by Noah Harris
Dante reached between them, wrapping his fingers around Liam’s straining cock. Liam pushed his hips up into his grip, his moans deepening as his cock leaked. Dante could tell the man was close, and he began to pump his cock eagerly. The experience was bringing Dante to an orgasm faster than he’d ever had before and he wanted to see Liam get off before he did.
“Dante,” Liam panted out, fingers scrabbling desperately for a renewed grip.
“I’ve got you,” Dante told him, biting his bottom lip as he felt Liam’s body tighten around him.
His mate gave an inarticulate cry, hips pushing upward. He spilled over onto Dante’s fingers, his body bearing down around his cock in a tight grip. Dante’s body bowed, pushing himself deep as he moaned Liam’s name. His breath left him as pleasure pounded through him, his cock pouring deep into Liam. The two of them rocked and shuddered together, their moans filling the air as their orgasms wracked their bodies.
When it was over, Dante found himself all but slumped over Liam, the man’s trembling fingers holding onto his back. Their lips found one another again, their kisses slow and gentle. Dante kissed Liam’s cheek carefully, trailing a line of affection to his forehead and then to his temple. His mouth moved, trying to speak the words of adoration that ran through his mind. He wasn’t making any sense, but Liam seemed to understand as he nuzzled their faces together with a happy hum.
Liam finally spoke. “I think I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that was even better the second time around.”
Dante’s grin was lazy. “Definitely. Do you think it’s always going to be like that?”
“I hope so, though that might not be altogether a good thing. I’ll never want to leave whatever room we’re holed up in,” Liam said with a chuckle.
That probably wouldn’t be the case, as Liam was about as restless as Dante was. Liam was far quieter about it though, less obvious in his need to move and do something. Dante was obvious, constant energy that had to be moving in order to feel content. Liam’s restlessness seemed to be mainly internal, showing itself only in the fact that Liam obviously enjoyed his life on the road. He had no doubt they would have plenty of moments where they locked themselves in a room and enjoyed one another’s bodies for as long as possible. There would always be that drive to dive back into the world again, however, even if that dive meant finding somewhere else to shack up for a while.
“I can hear you thinking,” Liam said.
Dante chuckled. “You caught me. Was busying thinking about all the sex we’re going to end up having.”
Liam patted Dante’s hip affectionately. “Lots and lots, I imagine.”
Dante rolled off Liam, extracting himself carefully as he did so. “In all sorts of places.”
With Dante off him, Liam stretched slowly. “It’s so weird to think about that.”
“What makes it weird?” Dante asked as he propped himself up on one arm.
Liam shrugged. “Thinking I’m going to be doing the same stuff I’ve always been doing, but I’m not going to be alone while I’m doing it anymore. All those years of wandering around, doing my own thing, where I want, when I want, and now I’ve got the same thing, but with someone else there.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Dante asked.
Liam grinned at him. “Not even close. I never thought I wanted anything like that before, I always liked being my own person, doing things at my own pace. Always thought having someone else with me for too long would get annoying. But with you? I’m starting to think about it as having a partner-in-crime rather than having someone slowing me down.”
Dante lay his head on Liam’s chest. “Everyone is always trying to make me into something or another involving crime. Why can’t I just be the quiet, domestic partner?”
“That sounds pretty boring, don’t you think?” Liam asked.
Dante didn’t hesitate to answer. “Gaia, yes it does. I’ve been sitting around this place, trying to make adventures where I could while I waited for someone to show up and whisk me away. I don’t even know what I would have ended up doing as a part of Noah’s pack. But now I don’t have to worry about that. You showed up and saved me from that fate.”
“I can’t claim credit for that, but I won’t argue with it. That’s for sure,” Liam said.
“It’ll be fun trying to keep up with you,” Dante said.
Liam chuckled. “Somehow I’m getting the feeling that won’t take long. Then the trick will be me trying to keep up with you. You’ve got a lot of pent up energy.”
Dante cocked his head to look at Liam’s face. “Yeah, speaking of that…what’s your recovery time like?”
“My recovery time?” Liam asked.
Dante nodded down at Liam’s groin. “You know, your recovery time.”
Liam blinked owlishly at him and then broke into a laugh. “Already? Oh good Lord, you’re going to be the death of me.”
“At least you can say you died happy then,” Dante said with a grin.
Liam pulled at him. “Come up here and kiss me, you rotten pain in the ass.”
Dante didn’t have to be told twice.
Epilogue
There was something to be said about the image of the green covered mountains in the rearview mirror and the sight of the city through the windshield. Dante had been awestruck by the size of the city, even at a distance. It reminded him of seeing the tall peaks of the mountains in the distance as a child. These towering peaks, however, were man made, built by hundreds of humans over decades. If the mountains brought a sense of immense age to mind, the skyscrapers of the distant human city brought a sense of awe and respect for human ambition.
“It’s hard to believe humans built all that,” Dante said for what felt like the hundredth time.
