by Diana Seere
He just nodded.
“Oh my God.” The gravity of the situation made Sophia sit on the ground, head between her legs, her hands washing her thick brown hair in a nervous gesture. New moonlight spilled over her dark hair, making it look wet.
“I know,” he said. “It’s terrible.”
“What? Oh. That. Yes, it’s bad, but I just realized something worse!”
“What?” What could be worse than having a top secret shifter serum stolen and in the wrong hands?
She frowned, produced one hand, and began counting on her fingers, quickly moving to her other hand, stopping at six. “All of the main shifter families?”
He nodded.
“I’ve slept with six of the people attending this meeting.” The sickly look on her face nearly made him laugh.
“Really?” Edward said drolly. “Only six? Slacker.”
She punched him.
He deserved it.
“Our generation has more men than women. It’s only natural,” she said.
“And bears don’t mate for life, so you have a convenient excuse.”
“Don’t need an excuse.” Her face twisted into a contemplative look. “I just really like sex.”
Molly, he thought. The promise of her body, the permission to touch her that she extended to him, the heat of her reaction to his touch, his taste, his bold claim on her for those seconds, however fleeting.
I really like sex too, he thought.
At least I did.
A long time ago.
Standing, he walked away in a last-ditch effort to escape the burst of heat that crawled through his bones, needing tea. “Earl Grey?” he called out from the kitchen, turning on the electric kettle.
“Do you have something stronger?”
“Earl Grey with lemon?” He played dumb.
“You are so boring,” Sophia called out, but she grudgingly joined him. By the time she sat at one of the chairs at his small kitchen table, he had the fifth of brandy in hand.
“Not so boring,” he retorted, jiggling the bottle.
She smiled, but it was shaky. “The threat is that bad? Bad enough for Asher to call a gathering of all the main families?”
He shrugged.
“What do you feel?”
He jolted, shocked.
Her turn to shrug. Kindly, cautious brown eyes the color of the brandy he poured into his teacup met his. “You really are different, Edward. You have gifts we don’t have. You also have torments I wish you didn’t hide.”
“I can’t describe what I sense. There are no words.”
“Pictures?”
“Not even pictures,” he said.
“Then what?”
He blinked, blowing on the hot tea, body tense, his T-shirt sticking to his long torso, the cotton bunched and sweaty along the line of ridged muscle that pelted his abs.
“Danger.”
Sophia shivered, brow furrowed, as she watched him.
But there was more, more he could not share, for he detected a new sensation, one with its own frequency, stronger than the rest.
Molly.
Her.
Holding her laptop bag and a bottle of water, Molly walked into a quiet side entrance of the Stantons’ enormous Montana ranch house, stifling a yawn. The local time was only nine thirty in the evening, but she was still on Boston time, and the winter sun had set hours ago. It was pitch-black outside, with no city lights for miles and heavy clouds covering the moon and stars. The weather had almost diverted their flight, but they’d landed just in time. A storm was coming in.
“We’ll stay in the main house,” Eva told her, gesturing to the right. A bald older man at the plane had promised to follow with their suitcases. “I thought you might prefer the same room you had during Gavin’s wedding celebrations. Perhaps it will make you feel more comfortable.”
Eva must’ve noticed Molly was nervous about coming to Montana but hadn’t asked why, for which Molly was grateful. After confessing her tryst with Tomas Nagy, she had no desire to tell her about having a thing for Edward Stanton. A thing she was trying to kill, but she wasn’t going to lie to herself. She had a thing.
A sudden pain shot through her scarred palm, and she rubbed it against her thigh. The flight must’ve aggravated the old injury somehow.
“Thanks, but any room is fine,” Molly said. They were all too close.
“You look tired. Get some sleep, and we’ll meet first thing in the morning,” Eva said. “Remember what we discussed.”
“How could I forget?”
Eva put a finger over her lips, glancing around the wood-paneled corridor. “Even here, it’s best if we talk behind closed doors. I’ll arrange a private spot for breakfast.”
“How many people are going to be here?”
“Four families. Each with at least four members, as well as their staff and servants.” Eva raised an eyebrow. “The Nagys arrived just as we did. Tomas and Gregor and their parents. That’s why I brought us in through this door, so you wouldn’t have to face that challenge until the morning, after you’d had some sleep.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it.”
“Your suitcases should already be in the room.” Eva lifted a manicured hand in a wave as she walked away. “Sleep tight.”
Without hesitating, Molly hurried down the hall to the bedroom she’d had during her last visit and locked the door behind her, sighing with relief and leaning against the back of the door. God bless Eva for bringing her in through a quiet side entrance. She didn’t have to face anyone until tomorrow.
She prepared for bed and climbed under the luxurious down-filled duvet, sinking into the thick, pillowy mattress with a groan of pleasure. Closing her eyes, she pushed Edward and the Nagys out of her mind and invited sleep to overtake her.
And then she felt the storm.
The wind was rattling the window, howling through the trees, gusting over the lake just down the hill from the house. A chill crept under the covers, tickling her shoulders.
