“Can I join this party, baby?” Sean moved her hair aside and kissed down her neck to the juncture of her shoulder. “You taste so sweet, Kaitlyn. I can’t wait to mark you as mine forever.”
His canines scraped over her skin as he sucked the flesh into his hot mouth. The feeling was so electrifying that she gasped and pushed herself against Aiden’s cock. Her pussy felt swollen, her panties wet. Her throbbing clitoris was painful. She needed something. She felt the pleasure tightening her muscles and dug her fingers into Aiden’s shoulders. She felt like she was going to fall.
“Help me, Aiden. I don’t know if I can do this.” She pulled herself tighter to him, afraid of what was happening, but more afraid the feeling would stop.
“We have you, my heart. We’ll make you feel good.”
* * * *
Sean’s head was spinning with the taste of his sexy mate. He’d sucked up a bruise on her neck and his feline taste buds were reeling with the flavor of her blood. The amounts were microscopic, but the sweet essence mingling with the musky aroma of her leaking pussy made for an arousing cocktail in his mouth.
“This is her first time. She’s too terrified to come.”
Sean nearly choked on his own tongue at Aiden’s disclosure. Recovering quickly, he moved his hand up to her breast. Her nipple was already hard, so he gently rolled it between his finger and thumb before pinching it firmly.
Kaitlyn screamed as her body tensed and shook between them. He released her nipple and caressed her breast, nipping her neck gently as her orgasm throbbed through her.
“Is she a virgin?” Sean knew her license had said she was twenty-three. How had she remained a virgin?
“We’ll need to take our time with her,” Aiden said, answering his question.
“Are you still alive, Kaitlyn?” Sean asked. He kept his tone light, even though he was feeling both stunned and immensely aroused.
“That was the most amazing feeling.” She buried her face against Aiden’s chest. Sean didn’t need to read minds to know she was feeling self-conscious.
“You are beautiful when you come,” Aiden said. He brushed the hair from her face and lifted her chin. “Thank you for trusting us.”
Sean’s cock throbbed in his jeans, the zipper painful against the sensitive flesh. She had no idea how sexy she was. Long, toned legs that ended in shapely hips and a lusciously rounded ass. God, he loved her ass.
“Have you never had any boyfriends?” Sean said, aiming for tactful instead of blunt.
“My father and I moved around a lot with his work as an engineer. I was homeschooled, and then did my business degree online. My move to Lauderville was my first time living away from him.”
She grew quiet then, and Sean knew without Aiden’s help that she was recalling her horrifying attack. “Had you worked there long, Kaitlyn?” Sean wondered how long the mayor had waited before he’d assaulted her.
“Friday was the end of my first week.” He scented her sadness and her despair, her strong emotions drowning out the scent of her previous arousal. He knew which scent he preferred, but he was desperate to get to know her.
“I know for a fact that Lachlan and Prescott would kill for a good secretary at the sheriff’s office.” Sean cried out as his head felt like he’d been slapped. He held his hand to the back of his head and rubbed at the sting to his scalp. He looked at Aiden to see him staring daggers at him. The vampire had actually slapped him upside the head. Fuck, he moved fast.
“What was that for?” Sean asked, forgetting to keep his question to himself.
Kaitlyn gave a small giggle. “They’d kill for a good secretary?”
Shit. He was an idiot. “Sorry, that was tactless.”
“Aiden hitting you was punishment enough.” Kaitlyn rolled to her back and moved his hand to rub at his head herself. “Do they really need help, or is this a pity job?”
“Shit, no. They are wading through unfinished paperwork. Caleb has threatened to lock them in the station house until they get it all sorted out.”
“Are we going to be living here, then? In Pine Falls?”
“Sorry. I should’ve asked you two where you wanted to live. I’ll go wherever you are, Kaitlyn.” Sean had spent the better part of his life in Pine Falls, but it wouldn’t be his home now unless she stayed here, too.
Aiden smiled at him and nodded his agreement. “It’s up to you, Kaitlyn. I have wandered the globe and called not one place home. You are my home now.”