Liam had been patient with him, expertly maneuvering the car along the stretches of road between the lands of the sept and the outside world. Dante wasn’t sure where Liam had gotten the car, since he’d admitted he’d originally walked to the sept for the celebration. He suspected he’d “borrowed” the car from a human, but wasn’t willing to break the illusion by asking.
“If you think that’s impressive, wait until you see what else the humans have made. There are structures all over the world made long before this country was even thought of. Humans aren’t always the best at taking care of the planet, but they sure do know how to build and create. Werewolf art is nothing compared to humanity’s,” Liam explained.
The most art Liam had ever seen had come in the way of small statues and fetishes. Werewolves emphasized the symbolic in their art. It was perfectly fine if a representation of a legendary hero or Gaia herself wasn’t precise or even clean. All that mattered was that the intent was there, and it was easy to see the meaning behind the shape. There was nothing in werewolf art that spoke of the clean lines and symmetry that the towering buildings of the city spoke of.
“You sound like you respect them,” Dante noted.
Liam shrugged. “I should, because I do. Our people like to act like humans are nothing more than apes who learned how to make fire. It’s easy to sneer at humanity when you separate yourself from them like werewolves have. We like to forget sometimes that we’re half-human. I think most werewolves like to keep themselves away from humans because they’re afraid of what they’ll see if they look in that mirror.”
“Oh, you mean like our tendency to go to war with one another over petty slights? How, despite the fact that we’re supposed to revere nature, we tend to harness it for our own uses?” Dante asked.
“That, but there isn’t just bad in werewolves, just like there isn’t in humans. Their ambition might take them too far sometimes, ignoring the cost of progress for the sake of progress itself. But that drive to create, to harness, is what’s led to their strides in art, in science. For every advance of humanity that ruins a patch of forest, there is another that saves thousands of lives. Humanity is still young, and I love watching the way they work. One day, they might be the inheritor
s of the Earth more than we ever were,” Liam went on to explain.
Dante smiled as Liam continued to express an obvious adoration toward humanity. It wasn’t that Dante didn’t think his explanation wasn’t interesting, because it was. Dante had always enjoyed an outside perspective on matters. It was simply difficult to totally focus on what Liam was saying, not when his eyes lit up like they did as he talked, and the way he began gesticulating with his hands as he drove. It was obvious he felt passionately about the whole subject.
“People are people, but they can be so different region to region. Like, you’ll think the humans are different here compared to the people you grew up around. Then I can take you across the world and the people there will be so much different than these ones. Yet, when you start to look, you’ll see there isn’t that much difference between them. They all still want to find something to satisfy them. They want to love and to grow, and they want their loved ones to succeed and prosper. People all over the world want to find adventure,” Liam continued.
Dante reached across the car to take Liam’s hand. “It’s nice to see you getting so excited about this. I thought you were going to continue to be difficult.”
When Liam hadn’t been nervously standing in the background over the remaining days Dante spent in the sept, he’d been fretting over Dante’s decision.
Liam glanced at him with a sheepish look. “Sorry. I know I’ve been a pest about it.”
“Only a little, though I think Rosa was ready to strangle you before we left,” Dante said with a laugh.
“Was she? It’s hard for me to tell the difference between her facial expressions. They all look slightly annoyed and angry,” Liam said.
Dante nodded, thinking she hadn’t looked very angry when he and Liam had finally struck out on the first leg of their journey to leave. He could remember only too well how stony faced she’d been, as if fighting any and all emotion, trying to prevent it from showing on her face. Dante hadn’t minded, after the shared moment they’d had in the clearing, he knew she simply refused to show any softness before an audience. Erik hadn’t been quite as dignified, shouting after Dante as he’d walked away, tears streaming down his face.
The thought made Dante smile, the expression feeling sad on his face. He’d meant it when he said he was well-prepared to leave the sept behind. It had been a reality of his life ever since it had been announced he would one day have to leave for Noah’s sept. He’d spent years mentally preparing himself for the move.
He wondered if it would have been easier or harder to leave if he’d ended up mated to Noah rather than Liam. He’d felt the tickle of hope that he might be able to stay when he realized he would have Liam by his side instead of Noah. Yet that hope had died so quickly when he realized he could never make Liam chain himself down. The hope had lived and died before it had a chance to settle in, but it left a feeling of melancholy behind it.
Liam seemed to sense Dante’s thoughts. “Do you want to go back and stay a little longer?”
Dante shook his head. “No, Elder Marrow was right. The longer I stayed there, the harder it would have been to leave. I got to have my time with them, and I got to say my goodbyes. It’s not goodbye forever. I’ll be able to see them again. Which is probably more often than if things had gone differently for me.”
It didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt, because it did. Among the humming excitement for the future, and the fear of it, there was the ache of leaving his family behind. It wasn’t quite the same as losing his family as a child, but it ached all the same. He supposed, like with the loss of his pack, the pain would dull with time. He knew it would never really go away forever, but he didn’t mind. One thing he’d learned from losing his first family was that the pain was important. The pain just showed what it meant to love someone, even if you had to be away from them for a time.
