She gasped at the new sensation and closed her eyes when he reached down between her legs and found her clit while his other hand gripped her hip and bounced her ass off of him with enough force to drive her wild.
Melody lost herself to the sensation and pushed back against him. Shameless. Wanton.
He leaned forward and grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled, pulling her head back and angling her ass just right. Melody cried out in rapture.
“Oh my god,” she panted. “I’m so close.”
Nuzzling her neck with his face, Aksel chuckled.
“Then come with me, love,” he said, picking up the intensity of their joining. He pumped into her furiously, with one hand holding her hip and the other snaked underneath her grasping her hair in his fingers.
“Not yet,” she breathed as she swept her hair to the side and arched her body closer to his. “We need to make this marriage official in the most ancient of ways, Aksel Sorenson.”
He let out his own surprised breath as Melody leaned her head to the side and exposed her neck to him, all the while pushing her ass up and toward him, lest his dick forget he was buried balls deep. He twitched with need.
Aksel didn’t hesitate. In a flash, he had his fangs at her neck, making Melody his mate for the world to recognize.
Chapter Eleven
They honeymooned. Mostly, they had fucked morning, noon, and night (sitting on the plane the last four hours had been murder on his sensitive spots), but they’d managed a worldwide global trek somewhere in there.
But Melody had her breakthrough and needed to go back to the island and see Kai. Aksel had been summoned by the Order a week ago and knew they’d be on the island waiting for them. Breaking the engagement had broken a few international vampiric laws and it seemed Thala was going to cause as much trouble for him and his new wife as possible.
He got Melody settled in their new rooms on the compound and let her have a few moments alone with her sister. He kissed the top of her head and told her he’d be back soon—there were a couple meetings he couldn’t put off no matter what.
Kai waited for him outside the conference room they were expected in. Aksel noticed the man’s face was ashen.
“What is it?”
Kai drew in a deep breath.
“I think the Order is here to take you into custody,” he said. Aksel tensed. “They’ve promised to leave Melody and the baby out of this. But Hegel and Thala are petitioning for an honor sacrifice.”
Stunned, Aksel swore out loud. That was a practice that hadn't been used in more than five centuries. It was barbaric. It solved nothing. And yet, the Order hadn't struck it from the books. It still existed and could be called upon if an aggrieved party felt there was no other recourse for their insult.
He'd expected a bureaucratic nightmare and maybe some fines or something like that. But he hadn't expected to be taken into custody for possible execution—had he any reason to think so, he never would have brought his wife to the island in the first place.
Aksel took in a deep breath and pushed the double doors into the conference room open and looked from the assembled elders to Hegel, Thala, and Bjorn. Hegel returned the look with one of his own—angry and spiteful and for a fraction of a second, it hurt Aksel to see a man he’d trusted for so long to look like he wanted Aksel’s blood on his hands. Thala’s face was a stoic mask, devoid of emotion or any of the beauty he’d once supposed he saw there. He saw a soulless devil now and immediately wanted to return to the room he shared with Melody. This was all a waste of time and would get none of them anywhere.
Kai’s hunch had proven right. Hegel immediately spewed his list of imaginary charges when everyone had assembled. He wasted no time and the petition was filed.
“What are you hoping to prove with this, Hegel?” Kai thundered, smashing his fist down on the table. “More death? How does this help us fight our true enemy?”
Thala had the nerve to roll her eyes at Kai, who diplomatically ignored the insult. Aksel could see from the throbbing vein in his neck that he felt the same urge to strangle the woman that Aksel felt.
“It wipes our race of a faithless betrayer,” Hegel yelled, standing with both hands on the table. “Clear the debt we are owed and let us seek peace with New Dawn to stop the bloodshed.”
Angry voices shouted from all sides of the room—especially at the request for an honor killing. It just wasn’t done. And to even consider a dialogue with New Dawn? That was insanity.
“He broke faith with us with a blood compact his mother made long ago. He mated with another when Thala had kept the faith all this time,” Hegel said, turning red with anger. “He’s a betrayer. A disease for our kind who won’t lead us into anything but ruin.”
One of the elder members of the Order folded his arms across his chest as he looked to Aksel.
“Is it true? Are you mated now, even with a binding contract already in place?”
Aksel wouldn’t deny Melody. He nodded.
"I can't deny their request to start the trial for honor killing," the older man said wearily. It was clear he wanted nothing to do with the procedure, either. "We'll have to take you into custody, Sorenson. You'll await your judgment in Vienna in prison."
The room fell silent as Aksel heard the doors close with a soft snick.
He felt Melody arrive before he saw her. He tensed when she entered the room, his need to stand within arm’s reach of her, to have his hands on her to be sure she was safe and healthy.
Despite that she'd turned weeks ago, she was still new and vulnerable. And that adorable round belly she lugged around made her even more fragile. Aksel stood and met her eyes across the room, warning her.
Don’t do anything foolish, his look implored her. If he had to, he’d slaughter every person in this room to keep her safe, consequences be damned.
Her small smile held a look he couldn’t quite make out. Was that…smugness?