“That’s exactly how I felt when I woke up this morning and smelled both of your scents. I knew I was finally home.” Sean wiped away a single tear that ran down her cheek before kissing her hard on the mouth.
Her taste shook him to the core again. God, she was sweet. He knew he’d never get enough of her. She wrapped her arms around him and moaned his name as he deepened the kiss. He dipped his tongue into her mouth before slowly pulling from her lips.
“I have never had a home, or a pride. I like Caleb very much. Can we stay here?” Kaitlyn looked at each of them in turn.
“My parents are going to be so happy to meet you, baby.” Sean knew his mother was going to want grandchildren as soon as they were mated. As he was an only child, nearly a century old, his mother had even taken to sending him on blind dates.
Aiden laughed out loud. Sean glowered at him insincerely. His mother really was desperate for grandchildren. “My mother has been waging the same war with me for five times that long,” Aiden said.
Sean laughed, too, and Kaitlyn tapped him on the shoulder. “I love that you two have bonded, but can I know what’s so funny?”
Chapter 10
It hadn’t slipped Aiden’s notice that Kaitlyn had failed to make any comment when they’d told her their parents were all anxious for grandchildren. His little mate may be twenty-three years young, but she was shrewd. She hadn’t so much as thought about their conversation. He was again impressed by the keen intelligence and adaptability of the cats as a race.
Sean had made them all chili for dinner and Aiden had insisted on doing the dishes while Sean and Kaitlyn relaxed. He joined them in under sixty seconds.
“Are you serious?” Sean asked, putting more wood on the fire. “I could use your help on sports day at school.”
“You’re a teacher?” Kaitlyn said, her eyes growing wide. “I thought your job was with the pride?”
“I’m an enforcer with the pride, but I run a special class for shifter children two afternoons a week.”
“Can I help with that, too? I never got to go to school.” Aiden heard the sadness in her voice.
“Of course you can. You’ll have all the boys madly in love with you, though.”
Aiden heard the disbelief in her mind. She really had no idea what a beautiful and special person she was. Her thoughts ran quickly through her lonely childhood. She’d had no close friends until her secretarial job in San Diego had brought her a friend called Meg.
As much as he wanted to strangle her father for subjecting her to twenty-one years of loneliness, he wanted to hug this Meg for the two years of joy her friendship had brought his mate.
“I think your father needs to come here and answer some questions for us, Kaitlyn,” Aiden said. He hoped the anger he felt toward her father hadn’t leached into his voice or his scent. “It’s better if he comes here to you. It’s not safe for you to leave the pride and travel to him.”
“I’ll call him before I go to bed. Should I tell him that I know what my mother was?”
Aiden could understand her anger toward her father. He’d kept her mixed race a secret from her, and possibly left her vulnerable to her attack.
“Just tell him you’ve met your mates,” Sean said. “He’ll be here in a flash to check us over. I would, if it were my daughter.”
Sean kissed Kaitlyn goodnight and he left for his patrol duty. Aiden gave Kaitlyn privacy for her phone call by doing a long sweep of Sean’s ranch and the surrounding properties. He found nothing to cause him any
concern and returned to find Kaitlyn crying quietly on the sofa.
“He said he’ll be here Monday.” She spoke softly, as Aiden sat down beside her and wrapped his arm around her shaking shoulders.
“He’s known all this time. I thought we were close. Thought that we had a great relationship. What a joke.”
Aiden wanted to kill the man for the loneliness and now pain he’d subjected his mate to. He’d glean as much information as he could from her father. Then, if Kaitlyn wanted him dead, he’d do it gladly.
Kaitlyn’s wet laugh made his attention snap back to her. “What has you laughing, my mate?”
“You are so obviously planning ways to murder my father right now.”
He smiled at her, not feeling guilty in the least that she’d guessed correctly. “I was, actually. But how did you know that?”
“I can’t read your mind, but your anger is stinking up the room. That coupled with the blazing red eyes was enough for me to guess.” She pulled her legs under her and knelt on the sofa next to him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and sighed, her laughter gone. “Thank you, but please don’t kill him. He’s still the only family I have.”
