by Liza Street
Hayley nudged Eleanor at a break in the conversation. “You know your celebrity couple name is Willie, right?”
Eleanor snorted. “What?”
“Will and Ellie make Willie.”
“My name’s Eleanor,” she said with a pointed look.
“Well, Ellie is what he calls you,” Hayley said, sticking out her tongue. “It makes Willie.”
“Ignore her,” Will stage-whispered in Eleanor’s ear. “She fell out of the treehouse all the time as a child. I think she hit her head too much.”
Eleanor giggled.
“I wonder where Becca is,” Summer said, checking her phone. Then she frowned. “She can’t make it. But, ohmygosh, look!” She held her phone up. “Alana, the lead for the Licorice Fiddles! Look!”
Eleanor smiled at the expression of joy on Summer’s face.
“We can’t see it if you keep waving your phone around like that,” Jackson teased.
Summer rolled her eyes. “Alana tweeted about us—here, I’ll read it. Our social media guru Jackson Jaynes just bought family tix for our XMas Tacoma show. Sucker! We’d have gotten him in free.”
“Breathe, baby,” Jackson said, pretending to fan Summer.
She swatted him. “How can I breathe when Alana’s texting about us? I feel faint.”
“We could check it in the symptom checker,” Eleanor said, holding up her phone.
“The what?” Marius said, pouring beer.
“Symptom checker,” Eleanor said, a little more shyly now that everyone was staring at her. “It’s this thing, through the Dr. Bridges website. You just type in your symptoms and it tells you what might be wrong with you.”
“That is the most incredible thing I’ve ever heard of,” Hayley said, snatching Eleanor’s phone. “Where’s the app?”
Eleanor pointed it out, and Hayley started narrating aloud as she typed, “Jackson’s head is swollen.” Hayley tapped the button to submit the symptoms and announced, “Jackson’s either got meningitis, a subdural hematoma, or…he’s an egotistical bastard.”
“It does not say that,” Jackson said.
“Dr. Bridges says so, and he knows what’s what,” Hayley said. “Or is Dr. Bridges a she? Now I feel sexist.”
Marius took Eleanor’s phone from Hayley. “Dr. Bridges is a dude—there he is in the picture.”
“Actually,” Eleanor said, “Dr. Bridges is really more an amalgam of several doctors—male and female, I’d imagine. But I usually think of Dr. Bridges as a man. Probably because of the picture.”
Summer asked if she could look at the app, and Marius passed it to her. “Incredible,” Summer said. “I could see myself going crazy checking every little twinge.”
“I sort of do that,” Eleanor said, feeling herself blush.
“Aw, sweetheart, you’re perfect,” Will said, and the endearment sounded so natural coming from his lips, Eleanor would’ve been surprised to learn that they’d been apart for four years.
He punctuated the statement by dragging her over to him on the bench seat so her legs were draped over his knees, and kissing her cheek.
She felt like her face was glowing with gooey love feelings. This man was well on his way to taming her again.
“So, the Tacoma trip,” Summer said.
“Tacoma?” Eleanor asked.
“Yeah, the Licorice Fiddles are playing at a club downtown. That’s okay, right? It’s only an hour or so to get there, and we can either come back that night, or stay over at a hotel. The guys can come, too, but it’ll be just us girls at the show.”
“Girls night out!” Hayley said, raising her milkshake.
Eleanor couldn’t help her smile. She had been completely embraced by these people, brought into a group of friends who were including her without question. It felt like she’d always belonged with them.
“I don’t know if we should all be going to Tacoma,” Will said.
Hayley reached around Eleanor to smack him on the shoulder. “It took a wedding and a mate to get you here, and now you don’t want to leave?”
Eleanor opened her mouth to ask about “mate,” which must refer to her but sounded awfully weird, but Will glared at Hayley. Even Eleanor felt slightly cowed under that stare.
“You okay?” Eleanor asked him.
