by Carol Davis
They didn’t stop there, though; Aaron kept her walking along, through a part of the woods she hadn’t seen before, one where fallen leaves crunched and crackled under her shoes. The sun kept going down as they walked, faster than she thought was possible, and she was sure it would be full dark before they reached wherever they were going.
But that didn’t happen. They walked up over a crest, through another grove of trees, and out onto a grassy area that overlooked the ocean. Out there on the waves, the sun was still some distance from the horizon.
“This is the place my mother mentioned,” Aaron said. “The place where the sunset is the most beautiful.”
Frowning, Abby glanced around. “Is it… popular?”
“Still thinking about an audience, are you?”
He gestured for her to sit down. When she hesitated, he sat down himself, then held his arms out to her. Did he intend for them to just watch the sunset? That seemed possible, because he wasn’t starting to take off his shirt, or reaching for the zipper of her dress.
Maybe he was waiting for everyone else to show up.
“You fret a lot,” he said.
“I—no, I don’t.”
He made a scoffing noise and patted the grass alongside him. She thought for a moment about walking back to the house, or finding somewhere more private, but this place was beautiful. Nodding, she sat down, then slipped off her shoes so she could wiggle her toes in the grass. It was cool and soft, and the ground underneath smelled rich and slightly damp. There were small clusters of wildflowers all around them, tucked into the grass and around the rocks at the edges of the clearing.
“Turtlehead,” Aaron said, pointing. “Jewelweed. Ironweed.”
“And black-eyed Susans. I know those.” Abby looked around some more, but couldn’t find what she was looking for. “Where are the white ones? The ones that were in the dream place?”
“They bloom in the spring.”
“Oh.”
“You’re disappointed.”
“A little. They seem special now.”
“We’ll look for them in the spring. But you can always see them in your dreams.”
His voice had gone soft, as if he was trying to lull her to sleep, but the look in his eyes had nothing to do with sleeping. That golden light was in them, dancing in his irises, reflecting the light bouncing off the waves. It made her forget all about flowers; if she could only see one thing for the rest of her life, she thought, it would be his eyes.
He drew her in for another kiss, gentle and tender this time, his fingers moving lightly over her shoulders and down her back as his lips teased hers. He still tasted a little of what he’d had for dinner, and she supposed she did too.
Good food, she thought. Making love. Then sleep. They could sleep here, maybe, if the wind off the ocean didn’t turn too cold.
He was adept now at finding the pull-tab for the zipper at the back of her dress without looking for it. She shivered as he pulled it down the track, and when he began to ease the dress off her shoulders, she moved to her knees and pulled it up and off. When she returned to his arms, he murmured into her ear, “You’re the most beautiful thing the gods have ever created.”
That made her breath catch in her throat.
Then he was kissing her again: her cheeks, her throat, her breasts. He lowered her down onto her back on the grass and left a trail of kisses down her belly.
It was like something out of a romantic, sexy movie, Abby thought—being in a place like this, with the most gorgeous man in the world making love to her. She’d seen dozens of movies like that since her teen years, and had daydreamed a thousand times about those things happening to her, but the closest she’d ever come was a halfway-decent hotel room with soft sheets.
Most of the time, lovemaking was awkward. Okay, at best.
Now…
“What is it?” Aaron asked softly.
He’d stopped what he was doing and was looking at her with deep concern. She shook her head and quickly brushed away the tears that had dribbled onto her cheeks and into her ears, but he’d already seen them. Worried now, he gathered her into his arms and held her close, looking around with the wary eyes of a protector. He didn’t find anything, because there was nothing for him to find.
“Why are you upset?” he asked.
“I just—” She bit her lip and pressed her head against his shoulder. “I don’t know what—I just—I never thought I’d have anything like this. This doesn’t happen to girls like me. We get ‘good enough’ and that’s all.”
She could only see a little bit of his expression, but that was enough to tell her that he was concerned. Not embarrassed, or exasperated, as Lane would be.
He ran a hand over the back of her head, stroking her hair, and shook his head. “You are not ‘good enough’,” he told her. “You’re perfect.”
“Are you supposed to say that?”
He held her far enough away from him that he could look into her eyes. “I suppose the bond exaggerates my reaction somewhat. But if you’ve been told that you’re nothing more than adequate, if you’ve settled for the attention of people you thought were only adequate—I’m glad you’ve come to me. I plan to care for you and protect you and honor you for the rest of my life. The gods brought you here, Abby. Not because they thought you were adequate. Because they see you as a gift.”
Tears poured over her cheeks, and this time she didn’t try to stop them. Aaron let them flow for a minute, then gently wiped them away, first with his fingers, then with his lips.
“I’ll never forget that you’re a gift, Abby,” he whispered. “I promise.”
“But… what if the elders…”
“We’ll find an answer.”
