by Zoe Chant
“Rose said something strange to me tonight.” Hayley hadn’t moved back either. “She said I should ask you what you’re afraid of.” She hesitated, her eyes searching his face. “Is it…Griff, are you afraid it might happen again?”
He knew she meant his uncontrolled shift, after they’d made love. Her expression was open, vulnerable, demanding that he tell her the truth.
“No,” he said, honestly. “That doesn’t frighten me. Hayley, even if I knew for absolute certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that I’d die if I touched you again…I would do it, in a heartbeat. I would rather live for a single hour in your arms than another fifty years apart. I’m not afraid of dying.”
A tear overspilled, tracking down her cheek, but her eyes were steady, uncompromising. “So what are you afraid of?”
“Hurting you,” he whispered. He drew in a deep breath, bracing himself. “I can’t stand the thought of leaving you alone. It’s not only Reiner, and what it would mean for Danny. Even setting aside all those complications…Hayley, when I die, at least I won’t be in pain anymore. But I’m frightened that I’ll leave you in pain. I’m terrified that I’ll break your heart.”
“Isn’t that my risk to take?” Hayley looked fierce as a lioness, even through her tears. “Griff, your life is yours to risk or not, but it’s my choice what I do with my heart. Rose said I needed to have courage, if I was to be a lion’s match. I’m tired of wearing a mask, pretending that there’s nothing between us. Whether we ever touch again or not, nothing will change that fact that I love you. I’m not afraid of that. I’m not afraid of what that might mean, in future. I love you now. That’s all that matters.”
He pulled her into his arms, unable to hold back any longer. He kissed her fiercely, his hands coming up to cup her face. His heart swelled with joy and terror, until he felt like it might break in his chest from the sweet pain of it.
He pulled back a little, leaned his forehead against hers. “You have courage enough for both of us,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m the one who has to match you.”
He bent to claim her lips again. She melted into him, her mouth sweet and tender under his. Succumbing to his desire, he pushed her up against the wall, pressing the whole length of his body against her soft curves. His cock was a rigid bar between them. He craved to sink into her warmth, to be utterly enfolded by her.
“Griff,” she gasped, as he left her mouth to start kissing his way down her neck. Her hips thrust a little, helplessly, and he very nearly came in his kilt there and then. “Wait. Are you sure this is safe?”
It felt as hard as hauling his animals apart when they fought, but he managed to pull back from her. “You did say my life was mine to risk.”
“Yes, but…” Flushed pink with mingled desire and embarrassment, she bit her lip. “I’m going to sound like a complete hypocrite, but I’m scared of causing another one of your uncontrolled shifts.”
She had a point. He braced his hands against the wall on either side of her head, trying to control his ragged breathing. “Give me a second. I was caught by surprise last time. I’ll see if I can take some precautions.”
Closing his eyes, he forced himself to take stock of his soul. His lion and eagle were too blind with lust to even notice each other at the moment, but after last time, he knew that could change in an instant. Gritting his teeth, he repressed his beasts, using the discipline of long practice to lock them away. He strengthened their mental cages, building high, thick walls to keep them apart from both each other, and himself.
It was rather like putting on a full-body condom. He had a nagging, uncomfortable sense of a barrier between himself and the world, dimming all sensation. Still, it was better than risking an uncontrolled shift.
“There. That should be safer now.” He opened his eyes again, and Hayley made a small, startled sound. “What is it?”
“All the gold’s gone.” She traced the corner of his eye lightly with her fingertip. “You look…human.”
He wished that he could interpret her expression, but with his eagle chained, his perception was a tenth of its usual level. “I hope you’re not too disappointed. I am just a normal human at the moment, when my beasts are caged like this. But that’s the way it has to be.”
This is the way it might have to permanently be…He shoved the chilling thought back down.
“I’m not disappointed!” As if to prove it, Hayley slid her hands around his chest, drawing him back close again. “It’s you I love, not your powers. I’d love you even if you were only human.”
