by S. M. Reine
But the wolf wasn’t the only one excited, and those smells didn’t make Rylie think of killing.
“I don’t think I’m that important, if you don’t want her to know about me,” Abel said. “If you aren’t ready to accept it, then that’s just goddamn fine. You can keep running, keep fighting, keep telling everyone that you don’t need me as much as I need you. But even a wolf can’t run forever. The truth’s gonna catch up with you one of these days.”
She wet her lips, and his eyes dropped to the place her tongue darted out. “What truth is that?”
Abel’s fingers tightened. “You’re mine,” he said, burying his face in her neck.
Rylie’s head fell back with a gasp as he scraped the bristles on his jaw down the tender skin of her shoulder. He inhaled deeply, as if savoring her smells.
“Mine,” he said again.
Their lips crashed together, and his tongue explored her mouth as if he owned her, like he might steal her breath away.
Rylie’s hands had minds of their own. She pushed his shirt up, tracing the ridge of his abs, curving around his ribs to his spine. Abel pulled away long enough for her to yank the shirt off over his head, and then they were chest-to-chest again.
He hiked up her sundress. His fingers bit into her hips, dragging them hard against his, and Rylie felt Abel straining, bulging between them.
She wanted him—needed him—so badly that it almost made her forget the guilt. She almost wasn’t even thinking about the way it had been with his brother, how much gentler Seth had always been, how he had been sweet and soft and worshipful. Abel was never sweet. He was rough, claiming her with his hands and mouth, marking his territory with sharp bites on her shoulder. Alpha injuries didn’t heal as quickly. When he bit, she was marked, and she stayed marked.
“Wait,” Rylie tried to say when he sank his teeth into her shoulder again. Oh, God, don’t stop. “I don’t want my mom to see bruises.”
A chuckle shook Abel’s chest. “She’s going to know you’re mine. Everyone will know.”
That was the end of Rylie’s ability to stand. Her knees melted. Abel lifted her, fingers digging into her backside, and Rylie twined her legs around his hips.
They stumbled into the dresser with a thud. The mirror was cold against her back as he jerked down the straps of her dress, baring her breasts. He licked a hot path down her shoulder, closed his mouth around one peach-pink nipple, and sucked.
Rylie muffled a groan into her wrist, biting down to keep herself from being too loud. Their breaths thundered in her ears like the roar of the wind through the forest on a stormy night. He ground himself against her, all desperate urges and mindless heat.
Their family was just in the other room—barely twenty feet away. It was bad enough that they had to have heard the lock click, much less Rylie and Abel thudding against the dresser.
“Wait,” she said again. She didn’t really mean it. Abel was as attuned to the subtle shifts in her smells as much as Rylie was with his, which meant he could tell how aroused she was, how much she didn’t want him to stop, and he was far more interested in what her body language said than what came out of her mouth.
He bit her shoulder. Every nerve in her body cried out.
“Wait, Abel, it’s just kind of—kind of fast,” Rylie said.
Abel reared back to stare at her.
Oh God, could she have said anything stupider in that moment? She struggled to catch her breath, hands braced against the dresser, while Abel’s hands relaxed on her thighs.
Mischief glinted in his eyes. “Fast? We’ve already mated, Rylie. I’ve made you mine. We had two kids. And you wanna talk fast?”
His first finger hooked in her underwear and pulled them aside.
“I don’t mean this,” she said. “I mean, our whole relationship isn’t normal. And my mom is going to think…” As soon as she realized how dumb that statement was, she stopped talking.
What did that word even mean? Normal? Was it possible to have a normal love life, and date like a normal person, when her inner wolf was already permanently bonded to his inner wolf? Maybe he was right—maybe it was stupid to act like Rylie could hide her life, her destiny, from her mother.
Rylie certainly felt more animal than human, with Abel trapped between her thighs and his hand sliding up the inside of her thighs.
“I don’t care what your mother thinks,” Abel said, like he could read her thoughts. “But if you don’t want me to touch you like this…”
He started to pull away. She grabbed his wrist and stopped him. “That’s not what I was saying,” she said.
“Then what?”
It was so hard to think of a coherent response when his palm was grinding circles between her legs, shooting hot spikes of pleasure straight to her brain. Her toes curled. One of her heels slipped off the drawer, almost sending her tumbling to the ground, but the weight of his body held her in place.
Rylie wasn’t sure if she was groaning or growling or both. Her fingers twitched on his back, digging her fingernails into the meat of his shoulders.
“It’s not fair,” she gasped. “I can’t have a conversation like this.”
“I’ll make it easy on you.” Abel nipped her earlobe. “Do you want me? Right here, right now, do you want me?”
Like he even needed to ask. “Yes,” Rylie said.
“Good.” Abel’s middle finger slid inside of her. She was hot and ready—she had been from the moment he locked the door. He began stroking out a rhythm, even as his hot breath whispered into her ear. “You’re going to introduce me to your mother.”
Were they seriously having this discussion now?
Rylie kissed Abel to keep him from saying anything else. His fingers worked inside of her, first one, and then two, and the motions turned her flesh into raw electricity.
“Rylie,” he groaned.
