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Long Lost © December 2011 by Sommer Marsden
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First Edition December 2011
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Long Lost
By Sommer Marsden
Prologue
I had not expected a house. Not a house like this—this cute little cottage with a nice living room and fireplace and three bedrooms and such. I pushed the tree and it wobbled before smacking me across the cheek with rough pine needles.
“I told you to let me get a fake one,” Ellis said from the doorway. He held a glass of wine in each hand and was trying sort of valiantly not to smile.
“You are a wolf,” I wheezed, wrestling the tree. “How in the world can you want fake foliage in your house?”
He shrugged and I felt a thrill work through me all over again at the thought that he was mine. That we had survived Frank the psycho wolf who had tried to kill Ellis and yes, yours truly, because I was Ellis’s long lost reincarnated mate.
Confused? Long story.
The bottom line was, I was his and he was mine and we’d been married by a psychic Samoan in a diner on the way to a town full of werewolves called TOWN.
More confused? Stay with me.
“I want anything my blushing bride does not have to bitch slap to get it to behave, Ruby,” he chuckled.
“Put the booze down and help me with the Christmas tree, husband!” I roared and he tipped his head back, laughing silently.
And then he obeyed.
Together we bullied the tree into its stand and stepped back as if expecting it to attack. “There,” he said.
“There,” I echoed.
And then the tree fell. It hit me broadside, I hit Ellis and together we hit the deck with the big sticky sappy pine on top of us.
“Hunh,” Ellis said.
“Fuck,” I hissed.
“If you insist.”
His hands were on me instantly and I warmed at that. “You are such a slut. It was a figure of speech,” I gasped.
His fingers had wormed under my waistband and were stroking the fragile skin above my mound. All of me tingled, all of me arched up to meet his hand.
“I have finally won your heart, tricked you into marrying me and we are about to share our first Christmas. You are in some severely smoking hot yoga pants and that little bit of cotton you call a sweater and I can see your belly,” he rumbled.
“Can we at least move the tree?” I asked.
“If you insist.” With one big sweeping motion, he pushed the tree up and off us and I—as always—marveled at his strength. Ellis set about stripping me of my sweater. “This is really a little tuft of fluff. Not a sweater,” he breathed.
“Ellis, we should be decorating.”
“Are we expecting company?” His mouth, hot and insistent settled on my throat and he licked the place where my pulse thundered. His fingers found my pussy and he slid those talented digits home.
“Well, no. But this is my first house as a…oh.”
“A what?” The tip of his finger brushed my G-spot and I lost all the air from my lungs.
“A wife,” I whispered.
“I think this is pretty wifely.”
My husband is a werewolf. A big, hot, terribly bad and wonderful werewolf who saved me from a crazy rogue alpha. Along with the help of a vampire and a bear. He was my knight in shining armor and also, at the moment, the man pulling my pants off.
“Yes, yes, this is wifely,” I said just as my poor yoga pants were being tossed across the room. Luckily they landed near the fireplace and not in the fire currently burning merrily within.
“Spread your legs, Ruby,” he said. The hair on the back of my neck rose up and my nipples went hard. Tender heat radiated through my breasts when he nipped them with his sharp teeth. So fucking sensitive, my breasts—unbelievably so lately.
My fingers warred with his to get at his zipper and finally he said, “Let me do it,” and I did. His mouth warm on mine, his tongue greedy when he kissed me, he pushed into me slowly. We both held our breath, eyes locked. And when he started to rock against me, we both exhaled.
“Put your arms up, baby.”
I pushed my arms high above my head and my breast jutted up. I brushed the backs of my fingers through the fluffy cream colored throw rug under me. Ellis pinned me with his much larger hands, holding my upper body tight to the floor as he moved into me. No rush, no hurry, just a blissful rocking motion that had me gnawing my bottom lip in moments.
“Ellis—”
He felt it. He knew. “It’s okay, sweetheart. We’re not done here. I like it when you have more than one,” he said, leering at me in that big bad wolf guise that always made me wet between the legs.
I came, my arms warring with his grip even though I had no desire to be set free. I simply had to move with the force of my release.
“Good girl. Good Ruby,” he whispered and I damn near came again.
I laughed softly and arched up to meet him, pushing my legs wider to open my body to his and he groaned. “Good Ellis,” I teased. “Good boy.”
“That sounds surprisingly like a dog joke.” His voice deep and rough but his eyes sparkly with humor.
“Woof.”
I knew what I was doing. I was baiting him. It worked.
His hand came free of my flesh and he pulled out of me, turning me like his own little Ruby-doll, I found myself on hands and knees, head down, hair brushing my fingers as they clutched at the throw rug.
Ellis drove into me, his body surging into mine, his breath hot on my back. “You fight dirty, wife.”