He stood up then and quickly stripped out of his clothes. Standing there in the golden light of sunset, he looked like one of the gods he kept talking about, every inch of him perfectly sculpted, his dark hair fluttering slightly in the breeze. He looked as much a part of nature as the grass and trees and rocks around him, and at the same time, like something too spectacular to be real.
He was smiling as he sank to his knees in front of her, the kind of sweet, expectant smile that could only come from love. With sure, capable hands he removed her bra and panties and laid them aside, then resumed kissing her belly, the valley between her breasts, the curves of her breasts themselves, her shoulders, the base of her throat. She could feel the weight of his cock against her belly and ached to have it inside her, filling her; longed to have him joined with her until long after the sun had set.
“Aaron,” she groaned.
“Not just yet.”
“You said you need me. I need you too. I want you.”
His hand moved to a place near her head and came back into her line of sight holding a wildflower. Grinning, he brushed her nose with it, then moved it to her nipple and began to tickle her lightly. The teasing made her squeal, and she tried to brush the flower away, but Aaron avoided her gleefully and nipped at her with his teeth. His assault was relentless, but it was so playful that it made her laugh, and he quickly joined in.
Somewhere along the line the flower disappeared, and he was lapping at her sex, teasing her clit with his tongue, as happy with his exploration there as she’d been as a child on Christmas morning.
Finally, finally, he thrust inside her, filling that empty place so completely that she gasped and rocked her head back, closing her eyes so she could focus only on how good it felt to have him there.
He was the sun, she thought. Radiating heat and power. Giving her the kind of life she’d never had before. Pleasure soared through her, from her core down to her toes, up to her lips, her heart. She clung to him fiercely, matching his movements with her own, gulping in air in big, heaving gasps.
Her body seemed to be on fire, then didn’t seem like a body at all; she seemed to be floating somewhere otherworldly, so close to the edge that she couldn’t bear it, ready to weep again because it was just beyond her reach.
Then she heard him moan, a deep, visceral sound that she knew came partly from the wolf, and she soared over the edge with a scream.
For what seemed like a long time, she couldn’t get hold of herself, wasn’t sure where she was. She could still feel Aaron’s heat, but he’d moved to lie alongside her. In the real world? Or the dream world?
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
But slowly, the real world came back. The sky, the last traces of sunlight, the cool grass underneath her.
And something else: they weren’t alone.
It embarrassed her at first. As if her thinking about it so much had made it come true, someone had been watching them, someone who wasn’t very far away.
She thought about grabbing her dress to cover herself, but it felt so right to lie there on the grass with the ocean breeze sliding over her damp skin that she decided to let whoever it was go on looking.
Saw a pretty good show, she thought.
When Aaron sat up, she smiled up at him. His shoulders looked impossibly massive against the sky.
Her king, she thought. Her alpha.
He was looking around. Not smiling now, not amused. He was concerned about something.
“What?” she asked, resting a hand on his thigh.
When he didn’t answer, she sat up too and looked around, but saw nothing that hadn’t been there before.
He was still solemn, his eyes deep and dark.
Was it Micah who’d been watching them? she wondered. To her knowledge, Micah was the only member of the community that Aaron had had any real trouble with; they’d battled only a couple of days ago, and the scar of one of the wounds that Micah had inflicted was still visible on Aaron’s chest.
And Daniel. It might be Daniel. That thought made her queasy.
“Micah?” she whispered.
He turned to look at her, and what she saw in his eyes sent a bolt of fear coursing through her.
“That human,” he said. “He’s come back.”
Nine
Aaron climbed quickly to his feet. He hadn’t stopped scanning the area; now he turned all of his senses toward what lay around them. The human man was farther away now, maybe a hundred yards or more. No doubt he’d scurried away when he realized he’d been noticed, but he’d slowed down and was lurking in the woods.
After all this time.
It might be that he’d never really left the island. Or maybe he had, but his human stubbornness had brought him back.
Abby got to her feet with her dress clutched in front of her.
“Put that on,” Aaron said. “I’ll take you back to the settlement.”
She fumbled a little, as if she’d forgotten what the dress was, or what she ought to do with it. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “This is my fault. He wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for me.”
He took the dress away from her and shook it out of the ball she’d wadded it into. When he held it out to her, she took it back, but she still made no move to put it on. Under other circumstances he would have been pleased that she seemed so comfortable with being nude, but not now. Shaking his head, he held the skirt open over her head and nudged her until she surrendered to putting it on.
“Abby,” he said quietly as she tugged the dress into place. “Did you make promises to this man?”
She shuddered and turned to face him. “I… no.”
“You did not.”
“No. I did not.” Her expression turned stubborn. “Why would you think that?”
“Clearly, he will not surrender. He thinks you belong to him. I’m trying to understand why.”
Thoughts of Katrin and Micah whirled through Aaron’s head, pictures of how their simple interactions over the years had turned into Micah’s belief that they were meant to be mates. It was a complicated business, he thought, full of the possibility for misunderstandings—and anger, and a sense of betrayal.
“Did he give you gifts? Tokens of his love?”
