She couldn’t see it yet, but there was another set in the kitchen, and another set in the now empty office.
“The master bedroom is normal,” he told her. He’d actually fixed that room up since he’d officially moved in to the kingdom house. Got rid of his dad’s 90s-era shiny black furniture so the space didn’t look so cluttered. He’d also scraped off the peeling paint and repainted the room dark blue, a color that added sophistication to the space but also wouldn’t stain so bad if his beast got the best of him. He’d bought a proper bed for the first time in his life. A custom job, with an indestructible mattress and a solid steel frame fixed to the floor, so if he lost control in there, he’d only have to replace the sheets and blankets. He’d even hidden the master’s set of wolf shackles inside his iron wardrobe, so the room seemed even more normal—at least, as normal as rooms Grady lived in got.
“And I’ve got some money saved up,” he said when she didn’t answer him. “We can get some more stuff in here. I just never bother with furniture, because—I guess, because this set up is easier.” And safer, he added, but not out loud, having no desire to creep her out any more than she probably already was.
“No, you don’t have to buy anything for me. It’s fine,” she said. “I just…”
She walked the short distance to the second bedroom down the hallway. The one that used to be Luke’s. It was the only room Grady hadn’t beast-proofed and it still had all Luke’s old things inside, his bedroom furniture, his band posters taped to the walls and ceilings, his t-shirts and jeans in the closet—all set up just like he’d left it. As if the room was waiting for Luke to come back any day now. Nothing but a thin layer of dust covering everything to let anyone know he didn’t live there anymore. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
“I’m going to close this door, okay?” she said with a wince, like Luke’s room was truly the creepiest thing in the Oklahoma kingdom house and not, say, all the empty rooms with shackles attached to the walls.
He wanted to say, “Sure, close it.” He would have gone straight to the storage shed for some caulk and sealed the room up from her sight forever if he hadn’t known they’d one day need it for a nursery. And he still had half a mind to offer, thinking maybe he could use his small stash to add a room to the house over the next nine months if it would erase the haunted look in her eyes.
But then the absolutely worst thing that could possibly happen right after you’ve just shown your new wife into your creepily retrofitted farmhouse happened. The tingle came back. The same one that had come over him at the Colorado summer cabin… but this time without any lead up. His beast came on so fast, there was no time to explain to Tu, no time to get to any of the shackles. His human only had a few seconds to yell inside his new wife’s head, “Tu, run!” before his beast took over.
“TU, RUN!” One minute Grady was standing behind her, looking apologetic, offering to buy furniture, and the next he was yelling at her via their mental link to run.
And if that wasn’t alarming enough, a smell invaded her nose, one Tu recognized as the set of hormones werewolves used to distinguish other werewolves from humans. Grady’s wolf, a smell that was always with him.
But in this case, it wasn’t just a smell mixed in with all of Grady’s other smells, it was THE smell, the one that stood out most, as if it had somehow stepped out to the front. Or taken over.
She turned around slowly. As slowly as the first murder victim in a horror movie. And she found Grady standing there, still as a predator, his blue eyes glowing in a way werewolf eyes weren’t supposed to glow outside of a full moon night. She wasn’t sure exactly what had happened between now and a few seconds ago, but one thing was clear: Grady’s human had left the building once more. But this time it wasn’t due to her being in heat.
Run, he’d screamed at her.
And she agreed. She needed to run. Run right now as fast as she could. But how could she? The hallway dead-ended behind her and in front of her it was all Grady, his body so large both of his arms were skimming the walls on either side of him.
She was stuck between a wall and a wolf with no way out except…
She looked down at the knob on the door she’d just closed. The one to the room that had stirred up more panic inside her chest than the near empty house with wolf shackles in every room. Luke’s room was her only escape route, she realized now, the only place she could run with Grady between her and the front door.
She took a deep breath and ducked inside the room, slamming the door behind her, then cursing when she tried to lock it. This house was old and originally built by wolves. And like many old houses built by wolves, it didn’t have locks on any of the doors, because wolves had no need of locks. They could smell when another wolf was behind a closed door and human locks weren’t enough to keep a wolf out, anyway.
But as Tu ran for her life across the room, she wished more than anything that Luke’s door had a lock. Anything that might have stalled the human shaped beast outside the door even for a minute. But as it was, she heard the door crash against the wall behind her as she opened the window. Then just as she got her body over the sill, a hand clamped around her ankle.
Everything happened fast after that. There was a mild rubber band-like moment when she tried to hold on to the sill, but only managed to hang on for a couple of ticks before strong arms banded around her, tearing off the yellow dress she’d gotten married in and everything underneath it like they were nothing but flimsy obstacles. Then she was on her back in Luke’s bed, looking up at the Heavy Metal movie poster he’d hung on the ceiling above. And suddenly she was returned to her first heat night, staring mindlessly up at the scantily-clad warrior, Taarna, on her flying mount, while Luke…
But Tu wasn’t drugged out of her mind this time. No, this time when the male wolf crouched over her, Tu fought back, slapping Grady, twisting underneath him, kicking at him as much as she could given how little space there was between his body and hers. But to little avail.