She pulled a pillow over her head, but knew it was useless. Every once in a while, when a big storm approached, she found herself drawn to go outside, no matter how cold or wet or dangerous, and feel it for herself. Feel it on her skin, in her hair, in her skin and bones. When she was a teen, one of her foster moms accused her of being a drama queen who was begging for attention because she’d returned to the house, dripping wet and shivering, at three in the morning, long past her curfew.
But she was an adult now. She could do what she liked.
Within five minutes, she was bundled in jeans, beret, and parka, and walking out another side door that led to the pool and lake. The great room was brightly lit, and its light poured out of the big windows to her left. The outdoor pool was covered for the winter, but the wind was flapping at the tarp’s edges, threatening to tear it off. She turned away, stepping carefully down the steps that headed for the lake, glad for the nameless Stanton employee who had cleared away the snow and ice, although more was coming very soon.
She unzipped her parka to feel the wind, to let it snake under the nylon and polyester fill and lick her flesh. Shivering, she smiled, never feeling as alive as she did in a storm. It was almost as good as sex. And without that to satisfy her the past month, she was grateful for this and would revel in every second.
Something urged her to get away from the house, away from people, into the wild where the storm could reach her more directly. She skirted the lake, using her phone to find her way after the path lights ended and cast her into darkness.
The storm smelled delicious, like ice cream and peppermint. She inhaled it deeply into her lungs and laughed into the wind. She knew she was crazy, but what the hell. Lifting her arms to the sky, she pretended she could fly, she pretended she could dissolve into the air and join the storm as a dance partner. The wind lifted the long strands of her hair not caught in her beret and whipped them around her cheeks.
God, she loved this. She tilted her face up to the s
ky and felt a few early snowflakes kiss her eyelids.
And then she felt something nameless and wonderful, even better than the storm. In the midst of the cold, violent wind, she felt heat, like sunshine in July, blossoming inside her. It was deep, warming her from within, protecting her from the world. She put her hand on her belly, searching for the source of heat.
It was higher, a little to the left. Her heart.
She’d never felt so loved. That’s what it was, embracing her, filling her—love. To a degree she’d never known before. As wide as the sky, as deep as the universe.
A gust of wind tore the hat off her head. When she turned to catch it, she was shocked to realize she wasn’t alone.
Chapter 5
Edward knew his time was limited. Precious few hours until the four families gathered the next day, hours he needed to use wisely. Composing himself to face his past required a level of sophistication he knew he possessed deep in his core, buried beneath years of torment.
Knowing it was there was one thing.
Accessing it took a different kind of knowing.
He felt Vivien in the air around him, like a spirit unable to let go. For months after her death he had dreams about her, unbearable nightmares in which she begged for her life, calling for him. Perhaps, he realized with a jolt that made him stop cold in his tracks, that was why he got along with Asher so well, unlike their other siblings.
Both had lost their women under unspeakable circumstances.
And both, he recognized, rubbing his beard with a rueful wince, had been unable to move on.
Yet, a voice whispered, the sound light like fairy wings, tickling his ears as if it were a true sound. Whatever part of him held out hope inside would not die, hunched into a tiny ball, hidden from sight, waiting.
Waiting.
Molly, the voice rasped, the sound making his palm freeze on his chin, the base of his spine tingling. Why on earth would she be here in Montana? This made no sense.
Alert and watching, he raised his pitifully inadequate human ears, perked for sound, skin beginning the familiar spread of awareness. He ached to shift, to morph into his true self, but some force inside stopped him.
Her.
The refreshing scent of Molly’s neck as he nuzzled her, the press of her yielding body against his, hands hot against her textured hair, the throb and pulse of rhythm pushing them closer, harder, deeper together with mouths and hands and tongues and fate.
A groan escaped his throat, involuntary and desperate. What was he doing? He shook it off, frowning, blowing air out through a frustrated mouth that burned with the need to touch hers again, and soon. This yearning for her was childish, based on an impulsive kiss. Edward took Asher’s warning about mating with humans quite seriously.
Unlike Gavin and Derry, he would never make that mistake.
As Asher told him long ago, “You’ve had enough heartbreak. Why seek out more?”
Indeed.
Why?
And then he felt her. Here. Was he going mad?
She was pure ozone, the scent of the earth’s pull and the galaxy’s stardust all fused into one ball of goodness and light. Her unique vibration strengthened, gaining momentum, turning heavy like a big African drum, loud and low.
Grabbing a jacket as he rushed out the door, he closed his eyes in midmotion, finding her with a trait like echolocation, yet wholly different.
There you are.
Unable to stop himself, he followed the steady drumbeat of her magnetic pull, out into the storm, the whiplash of wind becoming her embrace.
Tracking her was easy, though the slamming of his heart threatened to drown out all other frequencies, his own scent overpowering hers until he sped through the estate grounds on instinct, nearly blind with need and desire, guided by a lustful joy that took words and pictures and turned both into pathetic facsimiles of what he felt.
The lake. He should have known she would be there, but he skittered on the grass, halting softly, not wanting to scare her. Face tipped to mother moon, she drank in the sweet ambrosia of lunar love, the wind pushing her silken strands of hair back as she raised her arms to the sky in joyous supplication. It felt as if the wind offered him a talisman as a gust sent her hat flying, floating on the breeze and into his chest, the white beret trapped instantly between his quick palm and his cotton shirt, her scent enrapturing him.
