But even wolves in nature didn’t try to go after a wolf with another’s mating scent already fresh on her, and that was apparently what Grady had done, why they had pulled up the ladder. Because every time they opened the door to feed him, he’d get one whiff of Tu’s faint heat smell coming from the kingdom house and he’d try to go after her again, even though the mating scent was supposed to ward other wolves off from trying to claim your she-wolf.
“Give me phone,” Grady signed after Luke finished telling him what he’d done while checked out for the last four days.
Luckily “phone,” was one of those common ASL signs everyone knew. Luke pulled a smart phone out of the back pocket of his skinny jeans.
Grady typed, “Where is Tu? Is she okay?”
Luke shook his head, his handsome face screwing up with outrage.
“She ran. Snuck out a window after the mating was done. Can you believe that!?”
Knowing what he did of the Ataneq sisters, Grady could very well believe that. After all, Alisha had gone through a time portal to get away from Rafe.
Luke looked up at Grady, his face more somber than Grady had ever seen it, even though he could still smell the chemical scent of a variety of drugs on him. He picked them out like a florist wearing a blindfold: weed, moonshine, MDMA, the same extra potent form of ecstasy he’d smelled on Tu.
No wonder Luke’s eyes were so wired as he said, “She ran and I need you to help me get her back.”
Grady had responded to that request with an elbow thrown across his brother’s face, hard enough to knock the idiot to the ground.
That should have been the end of it.
But now here Grady was, five years later, wandering the forest because Tu had run away again. This time from him. And even though Grady hadn’t ever used drugs, hadn’t ever wanted to touch any of that shit after seeing it ravage his family and pack towns the way it had, he was going after her, just like his brother had—
A scent hit his nose. Faint but potent, very potent. Easy to follow even in a blinding snowstorm it was so potent.
Grady froze. No, it couldn’t be…
WHEN TU WOKE UP, everything was on fire. Her body, her head—even her eyes were filled with the sight of orange and red flames roaring in the nearby fireplace. She sat up, and nearly fell right back down again. Her head was blurry with confusion, and her sex… she gripped the grey sweatpants now covering the lower half of her body. She recognized them as her own, but she hadn’t left the house in them. Someone must have put them on her while she’d been unconscious, but she couldn’t bear the feel of them now. She had to get them off, she had to… she pushed and kicked them off her body with do-or-die urgency. Like they were made of fire, not cotton, and would cause her irreparable harm if they were not immediately removed.
But taking off her pants didn’t help at all. The sweltering heat from the roaring fire hit her sex, which was now drenched with her liquid heat. And the smell… this time she really did fall back down into a prone position, her entire core clenching with an almost crippling amount of sexual desire.
She lay there trying to get her bearings, to figure out where she was and what she should do next. The where came to her first. The front room of Rafe’s cabin. All the lights were off, and the only light came from the blazing fire, which someone must have stoked to extra roar because…
She remembered being cold, so cold, but hot at the same time. Certain that her human was going to die of hypothermia, because she couldn’t access her wolf form. Once a she-wolf went into heat, neither she nor the wolf who mated her could turn back into wolf form until three months after her baby was born. Nature’s way of ensuring the best possible outcome for both mother and pup. Her unexpected second heat had been a certain death sentence.
But she hadn’t died. Someone had found her and brought her back to the cabin. Dressed her in sweats and put a bunch of heavy blankets over her to warm up her human. It must have been Grady. But where was he…?
A slapping sound broke through the crackle of the fire, wild and irregular, like whoever was making it was in a panic. Tu sat up, her eyes going to the shadows of the room that sat next to this one. Her night vision clicked on, and she could see him in the sunken den area, near the house’s original wolf shackle.
Rafe’s bloodline had only been in charge of Colorado for a couple of generations, but the summer house had been in the crown’s possession since the beginning of the last millennia. It was a very old structure and though it had been renovated to suit a few different tastes, the original wolf shackle remained in place. An iron shackle, attached to a chain mounted to a rectangle of concrete embedded into the wall for just this purpose.
It’s original intent had been to provide its user with a somewhat safe way to turn if there were humans about outside the house. A shackle meant to be attached at the ankle. It was made so it would stay tight around the wearer’s ankle, even if he shifted into wolf form.
Grady, however, was not using it that way. He’d locked the shackle around one of his wrists, and instead of turning into a wolf, he was furiously fisting his large erection with his free hand, stroking his own shaft up and down with his eyes squeezed shut as if coming were a matter of life and death.
Tu’s eyes went wide. His member was… massive. Thick and tall, as if it had gone out of its way to perfectly match up with the rest of Grady’s body. Tu watched his hand work it, almost in a blur it was moving so fast as the wet slapping sound reached a distraught crescendo.
Grady’s breath hitched and he came, but only a little bit, white liquid reluctantly piddling out despite all the work he’d put in. When he was done, his cock remained standing, its bulbous head swollen, the thick shaft heavily veined with pressing need.
