the room. The walls were already plastered with pictures of Grace and her brother, Cassie and Brice with Brenna, and with pictures of him and Grace.
Rafe’s heartbeat paused.
The sofa and glass coffee table from her wish book had been replaced. Sitting in the middle of the room was a
leather couch and wooden coffee table identical to the ones he’d had in his apartment. A large wooden entertainment center, with a design similar to the Murphy bed cabinetry, housed a large flat-screen TV bigger than his had been. One of the glass doors on the entertainment center had been left open to show the new gaming system inside.
He sat hard on the coffee table. “What’s going on?”
“I told you. I need help hanging this.” Grace lifted a large frame from the couch. Beneath the glass was an enlarged print of the selfie she’d taken with his wolf.
Hope swelled inside his heart. Confusion tightened his chest to keep it from expanding.
“I want it centered over the couch.” She gave him the picture. “It will make a nice focal point, don’t you think?”
“I’m not sure what to think.” He lifted his gaze to her face. “Why did you change the furniture? Put up all the pictures of...us?”
“This house, everything you put in it, it’s everything I wished for—until I met you.” She sat on the couch, her knee touching his. “I miss you. I was kinda hoping you would share this place with me.”
God knew, Rafe wished he could. Wished he could be what she needed, but he simply wasn’t wired that way. Nor could he pretend he was.
He’d spent most of his life trying to be what others thought he should be. He’d never be what he would have been if he had grown up wild with his birth pack and he’d never be quite as domesticated as wolfans fully integrated into human society.
He was somewhere in between, forging a new path, and he wanted a mate to join him on the journey.
“Grace, I can’t play house with you.”
* * *
“I don’t want to play house.” Grace knelt between his legs. “I’ve always wanted a real home. But, no matter where I’ve lived, after a while, I’d get antsy and leave.”
“Grace, you don’t need to explain.”
“I do.” She stroked his cheek. “Something changed when I met you. I didn’t realize until I returned to Knoxville, but I’m not restless when I’m with you, Rafe. I’m restless without you.”
Grace cupped the back of his neck, drawing him close enough for a kiss. She touched her lips to his mouth. It was hard and cold as steel. Somehow, she needed to make him believe.
Pouring every ounce of her being into that kiss, she bared the rawness of her soul. Unleashing the loneliness, the regret. The insecurity that she’d never be all he needed.
Rafe’s hand slipped over her hip to her back, pressing her closer. He finally broke the kiss so they could breathe.
“God, Grace. I’ve missed you.”
“Come with me.” She took his hand, leading him into the bedroom. The lights were off but the full moon cast a soft silvery glow around the room.
“I want to be more than your full-moon partner, Rafe. I want to be your mate.”
“Can you really do this?” He cradled her face in his calloused hands. “Once I claim you, there’s no turning back.”
“Good, because I don’t want to go back. I want to move forward with you. Only you.”
Rafe’s kiss was as soft as a whisper and Grace wondered how something so ethereal could anchor her so firmly. Even as she felt her spirit soaring, his touch kept her from disappearing into oblivion.
She barely felt her clothes fall from her body as Rafe’s heat warmed her inside and out. The luxurious caress of his skin bordered on pain. Maybe it really was possible to die from too much pleasure.
She didn’t remember going from her feet to prone on the bed, but there she was, sinking into the softness of the mattress, Rafe crouched above her, so close his chest grazed her bare breasts. He nuzzled her neck, her jaw and the teeny, tiny spot behind her ear that apparently hid a direct line to her sex, because a sizzling charge shot straight down her spine, swirled in her belly and ignited an aching, clawing need in her womb.
In an almost desperate grope, Grace danced her hands up his muscled chest. The short hairs splattering his flesh tickled her palms. Excitement spiraled through her body. Wanting, needing him closer, she pushed her fingers over his shoulders and down the corded muscles in his back. Holding him tightly, she never wanted to let him go, again.