“That’s not true anymore, Kaitlyn. Sean and I are your family, too.” Wrapping his arms around her waist, he lifted her up and walked upstairs with her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and held him tight. Her trust in him was opening his heart even more to her. “Plus, you’re going to be part of a pride now. I have seen the bonds that form in a pride. As Sean’s mate, they will unconditionally protect you with their lives.”
“It’s a whole new life for both of us now, isn’t it?”
He laid her on the bed and wrapped her in the comforter. Her body was still weakened from blood loss and she drifted quickly to sleep. He was frustrated that he didn’t know what she required to continue healing. As a vampire, she would have needed to feed again, but as a shifter, she would just need rest. He hated not knowing who he could even ask.
As much as he didn’t want to meet her father, the man may be their only source of information on Kaitlyn’s mixed-race physiology. He just had to resist the urge to kill him on sight.
Chapter 11
Mayor Selwyn Graves paced anxiously as he waited in his office for his three councilors, his coven, to arrive. He had just experienced the best thirty-six hours of his extremely long existence and he was planning on repeating it. Soon.
He was in no doubt that it had been his new assistant’s blood that had affected him so drastically, but he needed to see what, if any, effect it had elicited in his coven before he set his plan in motion.
He listened as they pulled up to the town hall in their expensive cars. Vampirism’s long lifespan allowed for wealth to be easily accumulated, and most old vampires wanted for nothing money could buy. He was in that category.
What he had gotten from Kaitlyn Winters, however, was more priceless to him than all of his accumulated wealth. He had received a high unlike anything he’d experienced in his nearly two thousand years of life.
No drug ever made effected a vampire. The only break in the monotony of their daily existence was gained by travelling to new places or partaking in new activities. Many old vampires chose to simply end their lives rather than continue living under the crushing certainty that eons of endless monotony awaited them.
There had been nothing new in Selwyn’s life for over a thousand years. Even his coven’s practice of taking over whole towns and drinking them almost dry had begun to grow stale and predictable. Until Kaitlyn.
Her scent had been tantalizingly exotic, which was why he’d chosen her for the job. She’d been the least qualified of all the applicants, but his coven didn’t choose on work experience. They chose on what appealed to them and Kaitlyn had definitely appealed to all of them.
As his coven filed through the open door to his office, he studied them carefully. If what he’d experienced had also happened to them, then his life had suddenly become infinitely more exciting.
Chapter 12
“She’s sleeping longer than we did and we were up all night,” Sean said, tossing the remains of his coffee in the sink and slamming the mug down on the counter. He’d come home before dawn from his patrol and curled up behind Kaitlyn’s sleeping form, careful not to disturb her. When he’d woken at midday, he’d relieved Aiden and stood guard while the vampire also grabbed a few hours rest.
“It’s only four,” Aiden said calmly. “Jason said he’s unsure of how fast she’s likely to heal.”
Aiden had called Doc while Sean was sleeping, but the shifter doctor had apparently been unable to offer any reassurance. “He said to let her rest as much as she needed. So you are not going to wake her.”
Aiden stood in the kitchen doorway with his arms crossed. Sean may not have known the vampire well, but he knew from his expression that Aiden would flatten him if he attempted to disturb their mate’s sleep.
The sound of a car approaching the house drew them both to the porch at preternatural speed.
“I don’t recognize the car,” Sean said.
It was an older model hatchback, and the engine whine attested to its poor maintenance history. “The man driving looks to be around forty, olive skin, dark hair, and his scent says he’s a cat,” Aiden said softly.
“Do you think her father decided to surprise her and come early?” Sean could detect no scent yet, but he trusted that Aiden was correct. “What are his thoughts telling you?”
“That he wants to rip the gonads off the shifters who have dared to try and claim Kaitlyn.” Sean looked at Aiden to see if he was serious. “I may have paraphrased a little, but that’s the essence of it.”