The intense look in Will’s eyes faded as he turned his attention back to Eleanor. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
After a few minutes, the conversation returned to the original teasing, jokes, and conversation, and everyone seemed to have forgotten Will’s reluctance to go to Tacoma. But Eleanor didn’t. And she also couldn’t help but notice his tight grip on the steering wheel of his truck as they drove back to her place.
“I want to talk,” she said.
He looked over at her, then back to the road. “Of course. What’s up?”
“Something’s wrong.”
“You sense something?” His voice sounded alarmed. “Like a bad feeling?”
“No, all I sense is that you’re not…ugh. Will, would you just pull over for a second?” She wanted to look at him, face to face, and find out what was bugging him.
They’d reached the turn-off for the Jaynes property, so Will drove up that road and up the old driveway. It was a route so familiar to Eleanor she could probably follow it with her eyes closed.
He stopped them when they were out of sight of the road and faced her, taking her hand. “Ellie,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“You haven’t been yourself since the Tacoma thing,” she said, her voice sharp.
“Worried about the territory is all,” he said, his voice gruff.
“Territory?”
“Property, I mean. Yeah.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Give me a kiss, help me forget. Everyone thinks I’m crazy for worrying.”
Eleanor kissed him, and didn’t protest in the slightest when his tongue touched her lips and transformed the kiss from something sweet to urgent. She pulled off his shirt, wanting to feel his rippling muscles beneath her fingers with no fabric in the way. Skin to skin.
His tongue was hot and wet, searching through their kiss, through the oblivion he seemed to crave. He pulled away for a moment and whispered, his voice guttural, “Take off those leggings. And your panties.”
“Bossy,” she muttered.
He laughed. “You’re the one in charge. You always have been. From the very beginning.”
Maybe he’d chased her, maybe he’d tamed her. But she laughed, knowing what he said was also true: she was in charge. As she slid off first her boots, then her leggings and underwear, she looked at him in the shadowy cab of the truck and felt the smirk on her face. His expression was rapt, and she could hear his breath coming just as heavily as hers in the enclosed space.
He unfastened his jeans and slid them down along with his boxer briefs, freeing his erection. When he turned back to face her, his expression was dark with lust, eyes half-lidded, mouth determined. “Come sit on my lap,” he said.
Not interested in questioning the order, she clambered over as gracefully as possible, but when she started to straddle him, he maneuvered her so she was facing the windshield.
“Easier to touch you this way,” he said, pressing a kiss to her shoulder.
She could feel his lips through the thin cotton of her dress. Not only that, she could feel a much larger, more insistent part of him pressing against her bare thigh. She shivered.
“You cold?” he asked. “I can turn up the heat.” He brought one of his hands around, skimming it slowly along underneath the hem of her dress before traveling up to her breasts.
“Not—not cold,” she gasped as he tweaked one of her nipples.
“Good.” He kissed her shoulder again, then bit it a little too hard before pressing another kiss there.
Eleanor thought she might fall over. The desire flooding her system was overpowering, despite the less-than-romantic setting. Will’s bossiness, the little bit of roughness he was exhi
biting, was a huge freaking turn-on.
“Hold onto the steering wheel,” he said. “I’m gonna touch you everywhere.”
Nodding wordlessly, she did as he told her. He lowered the zipper on the side of her dress, loosening the constricting fabric but leaving it in place. Then he reached up the back of her dress, his hands hot and big, until he found the snap of her bra and unfastened it. He didn’t remove her clothing, but left it hanging on her as he began to explore. The sensation of his lips at the back of her neck had her squirming almost as much as his fingers lightly pinching her nipples.
“Will—” she panted.
“Yes?”
He sounded so calm, so infuriatingly calm. How could she admit that he was torturing her?
“Noth-nothing,” she said.