Grady collapsed back against the stone wall, his breath ragged. But then like a lupine Sisyphus with a stone to roll up a hill, he started stroking himself again. Whatever he was trying to do, it wasn’t working and Tu wondered how long he would try before giving up.
But then his eyes popped open and he saw her standing there, watching him…
He mouthed the word fuck and knocked the back of his head twice against the wall.
He let go of his cock and ran his fist around his chest in a circle. “Sorry.”
“Okay,” she signed back.
But he shook his head and the wolf shackle’s chain rattled as he signed, “Your purse in my car. Take blanket and my keys. Hide. When snow stop drive Wolf Springs. Doctor F-I-S-H-E-R give you medicine. Stop heat.”
He kept signing but Tu stopped paying attention. She walked over to him, her eyes stuck on the small amount of cum now drying there. Her human understood why he’d done it, respected the chivalry of him chaining himself to a wall and beating off to keep from attacking her unconscious body, which was dripping heat.
But her wolf… her wolf was furious he’d given his hand what was rightfully hers. His seed. It should be inside her, not dying a useless death. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t…
One moment she was standing above him, and the next she was on her knees, licking up the small amount of cum on his shaft, her mouth closing over the hood of his cock. His huge body bucked underneath her, and she soon felt his fingers tight in her hair, as she licked and sucked. Only when she could no longer taste his seed did she let go of his massive erection. And though the fire was behind her now, she could still feel it blazing in her eyes when she looked at him and pressed her palm to her chest. It was the sign for “mine.”
Then she began removing her clothes.
Grady shook his head. “Your wolf make you crazy. Your human don’t want me. Must run. Please! Don’t want hurt you. Please run.”
Now naked, she climbed up his body. He was so big, like a flesh covered mountain, yet she found herself comforting him like she would a small, terrified animal.
“It’s okay,” she said in his ear, though she knew he couldn’t hear her. “Ssh, it’s okay.”
She hugged him to her, and she could f
eel his breath on her bare shoulder, ragged with frustration. She wondered how long he’d been desperately trying to get himself off in order to keep his wolf from going after her.
His hands came up to her waist and he leaned back so she could see him mouth the words, “No, Tu. Don’t. Run. Please, run.”
Tu’s heart went out to him then. Her family always treated her like she was the most fragile piece of glass, but she could see all his cracks now. His deafness, his inability to talk, his humanity—all the things that had made him different throughout his life. She knew what he’d been trying to do by locking himself up like this, but she also knew what he was trying to do went against nature.
Also, there was one very hard fact neither of them could deny. His seed. His cock. His body. It didn’t belong to him. It belonged to her.
She looked him dead in the eye and signed it again, “Mine.”
And he signed back. “Mistake. Your wolf… not thinking right. Forget I’m defective.”
That was it. Signing time was over. She raised her hips and took him in her hand, parting her own slick folds with his heavy erection. He’d gone stiff beneath her, and she could tell he was shaking his head just above her sight line, but she kept her eyes on where their bodies joined. Watched herself envelop him, inch by inch, slow and wet as she adjusted to his size. And then he was all the way in.
She could feel him trembling underneath her, and she looked into his eyes as she whispered, “Mine.”
He shook his head, so obviously ashamed of himself and she said it again, “Mine.”
Then she started moving on top of him, setting a rhythm, but he continued to hold himself rigid, unmoving.
And eventually she found herself in the weird position of rubbing her open palm in a circle on her chest. “Please.” A plaintive beg.
That, of all things, did the trick. His hips started moving underneath hers, and it was… oh God, it was magnificent. Not a blur of sensations and animal need like it had been with Luke. They were so gentle with each other, rolling in sweet melody, both afraid of hurting the other, even as their emotions burned hotter than anything she ever known. The feeling of being with him like this—it was better than alcohol. Better than drugs. Better than anything she’d ever known.
But it still wasn’t enough.
“I can’t…” she said to him. She began moving even faster, bouncing her hips up and down, hoping that would help her reach the place she was trying to get to, but that didn’t work either. “I can’t…”
A small hopelessness started to set in, as she tried and tried, but couldn’t… quite… make it.
But then Grady brought his legs up, bending them at the knee, so she had no choice but to fall forward across his chest. She heard the chain rattle as his dominant hand disappeared between their bodies…
Dyn-A-Mite. When she came, the orgasm blasted through her, shutting down all her senses like they’d been zapped with an electro-magnetic pulse, then firing them back up again, better and brighter than before. It was like how every drug she’d ever taken was purported to make people feel, but even better.
However, she still wasn’t satisfied, couldn’t feel satisfied until he came, too. His head was buried in her shoulder, and he was shaking it back and forth. She realized he was trying to hold back again, hoping her orgasm would be enough to end this.
But it wasn’t. It totally wasn’t. She grabbed him by the chin and said, “You too.”
He shook his head, but she nodded, insisting. “You too.”
Then she took the decision out of his hands, sinking her teeth all the way into his shoulder, so hard she could feel her canines break through his skin. And it worked.
The unexpected act of violence made him lose his grip on the edge he’d been white-knuckling. Grady came with a bellow, his release rocketing out of him and into her womb, and Tu gasped, jerking against his shoulder when the knot at the base of his shaft expanded inside her, locking them together.