Aksel watched his wife plug her computer into the room’s audio/visual system with the help of the nerdy computer guy who worked in the lab. Jack, he’d heard him called that before.
"I'd like to offer a little evidence," she began, looking to the leader of the Order who'd spoken earlier. "To show that Thala, Hegel, and Bjorn Rapp are not loyal members of the Order and therefore disqualified from calling on judgment."
The room went silent and Hegel’s cheeks flushed.
“What is this nonsense? You dare insult me, even after all this?”
Melody turned the overhead projector on with a click of the remote in her hand, not bothering to immediately respond to Hegel’s words.
“I’m not insulting you, Mr. Rapp,” she said once her computer came to life and her desktop was projected on the screen above them all. She smiled sweetly and Aksel knew immediately that something was up. “I’m implicating you in the murder of 4 civilians and the attempted murder of hundreds more.”
Before Hegel could bluff her anymore, Melody unleashed a downpour of evidence.
“It started when I tried to pin down the activities of this profile here,” she said, pulling up attempted logins from different parts of the world. “They tried to hide their fingerprints with different countries and machines, but they didn’t stop to consider the fact that they used the same password over and over. I didn’t even need to try that hard, really.”
She blew the bangs out of her face and Aksel fought the urge to jump across the tables and drag her to their room for an afternoon of serious play. She was so damned adorable it hurt.
“Anyway, from there, watch as this sloppy hacker logs in repeatedly and targets one portion of the network in particular—the outgoing emails. And look at the particular emails they pulled up and downloaded. Travel plans. Business meeting plans. And check the dates. Notice they happen in the same time frame as the terrorist attacks?”
She nodded to herself and continued. Aksel stole a glance at Thala, who'd turned ashen. Gone was the ice queen demeanor. In its place, he saw, for
the first time, real fear.
“So, naturally, I had my suspicions and had to sneak in and swipe Thala’s hard drive,” she said matter-of-factly. “And wouldn’t you know it? This tramp right here was sending messages to a contact, providing the very same travel details to a known member of New Dawn.”
And Melody put the proof on the screen. Shot after shot of Thala’s emails with her contact, describing who would be where, when they’d go unguarded, and their most vulnerable moments.
Aksel was sickened after the first five minutes of it. All three of them had betrayed the Order. And they’d tried to make him an unwitting participant in it. Why?
Kai asked the question for him.
“Because the north deserves to rule the Order,” Hegel snarled, even as Kai’s security team arrived to arrest the three. “And if you were going to live here amongst them like some traitor, then we would use that to our advantage.”
Thala had her eyes closed as the guard put her in handcuffs.
Aksel had almost expected a little remorse or regret in her eyes when she opened them. Instead, she locked gazes with him and he saw nothing but hatred and venom. It’d been there all along, according to his wife.
“We could have ruled the ancient families, you coward,” she hissed as she was dragged to her feet. “Enjoy your worthless life as a subject to these fools.”
She’d meant it as an insult. Aksel only gave her a sad smile and promised to do just that.
Bjorn resisted and was ultimately tranquilized.
Now, it was them who were heading for Vienna to await trial and not Aksel, all thanks to his nosy, brilliant, sexy-as-hell wife.
Twenty-four hours later, the last of the visitors left the island, either by boat or by handcuff. Aksel was cleared of any more allegations or threat of future allegations. Not much could be done about New Dawn at this point, but at least they were down one more information source.
“How long did it take you to put those pieces together?” Kai asked Melody as the four of them watched her evidence video a second time. Aksel’s friend was in awe at how his wife’s mind worked.
“A few weeks,” Melody said, eyeing the emails as they flashed across the screen. “I knew you had a breach within the first week I got here. Jack let me take a look at your network log and Thala’s break-ins just stood out like a glaring mistake. She really wasn’t very good at it, no matter how smart she thought she was.”
Melody was just a little smug when she said that and Aksel beamed with pride. Gods, he loved this woman and her amazing, slightly erratic brain.
"Would you be offended if I offered your wife a job as my head of cyber security?" Kai said with a laugh but assured Melody that he was very serious.
“Think about it,” he continued. “You’d be in charge of making sure that we’re not vulnerable again. You’d get to boss Jack around officially now, and you’d probably be making more money than your husband.”
That got a laugh out of her.
"I highly doubt that," Aksel grumbled. "I have a few hundred years in rank. It'll take you a couple lifetimes to reach my pay grade, Princess."
In the end, Melody had happily agreed to take over the Head-Nerd-in-Charge of the Arkos cyber security unit. She’d made Kai promise her an office, a hefty benefits package, all the coffee she could handle once the baby was born.
With the compound clear of visitors again, Aksel joined his wife down by the beach, sitting down on the sand and pulling her onto his lap.
The storm had passed and now they sat facing the endless waves of the ocean in front of them. Aksel knew one thing, though. They had weathered this storm, but when it came to their kind, storms always returned in one form or another. Sooner or later, they’d be fighting an enemy side by side and Aksel couldn’t ask for a better battle buddy than Melody Sorenson.