His teeth grazed her shoulder, followed by laps of his warm tongue. And his dick was right there, close to her entrance, tantalizing in its nearness. Her thighs were damp. If she could maneuver just a tiny bit to the right…
A hot hand clamped down on her hip. “Hold still,” he said. “I’m not done touching.”
“You mean teasing,” she said, not even trying to hide the sulkiness from her voice. He was torturing her and he knew it and he knew that she knew it. Why bother pretending otherwise?
With a smile in his voice, he said, “Tomato, tomahto.”
“No,” she said. “It’s just tomato. Nobody around here says tomahto.” The irritation left her voice and her last words turned into a whine as he pinched one of her nipples even harder. She arched her back into the feeling—pleasure and the tiniest bit of pain.
And then that hand—the one not holding her hip in place so she couldn’t wiggle too much—went down her stomach and settled between her legs.
She gave up trying to think or have any control whatsoever, simply lost herself in the sensation of his fingers moving through her folds, moving slick and light over her clitoris. “Will,” she said, “please.”
“So polite,” he murmured.
“I am not fucking kidding around.”
His chuckle sounded evil, but he gave her what she wanted, guiding himself into her entrance and plunging inside. The relief was exquisite, but it only fueled more desire, more want. She clung to the steering wheel like it was the only thing holding her on earth, because otherwise she’d float up into the heavens on sensation alone, gripping Will inside her, over her, through her.
He feathered his finger over her clit and bit her shoulder again. She came in a sudden explosion of sensation, her whole body tense, out of her control. She was Will’s, truly and completely.
“Ellie,” he groaned, clamping her tightly to him with those muscular arms.
She felt his release within her and she sighed, leaning her head back to rest on his shoulder. He kissed her neck, nuzzling close so that the faint whiskers of his five o’clock shadow tickled her cheek.
They rested, catching their breath, and Eleanor realized that although they’d talked about his concerns for the property, and his “bad feeling,” she still didn’t know what was going on in that big handsome head of his.
He loosened one of his arms around her torso just enough to skim his hand along her bare thigh, raising goosebumps in its wake.
Later. They could talk later.
Chapter Twenty
Will shut his laptop and closed his eyes. After he’d been with Ellie last night in the truck, he’d been sated physically, but more disturbed, emotionally, than ever. He was here. He was attached to her, body and soul.
But when someone came to rip the territory from them, who would fight? How could he ensure Ellie’s survival? Hayley’s? Jackson’s? Their mates’?
And something was coming. The territory felt it, a rumbling beneath the surface, a tension in the air. He had felt it before the pride war four years ago, and he felt it again now. Threats.
Four years ago, just before he’d felt the misgivings, he and Ellie had been out at the lake. The water was freezing, but they’d waded in the shallows until they reached a large rock jutting into the water. He’d loved the way the light bounced from the surface of the lake and hit her hair, shining off those rich brown curls. Turning her face toward his, he’d kissed her.
She’d grinned into the kiss and untied the strap of her bikini top.
It had been only their second time making love. After they both finished, panting and leaning against the sun-warmed boulder, he’d asked her again. It was the question he’d asked before.
“Ellie McGowan,” he said, looking directly into her hazel eyes, “will you marry me?”
He didn’t know what he’d expected. That she’d laugh and splash him, maybe, or that she’d roll her eyes and joke about how he never gave up.
But instead, she’d looked back at him just as seriously and whispered, “Yes.”
It had signaled the point in their relationship when everything came together, finally. They’d always loved each other, but she hadn’t been able to trust in it. But at that moment, she’d finally learned how to trust in the power of what they had.
His heart felt so big, he’d whooped a shout of victory across the lake, listening to the sound carry into the sky. Ellie had laughed as he lifted her into his arms, cradling her against his chest like a bride going across the threshold.
Hours later, after more lovemaking, he’d dropped her off at the little cottage she was renting during the summer break before she started grad school. And as he’d driven home, he’d felt it, that tension and premonition of dark things. Danger. An insidious, shadowy feeling crossing the territory. A tightening in his gut, bracing him for the pain to come.
