Which is when the kid gloves came off.
Chapter 28
“You were nothing when I found you, and you’ll be less than nothing when I cut you loose,” Stormwinder said coldly.
I couldn’t resist slipping into Hunter’s consciousness via the pack bond to assess his reaction to this incendiary statement...or rather, I couldn’t resist trying to merge our minds. Because the doors were just as firmly shut now as they’d been when he left me last week. And this time around the exclusion wasn’t my own fault.
I ached to shift and wrap my arms around my mate. To tell him that no matter what past he shared with Stormwinder, he was my future and I wasn’t letting him go.
But the clad thigh beside my cheek jiggled nervously against the bed and I sensed that Hunter would completely lose his shit if Stormwinder got the chance to ogle my bare breasts. So I instead burrowed deeper into his sassafras-scented side, not caring if the Tribunal member noticed I was conscious and listening in or not.
I needn’t have worried. The two uber-alphas were so intent upon each other that I might as well have been on the moon.
I fully expected Hunter to toss back a scathing retort. Because the face-off moments earlier had proven to my complete and utter satisfaction that my mate was the strongest werewolf in the room...and possibly in the entire world for all I knew. But, instead, Hunter maintained his silence, unable or unwilling to speak.
“I’ve treated you like a son,” the Tribunal member continued. His tone was faintly overlain with gloating, as if he knew he was winning this second battle of wit despite having lost the initial battle of will. “I’ve given you everything you ever needed—money, a job, a purpose. I don’t think you realize quite what your existence would be like without that all-expenses-paid lifestyle. Do you really think your piece of fluff will stick with you then?”
Hunter’s growl vibrated my teeth until they chattered together in an absurd mimicry of fear. Because I wasn’t scared—I was pissed.
And slightly mortified. Piece of fluff?
I tried again to insinuate my thoughts into Hunter’s mind. I could feel his agony now down the mate bond, the wash of his emotions crashing like an ocean wave atop my head and threatening to pull me under.
I wanted to reassure him, to prop him up with some of the strength he’d so recently sent in the opposite direction. But I couldn’t quite manage to swim upstream long enough to make myself heard.
And before I managed to get my act together, Hunter spoke. “Get out,” he said, his voice shaking slightly and the alpha compulsion I’d been expecting entirely absent from his words. I winced, then cringed back yet further when Stormwinder laughed in his lackey’s face.
“I’ll give you a little more time to think it over then. A little more time to make a decision with your noggin instead of with your dick.”
The Tribunal member paused, then ended with one last parting shot, the words brimming with the compulsion my mate had been unable to drum up. “Do your job or you’ll regret it.”
Then Stormwinder turned on his heel and left Hunter quivering with what I hoped was rage but what felt more like my own patented blend of powerlessness and self-loathing. At which point I finally did shift so I could pull his barely responsive body into my loving arms.
***
I’d planned to talk my mate down off the mental ledge he was perched upon. To tell him that he was worth ten thousand Stormwinders. That I’d stick to him like super glue whether he was top dog or down and out and on the streets. That I was so proud of his willingness to take a stand for the people of Arborville that my chest swelled up like a helium balloon at the mere memory of his pronouncement.
But there comes a time when words aren’t enough. So even though my scorched skin chafed against even the time-softened sheets beneath my butt, I cuddled up behind the uber-alpha’s hunched back and encircled him with my arms.
And then I did whisper into his ear as my fingers gently teased him out of his funk. “I love you,” I admitted.
I’d assumed that speaking the L word aloud would result in such a jolt of impending doom that my shoulders would cave in beneath the pressure. Or perhaps that Hunter would disappear in a poof of smoke as soon as I opened my mouth, like a genie retreating into his lamp.
Instead, admitting my true feelings had exactly the opposite effect. My scorched skin abruptly felt soothed, the ache in my calf oddly distanced. It occurred to me, in fact, that my mate and I were alone at long last in a room sporting a bed and a lock—what more were we waiting for?