A shiver ran down his back at her unwittingly ominous words. He stopped her from saying anything more by kissing her, more slowly this time. It was different without his beasts’ urgency snarling through his blood, but she was still Hayley, his Hayley. She was still his mate.
“There is one advantage to keeping my beasts chained, you know,” he murmured, his lips brushing hers. He straightened, drawing her with him into her bedroom. “It means I can take my time.”
Slowly, he eased down the zipper of her dress. Her breath caught as he ran his hands up her exposed back, tracing the gentle dip of her spine. He worked the soft, clinging fabric of the dress down, uncovering first her plump, enticing shoulders, then the delicious swells of her breasts. He couldn’t resist nuzzling between them, nipping gently at her creamy skin as he pushed her dress off completely, letting it puddle on the floor around her feet.
“Hayley,” he breathed, tasting her, inhaling her, trying to memorize every glorious inch of her body. “Mine.”
He wanted to kneel to unpeel her tights from her gorgeous thighs, but pain screamed through his bad leg when he tried to bend it. The long walk back to the house from the pub had made the joint seize up.
Evidently noticing his wince, Hayley stretched up on her toes to kiss him. “I’ll do it.” Peeking up at him a little shyly through her lowered eyelashes, she slipped the tights off, leaving her standing in only a lacy bra and matching panties.
At the sight of her, all the breath left his lungs, as if he’d been punched in the stomach. His cock strained, desperate for her. “I’ve changed my mind. I can’t take my time.”
Her lips curved in a naughty smile. “Tough, because now I want to take my time.” She ran her fingers under the looped fabric of his plaid, tracing the lines of his chest. “I’ve never seen you naked. And I’ve always wondered what a Scotsman wears under his kilt…”
Griff couldn’t help chuckling as she tried to slide the plaid off his shoulder, only to be baffled by the way it was tied. A traditional great kilt really wasn’t something a novice could dismantle. “Ah, you do realize that I’m wearing eighteen feet of fabric?”
She cast him a half-exasperated, half-amused glare, still wrestling with the mysteries of the garment. “Then I guess I’ll really be taking my time.”
“Here.” He undid the outer belt, then guided her hands to the thinner, hidden belt that held the kilt pleated. He grinned at her as the heavy folds of fabric fell away. “Fortunately, my ancestors were very impatient men.”
“Well you can just be patient a bit longer,” Hayley retorted tartly. With teasing slowness, she started to undo the buttons of his shirt.
A growl rose in his throat as she worked her way down. Even with his beasts tightly restrained, every slight brush of her fingertips against his bare skin made his cock throb with need.
“Okay, now I am a little disappointed.” Hayley had encountered his briefs. “So the rumors aren’t true?”
“Actually, they are,” he gasped as she knelt to slide them down over his hips. The cool air was almost agonizing on his freed cock. “Don’t tell anyone I was bringing shame on my forefathers.”
Still on her knees as she stripped him of his last few garments, Hayley’s eyes gleamed slyly up at him. “My lips,” she murmured, sliding her hands up the backs of his legs, “are sealed.”
He groaned as her warm, soft lips enfolded the head of his cock. He wound his fingers into her silky
hair, fighting for control as she took him deeper. Her tongue curled around the underside, flicking exquisitely over his most sensitive areas.
“Hayley,” he growled, every muscle in his abdomen tight and rigid as he desperately tried to restrain himself. “Stop. I can’t—can’t wait.”
In answer, she closed her mouth tight around him, sucking hard. His hips bucked as she milked him urgently, her fingers digging into his thighs. He couldn’t hold himself back any longer. Hands clenching around her head, he yanked her closer, his thrusting cock entirely filling her welcoming mouth.
White-hot sparks burst in his vision as he came hard, emptying himself into her. She took every drop, her tongue teasing and flicking in encouragement until he was utterly, completely spent.
Shuddering with the aftershocks of pleasure, he relaxed his grip on her head. She came up gasping for air, but with an expression of intense, smug satisfaction. She gave his cock one last parting kiss—it burned like a brand on his oversensitive, still-engorged head—before allowing him to lift her to her feet again.
