“Rain, this isn’t like you. Why won’t you just admit the mission is complete and come home?”
Rain jawed at the air. Because the mission isn’t the point, he wanted to say, but that wasn’t the truth. The mission was absolutely the point, and it wasn’t complete. The mission could go on forever, by his estimation, if they kept getting leads that ran into dead ends. But that wouldn’t fix what was eating at him. “As soon as Maggie has any information, I’ll call in.” He was about to hit the End button when Francis’ voice rang in his ear.
“You go talk to that girl, Rain. She may be a Cavanaugh, but she seems to have a good head on her shoulders.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t salute me. This isn’t an order.” Francis took a long drink of something. “Or maybe it is.”
“I’m on my way to talk to her as we speak, sir.” Rain slid his arms into the blue button-up shirt he’d packed for casual wear. This was the definition of casual.
“And, Rain…”
“Yes, sir?”
“Don’t be a jackass.”
Rain felt free to hang up on his alpha. His uncle was a good man, if a touch on the nosy side, and he was just trying to be a helpful uncle in the moment. Not an alpha. An alpha intrusion would have been a justified action if there was something of pack-nature going on. At this moment, it was just two wolves fucking each other. Albeit, at inopportune moments and in the worst possible taste, but it wasn’t anything Francis needed to be concerned about as an alpha.
A concerned family member, Rain would hang up on. He’d been in the Army long enough to tell the difference between commands and at-ease.
He was going to be completely at-ease when he went to talk to Nora. Like a maelstrom of at-ease.
Rain closed the door to his hotel room as though he was a teenager sneaking out to go party in a shed somewhere. Instead of a single adult male on his way to speak to a single adult female. They had no ties to bind them. They could easily talk like grown-ups about their completely adolescent behavior.
When he reached her room, he knocked in a very prim and proper fashion. The door opened and Maggie’s bright face answered. Rain froze. Did he have the wrong room?
He looked past Maggie, into the room. “How goes the search?”
“Good. Nora was just letting me use her charger. Appears I forgot mine in Nepal.” Maggie smiled and held up a white cord, squeezing past him into the hall. “I’m just next door.”
“You mean Vegas?” Rain asked.
Maggie laughed and pointed at the door as she walked toward it. “No, I’m just next door.”
“I mean, you were in Vegas. Not Nepal.”
“We were in Nepal before Vegas,” she said, like it was the most normal thing she could possibly have said.
“You were in Nepal?” Rain averted his eyes from hers when he saw Nora in the corner of his vision. She had changed into yet another uptight, conservative dress. This one was black, with a straight neckline, and a white collared shirt stuck out, all the way up her long neck. Two little white cuffs stuck out under the long black sleeves of the dress.
Gods, that woman covered every inch of her body except her pussy. She undoubtedly had no panties on, again. Rain shook himself and smiled at Maggie, trying not to think the word pussy while looking directly at her.
Pussy. Tits. Ass.
Fuck.
And every one of those words now came attached to a particular image of Nora’s body. Hot damn, he had it bad.
Maggie was saying something about jumping off a bridge and Nora’s mouth dropped into a wide O. Rain waved her off.
“She means BASE jumping.” Rain ticked them off on his fingers. “Bridge, Aerial…”
“Building, Antennae, Span, and Earth.” Maggie leaned in to Rain, giving him a hard elbow. “Bridges are spans, boss.”
Rain nodded. Honestly, he was lucky he still remembered to speak English with images of Nora’s naked body fluttering around in his brain, unfettered. Like her breasts.
Hot damn. He needed to get out of the hallway before he started sporting wood like a teenager.
“Nora, can I speak with you for a moment?” he said. Gods, he sounded so formal
“Yeah, I’ll let you two talk.” Maggie swung the cord around on her way to her door. She turned at the last minute and gave him a big thumbs-up and a kidlike grin before she turned the key in the lock. Hidden by the other door, Nora missed the gesture, and Rain almost rolled his eyes.