His hand came around to find my clit and he stroked me with strong fingers wet with my own juices. My breath hitched, my heart pounded. “You, too,” I said.
“Come with me, then.” I felt his hair brush my back between my shoulder blades when he pressed his head to me as if in prayer. He was arched over me and thrusting hard and breathing harder and that was that.
I came as he came. A vibrant hush filled the room and then the sound of our orgasm. When I fell to my chest and he draped himself over me, Ellis said, “God but I love you, wife.”
“Ditto, husband.”
Christmas was only two days away.
Chapter 1
Ellis took me down the main street of Town to the library. I was still getting used to living among werewolves in a place called Town. I still missed my corner store in Baltimore and Mr. O’De
ll who visited me most every day. And I dearly missed my best friend, vampire and ex-lover (complicated, much?) Tyler Gent. On the other hand, I was beyond happy. I woke up every day with that tingly sensation in my gut that almost screamed excitement. Sometimes I felt so excited I was damn near nauseous.
“So this is your big Alpha debut,” I said.
“Don’t be nervous,” he said.
I stopped in my tracks, digging the heels of my lace-up boots into the cracks on the sidewalk. “We talked about that. Stop smelling my emotions,” I said.
“Would you rather me say I can smell your—”
“Ellis Bach!”
He grinned at me and all of me crimped up with emotion at that smile. I had never loved anyone as much as I loved Ellis. Actually, since falling in love with Ellis I now realized I’d never been in love before in my life. The fact that this was our second lifetime together—that I had once been his mate, murdered, and reincarnated to return to him—just made the love thing that much sweeter. And that much more confusing.
“Sorry, baby. But don’t be nervous. I’m not.”
“But you’re all macho and alpha and with the splintered gaze and the prophecy.”
“Hmph,” he said. He didn’t so much believe in this prophecy thing.
According to Samuel Soriano, the psychic who had married us in a diner, there was a prophecy in the Eastern Pack that Ellis Back could work wonders for the wolves. How did we know it was him in the prophecy? By his splintered gaze. See, my yummy husband has blue eyes with a jagged bolt of aubergine in one when he is human. And when he is wolf, he has aubergine eyes with a jagged bolt of surreal blue. He is, for the record, hot as hell in either form.
“Don’t hmph the prophecy,” I said. “You can save the wolves.”
“From what?”
“I don’t know yet.” But when I said it, my gut went heavy and I felt lightheaded. Something was coming. Something probably not good, possibly big. Samuel had also foreseen me being an empath and a psychic like him. So I ignored this part of my running emotions at the moment. Selective feeling. Can’t beat it.
“What’s wrong?”
He turned to me and I smiled, turned on tip-toe and kissed him. “Stop sniffing my feelings, Ellis.”
“Kiss me like you mean it,” he said and hustled me back into a dark corner near the library entrance.
I parted my lips for him, let his tongue slip into my mouth and slide along mine.
“Kiss me like you love me,” I said, teasing him.
“God, I fucking love you. You have no idea, Ruby.”
Actually, I did. He had risked his life and his beliefs to save me from that crazy—and now thankfully dead—Frank the wannabe alpha. Awful, awful Frank had wanted to kill me a second time. Frank had been the one to kill me in the 50s and he tried it again a few weeks ago.
“I have an idea,” I said and pressed myself to him. “But for right now, we need to go in there and be the mated, happy Alpha leader couple type people.”
“That was a mouthful,” he laughed.
“And then some.”
“I’ve got a mouthful for you—“
“Ellis!” I hissed, swatting him. “You are a big dirty pervert.”
“You love it.”
“I do,” I admitted and blushed, but then I hustled him into the library where there was a nice little Christmas celebration planned. You know, before he did me in the alleyway or anything.
I was in the reading room doing the ‘princess wave’ as Tyler used to call it and schmoozing with the locals when my phone rang. I recognized the number and my stomach bottomed out. But I pressed the button anyway.
It was Tyler.
Things had not ended well with us. A smoking hot threesome between him, Ellis and myself and then he’d had to let me go to Ellis. Who was my destiny. But Tyler was still hurting and I felt like I not only lost a lover but had lost my very best friend.
“Ty,” I breathed.
“Ruby. We have a problem.”
And then I was sitting in a tiny little wooden chair meant for a child, because it was sit down or fall down. I chose to sit. Somebody was dead.
* * * *
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
Of course I fucking believed him, but saying no to what Tyler was telling me was easier than accepting it as so.
“You do so. I’m worried, Ruby.”
We hadn’t spoken for weeks. I had called home several times after packing up to move to Town. I had put Mr. O’Dell in charge of my corner store and said good bye to Tyler and Peabody after assuring Tyler that his mate was out there.