She turned, aware of his presence, her face like Diana the huntress, her eyes filled with eternity.
An eternity he craved.
Molly pressed her hand to her chest while aiming her phone’s flashlight up at Edward with the other. He stood directly behind her in the darkness, his eyes gleaming above his beard, clutching her beret over his heart. Edward watched her keenly, his breath soundless, body pulsing.
Seeing him so suddenly then, at the very moment she had already been feeling emotional from the trip and the storm, almost knocked the air out of her. It took a moment for her to catch her breath. “What are you doing here?”
Although he’d crept up behind her, he looked as surprised as she felt. “I live here,” he said. His voice was low and soft—calming her down in some ways, stirring her up in others.
His pupils had shrunk under the harsh light from her phone, exaggerating the sea-blue of his irises. She flicked her phone off and returned it to her pocket. “Of course you do. Sorry.”
They faced each other in the darkness, breathing each other’s air. He held her hat, bringing it up to his chin, and yet he didn’t offer it to her. Was he smelling it? She wanted to ask, but the words wouldn’t form. Wind made her eyes dry, and she blinked, as if he might disappear into the night, a figment of her imagination.
Blink.
Still here.
Thank God.
“Perhaps I could ask you the same question,” he said. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?”
His deep, silken words sent a shiver through her, hardening her nipples under her T-shirt. She was immediately reminded of the fact she was not wearing a bra. “Eva asked me to come.”
He paused. “Eva?”
“I’m her assistant now.”
Perhaps it was her imagination, but he seemed closer now. She could smell him. She could smell his cologne. “She brought you here,” he said.
Molly imagined he said something else then, although his mouth didn’t move. To me, he seemed to say.
He had definitely gotten closer. She could feel the warmth of his body radiating through the cold night and into her pores, even through her clothing. A blast of wind struck her from behind, pushing her weight onto her toes. Immediately his hands were on her arms, his fingers gripping her hot flesh under her coat, his legs brushing against hers, his chest grazing the hard, sensitive tips of her nipples.
He ducked his head. “Careful,” he said in a low voice.
“Not tonight,” she muttered, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck just as his mouth came down on hers.
The kiss was hot and mindless, moving her out of her thoughts and purely into her body. They’d tasted each other before, but it had been a surprise, an accident, a quick display. This was eager and mutual and private.
She raked her fingers along his scalp and grabbed fistfuls of thick hair, reveling in the sound of the growl rising from his throat. While his hands roamed down her back, she trailed her tongue along the top edge of his teeth and pressed closer, savoring the feel of his beard against her skin, feeling herself overheat in her thick coat even with the wind and snow lashing their bodies.
As if reading her thoughts, his hands slid up her arms under the parka and pushed it down, exposing her skin to the elements. She wore only a thin T-shirt and the jeans she’d pulled on to explore the storm, but the icy wind was a breathtaking relief. Burning for him, she unfastened the top button of his flannel shirt and licked the hollow of his throat, where tufts of hair curled up, inviting her to explore.
“Molly.” His voice was rough, urgent. He caught her face b
etween his hands and ravaged her mouth, a kiss that made the other ones seem silly, polite, forgettable. What other kiss? What other moment was there except for this one?
Molly was shaking. Her body was taut as a bowstring, drawn between his strong, clever hands. “I need you. I need—”
His arms wrapped around her, and somehow he was carrying her with him into the black night. His ragged breath was hot on her neck; she let her head sink back and felt his beard scrape along her throat. They were rushing, unable to slow down, powerless to stop. Her back pushed against a hard, cold surface: the wall of the boathouse. When she was steady on her feet, his hands moved around her ribs to her belly, powerful fingers splayed, and then slid up to her breasts.
Pleasure shot through her, settling into the throbbing, wet heat between her legs. Oh God. She couldn’t think. She was falling apart.
As his thumbs stroked her erect nipples, he said something in a language she didn’t know. It sounded like a curse or an oath, low and fierce.
The tension inside her was coiling tighter and tighter. Only his hands were touching her, and lightly at that, but she was trembling, she was gasping, she was going to die if he didn’t take her all the way.
“Molly,” he said, his voice reverent as he lowered his head so that his lips were brushing her forehead. One hand lightly cupped her left breast, the other gently caressed her cheek. She reached for his belt, wanting him to drop his pants, push her thighs apart, and bury himself in her, finally urging her body over the tipping point and giving her the release she’d craved for weeks.
Instead, he kissed her, his mouth over her mouth, his tongue moving between her lips in a deep, sweet invasion. His leg was between her knees, nudging them apart, and an intense, fierce need overtook her. Tilting her pelvis forward, she ground down against his thigh. Oh God. Such inadequate contact, but what bliss. In that instant her shackles broke, and she skyrocketed into sparkling, red-hot waves of pleasure.
Her thoughts shattered, carrying with them her past, her future, her everything. There was only the gentle pressure of his lips against hers, the slick union of their mouths and his hand twining through her hair, the sound of her name, repeated over and over, on his lips.
