“Momma his face, when he realized I really did mean it. It just hurt so much to break his heart.”
Her mother reached over and patted her daughters hand gently. “Well, you should have expected that. You’re a hell of a girl he’s losing. In time he’ll get over it and so will you. You have Caleb now so you have to start planning your future with him.”
“I barely know him, Momma,” said Kerry, flexing her hands and feeling so powerless.
“Well then, you get to know him. Most couples get to know each other a little bit before the mating happens, so you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Let Caleb show you what he’s made of. I’m sure his momma raised him right. He’ll be full of surprises and romance you haven’t even uncovered yet. You’ll come to love him.”
Kerry took deep breaths. She wanted to tell her mother that love shouldn’t have to be like that, that she shouldn’t be bound to the man till she loved him. Her mother chose to love first. She turned to her mother and was about to voice it all when her daddy kicked open the front door, bearing a box full of engine parts.
“Honey, wait till you see what I got.”
Her mother stood up straight and stared daggers at her husband. “Oh, no you don’t,” she said, placing her fists on her tiny hips. “You take that out to the garage right now. I am not having dirty motor parts in my nice, clean house.”
“It’s still too hot to work outside,” he griped. He stomped his boots on the mat and little pieces of dirt sloughed off his caterpillars. Her mother looked down at the floor around the mat and so did her father. Kerry watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard.
“James Herbert Bradley, you take those greasy motor parts and your dirty work boots outta my house this instant. I am trying to have a heart-to-heart with your only daughter and in you come waving bits of mechanics at us. Out! Shoo!”
Kerry shot her father an apologetic look as he quickly back-pedaled out of the house and around to the side where the garage was. They called it a garage but it was more like an aluminum shed stuck onto the side of the house. The car couldn’t actually fit but it housed all the yard equipment and a workbench which her father designated for his projects.
Kerry smiled to herself. Her daddy like to fix things, as long as they were made of metal and wouldn’t blubber all over him “like a wet sea sponge”.
Once her father was clear of the house, her mother fetched the broom. She started erasing the signs of his passage from the inside step and then from the outside one.
Kerry looked out the window. The sky was turning to colors of orange and pink and she knew she had to get going. She padded on her bare feet out the screen door, coming up behind her mother and giving her a kiss on the cheek.
“Bye Momma. I’ll see you later.”
“Just where are you going? I was about to stick supper on.”
“I had a large lunch,” Kerry said with a little smile. She’d barely touched her lunch. “I’m going to meet Caleb.”
“Why can’t he come here? I can cook enough for one more.”
Kerry looked towards the shed where the only sounds indicating her father was still in there were clinking and hammering.
“Maybe another night, when I can guarantee he’s not going to get socked in the jaw.”
Her momma looked towards the shed with an indignant sigh.
“All right. You two kids have fun but I want to meet this man proper. He’s going to be our son-in-law.”
Kerry knew her father was listening when she heard him drop something and curse loudly. Smirking, she headed into the tree line and started the walk towards the mountains.
Chapter Five
Caleb paced restlessly. Every second since he saw her that afternoon, he wanted to burst out of his skin, take his wolf body, and run to her. His desire for his mate was every bit as overwhelming as he was warned it would be. He thought that now—knowing she was on her way here, knowing he would see her—would lessen and he would find some measure of his normal composure. However it didn’t come.
Caleb wore drawstring pants and a button down, plaid shirt in blue that was really slumming it for him. He kept clothes like this around so if he had to shift without warning he wouldn’t be torn up about the loss. It wasn’t like they were one of his Armani suits.
Caleb was a man used to getting his own way and waiting for her to arrive grated a little on his nerves. Why can’t she be on time? Didn’t she want to see him as much as he wanted to see her? If she was late because she was hurt while breaking it off with her human, Caleb would have his swift justice. He was planning how the norm could get lost hiking and mauled by an animal when Kerry stepped out of the tree line.
Caleb stopped pacing and looked at her. The deep pink of her dress showed off the natural highlights of her red-gold hair framing her face in a just washed style he found very attractive. The material of the dress clung to her curves, flaunting them to his keen eyes. He raised his nose to inhale. The spicy warm sent of habanero peppers inflamed his nostrils and made his mouth water.
“Hello Caleb,” she said with a little smile. Her voice was soft and somewhat shy.
She locked her fingers behind her back which he read as a coy gesture except it made her luscious breasts jut out. He could already see her nipples hard underneath her clothes with the same electric excitement coursing through him. He took two large steps towards her and looked down at her. She was his.
He pulled her flush against him, making her cheeks redden at the sensation of him pressed firm against her belly. Caleb leaned down and took her mouth in a fierce kiss. She melted into his kiss, parting her plump lips and allowing his tongue to taste inside. The same peppery scent that clung to her skin and was unique to her was also inside her mouth. It was like licking flames as he kissed her. When he broke it, he gasped as if he’d walked for days in the desert and needed cool water to sooth his ravage tongue.
“I take it that’s your version of hello.” Kerry was a little breathy as she spoke but her lips were curved into a very pleasant smirk.