It was like trying to fend off a machine. Grady didn’t even seem to register that she was fighting back, as one hand clamped down around her wrists, pinning her arms down over her head while he stilled the rest of her body by simply shifting his weight, so his pelvis was directly on top of hers. She could feel his arousal, heavy and thick inside his pants, at her naked opening and she stopped struggling, realizing in this position if she struggled, she’d open herself up wider to him, make it all that much easier for him to get inside.
She was helpless. Again. And that freaked her out even more than Grady’s complete personality switch.
“Oh God, don’t. Please don’t. Not like this…” she pushed into his head.
No answer, and she could feel his erection, digging into her sex, as if preparing to push in, even though Grady was still fully clothed.
Tears of frustration leaked out of her eyes. To find herself in the same room five years later, still unable to defend herself from a wolf determined to fuck her…
She felt something wet on her face, and the shock of it jolted Tu out of her panic. What the…? It was Grady’s tongue, licking her cheeks, first the right, then the left, before he nuzzled his own face into hers, drying her wet cheeks with his own.
“Grady?” she said out loud.
And to her surprise, Grady actually smiled at her like he’d heard her, and his mouth hitched up into a silly grin that seemed to say, “See, everything’s all right. Don’t cry.” It put her in mind of the way dogs seemed to smile with their mouth’s open and their tongues hanging out.
“Can never talk. But can hear until age ten. Think maybe because puberty. Wolf and human don’t play nice.”
Grady’s human couldn’t hear, but his wolf could, Tu realized then.
But she didn’t have much time to process this new information because Grady started sniffing at her. First her neck, then her breasts, which he also licked as if he wanted to explore this particular piece of her anatomy with more than one of his sens
es. It was crazy. She had no idea what was happening now or why he was doing what he was doing, but as it turned out, her body didn’t need to fully understand what was going on to respond. The more he lapped at her breast, the more she felt it down below, as if the nerves in her pebbled nipples were directly linked to the ones in her sex. Soon her pussy began to clench, trying to grab onto the thing she’d been so afraid of just a few minutes ago.
“Grady…” she moaned, arching her breasts into his mouth, and wishing now that he hadn’t done such a good job of holding her down, because she wanted to move. A certain part of her anatomy wanted to move all over a certain part of his.
After a full lathing session on both breasts, he finally did release her hands. But it came at a price. His mouth moved away from her breasts and began sniffing at her again. This time downwards until he came to the V between her legs. He sniffed her there, too. Then he licked between her folds in the same exploratory manner he’d licked her breasts. He sniffed again, then he licked some more. Sniffed, licked…
Tu’s arousal scent arrived like a blare from a trumpet, quickly displacing and then completely overwhelming the one of fear that had permeated her body before.
This seemed to be what Grady had been waiting for because things sped up again. In a blur of movement, his clothes came off, hulk style, with lots of ripping fabric sounds as Grady’s button down shirt and pants went the way of her dress. Then he was once again on top of her, his own arousal heavy between her legs. And all softness disappeared as he pushed into her, hard and rough, rutting her with the primal abandon of an animal.
Tu tried to keep up with what was going on and how she should feel about it. This was so crazy! Somewhere in the back of her head she could still hear Grady yelling at her to run. But her body—her body didn’t want to run. In fact, her knees came up and went wide on instinct, opening herself up to the beast she’d been trying to escape just a few minutes ago, even though she could now hear it growling in her ear as he ruthlessly thrust into her.
Then he bit her, his teeth clamping down on her shoulder. The Heavy Metal poster disappeared and Tu’s world flashed to black as her climax slammed into her, blinding her, deafening her—all she could do was feel the beast on top of her. Still fucking her—no that wasn’t the right word. He was claiming her, she realized as her sight and hearing came back online. Claiming her all over again. Even though he’d already done so at the cabin.
But why? They were already mated and married with his pup inside her womb. Why would he… the answer came to her as obvious as the fan service on the Heavy Metal poster above them. Because she had closed the door to Luke’s room.
Grady’s beast had triggered because she hadn’t wanted to confront the room where she’d first been claimed. Because he wanted to mark her in the way wolves mark their mates. That was why his beast was in charge now, why he was fucking her in his brother’s room, on the same bed where Luke had mated her.
Tu had been so scared of this room, of the memories it dredged up, but now all she could see was Grady’s huge body moving on top of her. All she could hear was his animalistic grunts. All she could smell was their thick mating scent, filling up the room like they owned it. And all she could feel was Grady. Grady everywhere, his teeth clamped down so hard on her shoulder, he could probably taste her blood in his mouth.
He rode her and rode her, an animal on a mission, until… he abruptly let go of her and reared up between her legs, pulling out of her. And then, he… Tu couldn’t believe it, even as she watched him do it, her eyes wide with shock. He released with a triumphant bellow, loads and loads of cum, which he aimed at the bed, the floor, and then finally at her: spilling his release on her belly, her breasts, the inside of her thighs, because…
Because she was his. His mate. His territory, which he was marking in the most primal way a male in human form could mark a female as his.