I uncurled my legs from beneath my bum and slipped off the mattress to push that all-important button in the center of the door knob. Because I could hear rustlings of waking pack mates elsewhere in the house, and I wouldn’t put it past Ginger to bust in on us out of pure orneriness. The redhead might have transferred her affections to someone else during our month-long separation, but she was still a trouble twin.
Turning back around to face the bed, I found that Hunter had taken advantage of my absence to unfold himself from his previous hunched posture so he could straighten into his full glory. He shook like a dog, flinging angst off his shirtless chest like water. Then his lips took on that characteristic smirk and he answered me in kind. “I knew you loved me.”
“Asshole,” I said fondly.
“Darling,” he replied.
Three steps apiece and we met nowhere near the center of the room—his legs were just that much longer than my own. He swept me up into the same arms that had carried me away from danger the day before, the memory making my body melt even before his face nuzzled into the crook of my neck.
“You smell delicious,” Hunter murmured.
“I smell like smoke and sweat,” I retorted. I’d been too exhausted to shower the night before, and now I regretted the lapse. Especially when Hunter had clearly cleaned himself up, even taking the time to shave while I was busy napping off the worst of my injuries. Despite raging hormones, I made as if to pull away from Hunter’s broad chest before I smeared grime all over his squeaky clean skin.
“You smell delicious,” my mate repeated, muscles tensing as he refused to allow me to budge out of his grip. Then he put his lips to better use, trailing butterfly kisses down over my jaw, my throat, the swell of my breast.
“Aah,” I sighed out my appreciation, soot and smoke forgotten. I wasn’t quite sure how we moved from floor to bed, but abruptly we were lying side by side, Hunter’s jeans absent and his long legs twining around my own. As in the burning house, I’d lost long moments of reality, but this time the misplaced minutes were a result of joy rather than pain.
Maybe reality wasn’t such a bitch after all.
The ceiling fan pushed gentle tendrils of air across my suddenly super-heated skin as Hunter’s fingers drifted south. I fully expected him to go for the gold. After all, our long days of separation had felt like an eternity and our miles of distance like a deep, blue sea. My body ached to celebrate our return to cohabitation with hard, vigorous sex and I would have expected my mate to crave similar physical confirmation of my presence.
Instead, his calloused thumb stroked gentle patterns across the curve of my hip. His palm flattened across my belly as he rubbed exquisite shivers into my nerve endings. And his mouth continued to nip and suck and play until I was panting with arousal.
The gentle seduction was ten times sweeter than the fast, furious lovemaking I’d thought I desired.
“I’ve been thinking,” Hunter whispered, his breath teasing across my overly sensitive lips. Now his fingers finally did hunt down the slickness at my core, flicking across that nub of pleasure and making me lose track of words for a long moment. Two seconds and I was already on the verge of combustion.
“Mmmm?” I answered.
“Now that you love me,” he asked, “how would you feel about shacking up? Buying some land here for us, for our pack...for your mother.”
His preface had sounded teasing, but the rest of the sentence cam
e out serious as heartbreak...or perhaps as heart-mend. Still, even though Hunter’s hands continued their skillful ministrations, I couldn’t quite prevent my muscles from tensing up.
The real question he was asking was too big, too scary, too profound to answer now. But the mere mention of Celia reminded me that my mother was installed in the room on the opposite side of this very wall—reason enough to push Hunter’s hands aside and to sit up abruptly. I replayed our recent past in a mortified flurry, trying to decide whether I’d really emitted that long, glorious moan of pleasure rather than just feeling it vibrate up against the inside of my skin.
Hunter must have sensed my chagrin because he laughed at me...then eased my fears as he pressed me back against the sheets. “Celia’s in the kitchen at the moment. And we’ve been very quiet.” He paused, his lips sucking the sigh out of my mouth before he continued in a husky whisper. “We’ll continue to be very quiet.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. Because now that I didn’t have to worry about being overheard by an interested parent, panting breaths exited my mouth in long rasping heaves as the heat built at my core. I found myself mewling little cries of satisfaction as Hunter stroked me up toward the precipice I longed to be flung away from.
