by Caine
“I had to get up to go to the bathroom, Caine.”
“So you came in here to pee in the kitchen sink?”
She rolled her eyes at him and then smiled at the top of his head when he bent to check her foot. For well over a week, he’d fussed and pampered and made himself at home by her side.
Chloe had never been so happy in her life.
“It’s still a little swollen,” he murmured. “You should go have it X-rayed.”
“It’s fine,” she argued as she looked at the ankle that hadn’t even twinged in pain for almost three days and had never been swollen very much at all. “It was just twisted, that’s all.”
Caine stood up straight and looked down at her. And then knelt down in front of her and straightened her buttons without speaking.
“Are you trying to cop a feel of my tits?”
“Did you get a good look at my cock?”
Shit, um, wait, shoot, Chloe hadn’t meant to pick this fight. She turned her head and felt the fires of hell light her face. He was grinning. She could see it from the corner of her eye. So she closed both of them.
She felt his hands slide around her waist just before a wall of very warm man met the very objects she had just accused him of admiring. His lips found her neck. And he whispered up, toward her ear.
“Well?”
Chloe opened her eyes and looked at the thick, black hair on his head. He smelled like pine trees and weekend camping trips and sex today. But then again, the man could have just spread fertilizer and Chloe would most likely have detected the sex part, despite the stench. She bent and kissed his head. And nuzzled his hair to gather his smell.
“Well what?” she asked after her nose was satisfied. He looked up at her and tightened his hold around her waist.
He grinned again and shifted. Chloe felt her legs being parted by the movement and his body finding a path. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him as he spoke.
“Well, how did it look?”
Chloe gave her head a so-so shake from side to side. And pouted out her lip as she rolled her eyes upward. “I guess it would do,” she stated. “In a pinch,” she added quickly.
So he did. Hard. And right on her butt. His fingers found flesh and before Chloe could stop giggling, he had them both on the floor of the cabin. Caine straddled her at first. Chloe lay back on the cold boards of the cabin and stared up at him. Just as she had imagined every night after Caine came to tuck her in and tease her almost to insanity. She imagined him above her like this while she pleased herself with the alpha watching from the glass door.
She suspected it pleased him as well.
Chloe felt herself being rolled over and shifted so that she now straddled him. Caine slid her body down and nestled the very topic of their conversation between her legs. And then grinned again.
“We could try it out if you’re not sure of how you feel about it, you know?”
She laughed at his creative way of asking her if she was ready for him to take her to bed.
She was. But she couldn’t let that happen. Not yet.
Chloe felt the smile slide from her face as she leaned forward and gently kissed the man she wanted more than she had ever wanted anything in her life. And she considered for the first time since they’d met that perhaps what she wanted might possibly interfere with Caine’s needs. Their time together had forced her to think about how seriously her relationship with him could affect his life. And it made her fear what would happen between her and Caine if he didn’t know that she and Luke had been together.
But more importantly, she had to consider what would happen between Caine and Luke if she stayed in one of their lives.
She wasn’t sure that it would cause conflict between the brothers, but the risk was big enough that she had to be certain she could be in one of their lives without hurting the other one. Chloe was afraid of what her own needs and desires would cause her to do if she ever found herself within reach of feeling the way Luke had made her feel that night. To be in love with Caine, but to want his brother if only physically, could do irreparable damage to their lives were Chloe ever to bend to that desire.
Caine adored his family. He talked incessantly about them. He loved his parents and adored his youngest brother—the wolf cub’s namesake, Caine had informed her—more than Chloe had known such family love to exist.
Chloe had come from a broken home. And so she knew that siblings were sometimes all a kid had. And Caine worshipped his twin.
The man would be devastated that Luke had made love to her. Chloe suspected that she might never tell Caine about the incident with his brother, but only because she had no desire to hurt him.
Even if it meant she couldn’t be with him.
Chloe knew that she was supposed to be with Caine. She knew she loved Caine. But she also knew what she had felt seething from Luke when he’d made love to her.
It had been the exact same thing that had been seething from herself.
It was a much more primitive attraction than she felt when Caine teased her lovingly and gently. It was something that one of her female wolves would feel toward a male who was not her mate, but who appealed to what her instincts said smelled like something she would be willing to and pleased by having mount her. It was just that base. And it was the kind of attraction that she knew could make her do and want things that she was afraid to admit.
Chloe still wanted that. The strong sexual urges Luke had shown her when he’d been in her bed had been just that. Sexual. Animal. And Chloe knew that sex with Luke Caine had most likely been the most raw and feral thing she would ever encounter.
And although it wasn’t love, the hunger she had for Luke’s ways of making love and the craving that he obviously had to fuck her again weren’t something Chloe knew for sure that they could both keep under control were she to stay in Caine’s life. Luke had shown remarkable restraint when she’d asked him to stop the second time, but she had felt something brewing inside the man that she knew might one day prove detrimental to her own resolve.