He hadn’t believed me and I didn’t blame him. But Samuel Soriano had told me so and I believed in his seer abilities. With each day that passed, I knew more and more. I sensed more and more. I had sensed something was coming and deep down I also sensed that Tyler was about to fall in love.
All of that was irrelevant now, though.
“Mr. O’Dell—”
“Is fine. He’s right here. I’ll let you talk to him in a minute.”
“And how? How did they…” I shook my head, couldn’t say it. Across the room, Ellis’s gaze came up to find mine. He frowned, said something to the woman he was talking to and started my way.
Let me guess. He can smell my upset…
“Her head was sawed off.”
Like mine had been once upon a time in another life by a mad wolf named Frank. For retribution. And now the girl Mr. O’Dell had hired to work the corner store for him had been killed that way.
But Frank was dead.
But Frank also had followers who wanted to go back to old school. Who wanted to be dominant over humans…
“Ruby?”
I shook my head. My hands were shaking.
“Tyler,” I said to Ellis.
“Is that him?” Tyler asked and I could hear the frown in his voice.
On this end, Ellis was frowning too but he put his hand out for the phone the instant Tyler said in my ear, “Put him on.”
Who was I to argue? I had once—for one night—been locked between these two men. Taken by them both simultaneously. And now I surrendered to their multiple wills. Tyler wanted to talk to Ellis about this problem. Ellis wanted to speak to Tyler.
I handed my husband the phone and said, “They killed the girl working the store. They killed her. And they cut her head off.”
And then Ellis was talking into the phone as he guided my head down between my knees because I couldn’t breathe. I heard him mutter to a passing server and then someone was pressing a bottle of water into my hand and Ellis was stroking my hair.
Chapter 2
It was snowing. Thank God it was snowing, because the cold kisses of frozen white were just what my face needed. I was hot, horribly hot. Bright splotches burned on my face.
“You okay?”
“I’m scared.”
“I know. Tyler and Peabody are going to be watching over the girl’s sister.”
Mr. O’Dell had worked certain days and hired a local girl, Michelle Mann, to work a few afternoons a week. New to the neighborhood, she and her sister had rented out my old apartment above the store for a song and worked for chump change. A good arrangement for everyone, until Michelle had been beheaded the day before.
Mr. O’Dell, my former neighbor, had sent me emails with pictures of the store and the girls. Michelle had looked very much like me. Tall, curvy, dark honey blonde hair. She’d been little more than a smiling face on my computer screen standing next to my beloved Mr. O and his wife—now wheelchair bound with MS. Until now.
I swallowed hard. “Peabody needs to camp out there,” I whispered.
“He might be huge, Scottish and a bear when he shifts but Frank’s cronies are crazy. They have rage and now revenge on their side.”
“I know,” I said.
“They’re going after what’s yours because they can’t get to you,” he said.
“Because I’m surrounded by wolve
s.”
“Yes, that and because your husband would take them apart piece by piece should they even sniff back around here. Their kind were banned when you killed Frank.”
Did I mention I had killed Frank? A few weeks earlier not only had I moved to Town, I had beheaded the man who had murdered the former me and was trying to kill the present me. Hey, reincarnation can be a bitch. Especially, when you come back so fast that your old enemies are still around to become new enemies. Or, I guess, again enemies would be more like it. Anyway, long story short, in front of the whole Eastern Pack I had chopped off Frank’s head with a shovel and then become the official alpha mate.
Tada.
“There is that,” I said and shivered. The December wind had nothing to do with it. I was shivering with fear. It was a shame, too. Town really did it up for Christmas. The whole small village looked like a vintage post card. White lights strung from old fashioned street lights, a frozen pond, a tree in the square. Faux candles burned in most windows and the snow was picturesque on the sidewalk and the trees.
“Let’s get you home and warm and calm.”
“A bucket of wine?”
He smiled, though worry still lurked under it, and he put his arm around me. “I don’t think a bucket of wine is wise. You’re looking a bit piqued, as my mother would have said. How about I make you my famous homemade hot chocolate?”
“Is there whipped cream in this deal?”
“There can be.”
“Hot bath, hot chocolate, hot man. How can I lose?”
“Right. And then I will rub your back.”
He was right. I did feel off. I felt tired and heavy in my bones and almost sick with worry. “That sounds like heaven,” I said. But I heard the hitch in my voice over poor Michelle. And I knew Ellis did too.
He made me hot chocolate with real cocoa powder and sugar and whole milk. He even put whipped cream and chocolate shavings on it and then he washed my hair.
Have I mentioned he’s awesome?
“What are we going to do?” I breathed as Ellis’s fingers worked the tension out of my scalp. My bones went slack with his ministrations, my muscles succumbing to his talent.
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