Shifters in the Snow: Bundle of Joy: Seventeen Paranormal Romances of Winter Wolves, Merry Bears, and Holiday Spirits

by J. K Harper

  He notched the end of his shaft against her, and her breath escaped.

  Or five.

  As the smooth head missed its entry again and again, she wondered if, indeed, he wouldn’t fit. But every time he missed, the sticky head thumped the bottom of her clit, like a pool cue giving a ball the tiniest tap. Each tap sent an electric shiver up her spine that made her hips fall open even more and her wetness surge.

  He’s doing it on purpose.

  He laid kisses along her jaw and beneath her open mouth. “Hold yourself open for me, Angel. Put your fingers down there and help me in.”

  She’d never been expected to do such a thing. She’d never been asked to touch herself before, but when Grant did, the act didn’t seem crass, just practical, and maybe even a little sweet.

  She slid her hands down between their bellies and between her legs. At either side of her pussy, she pressed a finger, and parted herself. She opened herself wide, and was glad he wasn’t in a position that he could see.

  He used one hand to hold himself off of her just slightly and the other to guide himself in. “Gods, don’t let go. Not until I tell you, you hear me?”

  She couldn’t catch her breath enough to talk—she felt too full, too overwhelmed—but she nodded.

  “Good girl. You’re so wet for me.”

  She nodded again.

  “You smell so good. I’ll always remember your scent, and that the first time I smelled you was at Christmas. Let go, honey.”

  She let her hands fall beside her hips and set her teeth into her lower lip as the ache of her stretched, possibly torn, flesh settled into her brain.

  But that was just a small pain compared to the pressure already building down low with each small thrust of his. His angle was shallow, his body pressed so flat against hers, but that was exactly what she needed. She wanted his weight mashing against her clit, wanted the slight fear of suffocation, because it meant she was at the mercy of someone she’d willingly given her breath to.

  “Gonna speed up. Just relax, all right? Let me take care of you.”

  “And you?”

  “Don’t worry about me. Trust that whatever I do to make you come is going to make me come, too.”

  Oh.

  He hitched one of her legs around his waist and slid a couple of his knuckles into her mouth.

  When she raised an eyebrow at him, he whispered, “You’ll see,” and he plowed harder into her.

  She gasped, but before she could try to catch her breath, he did it again, and again, and faster and faster, until she couldn’t discern in-stroke from out-stroke. Some noise that was more gurgle than exhalation repeatedly croaked out of her, and he kept up that dizzying speed, planting so many tingles in her core that kept culminating with pops and zings every time he brushed her clit.

  She couldn’t shout because his knuckles were in her mouth, but she bit down, and that stimulation was almost as good.

  “Next time, I’ll take you on the counter,” he whispered. “I’d prop you up there and spread your legs…”

  Oh, shit.

  She gushed again, this time at the tawdry image in her mind.

  “I’d just drop my pants and press into you.” He pulled out of her almost all the way so he could bend to her right breast. He licked the nipple lazily for a few moments before kissing back up toward her collarbone. “I’d watch my cock slide in and out. I’d be so hard, looking at how tight you are around me and how you’re grabbing me. I can feel it.”

  His fangs tickled her skin, and she writhed, eager for his bite, and his cock again.

  “I can feel it,” he said, “but I want to watch, too.”

  “You could do the same from the back.”

  “But then I wouldn’t be able to see your face. I want to see your face when I take you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re beautiful, and you’re mine, and a man should get to look at what’s his.”

  He sucked a stretch of her skin into her mouth and rolled his bright gaze up to hers, pushing the flesh against the sharp points of his fangs.

  “Do it,” she said. “Mark me.”

  He bit, and it hurt like hell.

  His bite was like every scraped knee, every shot in the arm, every burn, every whit of trauma she’d had to her skin in twenty-six years, but all at once. Deep down, she’d suspected the sting wouldn’t bring pleasure, but she hadn’t expected such fierce pain.

  No one had warned her of the pain, only of the pleasure that was supposed to come immediately after.

  He unhinged his teeth from the stinging flesh and licked around the marks, and still that chaser of pleasure didn’t come. There was no spike of hormones, no urgent demand that he bring her to completion.

  He slid back inside of her, holding her tightly in his arms as he rocked his hips.

  Willingly, she let him tenderly kiss her confusion away. She let him distract her from the conflicts in her brain.

  Am I too broken even for him?

  “You’re so sweet, Angel,” he whispered. He kept stoking the flame inside her. Her body’s demands were less intense, but the sweet peak was still attainable, and she wanted, in spite of everything, to get there with him.

  So she closed her eyes, and let the sensations he ignited push her toward her pinnacle. She savored the feel of the soft hair on his chin. The gentle curling of his fingers against her scalp. His lips against her temple. The warmth of his breath as he whispered her name again and again.

  “Grant…” she whispered back, and she let him have that piece of her she hadn’t been able to give to anyone else. He’d been the only one who could take her high enough to set it free, and it was the only magic a wolf like her had to give.

  “It’s okay, Angel. Everything’s okay.” He pulsed inside of her, thrumming and hot, and brushed his lips over the tracks the tears made on her cheeks.