And when he’d returned home that night, there’d been no chance to tell his family about his engagement, because they had a week, maybe less, to prepare for the Clausen Pride’s arrival on their territory.
He’d kept his distance from Ellie the next few days, calling and texting but keeping their conversations short. His pride needed to fight off this threat and then he’d be free to start planning their wedding and celebrating with his family. He’d found his mate, but he’d be damned if her introduction to his life as a shapeshifter was going to start with blood and wars.
And then everything had gone so, so wrong. His parents dead, his leg messed up, and on the run with Hayley and Jackson.
He’d called Ellie and left her a message, telling her he was sorry and that he had to leave, and he didn’t know when he’d return. And then, after a day of driving with his siblings, he resolved to set Ellie free of this violent world. Before he changed his mind, he tossed his phone in a dumpster outside a gas station in southern Oregon.
He shook himself back to the present and opened his eyes. Was he only imagining this dark feeling, or was another group of shifters planning a move on his territory?
Since Thursday night, he and Ellie hadn’t spent a night apart. He was lucky she slept so soundly, because that tension in the air, in the earth, compelled him to get up each night and wander around in his mountain lion form. He’d go out the back door, strip out of his clothes, and stalk through the neighborhood, exciting more than one alert dog and pissing off the owners who couldn’t see or sense the large predator in the shadows.
But Will wasn’t the predator they needed to fear.
His phone buzzed with a text from Hayley. Stop acting like such a sourpuss. Why don’t you want us to go to the concert in Tacoma?
He didn’t want her to worry, but she’d asked, so he’d tell her. Instinct is telling me it’s a bad idea.
Hayley: Does your instinct tell you when it might be safe to go? Or are we all gonna be hunkering down in Huntwood for the foreseeable future?
Will rolled his eyes. It doesn’t work like that.
Hayley: How does it work, then? Impatient sisters need to know.
Will: I don’t know. But not like that.
Hayley: Well, we’ll just have to be careful, then. I don’t want to miss out on everything fun just because you’re worried.
/> She didn’t have to say it—it had been Will’s fears and worries that had kept them from returning to Huntwood for four years, long after the Clausen threat had passed. True, Jackson had been forced to contend with a Clausen pride member, but it had been the last one, and Jackson had handled the problem on his own. He and his siblings could have returned earlier, but Will had worried. As their alpha, it was sort of his job to worry.
He wouldn’t stop worrying. He couldn’t.
Chapter Twenty-One
“I know you don’t want me to go,” Eleanor said, staring at Will’s reflection in her bathroom mirror. Christmas music floated from the speakers in her living room. She swayed while rooting through her makeup basket, looking for her liquid eyeliner. “Winter Wonderland” would probably sound really great adapted for a jazzy piano solo. She resolved to look for sheet music and tinker with it when she came back from Tacoma.
Will leaned against the doorframe of her bathroom, watching her as she put on makeup. “You don’t usually wear that stuff,” he said.
“I do when I’m going out. And don’t change the subject, William Zachary Jaynes. Is it that you don’t want me to go because you’re still having those bad feelings?”
It had been two weeks since he’d confessed his gut feeling about something happening to the Jaynes family property, but nothing had happened yet. “Territory,” he’d called it.
Eleanor was worried. She’d even used the Ask Dr. Bridges app to look up things like “paranoia,” and “gut instinct,” but of course she hadn’t been able to find anything.
And then…there’d been last night. She’d woken up at one a.m. and found herself alone in bed. When she got up to look for Will, he hadn’t been anywhere in the house. Movement outside had caught her eye, and she’d seen him walking up to the little patio behind her house.
Stark naked.
He’d stood and pulled his clothes back on. When it looked like he was about to come inside, Eleanor had dashed back to her bed and clambered in, struggling to breathe deeply.