Dante smiled at Liam. “You don’t have to worry about me, Liam. I’m going to miss everyone like crazy, but that doesn’t mean we need to stop. I made my choice and I’m ready to face the world with you.”
“Which you’ve told me repeatedly,” Liam said.
Dante chuckled. “And you’ve repeatedly worried over me making that decision. How about we both just stop repeating ourselves and look forward to what’s coming our way instead?”
Liam nodded. “I think I can go along with that, but one thing first.”
Dante looked at his mate curiously as Liam pulled the car off the asphalt, and onto a dirt road. Liam only shook his head when he caught Dante’s questioning look. They drove for several minutes along the path, lined by trees that had grown further and further apart as they’d approached the city. Liam stopped the car along the road under a canopy of trees, slipping out of the driver’s side after turning it off.
“What are we doing?” Dante asked as he tried to open his own door.
Liam waited patiently until Dante extracted himself. “C’mon, follow me and I’ll show you what we’re doing.”
Dante did as he was told, following Liam into the line of trees. He didn’t have to wait long, as they emerged through the other side. The view opened up to a decently sized cliff before them, stretching out along the land below. As Dante followed after Liam, he glanced around and realized he could see both the city and the distant dense forest that had been his home his entire life.
Liam gestured in both directions, and then out toward the rolling landscape ahead of them. “This is the life you’re coming into.”
Dante walked to the edge, looking below. The cliff was high enough up that a misstep would send him plummeting to either horrible injury or death. The light of the sun was beginning to settle below the horizon in front of them. The light was changing, glowing with brilliant oranges and smears of crimson. Soon, he would be able to see the lights of the city sparkling through the darkness toward him, just as the stars overhead would. The light that illuminated the woods of what was now his former home would disappear, casting it all in darkness.
He’d briefly felt the gravity of what he was doing when he’d looked in the rearview window. He’d always known he would leave his home behind, but it had never been due to any choice of his own. All the farewells he would have made would have been scripted, and his final glance back to his sept would have been one of lingering regret and resignation.
As he stood at the edge of the cliff, looking at the drop below him, he realized just how much his life would be different. He’d come to this point by a decision that he had made. Not because someone else expected him to make the choice, or because he felt it was his duty to make it. In the end, he had chosen this path. He’d laid out every fact and possibility before deciding this was the path he would choose to walk. It was the first time, in what would end up being a long line of choices he would make for himself, dictated by his own beliefs and thoughts.
Liam walked up to join him, saying nothing as he stood without hesitation on the edge beside Dante. Dante watched his face for several moments, finding a smile gracing his lips as he did so. Liam was everything Dante had wanted and needed in a partner, without even knowing it. The man was unfettered, he lived his life by his own standards, and he answered to no one. Joining or not, Liam had still chosen Dante as surely as Dante had chosen Liam. He’d opened the door of his heart to Dante without reservation, save for the fear of what harm it would bring into Dante’s life. Liam was free but held himself responsible for his own choices. He cared for Dante deeply, and one day, they would find love for one another just as they’d found this connection.
Dante closed his eyes against the sunset, letting its dwindling warmth light his face. “I think I understand why you brought me out here.”
“Oh yeah? Then I guess you know what I’m about to ask,” Liam said, and Dante could hear the smile in his voice.
Dante chuckled. “One last time?”
“One last time. Now, are you sure?” Liam asked firmly.
Dante took hold of Liam’s hand once more, running his fingers over a
scar on his palm that Dante still didn’t know the story behind. There was so much about Liam he didn’t yet know, just as there was so much about the world he didn’t know. The city they would soon find themselves in contained more mysteries than Dante had faced in years. The man beside him probably had many times more than that. Both would yield their mysteries to him given time and careful patience, on Dante’s part.
Standing on the cliff, it felt as if he were facing down both his future and his past, all at once. The sept to one side, the city to the other, and the broad expanse of unknown land before him. The sunset burned through the horizon, giving the illusion of fire stretching across everything. The most important detail, in Dante’s mind, was the man who stood beside him.
Through trials and tribulations, through both the joyful and thrilling, the pain and pleasure, he knew Liam would be there with him the whole way. It had only been a few short weeks together so far, but it had been enough for Dante. It was enough to tell him just how ready they both were to take on the world together. It didn’t matter what they found or struggled through. He could do anything, so long as he had Liam by his side. The whole world was open to them, ready to be plundered for its adventures and secrets, and Dante had the perfect partner to walk beside him throughout it all.
Dante smiled, “Yeah, I’m sure.”
Important Information
This book, "Promised Passion" is the third book in the Heart's Desire Series. However, this book and every other book in the series can be read as a stand-alone. Thus, it is not required to read the first book to understand the second (and so on). Each book can be read by itself.
Everyone wants to be with Aidan. Kyle can't stand him. So, what happens when fate decides this stubborn omega and arrogant alpha belong together? If you would like to check out the first book, Bonded by Fate click here.