And yet, I still wasn’t ready to let go. Wolf ears, I whispered silently. Our mate bond had reopened the instant Stormwinder left the room, so I was able to push this warning through the ether rather than trying to fumble words out of a mouth that I wasn’t sure was currently able to speak. Celia might be in the kitchen with our pack mates...but shifters would be able to hear us making love even from that far distant.
Hunter solved the noise problem with his usual alacrity, crushing his lips over my own. The mirroring wet heat above and below my neck nearly pushed me over the edge in an instant and it didn’t help matters when my mate’s tongue thrust in the same rhythm that his fingers were pulsing deep inside my slick folds.
His lips shifted and circled while his other hand swirled spirals around my nub. But Hunter hadn’t let the previous conversation go—only moved it inside our shared mind. Is that a no to the pack land? To inviting Celia to join us?
I was glad Hunter had elaborated on his question because I’d honestly forgotten his tentative request. It was hard to focus when his fingers were so sure and authoritative, when my body was beginning to quiver with impending explosion.
Can we not talk about my mother right now? I rebutted. The words broke me out of Hunter’s spell long enough so I could repay his attentions, teasing his already erect manhood until the organ in question jerked enthusiastically beneath my grip.
My mate growled, fumbling behind his back for a condom. Then his broad palm was stifling my cries of pleasure as he invaded my body the same way he’d stolen my heart.
I was lost to the movement, the sensations, the shared emotions bouncing back and forth down the mate bond. The magnification of pleasure was earth-shattering and I knew Hunter felt the same way because his harsh growl reverberated both inside and outside my skin.
Yet the true gentleman remained aware enough to lift my head and tuck a pillow beneath my spine, to pull a tendril of hair away from my damp face before the threads could slip into my eyes. Then he whisper-growled: “Pack land or no pack land, you’re mine forever.” He thrust one last time and I clenched in uncontrollable abandon around his hard length.
Now it was my turn to reach up and shield Hunter’s roar of pleasure with one hand as he shattered above me. Our physical joining was stupendous, but the sensations washing over my body were only a side dish to the main course of our ever-deepening connection. Our bond stretched and grew, an itch beneath my skin turning into a warm flush of pleasure as the thin thread of joint experience opened up into a gushing flood of information.
Our acceptance of each other was simple. It was profound. It was a fusing of the souls.
Hunter’s mind opened to me like the glow of dawn crossing a moonless landscape. Everything was revealed—his love, front and center and glistening with joy, but also the shadowy recesses that had previously been hidden from view.
Deep in his heart were such dark canyons of pain and betrayal that I gasped aloud at the secondhand suffering. I skimmed across his childhood, or absence thereof. Watched as if from beneath his skin as he fell into a footloose but far from fancy-free youth. Then cringed at Hunter’s entrance into shifter society at Stormwinder’s side...followed up by the treachery of a man who I considered an asshole but who Hunter had looked up to like a father.
Hunter was hurting. And while I couldn’t pull the real thorn out of his paw, I knew I could make him forget his woes for a while with a few well-chosen words.
There’s a time to be careful and a time to be brave, I told myself firmly. Then I cleared my throat and accepted the truth that had already grown up between us. “Okay,” I whispered.
I was sprawled out across Hunter’s chest now because, burns or no burns, I couldn’t stomach the thought of being separated from my mate for one moment longer. So I felt his reply rumbling into my belly and up through my bones. “Okay?” he murmured, eyes still closed.
I didn’t think my mate had re-experienced the same lowlights of his life that I’d just consumed because his muscles were relaxed and his voice steady. But it didn’t matter if Hunter was currently hurting or had just been hurting in the past. Either way, I wanted to do what I could to make one part of his life, at least, bright and rich with promise.
“Okay,” I repeated before elaborating on my plan. “We’ll pool our resources, buy the pack some territory, and make our stand right here.”