“I don’t have condoms,” she admitted. “And I was fairly certain you wouldn’t have restocked either.”
He kissed her, deep and lingering, tasting the faint traces of his own salt on her tongue. At the back of his mind, his lion and eagle flung themselves against the walls of his control, intensely aroused by that intoxicating mingling of their scents. Walled off from his consciousness, his beasts hadn’t partaken of his own release. From the ominous pain gathering inside his skull, he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold them much longer.
“Lion or eagle?” he murmured against her lips. “I have to let them one of them out now, or risk them both breaking free of their own accord.”
Hayley leaned back a little to look at him curiously. “Does it make a difference? Which one you release, I mean.”
“Very much so.” He trailed his finger over the curve of her breast, savoring her sharp intake of breath. “And since you’re right—I don’t have condoms—it had best be my eagle. My lion can be a bit…dominant.”
From the way her pupils went wide and dark, he thought she rather liked the sound of that. His senses sharpened as he allowed his eagle to soar free, and he abruptly knew just how much she would like that. He knew other things too—how the nape of her neck begged to be seized in his teeth, how her thighs trembled to feel his caress, exactly where he should be gentle and where he should be rough…
“Oh,” she gasped, as he started to put his observations into practice. “I—I think I’m going to like your eagle. The lion will have to wait for another time.” She looked up at him with sudden fierceness, her determined expression at odds with the obedience of her body as he pushed her down onto the bed. “Because there are going to be other times, Griff. Lots and lots of them. Promise me that.”
“Aye,” he said softly, before he covered her mouth with his own. “I promise.”
And in that moment, he made his decision. He knew that he would do whatever was necessary to keep that promise.
Tonight for the eagle. Griff kept the thought hidden away in the most private depths of his mind, out of sight of his beasts. And tomorrow, a night for the lion. I can give them both one night with our mate, at least.
Before I submit us all to Ash’s fire…and we see how much survives the inferno.
Chapter 20
Reiner
“That was the best Halloween ever.” Danny bounced on Reiner’s guest bed, his borrowed T-shirt flapping around his knees. It was the smallest shirt Reiner owned, but it still drowned the boy. “I liked it best when you pounced right on that deer, Daddy, pow! You knocked him right down flat!”
Reiner caught Danny in mid-jump, making him shriek in delight. “I’ll knock you down flat if you don’t get yourself into bed. I can’t believe you’re still so full of energy.”
Pride swelled in Reiner’s chest as Danny wriggled and giggled, trying to free himself. Not even six years old, on his first hunt, and the boy had still managed to achieve a throat-lock on a fully-grown deer. If he’d been just a little older and bigger, Reiner was certain that he’d have throttled the animal all by himself.
Wouldn’t that just wipe the smugness off my dear brother’s face? When none of his own ever-so-perfect pure-bred offspring have managed to lay paw on so much as a rabbit yet…
“You know, I was only able to pounce on that deer because you were holding him for me,” Reiner said to Danny. “Really, the credit is half yours.”
Danny’s eyes widened. Reiner still got a little thrill every time he gazed into those amber eyes—so similar to his own that it was like looking at his reflection in a mirror. “Really, Daddy? You mean I killed the deer too?”
“Absolutely.” Reiner smiled, triumphant. “When we tell everyone back home, that’s exactly what we’ll say.”
Let’s see how my dear alpha brother likes that. I can’t wait to see the moment he realizes that his sons are going to be beta to mine.
His lion flicked its tail in mild irritation. We have our own place, as our cub will have his. We are no less valuable to the pride than any other. Not even the alpha.
Reiner’s jaw tightened a little at his lion’s unquestioning acceptance of the pride hierarchy. Why, why couldn’t he have had an alpha lion, fiercely proud and ravenous for power? No matter how he fought to win the place and respect he deserved, he’d always been hampered by his inner lion’s instinctive submissiveness. It wasn’t fair.