Chloe knew animal nature. She knew the sexual urges of animals unable to control their physical reactions to one another.
But most importantly, Chloe knew herself. She knew her fantasies. And she knew that if Luke Caine was to try to fuck her again, this time, the less human part of Chloe, the part of her that remembered how he had felt inside her, how he hadn’t been able to keep his true nature from showing, might not have the strength to say no.
She felt Caine’s arms tighten around her, waiting for her answer. She smiled into his eyes and felt her heart constrict at what it felt when she had this man pressed against her.
Chloe wanted to let her own wild and primal instincts out when she made love to Caine. But he wasn’t giving her the indications that he could be as tolerant of such behavior from a woman as his brother could.
Chloe wanted to joins hands with this man and, once and for all, completely let go.
But that hadn’t happened, although Chloe was quite sure the man had it in him to be as brutal as his brother—Caine had given her a taste of his more deviant side the first night they’d met—she also knew that men were oftentimes reluctant to let their true impulses control them in the bedroom. Because so many of them feared being seen as perverse if they acted upon their impulses.
Chloe still wanted that part of her fantasy. She wanted the man she spent her life with to feel free to follow his urges and lose control when he was with her. Most importantly because Chloe wanted to do the same. And had Caine admitted to having just a little more of his twin’s animal-like instincts, or had he been just a little more helpless to control them, Chloe would have been sure that the man in her arms would always be enough to keep her out of the fantasy world in which she had always loved.
Until then, however, Chloe wasn’t about to break the man’s heart or break up his family.
“Today’s not exactly a good day for intimate activities,” she explained quietly as she managed to b
lush.
Caine nodded. Silently.
Almost as silently as he shifted her off of him and stood up before walking out of her house.
* * * * *
“Where are you going?”
Lee looked back over his shoulder at Caine and raised his eyebrows. He stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged.
Caine laid his paper down and squinted at the boy.
“Are you after my woman?”
Lee grinned at him. And nodded.
So Caine let him go.
Caine sat alone in the living room of his parents’ house. The house where he and his brothers had been conceived and raised. The house where he wanted to raise the children he and Chloe created together.
The thought gripped Caine’s heart. Chloe had to have no doubt about the love Caine felt for her. He had showered the woman with affection and attention and adoration. And although their nightly ritual of his teasing her to sexual madness and then leaving her to please herself was proving to be very frustrating for Caine’s own sexual needs, it was also wonderful for him to watch the woman he loved as she demonstrated how aroused he could make her.
Every night as Caine watched Chloe love herself from his post just outside her bedroom, he thought about going to her again as he had the first night they’d met. He had considered climbing into her bed and beginning to make love to her in his animal form.
Caine only thought of doing this because she seemed so much more open with him when she didn’t know it was he who was keeping her company. When Caine was in wolf form, Chloe talked to him about him and about how what he was doing to her each night was making her ache with need. Caine was learning whether she had enjoyed his hands on her body in one way or his mouth on her in another. And he was using that knowledge each night he went back to her.
It was as if they were completely open to one another, but only through her conversations with two different creatures and only because she didn’t know who Caine really was. That was a problem Caine could not take lightly. And a problem that told him that it still wasn’t safe for him to tell her what he was.
Several times, when Caine was in his human form, they had talked more about the stories of Caine’s family and each and every time, despite the way she called them fairy tales, Chloe’s eyes and tone had sparkled and her face had become bright with excitement. She had even started telling Caine a story about how her great-grandmother had been ill enough to believe that she had once been in love with a man who was part wolf and part human. The story Chloe told Caine had been a very sweet and romantic yarn and it had made her face flush and her body become very aroused even when she stopped mid sentence during the story and told him that she knew that the tale was nonsense.
Caine hadn’t had the heart to tell her the truth. He hadn’t told her that she was wrong about the story being nonsense, or that the story itself was incomplete in more ways than she had left it.
The man’s name had been Grey. Grey Caine. Caine’s great-grandfather.
Even if he was able to tell Chloe that the stories hadn’t been the ranting of a mad woman, Caine didn’t know if he would ever tell Chloe that shortly after Maw’s love was forced by his own alpha position in the pack to breed with another woman, he was shot and killed while in wolf form as he tried to go back and see the woman he wasn’t able to forget.
Caine could only guess that either Maw’s father had kept the truth from his daughter or Maw had kept the truth from Chloe. More secrets. And these secrets were the kind that could put an even greater wedge between Caine’s pack and Chloe’s human family.
Caine’s grandfather had never known his own father because of the actions of Chloe’s ancestors. It was information that hit Caine hard when she told him what she knew of the story. The wolf in Caine had been immediately enraged, but the man who loved this woman had been able to back it down. It wasn’t Chloe’s fault. And Caine knew that she herself would never have done such a thing to one of his kind or his cousins. Caine also used the one consolation that had the events of his past not unfolded as they had, Chloe might never have been born.