He pressed a kiss to her temple.
“You’re amazing,” he whispered.
“I know,” she said with a laugh as she snaked her arms around his neck. “What now? What do we do now that we’re immortal and I don’t have any romantic rivals to quash?”
“I’ve got an idea or two,” Aksel growled low into her ear as he lifted her to his chest and stood up. Melody laughed the entire way back to their room
Epilogue
The Viking’s baby turned out to be as beautiful as his father. Named Corvan Terzi Sorenson, the baby had been a week late, choosing to let his parents wait it out much like his own father had done to his mother.
Already 8 months old, Corvan was the apple of his proud papa’s eye and the owner of his mother’s whole heart.
He slept in the adjoining room of the beautiful beach villa Ember and Malakai had gifted them on the island as a combined wedding/baby present and it suited them perfectly.
Aksel walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her body. Melody turned from the sun as it dipped over the water and faced her husband.
“Plans for the evening, Mrs. Sorenson,” Aksel smiled as he placed kiss after kiss on her lips. She was already melting and he knew it.
With a glint in her eye, Melody gave her husband a wry smile.
“I’ve got an idea or two, Mr. Sorenson,” she said with a laugh as Aksel chased her into their bedroom.
*****
THE END
Hopefully, you enjoyed reading my book as much as I did writing.
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Mated to the Wolf
Description
Beauty, brains, and a killer instinct; What more could I ask for in a woman?
Doris Davis was just supposed to interview me for a story. I was fairly used to it since I became a star baseball player. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but it sure is fun; especially when it’s totally true.
But from the moment I saw her I realized that there was something different about Doris. It was more than her killer wit, her beautiful face, or her amazing BBW curves. She was a wolf, just like me.
No wonder I’m drawn to her so deeply… I need her, I must be with her. I’ve never felt this way. I’m in love with her.
And she desperately needs my help, because there is an evil force after her who wants us both dead.
Time to howl…
Chapter One
Rob Thompson was ready.
He took a deep breath, feeling the adrenaline pouring through his body, as he got ready for whatever Greg Nelson had for him. Rob did his best to shut out the roar of the screaming fans in the packed stadium. They were all there to see the Diamondbacks win this game and move forward to the playoffs. They would not be let down if he had anything to say about it, that was for sure.
He felt like he’d been preparing for this moment all his life. Since he was a child playing little league he’d dreamt of the time when he would be on the major-league field with a crowd full of adoring fans behind him, waiting for him to make the clutch play that would send his team to the highest reaches of stardom, and he along with them.
Now he’d finally made it. He was a major league baseball player for the Arizona Diamondbacks; he was a star. He briefly replayed it all in his mind, the endless hours growing up practicing, leading his high school to their first state championship two years in a row, and then leading his college team to league champions. After his second year of playing college ball, he had been handpicked to walk on to a major league baseball field.
The fans were hesitant at first, but with his bat, his swift speed, and his uncanny athleticism he’d taken th
e team by storm and showed the world he was a force to be reckoned with. And it was even better than he thought it would be. He loved being a star. The fame, the adulation, the money, the perks, the parties, and the women. Oh, most of all, the women. Ever since he’d lost his virginity at a young age he had been all consumed by his desire for women. It was almost as strong as his love for baseball.
But he couldn’t say he had ever come close to being in love. Rob was not a one woman kind of man. He didn’t lie to women, but most of them automatically assumed that he cared more for them than he really did. Sex did not equate to commitment in his mind; it was just a physical good time. A lot of women did not understand that, and they were hurt by it. That was never his intention though. He was just a man who loved to experiment and chase new experiences.
And, of course, he had a secret. The secret was something he could never let anyone get close to; it would have put them in mortal danger if he did. And if it was ever exposed to the world who he really was—what he really was—then his entire life would be over. Everything he’d worked and strived so hard for would be gone.
No, he could not let anyone get that close to him.
But he couldn’t think about that now. He had to focus, had to concentrate. This was crunch time. It was like something out of a twelve year old boy’s fantasy, but it was real this time; it was here and it was happening now. It all seemed like slow motion as Rob watched it unfold.
The Diamondbacks had a one run lead. It was the top of the ninth, one out, runners at second and third bases. A base hit could score two runs and lose the lead. Or even a long fly ball would tie the game. Rob gritted his teeth. No matter what, he would not let that happen.
Andy Garvey released the pitch. It was a hard, fast ball but too much down the center; that was the wrong pitch to give Greg to hit. He swung the bat hard and connected, getting all of the ball. It was a hard line drive. It was fast, and deep. It was going over the fence. Rob’s mind made several decisions in a nanosecond. He knew that he was not going to be able to do this… as a human. Without any conscious thought, he felt the wolf emerging just slightly. He could not change, not here. It was always a slippery slope, a fine line when he tapped into the wolf’s essence to give himself the slight edge that he needed in crucial situations; and sometimes he was not able to hold it back. He had to maintain control this time.
The Vampire´s Secret Baby Page 5