But at least life would be better for his son.
No asshole alpha is ever going to push you around, Reiner silently promised Danny as he tucked him into bed. I’ll teach you to be so strong and dominant, you’ll just have to stare at another lion to have them whimpering and showing you their belly. I’ll make sure you can have anything you want. I swear it.
Danny stretched out like a starfish, his arms and legs not even coming close to reaching the edges of the double bed. “This is the biggest bed ever, Daddy! And the biggest bedroom. Why’s your house so huge?”
Reiner blinked at him, taken aback. “This, huge? This is just a hovel, compared to my real house back home.”
“What’s a hovel?” Danny asked.
Reiner waved dismissively around at the bedroom, with its sleek, minimalist furniture and views out over the fishing lake. “This is. You just wait until you see the Ljonsson estates back home. Then you’ll understand.”
When Reiner had learned that Danny was his true son, he’d immediately rented out the best house he could find near Brighton—an old hunting lodge set in fifteen acres of private woodland, half an hour away from the city. Even so, it was barely adequate for a real lion’s needs. He couldn’t comprehend how any shifter could possibly stand to live in built-up Brighton itself.
My poor son has been utterly deprived if he considers this to be a huge house. A prickle of anger ran through his blood. I trusted Hayley to provide at least a minimum level of care. How can she have failed so badly? It’s a good thing I stepped in when I did.
“Wait until I take you to Valtyra,” he said to Danny. “You’ll love it. Everyone knows about shifters back home. We’ll be able to be lions whenever we want, without having to worry about frightening stupid humans.”
Danny looked suitably excited at the prospect. “Are there more deers there? Can we hunt them?”
“There are deer, and boar, and even elk. We’ll hunt them all. I promise.”
A stab of homesickness twisted his guts. He wished that he could just take Danny back on the next flight.
If only that asshole alpha didn’t have his claws in my son!
“I wish we could go there tomorrow,” Danny said wistfully, and Reiner’s heart melted at the unwitting echo of his own thoughts. “But I’ve got to go to school and Mommy has to go to work. Maybe we can go during summer vacation.” He frowned a little. “We’ll have to ask Mr. Griff. Daddy, do firefighters get to take summer vacation?”
Reiner clenched his jaw. Can I not have on
e conversation with my son without that damned alpha coming up?
“I don’t think they do,” he said, trying not to sound too curt. “So your alpha won’t come. Anyway, wouldn’t you like to take a trip together? Just the two of us?”
“Without Mommy?” Danny pulled the covers up to his chin, as if hiding from a monster in the dark. “But I’ve never been away without Mommy. Can’t she come too?”
“She wouldn’t want to come. She and your alpha would jump at the chance to have private time alone together. They were eager enough for you to come with me tonight, weren’t they?”
A twinge of jealousy shot through him at the mental image of that arrogant alpha in Hayley’s bed. Even if she was a bit fatter and more tired-looking than when he’d known her, she was still an extremely attractive woman. Reiner wouldn’t have said no to a second round…but of course there was no chance of that, now that she only had eyes for her oh-so-alpha mate.
Reiner consoled himself with the thought that at least he’d had her first. And she’d been younger and riper then, too. If only she’d been a shifter! But there was simply no way he could ever have taken a mundane human home to his family. Not when his perfect older brother had already mated a perfect alpha lioness and started producing perfect pure-bred cubs…
Our cub is perfect, his lion said, its mental voice a soft purr.
So he is. Reiner shook off his dark thoughts, focusing on the shining promise of the better future ahead.
“Your mother and her mate don’t want a cub like you getting in the way all the time,” he said to Danny. “They’d be happy if you stayed with me for longer. They just don’t want to hurt your feelings by telling you so.”
“Oh,” Danny said quietly. His little face was shadowed in the moonlight. “I didn’t think of that.”
“Don’t worry. I always want to have you around.” He stroked Danny’s golden hair back from his forehead. “You go to sleep now, my son. I’ll be right next door if you need me.”