“Hello Kerry,” he said in his deepest, sexiest voice
He watched her shudder and delighted in it. His hand ran down her shoulder, curving around her breast. He prepared to induce shivers in her another way when she stepped back from him. He looked puzzled.
“Don’t be so hasty,” she said and turned her back on him.
He watched the line of the dress as it lay over her buttocks and had to appreciate the view. She was being playful. Kerry looked back at him over her shoulder and smiled very warmly at him.
“Then again,” she said, pushing the dress so that it fell from her shoulders. It slid like a fabric waterfall over her skin, pooling at her feet. “I want to see if you’re really as fast as I remember.” Kerry threw her body forward, landing on her four paws as a white wolf.
Caleb took time to admire her in this form too. Her coat wasn’t pure white; there were undertone of cream around the eyes and in the scruff under and around her neck. Her back paws were the same as if she wore wolf sized shoes. Her tail was full and bushy, flowing up from the end of her spine almost like that of a Persian cat. Her eyes were clear Arctic blue in her wolf form but they were far from cold.
She strolled around him, assessing his human form with her wolf eyes and then nipped him in the bottom. Caleb yelped and stumbled forward, turning to face her and her wolfy grin. Oh, yes, he thought, very playful.
“That’s it,” he said stripping out of his shirt. “You’ve really asked for it now.”
Kerry watched him tear himself out of his shirt, throwing it to the ground on top of her dress. She admired the sculpted plains of his stomach, down to the lines of his hip bones against the waist band of the pants he wore. Caleb took very good care of himself.
He was soon out of the pants and she admired his manhood jutting out proudly from his body from mere contact with her as he took the shift too. As a wolf Caleb was a mountain of black fur. He was twice Kerry’s size with huge p
aws. No one could ever mistake him for a dog.
Caleb threw back his massive head and howled up at the sky, the throaty call impressive in both its volume and length. When his amber wolf eyes turned back on Kerry, he was determined. Kerry swished her tail and darted into the trees.
Caleb gave her a couple of seconds head start before he darted after her into the under growth, following her trail. She was as fast as he remembered; being so small and lithe gave her a great advantage in that area. When he saw her, Kerry was just a blur of white ahead of him.
When he lost sight of her, he just followed her scent. The same scent that he followed the night of the dance. Unable to deny its warm spicy aroma, Caleb stopped in a small clearing. He saw the night sky forming over the treetops like a dark canopy.
There was dead log to his left—gnarled, covered with moss and smelling like decay. Caleb scanned from left to right and saw no sign of the streak of white he’d been following. He bent his nose to the ground and it wrinkled. The spot his nose came down on must be some kind of squirrel toilet. He raised his head and tried another spot, catching the trail of her scent. It went around and around the clearing in a circle. Which direction did she shoot off to? Had she doubled back?
He back-tracked his own scent to see if hers got stronger in that direction but it was mostly just him. He sniffed the dead log and his hackles rose slightly at the unpleasant odor before he turned away from it. If he’d kept looking just a little while longer he would have seen Kerry’s two bright eyes hiding in the darkness. As it was he was completely taken by surprise when she burst forth , pouncing into his side. She knocked him over and nipped his ear before running off at full speed through the woods again.
Caleb growled, shaking his head. He pulled himself up onto his feet again and hurtled after her. She was not going to get away from him. He closed the distance between them fast until she was only a few paces in front. She looked back at him with her tongue lolling out from exertion.
He leapt at her back just as they reached the tree line and flattened her body underneath his weight. He growled in triumph, he had her. He won again and now he would mate with her. He wriggled himself into position but she whirled on him, using a paw and her snout to knock him towards the brow of a small incline. They rolled in a blur of black and white fur which slowly melted away until they were skin rolling against grass.
Caleb landed on his back at the bottom, dazed with Kerry’s smaller body straddling him. She was panting even before she arched her hips back and took him inside her. Caleb moaned. He found his hands and ran them up her calves, over her knees and to her hip, anchoring her to him.
“I win,” she said with a small smile. “So, it’s only right as the victor I mount you this time.” Kerry rocked her hips back and forth, driving him into her in soft, gentle strokes. Her eyes fluttered shut as his hands ran up along the sides of her belly to her breasts. He cupped and kneaded the flesh as she rode him.
“I will never concede defeat,” he said with an amused chuckle. He drew his upper body up off the ground so he could latch his mouth over one of her nipples. He sucked her tender flesh, making her cry out.
She pushed him back to the ground with a huff on his part and drew herself up off him slowly before slamming back down. Caleb moaned her name as she did it again and again. She worked herself into a steady rhythm, driving both of them wild with the sensation. The wind whipped around them, blowing leaves dragging across their skin and making where their bodies were joined like the warmth at the center of a storm.
Kerry’s pleasure escalated as the firm grip of his hands on her waist helped to move him inside her. Caleb leaned up, taking her other breast into his mouth. This time she didn’t push him back. She wrapped one hand around the back of his skull and held him to her. Caleb was her mate. All felt right with the world to have him inside her. Her breathing changed as her climax threatened to overtake her.