It was so out-of-control and graphic, Tu should have screamed in horror. And she would have if the sight of him doing this hadn’t sent another mind-dissolving orgasm shuddering through body, even though Grady was no longer on top of her. It was as if her body and mind were two separate beings, with one looking on in horror as the other accepted Grady’s beast, answering it in the most base way that yes, she was his mate. His territory. Her body, her mind, her everything—it all belonged to him.
15
Tu woke up in a state of massive confusion and feeling, her entire body sore, her shoulder aching where Grady had bitten her… the words “rode hard” floated into her mind. Like she’d been taken across country and back again.
She was also very clean.
She sat up in the bed and moved the heavy quilt aside to look down at her body, which smelled of no-brand soap and lotion everywhere. Someone had not only scrubbed her down from top to bottom but had also moisturized her afterwards. Her wolf whimpered inside her, missing the marking scent that had sent her into a body-emulsifying climax the night before, even as her human startled at the thoughtful gesture.
However, she didn’t miss Grady’s marking scent for long. It hit her as soon as she stepped into the hallway, curling out from under Luke’s door, despite what smelled like a ton of cleaners that Grady must have used to scrub down the room. Also despite the fact that the door was closed now, with a shiny new padlock hanging off a freshly installed hasp. Tu knew without even having to touch it that both the padlock and the hasp beneath it would be made out of silver.
There was also a brand new set of wolf shackles attached to the house wall where the hallway dead-ended, the plaster dust underneath the mount giving testament to how recently the set had been installed.
Yet she went to him anyway.
After she got dressed in the jeans and coral waffle-knit thermal Grady had encouraged her to buy the day before when they went dress shopping, she went looking for him. And she found him at the back of the house, right where the hallway dead-ended, with what looked like an industrial-sized tape measure in his hand.
He must have smelled her coming because he was standing there, perfectly still, like he’d been waiting for her. He was dressed in the same thing she was, a long-sleeved thermal and jeans. But his thermal was white and clung to his body like it could barely contain the muscles underneath. He also wore a sheepskin bomber jacket over his ensemble.
It was another cold morning. Not as cold as back at the Colorado cabin, but cold enough. The air hung over them, frigid and unforgiving, and if either of them had spoken, you would have likely seen their breath in the air.
But neither of them said a word. Tu wasn’t even breathing.
“Are you okay?” she pushed into his head, not sure who she was currently dealing with, Grady or his beast.
It was Grady. His face crumpled into something that perfectly illustrated the term “everlasting sorrow” and he slammed his fist into his chest, rubbing it around in hard circles.
“It’s okay,” she said.
But he just shook his head and kept rubbing his fist over his chest, like he was having a nervous breakdown via ASL for “sorry.”
She grabbed his fist in both of his hands.
“It’s okay. I’m okay. But are you okay? Why aren’t you talking to me?”
“Because I don’t deserve to have your voice in my head,” he answered, his normally deep voice haggard and broken. “I don’t deserve to talk to you. Not after what I did last night. I…”
Grady broke off with a shake of his head and a sneer of self-disgust spread across his face.
“You went on wolf pilot,” she finished for him. “It happens. I mean I’ve heard it can happen. I’ve never seen it happen myself, but I know for sure it definitely happens. But does it… ah, happen a lot to you?”
He nodded, his eyes on the ground.
“Grady, I know you’re trying to pay penance by not talking or whatever, but it would be easier if you talked to me.”
“Yes, it has happened before,” he said inside her head, though his eyes stayed
on the ground. “But usually it doesn’t come on that fast. Usually I can get to a pair of wolf shackles in time. And usually I shift all the way into a wolf.”
Tu went quiet with surprise. “You’re not fully wolf-trained?” she asked.
He shook his head and she understood why he refused to look at her. Most wolves were wolf trained by the age of three, which meant they were fully in control of their shifts on non full moon nights. Grady admitting this to her was the equivalent of a grown human male admitting he wet the bed. It was considered that shameful in the wolf community.
“It doesn’t happen often,” he told her quietly. “I control it. I do a lot to control it. Make sure I get enough sleep, sometimes even take a sedative if I think there’s a possibility of me losing control. It usually takes a lot more to make me shift. Usually…”
“But not last night.”
“No, not last night.”
“Grady, look at me.”
Grady didn’t seem physically able to look at her. He raised his head but looked everywhere but at her.
“Grady, it’s okay. All of it. It’s okay.”
“It’s not.” His voice was ugly with anger and recrimination. But she knew he wasn’t angry with her. He was angry with himself. And she knew how he felt. Understood what it was like to want to tear your wolf out of your body.
“I’m telling you it is okay.”
“No, Tu, it’s not. I could have hurt you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I could have.”
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small tranq gun. “Here,” he said, pushing it toward her. “I’ll see about getting you some kind of holster for it after I finish these measurements, but I want you to wear this on you at all times, from now on, even when you’re sleeping.”
Tu shook her head. “Grady, I don’t need that.”
“Yes, you do.”
“You didn’t hurt me,” she assured him. “It’s fine.”
Wolf and Soul (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 3) Page 10