But she had been and Caine had finally gathered the nerve to take a chance and tell her about what he was. When she hadn’t wanted to make love to him, Caine had no choice but to rethink the situation. He considered the fact that Chloe was just a bit old fashioned and wanted to wait a little longer, especially since she thought she’d been with his brother. And that bit of conscience suited Caine just fine. At least it suited the human side of him.
The wolf side of him wasn’t so easily told to wait. Caine’s body was going crazy with its urge to breed. It knew that its mate was near. It knew that Chloe was supposed to bear his young. And it was well aware that before long, Caine was going to lose his battle against such a force. It frightened him sometimes, for Chloe’s sake. Even with Meagan, Caine hadn’t felt as much sexual energy build inside himself as he anticipated making love to her. Caine feared that if he wasn’t able to tell Chloe what he was soon, he might not have a choice in the matter.
Caine had never felt so much like his own prey. But with the uncertainty of Chloe’s feelings toward him, the wolf in him knew that he might still have to force her to breed with him. She would be fertile again within days and Caine knew that she would become pregnant with his young this time. Whether it was something that he or Chloe wanted.
The animal in him knew that her monthly cycle had already come and gone. And that nothing would have prevented them from making love when he’d wanted to that afternoon.
But it had been the man in him who had to wonder why she had felt the need to lie.
Chapter Nineteen
Chloe awoke with a jerk. The sound had been loud enough to wake her, but now the room was silent. Until the howl echoed again.
She reached for her jeans and her shoes. This was none of her business. She knew that nature controlled these things, but still, the thought of losing only one of the precious beasts was enough to make Chloe rationalize her interfering with the most delicate and intelligent of all things.
The fight sounded very close. And they were large dogs. Chloe could tell by the sounds coming from them as they ripped and tore at each other that this was not the play of pack members. And as the alpha had obviously staked his claim on the cabin and her uncle’s property, Chloe knew that only one thing could be important enough for the two wolves she could hear killing one another to resort to this level of violence.
Someone had been caught where he didn’t belong.
* * * * *
Caine jumped and then closed his eyes again. It was all right. The house was silent.
But the air felt heavy around him. Intrusive. Wrong.
The smell of defensiveness coming from his twin as the wolf appeared in Caine’s bedroom door, reminded him that it was never a good idea to ignore his instincts.
* * * * *
They couldn’t speak when in this form, at least not with human words. But they didn’t have to.
Caine had smelled the intruder. It hadn’t been a sound that had awakened him. But now that he was awake, the smell and sound of the fight ensuing between Caine’s grandfather-a former alpha with a brutal streak that rivaled even Luke’s-and a wolf from one of the neighboring packs, was very clear to Caine’s senses.
Luke had hit a hard run before Caine even finished transforming and Lee was quickly bringing up the rear. As soon as Caine dropped and changed, he caught up with his twin and they bolted, side by side, across the miles between themselves and their oldest patriarch. Caine knew that his father would be joining them, although a few minutes later than his sons, his own aging body less able to travel such distances at this speed.
But Caine, Luke and Lee were not aged or infirm or unhealthy. As Caine felt muscles work in perfect stride alongside his brothers, he was not only reminded of how grateful he was that he had been born the magnificent creature he was, but also how grateful he was for his family.
The one that was being threa
tened by an intruder.
Caine glanced to the side just long enough to see that Lee had quickly caught up with his older brothers and now was even challenging their own abilities with his strength and speed. The thought of yet another alpha-worthy male in the family was one that Caine simply could not deal with for the moment, but one that he knew he would have to confront sooner or later.
The calls that were coming from Caine’s grandfather had grown weak and were causing Caine’s heart to pound even harder than his physical exertion was. The man was almost seventy and although he had relinquished his position as alpha to his son decades ago, he remained one of the most influential wolves in the pack.
And he was their grandpa.
That thought gripped Caine as he and Luke topped the hill that overlooked Chloe’s cabin. Caine was forced to stop because of the futility of what he saw, but his brothers never slowed. Luke and Lee were angry and for the moment unable to control that anger.
Caine could suddenly feel nothing but grief.
He watched as Chloe quickly backed away from the bloodied and obviously dead body of Caine’s grandfather as Luke and Lee approached their beloved patriarch. Chloe was crying and very visibly shaken by the sight of the dead wolf and by the sight of two other wolves coming at her with such anger in their eyes.
Caine could understand her fear as she quickly made her way back into the cabin and closed the glass door. But more than anything, Caine could understand his brothers’ anger for what had happened.
He watched as Luke and Lee sniffed and examined their grandfather’s body. Caine slowly made his way toward the site, and then bypassed it in order to examine something else on the ground very close to where his blood lay dead.
Caine stared at the small piece of metal that had obviously been wedged from the intruder as he’d fought to take what rightfully had belonged to Caine since the day he’d been born. His eyes then went to the woman who stood inside the cabin, looking out at Caine and his kin. Afraid of Caine and his brothers and the very creatures she herself had invited into Caine’s home. The wolves that had now killed a member of Caine’s family.