Caleb was sitting up now with her in his lap. She dragged her legs against the grass, so she could lock them around his waist. His hands held her at the small of her back, giving her balance as she did so. He gripped at her hips with his fingers digging into the flesh as he brought her down on him harder and faster.
Kerry cried out, locking her arms around his neck. Caleb growled against her throat as his pace increased, forcing her to take everything he had to offer and tighten around him.
“Oh, God,” she cried out. Her head fell back. “Caleb I’m there. I’m—”
Kerry’s orgasm over took her, drawing Caleb into her tight as her muscle contracted around him. Caleb howled, a very different sound from his human throat, arching his hips up into her as she forced him to have his own climax. She shuddered in his arms as he drew his legs up and, using his greater weight, toppled them over. She lay beneath him, her arms and legs wrapped around him as he emptied his soul into her. He held himself up on his arms so that she didn’t suffocate against his chest and re-learned how to breathe.
He rolled onto her side ,holding her against him so that one of her legs flopped over her his. His deflated manhood nestled happily between her thighs. Kerry made lazy circles with her fingers over his chest hairs.
“So, how long do you think it will take you to pack?”
Kerry raised her head from his skin, the afterglow faded just a little at his words. She gave him a skeptical look.
“Excuse me.”
“Your stuff. I mean you still live with your folks so you won’t have that much in the way of furniture, but clothes and personal items. Could we get you moved in this weekend?”
Kerry pulled up to her knees and stared down at him. “Moved in?”
“Yeah, I have a nice place on Pine Ridge Road. You’ll like it.”
“I’m not saying I wouldn’t. Don’t you think that’s rushing things just a little bit? We barely know each other. I don’t even know your last name.”
Caleb shifted his arms behind him, pushing his upper body up so he could look into her face.
“It’s Vander, but what’s with all the looks? We’re mated now. As soon as the month is out, we’ll be married. I’d compromise and we’d combine our households if you had one.” Caleb quirked one of his eyebrows.
“You want to get married just like that. We barely know each other,” she said incredulous.
He just kept staring at her like that was exactly what he imagined. “That’s just the way it’s done.”
Kerry turned, wrapping her arms around her knees.
“That’s not the way I was raised. It can’t be that simple. What about love?”
Caleb ran his fingers up the muscles of her back slowly. It made her shiver but that was all it was—a physical sensation.
“It will come in time.”
“That’s what my momma said,” said Kerry, blowing her hair out of her eyes.
Caleb smiled cockily. “Your momma would know.”
Kerry pulled away from him, getting to her feet. She looked back at Caleb who discreetly covered himself with a bent knee while still looking completely scrumptious.
“That just goes to show you know absolutely nothing. My momma knows nothing about it. She didn’t follow pack law. She didn’t meet the man she was supposed to mate with a night before. That was it; no going back. She grew up next door to my daddy. She fell in love with him over years of being together. They ran away from home, got hitched at a chapel outside of Vegas, and mated in the honeymoon suite of Caesars Palace . They’re clan shame Caleb. They came back and neither of their families wanted to know them. They took what they could and moved a state over, having to start all over without any help or support. Now Momma’s Momma came around when she had me but Daddy’s folks still won’t even pick up the phone if they know he’s calling.”
Caleb thought about what she told him. His family was very different—traditional. His parents—although they cared very deeply for each other—never had a passionate love. It was why a lot of were-families often only had the one child. They did thei
r duty with the one and there was no desire to continue on after that. After the first month of mating frenzy and mating dances, the couple could be satisfied with nearness at the end of the day. His parents were fine not seeing each other all day. Not speaking even when they were in the same room. His mother had been more affectionate towards him as a boy then he ever saw her be with his father.
“I understand.”
“I really don’t think you do,” she continued. She paced back and forth which distracted Caleb slightly from watching the way her body moved. “They hated the thought of being without each other so much that they chose to lose everything rather than be without each other. Now, I don’t know if you can imagine a love like that as you were raised in a traditional household but I can. I thought I might have found that.”
Caleb ground his teeth together. He didn’t like to hear her admitting this love for someone other than him. It irked him to think she was someone’s before his.
“I’ve given it up for you because that’s what the hell I’m supposed to do. Therein lies the problem and makes your job really, really hard.”
“Huh?” Caleb asked, unable to strive for something more elegant.
“Now, you’ve got to prove you were worth it.”
Caleb looked at her stunned. He had to prove himself to her. He growled. “What are you suggesting? Dating? What the hell point is there in that? You’re already mine.”
Kerry returned his growl with interest. He flinched. He could tell she was really mad at not being taken seriously.
“Not doing well so far, are you?”
Kerry wrapped her arms around herself and trudged back up the hill to claim her dress, what was left of her dignity, and hustle on home.
Chapter Six
Kerry lay on her back on the bed, feeling completely miserable. It’d been nearly a week since she saw Caleb and her belly wouldn’t stop quivering at the separation. He could call her. She may not have given him her number but he was a smart, resourceful man. He could easily get her number.
Mistakenly Mated Page 4