Being with him like this, his knot filling her up so she received a trill of pleasure every time she clenched around him, milking his dick—it was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her in her entire life, and she couldn’t ever imagine being sorry about this mating.
Yet Grady seemed to be beside himself with regret, as if he’d done something unspeakable to her. His fist went to his broad chest, still covered in the Denver University t-shirt he’d worn to bed. He circled it around his heart even as he emptied into her, his whole body spasming with each load he released.
“Sorry… sorry… sorry.”
Like a tortured monk trying to give penance for the sin of being human.
“It’s okay,” she said out loud, willing him to read her lips. “It’s okay.”
But he kept shaking his head like what he had done was unforgiveable.
Tu grabbed him by the face. “Grady. Grady,” she said. “It’s okay.”
He closed his eyes, unwilling or unable to accept her absolution.
So she pushed the words into his head. “Grady. Grady. It’s okay. It’s okay—”
His entire body jerked, his head whipping from left to right, like a ghost had suddenly entered the room. And he didn’t have to sign anything, because “what the fuck was that?!?!” was written all over his face.
That was when Tu realized… he’d never heard her voice before, and she’d shocked
the shit out of him. The next time she pushed into his head, it was with a bit more care.
“Grady, Grady. It’s me, Tu.”
He stopped looking around and stared at her, his eyes popped wide.
“You can hear me because we’re mated. That means we can speak telepathically.”
His breath hitched, and she felt him go tight underneath her.
“Do you know what ‘telepathic’ means?” she asked him tentatively, in the same tone she’d heard Rafe use to speak to the boys whenever they got spooked about something from modern times that they’d never encountered back in Old Norway.
“Yes, I know what ‘telepathic’ means.” A voice pushed back into her head. It was deep and slightly southern, but way more refined than she ever would have guessed. “But I’m defective. I never thought I’d be able to hear you, to talk to you like this. Can you… can you really hear me? Hear my voice?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I totally can. You sound like one of those English actors they always get to play characters with Southern accents.”
She laughed, but then he started crying. And damn if it wasn’t just like one of those YouTube videos of deaf people hearing the voice of a loved one for the first time thanks to a cochlear implant.
“I can hear you,” he said, his telepathic voice clear as day, despite the fact that his physical form was crying like a six-foot-five baby. “And you can hear me.”
She nodded, tears springing to her own eyes, she was so caught up in his unexpected elation. “I can hear you.”
And this time it was he who hugged her tight, seeming to have completely forgotten how against mating her he’d been just a few minutes ago.
9
“Tu, Tu… wake up. Tu?”
Tu came awake sprawled out buck naked on top of Grady, her cheek flush against his chest, her butt up in the air, and her legs bent under her on either side of waist. Like child’s pose on a human-shaped yoga mat.
“Grady?” she asked out loud. Then she remembered and pushed words into his head. “Grady? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he answered, shifting, so he could sit up on his elbows. “But you’re in heat again.”
It was true, she realized. The smell of her intense desire was fresh in her nose again. It had filled up the room and she could feel herself throbbing down below, her body demanding to be mated a second time.
An urgent need Grady seemed to understand. This time there were no protests, just Grady positioning his shaft and slowly setting her down on it, a thick, long peg going into a warm, wet hole. She bit her lip, both unbearably turne
d on and overwhelmed by the way he filled her up. Then she braced herself against his chest, opening herself up even further to him.
“Also, I was wondering…” Grady said into her head as he began working his cock in and out of her. “…what was your favorite eighties movie?”
“I don’t know…” Tu’s hips undulated on top of his, her wolf giving as much as she was receiving even as confusion seeped into the thick cloud of sexual desire. “…Ghostbusters probably. I also liked Splash.”
Grady reached up, his big warm hands palming her 36Bs as he said, “Mine was Goonies, but I like Ghostbusters, too. What was your favorite part?”
His hands felt so good on her breasts, served the double purpose of stimulating her even further, while she received his slow, almost unbearably deep strokes. The small telepathic talk he was throwing at her did not go at all with the way his thick rod was working inside her, but she tried to answer as best she could.
“My favorite part in Goonies or Ghostbusters?”
“You’ve seen Goonies?”
“Everybody’s seen Goonies.” Then she had to pause to bite off a moan when the base of his shaft triggered his knot, thickening right into her G-spot. “My favorite part’s when the Fratellis tell Chunk to confess and he starts telling them all his random secrets. I laughed so hard—oh, God, Grady. Your knot, that feels so…”
Perhaps sensing she was no longer capable of riding him with his knot wedged against the sensitive bundle of nerves inside her tunnel, he took hold of her hips and started doing both her work and his as his own hips rocked up into hers.
Yet, his voice remained calm inside her head as he said, “My favorite part is when they find the map. I tore apart our attic, then the whole house, trying to find a treasure map. My stepmom was pissed when she came home and found the place all messed up—Tu, oh hell, Tu!”
Wolf and Soul (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 3) Page 7