Abby folded her arms over her chest. “Flowers, sometimes. He always sent them to my office,” she said with her chin jutting out. “So all the people I worked with could see what a terrific boyfriend he was.”
“Nothing else?”
“Concert tickets. He took me places he wanted to go to. He bought me a fancy watch because he thought I was late too often. We went out to dinner a lot. If you mean jewelry, then no. No rings. I didn’t promise him anything.”
“Did you speak of marriage?”
Abby turned her head away, and that simple gesture made Aaron’s stomach roll over.
“It was mentioned,” she said. “People talk, okay? They talk. I don’t want to marry him, Aaron. That’s the last thing I want.”
When he didn’t respond, she made a loud sound of frustration.
“Do you not change your minds?” she asked him. “Your people? The… the wolves? You can’t tell me you don’t ever change your minds. Okay, maybe there was a time when I thought marrying him might be something I wanted—but it was a long time ago. I don’t love him. I’ve never loved him. I just thought it might be all right. I’d have a husband with a good job. Somebody people respected. People get married for worse reasons than that. Does it not ever happen here?”
“I suppose it does,” he admitted.
He could almost hear her heartbeat speed up. She was badly shaken now, and her scent had become very strong.
“I want you,” she said. “I won’t change my mind.”
Aaron looked into the depths of her eyes until time seemed to slow down a little, until the wolf inside him stopped pacing and settled into a position of strength and commitment. “You misunderstand,” he told her, running his hands down the length of her arms, caressing her soft skin. “I don’t doubt you. I needed to know his thoughts. His expectations.”
“And… then what?”
“I need to win you. I need him to understand that he must go away and never come back, because there is nothing for him here.”
“I told him that already. You heard me. I told him.”
Slowly, Aaron drew in a breath. The man’s scent was harder to find now, but that was because of a shift in the wind, not because he’d moved any farther away. He was still there, Aaron knew: not very far away, still watching. He had made a strategic retreat, nothing more.
“He won’t listen to you,” he said, his eyes on the woods. “This is between him and me, as it was between Luca and Micah. He clearly will not be swayed by words. He needs to be driven off the island in a way that will not allow him to return. He’s a threat to the pack, Abby.”
He paused then, because the wolf was restless again. After a moment, he said, “A reasonable man—one who was willing to accept that your relationship is over—would have left the island when you told him you were safe and wanted not to see him again, but he is not reasonable. His honor has been challenged, and he won’t surrender until he’s forced to.”
“He’s not like Micah, Aaron.”
“Isn’t he?”
She shifted the dress into place, and he quickly pulled the zipper up the back. Then he retrieved her undergarments and shoes from the ground and handed them to her.
“Are you going to fight him, like you did with Micah?” she asked.
Aaron took a step back. “He would not survive.”
“Do you want to kill him?”
“Abby—”
“Do you?”
“Part of me does.”
She was silent for a minute, then, sounding very tired, she said, “He can’t just disappear. He’s not like me—he’s not nobody. He’s an attorney, a successful one. People will look for him. It won’t be just one person who’ll show up. They’ll make a thing out of this, Aaron.”
He thought of the stories that had been passed among the wolves over the years, tales of people whose bodies had been taken back to the mainland and left in the woods. People who appeared to have been killed by a large, predatory animal—or by a human murderer.
&nb
sp; “We can make arrangements,” he said.
“Aaron. No.”
“You don’t want him to die.”
“I—” Abby made another sound, this one full of emotion. “No. I don’t want anybody to die.”
She truly didn’t, he understood. It was part of why she’d set aside her fears to help him battle Micah—so that neither of them would die. But he had to wonder how far the man Lane would go in order to bring her back with him to the mainland. Would he be willing to kill, or maim, as Micah had?
Aaron had only spent a short time with the humans during his Involvement, but that was long enough to have shown him how bloodthirsty the humans could be. They fought and killed each other over territory, philosophy, mates… even something as meaningless as a pair of shoes. Sometimes, they killed simply because they had been instructed to.
He wasn’t at all sure that anything would compel this man to back down, to admit defeat.
But he said quietly, “Then he won’t die.”
“What does that mean?” Abby asked. “What are you going to do?”
Aaron shook his head, then tipped it back a little and called out to his packmates, letting the wolf fill his lungs with power and passion. The cry went on for almost half a minute, telling the others what was happening, that there was danger here and that he needed their help.
He was still calling when their replies began to fill the air, telling him what was happening back in the settlement. The little ones were being taken indoors, where they could be protected. Some of the females and the older males would guard doors and windows.
The rest would come to him.
“Aaron…” Abby said, worry written across her face.
She was interrupted by the members of the pack who began to move into the clearing, all of them still in human form. Luca came first, as Aaron had expected, responding to his brother’s call. Then, two of the young wolves who had stood guard while Aaron was being held in the meeting house. There were more in the woods, circling around, examining the area for themselves but making a wide berth around the human.