Rafe moaned and growled her name. The husky vibrations hooked her, reeling her hips against his. Grinding her mound slowly against his cock, she cupped his tight ass, squeezing and pressing.
“Inside me. Now!” It wasn’t romantic or sweet, but the raging sexual fever had all but obliterated her vocabulary.
Apparently it had wiped out Rafe’s. He responded with a primitive grunt, positioning himself at her entrance and thrusting without further enticement.
Grace’s vaginal walls gripped his cock as he pushed harder and deeper inside. He locked his gaze on hers. The dark, feral possessiveness in his eyes stole her breath and the sheer ecstasy of their joining nearly drove her mad.
His kiss, his touch, his thrusts, she couldn’t get enough. She panted his name, clawing at his haunches, widening her legs just so he’d slide deeper. A swirling heat flamed in her core. She arched her pelvis and anchored her legs around his hips, matching his hard, fast thrusts. Grace slid her arms around his neck. Pressed her breasts against his chest and held him in a promise to never let him go again.
Hoarse and halting, her name spilled from his lips as her sex began to spasm, releasing wave after wave of rapture like the rushing, rising waters of a torrential flash flood. Even as the intensity roared through her body, deafening her ears and darkening her vision, her skin became super sensitive to Rafe’s touch.
He kissed the hollow of her throat, soft and sweet, yet the burn was almost unbearable. His lips waltzed toward the curve of her neck.
A stark panic flickered through her. This was it. She was becoming his and there’d be no turning back.
He licked her flesh, teasing her with his tongue. Driving her mad with the electric pulses it sparked.
“Rafe,” she panted, fully embracing their future.
“Mine!” His bite felt like a sharp pinch and what followed was a rush so intense and so deeply intimate that Grace’s eyes filled with tears and a sob rose in her throat. It was as if all Rafe’s love gushed out of him and straight into her soul. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever experienced.
He trembled against her, very nearly collapsing, except for the locked elbows that kept him from crushing her with his weight. She curled her fingers gently in his hair.
“Wow,” she said.
“Yeah, wow.”
“I told you I came with great benefits.”
“Hmm.” He nuzzled her cheek, then rolled onto his side, gathering her in his arms. “Now that I’m the exclusive beneficiary of those benefits, I intend to explore every nook and cranny of the policy provider.”
His fingers slid along the curve of her hip as he nipped and licked and kissed the curve of her neck and shoulder. “Every. Single. Morning. Every. Single. Night.”
Rafe’s heat wrapped around her in loving comfort. She felt his love, his joy, his strength.
He nudged her onto her back, moving over her with tender stealth. She sighed as he easily slid inside her, rocking her with a gentle, easy rhythm. Merging bodies, merging hearts, merging souls.
With Rafe, she’d never be alone.
Grace wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed him softly, sweetly. She’d never needed to find the perfect town, with the perfect house, filled with perfect things to have a real home.
She’d just needed him.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE UNFORGETTABLE WOLF by Jane Godman.
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The Unforgettable Wolf
by Jane Godman
Chapter 1
Just because he was no longer a werewolf didn’t mean he wasn’t big and bad. It just meant he had to be careful. Very, very careful.
Which was why, as the courier approached, Nate Zilar’s every sense was on high alert. He had chosen this meeting place because of its deserted location and had checked the surrounding area carefully. There was no one around. The parking lot was empty, apart from his car and the truck in which the other guy had just pulled up.
“Do you have the merchandise?”
“In the back.” The courier jerked his head.
Nate stepped forward. Another quick scan of his surroundings confirmed they were alone. Even now, after six years, he got flashbacks to that time. A reminder of that brief period when everything—his vision, hearing, scent and intuition—had all been so much more acute. When his body had been a raw mass of power and reaction. It wasn’t welcome, but at times like this, that residual supercharging of his senses came in useful.
Rescued by the Wolf Page 26