  He may have said it, and she may have felt it at that moment, but she didn’t believe that was true.

  If everything was okay, she should have felt the stirring of her wolf inside.

  Instead, she felt nothing. Just her usual uselessness, and him.

  All the energy in the room was alpha.

  Chapter 7

  “Come on, honey. You don’t gotta go,” Grant whined the following morning.

  Grant had never begged a woman to stay before, but Angel was different. Angel was his mate. He didn’t give a damn if she could shift or not, or that his bite hadn’t done anything. He still wanted her, and he hated that he’d given her a new sort of pain. Hers wasn’t the pain of regret, but resignation.

  He’d made her feel like that when his bite hadn’t been enough to stir the wolf in her.

  She stood in the doorway of his tiny-ass house with Pete on her hip, looking outside. Arnold was out there somewhere, probably trudging a path from the truck to the porch so Angel didn’t have to do the breaststroke through all the snow in his yard.

  She rubbed Pete’s head with her chin. “I have to.” Her breath fogged the glass at the top of the door.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I do. What are people going to think?” She tugged her sweater down from her neck a bit, obviously to show him the angry red bite still healing over on her chest. “You can’t have me as a mate and for me to be the way I am.”

  “I don’t give a damn what people think.”

  “You have to.” She cringed. “What people think is important when you’re trying to establish dominance. You can’t be an alpha wolf with an omega mate who you couldn’t make shift. They’re going to think you’re not strong enough.”

  He jammed his hands into his pockets and stared at the colorful braided rug beneath the coffee table. His sisters had made it and others in the house during their copious free time as kids. They hadn’t had televisions for most of their childhood, and there were only so many times they could reread the same five books.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But I don’t feel right letting
you go.”

  “I don’t want to go, Grant.”

  “So stay.”

  “Please don’t make this harder.”

  Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs onto the porch, and then Arnold appeared in front of the door. He stomped the snow off his boots, then, opening the door a crack, he said, “Grant, you got chores you need to do before we go? Your mother said she wouldn’t get out here until noon or one.”

  Grant forced air through his lips and smoothed down his hair. He probably looked like hell, but that was nothing new. “The chores can wait.”

  Arnold held up a full plastic bag. “Brought you leftovers for lunch.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Arnold pulled the door open the rest of the way.

  Grant took Pete and slid the bag onto his arm.

  Angel tried to step outside without a word, but he managed to pull her back by her hood. “Hold on, woman.” He drew her back into the house, and, to Arnold, said, “Give me a minute.”

  “All right. I’m gonna go do some more scraping on the back window of my truck. Maybe I was in a little rush to get out of your ma’s house.”

  “Yeah, I don’t need to wonder why.” Between Ma, Leo, and the rest of his sisters, there would have been nonstop chattering. The noise was enough to make a man claw off his own ears.

  Arnold grunted and took his leave.

  When the door snapped shut behind him, Angel turned her gaze up to Grant. “I asked you not to make this harder.”

  “It’s gonna be hard no matter how we slice it, isn’t it?”

  The next breath she took seemed to choke her as she nodded. “Yes.”

  “Here. Take this.” He set the food bag on the coffee table, and from the top of Christmas tree in the corner, plucked down the angel. He pressed it into her hand and closed her gloved fingers over it.

  Her laugh seemed like half a sob. “I didn’t notice it was a wolf.”

  “We all have them, all of us Banks kids. Leo made them years ago. She’s always been funny.”

  “Will she be upset at me taking it?” Her forehead crinkled as she peered down at the snarling wolf and fingered the mohawk tuft of angora at the top of his head.

  He shook his head. “Nah. She knows I bit you. I guess when she came inside to change Kinzy, Arnold told her your scent was different. I don’t think she’ll mind you having that tree topper one little bit. She probably won’t say anything at all with the circumstances being what they are.”

  “Too awkward.”

  He grunted.

  “I’m sorry.” Angel tugged her lush bottom lip between her teeth and let it pop back out.

  Had she not been on her way out of his life, he might have told her that her toying with her sweet lips like that in front of him was an invitation, and she would have blushed, and he might have kissed her.

  Instead, he looked away from her sad face and down at her hands.

  “I’ll keep him, then,” she said. Carefully, she wrapped the angel-wolf’s lace wings around his body and then tucked the ornament into her purse. “I wish I had something to give you.”

  “You let me put my mark on you.”

  “That’s probably worth more to me than to you.” She pushed up onto her tiptoes, pressed her lips to his briefly, and whispered, “Don’t make this hard.”

  “Okay, honey.”

  He was a wolf who kept his word, so he didn’t touch her.

  He let her back away and didn’t reach out a hand to wipe away the tears on her cheeks when they fell.

  She waved, and then left.

  He swore.

  That was all he could do until his mother showed up to play nanny for yet another day. He’d run out of his tiny-ass house like his pants were on fire, and he’d shift.

  Then he’d run until he had nothing left to exert. Once he was too tired to howl over losing the mate he’d hadn’t expected to come into his life, he’d turn around, go home, and feed his fucking cows.

  Just as the cows didn’t care about holidays, they also didn’t care if their keeper had a broken heart. They still had to eat.