This was not his life.
Nora stood a foot or so back into her room. “Come on in. Boss.”
Rain sighed and followed her into the room, closing the door just as carefully as he had closed his own. Everyone was probably on high alert, even though he’d told them to sleep. They had no idea how long it would take Maggie to track down the owner. Someone would relieve Alex in the morning, and if he didn’t manage to get Nora to talk to him, that someone might be Rain. He either needed to get this out, or get the hell away from her.
“I think we should stop fighting this,” she blurted, but her back was to him. She was halfway between the door and the window that looked out on the city.
The giant king-sized bed took up a good portion of that space, and it was suddenly calling Rain’s name. He took his life in his hands. “Fighting what?”
“Look, I’m sure we both feel it, now. Fate. We should stop fighting it.”
Rain blinked at her. “Right. Yeah. I mean, why fight it.”
“Yes.” She flipped a switch and all the lights in the room went off.
He could barely make out the shape of her body in the light that filtered in from the streets. His eyes adjusted quickly, but he could still only see dark shadows. “Because it’s Fate, right?”
“Right.” She reached behind herself and unbuttoned the top of her dress. With a long zip, the fabric came away and the black dress dropped to the floor in a dark puddle around her feet.
His throat was so dry, he almost couldn’t swallow. “Can’t fight Fate.”
“Nope.”
“Tell me, Nora.” He took one step toward her. “What prompted this?”
She turned around, unbuttoning the light shirt with excruciating slowness. And she started from the bottom, so he saw a hint of belly, then a hint of abdomen, then the valley between her breasts, then her collarbone. “I decided to stop fighting it.”
“Thank the gods.” Rain crossed the room in two steps and had her in his arms in less than a breath. She opened her lips to the assault of his mouth and he kissed her harder with each battle, moving his head from side to side for better access. He couldn’t get close enough.
Nora’s hands were on his belt as he finally got a glorious handful of the breasts he’d been ogling since they were in Las Vegas. Her sharp inhale drove him forward, backing her against the bed.
He spread the shirt wide, baring her body to him. He licked at one breast, then bit one nipple, relishing the deep moans that started in her belly and moved up into her throat, and then into the stratosphere.
Her legs edged apart and he could smell her arousal. He was so hard, and he couldn’t remember if it’d started when she’d first opened the door, or when he started thinking about her back in his hotel room, or when he’d smelled her. It didn’t fucking matter. He could drive nails with the erection pulsing between his legs, but all he wanted to do was get inside Nora.
She ripped at the buttons on his shirt and peeled it off him. Rain pressed his chest into hers, relishing the feeling of their skin on skin. Finally. He’d been waiting for this moment for too long. She was always hitching her dress up and giving him access, but he didn’t really have access.
This was access.
Something inside him soared when she touched his cock. He had to catch his breath to keep from coming right there, the magick was so crackly. So powerful. He had been trying to internalize what Maggie said all night—that Nora was there to teach him something. Only when he was with her, he couldn’t think or learn
or process anything.
Nora guided his cock toward her opening and he felt the pressure of her surrounding him as he considered plunging into her. How many times had he fucked her now? And how many times had he been inside her? But he’d never been thinking about it. He’d just been responding.
Rain pulled back and rolled over on the bed, his dick bobbing in all its erect glory. He panted. “Stop, Nora. Just stop.”
Her hazy eyes shifted over to him. “What?”
“When I said I didn’t want to fight this, I meant…I wanted to figure out what this is between us.”
Nora smiled, almost wickedly, and crawled down his body. She pulled his pants all the way off, boxers and all. “No figuring needed, Einstein.”
She straddled his legs, the shirt fluttering open to reveal her breasts bouncing with gravity as she dipped her head toward his cock.
Rain caught her shoulders just before she had her mouth on him. It would be all over if she did that. “No, I figured it out.”