“I like you, Aiden.” Sean really did find the man to be easy company and would be great to take to a poker match.
“Thank you. But I have accumulated enough wealth that you don’t need to gamble to keep a roof over our heads.”
“I wouldn’t be doing it for the money, my friend.” Sean clapped Aiden on the back and stepped down off the porch to meet Kaitlyn’s father. “I’d be doing it for the satisfaction of beating all the bastards who regularly clean me out.”
Kaitlyn’s father pulled his car to a stop and stepped out. He was a little over six feet tall and solidly built, but Sean towered over him. He stepped right up to Sean, invading his personal space with his mouth set in a sneer, his eyes beginning to spark the amber of his panther.
“Are you one of the men claiming to be my daughter’s mate?”
Sean didn’t step back. He leaned into the small space separating him from the smaller man and smiled when the older man leaned away.
“My name is Sean Marland. This is my ranch, and I am your daughter’s mate.”
“I know that to not only be a lie, but an impossibility. I won’t let you play games with my daughter just because you want to fuck her.”
Sean drew back his arm and swung at the bastard. His cat was itching to come out and rake its claws across the bastard’s throat. Sean’s fist failed to connect and he staggered as the empty punch threw him off balance.
“I think you owe the both of us an apology, Mr. Winters,” Aiden said coldly.
Sean watched the light drain from the man’s eyes, then the color from his face. He sagged against the car where Aiden had him pinned. He neither looked nor scented as fearful. He looked resigned.
“So I can assume she knows, then?” the older man said. He looked at Aiden and then at Sean. “Is she even going to talk to me?”
“I don’t know why I should, Daddy,” Kaitlyn said softly. “But my mates seem to think you may have had a reason for lying to me my entire life.”
Sean ran to her side and swept her up into his arms, his anger at her father forgotten, everything forgotten except for his joy at seeing her awake and well. He took her mouth in a kiss born of his worry for her. She opened to him and moaned as he plunged his tongue into her sweet mouth, her own tongue dueling deliciously with his.
He br
oke the kiss reluctantly, leaving them both a little breathless. “I was worried when you slept so long.”
“I like the way you kiss me when you’re worried, Sean.” She was gone from his arms before he’d had a chance to blink and he found himself holding Kaitlyn’s father aloft by his shirt collar instead. Sean let him fall the six inches or so to the deck and looked around for his mate and the damned vampire.
“I think he took her inside,” Kaitlyn’s father said. “I’m Ray Winters.” He stuck out his hand and Sean didn’t hesitate in taking it. His momma would kill him if he was disrespectful to his future father-in-law. “Sorry for my assumptions. I can smell the mating musk pouring from both you and Kaitlyn. I’m happy she’s found a mate.”
“Mates, Ray.” Sean let go of his hand and opened the front door. “Please.” He gestured for the man to enter and Ray walked slowly into the house.
“Don’t think for one second that I’ll ever be happy she met something like him.”
Sean stopped the man’s advance into the living room by placing a hand firmly on his shoulder. “That man opened a vein to save your daughter when she was close to dying.”
Ray’s shocked expression told him Kaitlyn had failed to mention the circumstances surrounding her attack.
“Thank you, Sean. I think Kaitlyn should be the one to tell him the rest, though.”
Sean ushered Ray into the living room to see Aiden seated on the sofa with a disheveled and blushing Kaitlyn sitting demurely on his lap. She was so beautiful his heart skipped a beat. He loved her. He wasn’t sure if it was normal for it to happen this fast, but he did.
“Ray, this is Aiden…” Sean said.
“Aiden O’Connell.” Aiden finished for him.
Ray didn’t move any closer to Aiden. He stood in the doorway and stared at his daughter.
“Why did you even come, Dad?” Kaitlyn rose and walked to stand in front of her father. Aiden appeared behind her.
“Shit, you move fast.” Sean moved to stand beside Kaitlyn. If Aiden was concerned for her, then so was he. “Is her father a threat to her?”
A Thousand Years Dead [Pine Falls 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 6