  Chapter 8

  Angel was trudging out of the Norseton executive mansion after yet another workday that had gone by in a blur when Queen Tess jogged down the stairs ahead of her and stopped at the bottom of the landing.

  She put her hands on her hips, narrowed her hazel eyes, and scowled at Angel.

  “What’s wrong?” Angel asked. “Are you upset because I didn’t check out with you? I talked to Oliver, so—”

  “No, it’s not that. I’ve been trying to catch up with you for days.”

  Angel knew. She’d gotten better at hiding from people when she needed to. There was only so much pity she could take. She’d been hiding from her mother, too, which took some very creative scheduling. At the turn of the new year, Angel had been careless walking out of the bathroom. Her mother had seen the bite, and there’d been so many questions.

  She’d been angry with Grant, thinking he’d cast her away like Angel’s father had done to her, and Angel had tearfully explained that the situation had been quite different. She’d been the one to walk away.

  Her mother had cried for her.

  “You’re not yourself lately,” Tess said.

  “No?” Angel continued down the stairs, sighing as she went.

  She couldn’t help the sighing. That was pretty much all she’d done for the month since Christmas. She managed to put on a happy face while she was at work for the most part, but obviously Tess had stopped buying it.

  “No?” Tess repeated accusingly. She tossed her long, curly hair over her shoulder and snagged Angel by the arm. She steered her briskly toward the town square. “Is that all you have to say for yourself? No excuses?”

  “None that would do me any good.”

  “Tell Queenie what’s wrong.”

  “Because you need one more person burdening you with something?”

  “No, because I care, and you need to talk to someone, if not your mother.”

  Angel groaned. “My mother put you up to this? That was bold of her.” Her mother had come out of her shell a lot since they’d relocated to Norseton, but Angel would have never thought the woman would have had an encounter with the queen. Her mother didn’t work anywhere near the mansion.

  “Yes and no,” Tess said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Means that when I saw her at the diner this morning, she made some throwaway comment, and suspicious shrew that I am, I did some investigating, and the mansion staff said that you’d been blue.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. Just tell me why you’re sad.”

  Angel sighed. She didn’t want to talk about him. “Where are you taking me, Tess?”

  “Picking up my six o’clock coffee order.”

  “Oh.” They were walking toward the coffee shop, after all. Angel had certainly been there enough times before work that she would have been able to find the place blindfolded.

  “Talk. Now,” Tess snapped. Obviously, the woman wasn’t going to be put off.

  Angel put up her hands in surrender. “Look, it’s just biology. I got a bite last month, and I guess the magic won’t let go of me.”

  “Grant bit you?”

  “Yeah.”

  Bit me. Cuddled me. Kissed the breath out of me.

  She sighed again.

  “Man, you wolves totally perplex me. If you liked him enough to let him bite you, why did you come back?”

  At the rapid surge of saliva in her mouth, Angel swallowed, and regretted it. She’d been sick to her stomach for a week.

  Bleh.

  She couldn’t very well spit in front of the queen, so she forced the next surge down, too. “I came back so people don’t think Grant’s a weak alpha.”

  “Is this some werewolf political shit? I have a hard enough time keeping up with Afótama mess, and I’m the freaking queen.” She pulled open the door of the shop, and gestured
for Angel to step in.

  “Hey Queenie!” the barista called out. “Got your Americano over here.”

  Tess hooked her giant cup, and immediately the acrid smell of coffee wafted up Angel’s sensitive nose and made her gag.

  She couldn’t suppress the reflex, and Tess couldn’t possibly have ignored the noise Angel made.

  “Angel, what’s up with you?”

  “Sorry. I don’t know. Been like that for a few days. Can’t take the smell.”

  “Of coffee?”

  “I know. I haven’t felt great, I mean even without the Grant thing, all week. At first I thought it was something I ate, but now I’m wondering if I caught something from one of the kids. I was subbing at the school in the mornings last week.”

  Tess guided her back outside into the fresh air. “Well, that sucks hard. I was like that when I was pregnant. I couldn’t stand the smell of coffee or bananas or ginger. Random shit. I couldn’t tolerate any of them for months.”

  “Must have been awful. I’m not pregnant, though.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. I’m an omega.”

  “Okie-dokie then, if you say so. Figuring you out would be easier if you were Afótama. I would just know stuff.” Tess hooked Angel’s arm again and pulled her across the street toward the drugstore.

  “Why are we going in there?”

  “Gonna buy you one of those fancy pregnancy tests with the digital readouts.”

  “But I can’t be pregnant.”

  “Because you’re a virgin?”

  “No!”

  Perhaps Angel objected just a little too loudly. Everyone at the front of the store had turned to look at them.

  Tess didn’t seem bothered, but of course, she was the queen. “Stand there if you like. I’ll get the test. I know exactly where they are. I buy these things all the time.”

  “Why? Do you think you’re pregnant again?”

  “No. I know where they are because none of the women of childbearing age I know have big enough balls to buy their own, for some reason.”

  Angel sighed and then, determining that following Tess was a better course of action than standing in the drugstore doorway where people could gawk at her, she got her ass moving.