“So did I,” she pressed against his hands, crawling back toward his dick. “It’s Fate telling us we should be together.” Her eyes locked onto his. “Already got that memo. What does it look like we’re doing?”
For a long moment, he just stared. Did she really get it? Had she really figured it out? And it was just that simple? It was Fate? But it wasn’t like Maggie said. Because he didn’t just want to fuck her and have it be over. He wanted it to be forever.
That was the problem.
He had already started imagining her back in his old life, in addition to seeing her between his legs and him between hers. It was more than just sex, and more than just a fling. Somewhere inside, he knew it.
“We’re mating,” he said in a low rumble.
“Mmm. Yes, we are.” Her growl incited all kinds of fire inside him.
“You already knew that.” He relaxed his hands, as though it was time to give up. To release. If she knew it was mating, then he didn’t have to tell her anything. And they didn’t have to talk about it. They just had to…holy fuck.
Her mouth sank down on his dick, tight and wet and hot. She grabbed his length and pumped him as she sucked him, and Rain had to bite his lip to keep from calling out the names of the gods and the saints.
She popped his wet cock into the air and smiled up at him. Rain groaned and jumped forward, pinning her down on the bed and taking her mouth with his. He fumbled for his already wet cock and she spread her legs wide beneath him.
As he drove into her and came , his wolf continued to growl inside.
Mine.
* * *
Nora stretched her legs and froze. One of her legs was draped over a warm body and one of her arms lay across his rising and falling chest. She popped an eye open and squinted in the semi-lit room. The curtains were drawn, but just a little light filtered through the center crack between them, allowing enough pre-dawn light to see by.
She’d slept with Rain.
Actually slept, not just fucked and left. The feeling of escape she typically only achieved during sex remained wrapped around her like an electric blanket—an afterglow of contentment and hope. A tear rolled down her cheek.
She’d known Rain was a potential Fated mate ever since they’d arrived, but they hadn’t been together longer than it took to fuck over the last couple of days. The magick hadn’t really settled. But now, it was all around her, whispering to her wolf that she had another chance to be happy. To be complete.
Could she really throw that chance away and leave him? Walk away from a match that filled the gaping hole in her heart? That was the mistake most women made in movies, they left, thinking they were protecting the man from their problems—in Nora’s case, a psychopathic kingpin of a father who might murder him—but in reality they were just afraid and ran without thinking about what the man might want or choose.
She was afraid of her father, not for her life, but for the life of the man she’d found solace in. She didn’t care what her father did to her. But Rain was different. He was a soldier. Maybe there was a way.
His body shifted beside hers and his arms encircled her body, pulling her even closer. “Why are you crying?” His voice rumbled in his chest and he pressed a soft kiss against the top of her head before taking a deep breath, like he wanted to fill his lungs with her scent.
“I need to tell you something.” She pushed against his hold and sat up in the bed as soon as he released her from his embrace.
He stared up with a reassuring smile. “You’re mine, Nora. My mate. No matter what it is, we can figure it out.”
Nora inhaled, then slowly exhaled. She wiped another tear away and steeled herself for Rain’s response. Words meant nothing. Actions were what defined a man. She’d learned that the hard way.
She tugged at the cuff of her shirtsleeve and withdrew her arm, then slowly repeated the process with her other arm until she was completely naked for the first time in Rain’s presence. The tattoos she’d received when she and Paul had mated a year ago wrapped around her wrists, reminding her of what she’d lost.
She wore long sleeves every day, not only to conceal the marks from prying eyes, but also to hide them from herself. As if covering them up helped her pretend they didn’t exist.
His sharp intake of breath made her heart race. And he jerked his hand away from where it had been resting on her leg, like touching her now burned him, but to his credit he didn’t utter a word. Rain just waited, giving her time to collect her thoughts and tell him what’d happened.