I paused, waiting for my mate’s eyes to open and his gaze to meet my own. Then I poked him in the chest as I finished adamantly: “But we’re getting our own house. I’m sick and tired of being quiet.”
Chapter 29
Not that we had another chance to be quiet for a good long while. “Clothes,” Hunter said curtly, waking me from a half-doze by flinging a pair of panties atop my face.
I would have taken him to task for rudeness if I hadn’t heard the exact same thing that had spurred my mate’s abrupt absconsion from our shared bed—a stampede of human and lupine feet racing up the stairs toward us. My clan members had seen me naked multiple times before, but somehow I didn’t want to be caught unclothed beside Hunter this morning...not with my mother in the house and liable to walk in at any moment.
I’d barely tugged on the last item of apparel when the door flung itself open, Ginger’s smug face and the bobby pin in her hand explaining the failure of the lock’s promised solitude. Immediately, a sea of shifters surged inside, led by Cinnamon’s red-tinted wolf and then flanked by his two-legged sister. They all leapt directly onto the bed I’d so recently abandoned, the whole mass of beings proceeding to hassle and jostle for space.
“Hey!” Ginger complained as she was squeezed out, ending up in a heap on the floor. The young woman stood and grabbed her brother’s ruff, shaking him half-seriously. “No more taking my spot.”
“You should be thanking him,” Glen interrupted, striding into the room with a tray of breakfast goodies in one hand. My stomach called out an exuberant welcome at the sight, but I made myself respond to my second’s words instead.
“Ginger should be thanking Cinnamon for pushing her out of the bed?”
“Well, we should all be thanking him,” Glen clarified. “I gather that’s why Ginger was awake and able to lug Lia out of the burning building yesterday—because her brother rolled over and nudged her onto the floor.” My second’s words were light, but his dark eyes acknowledged the seriousness of the occasion at the same time that they sent a silent thank-you to me and Hunter for our part in the rescue operation.
So that means the second breakfast is mine? Cinnamon’s words slid down the pack bond and I found my lips quirking upward into a smile. Trust the male twin to be more interested in his belly than in being a hero...or in worrying about our recent brush with death.
“I�
��m pretty sure you already ate an entire horse,” Lia countered, slipping in the open doorway behind her pack mate with a second laden tray in her arms. She handed the offering to Hunter, who immediately began to shovel the contents into his mouth.
I figured that meant the first tray was for me, but I had a hard time directing my attention away from the other shifters in the room long enough to lift a fork. The entire clan appeared bright-eyed and bushy-tailed despite last night’s adventures...many literally so. And when I counted heads, I was pretty sure that even the final bloodling Hunter had abandoned when I drifted into unconsciousness was present and accounted for.
He escaped before the walls came down, my mate confirmed, surveyed the tangle of lupine limbs with pride. I couldn’t blame him for the hint of hubris that filtered through, either. The uber-alpha had adeptly transformed twenty-plus potential detonation threats into viable shifters, and he must have talked the rogues into accepting my original pack mates as members of their clan this morning as well.
Because, yes, Ginger had found a spot for herself on the bed and was rubbing one bloodlings’s belly even as another settled across her lap. No growls or territorial disputes were evident now that everyone had found a spot to stretch out.
My own ward wasn’t nearly as well socialized, but at least she hadn’t taken to her heels again either. Lupe sidled through the doorway as if the inanimate object might bite her in the butt, looking less than pleased at being stuck in a small room with way too many werewolves.
I attempted to send a surge of sympathy in her direction, but the young woman’s brain was resolutely locked down and her upper lip remained raised in what was likely a combination of both annoyance and challenge. Before I could either take her to task or soothe her ruffled fur, though, my mother’s entrance turned my mind away from the resistant rogue.
“You have a visitor,” Celia announced. She spoke to the room at large, but her gaze locked down on me like a self-guided missile that was just itching to explode.
Lone Wolf Dawn (Alpha Underground Book 2) Page 19