“My father didn’t approve, and he had him murdered. It’s been nearly a year and I’ve disappeared into one man’s bed after another, looking for a way to escape the pain I hold in my heart.” Nora wrung her fingers together in her lap. “I don’t deserve a second chance, and I can’t bear the thought of living through a repeat performance from my father. Losing you. But I also realized this morning that I don’t want to leave you, either. The thought of being separated from you hurts.”
“You were going to leave me?”
The wounded tone in his voice crushed her. “To protect you from my father. Yes.”
Rain sat up crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned against the headboard. His blue eyes darkened in anger. “I don’t need you to protect me, Nora.”
His words cut deep and she cringed at the anger beneath the surface. She’d known he would be angry. How could he not? She’d been mated. She’d hid it. And now she was telling him she’d been planning to leave him. And she would’ve. To keep his identity hidden from her father and her pack. She would die to protect Rain. She wasn’t given that option with Paul, though she would’ve done the same for him.
“I’ve lived beneath his thumb for so long. You don’t understand what it’s like. Francis Dubois is nothing like Edward Cavanaugh. You have a pack that loves and cares for you. I have a pack that looks for ways to exploit and use others…use me for their gain. Whether it’s for power, money, or punishment.”
“Do you want to be with me Nora? To be my mate?”
“Yes.” She nodded as another tear burned its way down her cheek. “More than anything. But—”
“No buts,” he said, crawling closer to her. “I’m all in, but you have to be too.”
Tears poured down her cheeks and she sucked in a breath. “I want you, Rain. I’m all in.”
He slanted his mouth over hers and their magick swirled between them, alive with desire and passion. The intensity was heady, and she moaned into his mouth. His hands caressed her breasts, tweaking her nipples until they stood as hard peaks in the cool air.
Rap. Rap. Rap.
“Sorry to interrupt. Alex’s here with some priest.” Maggie’s voice carried clearly through the closed door. “I hadn’t heard you leave, so… We need you both now.”
Chapter Eight
The Miami wolf paced back and forth near the door, and Rain tried to focus himself, amid the buzzing of electric magick that pulsed around him. Even with Nora sitting across
the room, he couldn’t stop the feel, the pull.
He’d been just about to do it when Maggie came to the door. Bond. He was going to say the spell that would put those weird tattoos on his wrists—the ones he’d never thought he would ever have.
It was damn hard to concentrate on Miami, on Maggie, and this priest they’d brought him, when he just wanted to be touching Nora. But the look on Alex’s face when he’d found them in the same room had been enough of a deterrent.
Another knock at the door brought the rest of the team, and they’d all crowded into Nora’s room. The young priest sat on the bed, still silent, eyeing them.
“Okay. Everyone’s here.” Rain looked at the Miami wolf. “Alex, tell us what happened.”
“This guy was nosing around outside that building. When I came out of the door, he started babbling about some old priest and was I there for the book and shit.” He pointed at the man on the bed. “There’s something weird going on here.”
“I don’t think he speaks English,” Tomás said, parting the group so he could come forward and kneel on the floor in front of the guy. “Father, do you speak English?” he asked in Spanish.
The priest shook his head. “No, I never learned,” he returned in Spanish.
Nora raised an eyebrow at him and Rain translated. “It looks like there are enough of us here who speak Spanish, I think we can question him.”
There were a few nods in the group, and no objections, so Rain gestured for Alex to come to the front of the crowd. He put his foot up on the edge of the bed.
“Who sent you?” Alex asked.
“I wasn’t sent by anyone. I go to that building every week.” The young father didn’t cower, and he didn’t look frightened.
Rain had to give him backbone credit. Alex was a little terrifying to a civilian, all eyebrows and anger.
“Someone sent you,” Alex said. “You don’t just go to a place like that out of curiosity. Did you…” he trailed off, then growled, “Did you patronize that establishment? Were you looking for a piece of something?”
The Werewolf Ranger (Moonbound Book 3) Page 6