Whenever he said her name like that, it had a way of making Rylie forget everything else that was happening in the world around them. Like she was starving to hear his name on her lips. But it hadn’t been that long since she had been groaning his brother’s name, sent out wedding invitations that said Seth Wilder and Rylie Gresham. How in the world could she ever introduce him to her mother?
Rylie’s vision flashed. She was close to climax just with a few long strokes.
Deep inside her, the instinct of the wolf was taking over. The animal parts of her mind grew to overcome the humanity. She barely even understood Abel when he growled to her again. “I want to fuck you,” he said. “But it’s not happening until you’re as proud to be with me as I am with you.”
“Please,” she said.
Forget the people in the kitchen, the family drama, her ex-boyfriend, everything that had gone strange and wrong in the country—Rylie wanted Abel. The wolf wanted him, too. For once, they were in total agreement.
But when she reached for his belt, he pushed her hands away.
“Not yet,” Abel said, rubbing harder.
She went over the edge in a breathless, heart-stopping instant. Her mind filled with the roar of waterfalls crashing over Gray Mountain. Her muscles seized.
Rylie threw her head back and let the world fall away.
Sharing a bed with Abel was nothing new. Rylie had slept with him every night that they were in the forest by the Haven, so she had gotten used to his warm, sprawling body taking up their sleeping bag. It was like snuggling with a really big teddy bear—not that she would ever tell him that. Being called a teddy bear probably would have wounded his manly pride.
For a few hours, she drifted in blissful, restful nothingness, where there were no worries or visiting mothers. But then morning came. Morning always came, sooner or later.
Rylie was the first out of bed, for once. Abel reclined against the pillows with his arms behind his head. The blanket pooled in his lap to bare the bricks of muscle down his chest and abs. The heat of his gaze felt like hands traveling over her body as she dressed.
She was blush
ing. That had to be the stupidest thing ever—being that intimate with someone, spending the night with them, and still blushing in the morning. The flush made the skin on her chest turn pink.
Shimmying into her underwear, Rylie bent to search for her bra. A smile played over Abel’s lips.
“Keep moving like that, I’m going to make us late to the airport,” he said.
She bit her bottom lip and tried not to dissolve into a puddle of embarrassment. “I’m not taking you to the airport with me. I’m going alone.”
His smile faltered—a tiny crack in his confidence. The momentary vulnerability that she glimpsed in him was heartbreakingly endearing. Rylie was tempted to jump on him and tell him, “Yes, I’m yours, come with me.” Anything to bring the swagger back. Only the thought of her mother leaving airport security and seeing them there, together, held Rylie at bay.
It took him a minute to put his shields back in place, concealing his hurt. The lazy smile returned. “No matter what’s up with your mom, you’re going to want me at the airport,” he said. “Security’s been watching for preternaturals. If shit gets real, I should have your back.”
“I’m not trying to get through security. It won’t be any problem. I’ll just pick my mom up, get in the car, and go.”
“The Union’s crawling over those kinds of places.”
“They won’t bother me. I promise,” Rylie said. She kicked her dress from the night before into the closet, then grabbed a fresh pair of jeans and shirt. The jeans were huge on her—they must have been Summer’s. God, where had Summer slept the night before? Having to explain the locked door was going to be embarrassing.
Abandoning the jeans, Rylie found a skirt that actually fit, then headed for the door.
Abel pounced.
He was lightning-fast, but Rylie’s reflexes were good enough that she could have stopped him if she wanted to. Which she didn’t. He flattened her to the wall, pinning her wrists above her head, and the weight of his body evoked such memories that she was tempted to never leave the room at all.
“Maybe I won’t give you a choice,” he said, nipping her throat. It pinched hard, maybe hard enough to draw blood. “Maybe I’ll follow you there. Hunt you down.”
The idea was far too appealing to Rylie’s wolf.
“Don’t forget who’s Alpha here,” she said breathlessly, but it didn’t sound very convincing.
Abel sank his teeth into her shoulder gently. She was still bruised from his last love bites, so it didn’t take much pressure to make her abs clench. If not for his grip, she would have fallen over. “I’m thinking I never want to let you out of my sight again.”
Rylie caught sight of the clock around his arms. “I have to go, Abel,” she said, squirming free of his grip.
He caught her wrists again. This time, she didn’t ask nicely—she pushed.
It was probably harder than she intended. He flew across the room and landed on the bed. One of the legs cracked, buckling under him.
Abel looked so surprised that she couldn’t help but laugh.
“I need to handle Jessica alone. Okay? Once I get through this morning, I promise I’ll introduce you.” Rylie stuffed her feet into a pair of Gwyn’s oversized cowboy boots.
“Seems I don’t have much of a choice,” he said, glowering from among the pillows.
She stooped to brush her lips over his cheek. Abel turned his head and caught her mouth with a lingering kiss instead.
But, thankfully, he didn’t get up when she backed away from him, cheeks aflame again.
“Love you,” Rylie said. “I really do.”
He didn’t reply, but he didn’t have to. His face said enough.
FOUR
THE MORE TIME that Rylie spent as a werewolf, the more that she found human places unpleasant. From the moment she hit the onramp for the freeway, a growing panic threatened to overwhelm her. The wolf didn’t like being trapped in a metal box while other metal boxes zoomed around her. Her very human hands were clenched tight on the steering wheel while her heart thudded against her breastbone.
Finding parking in the airport garage was a whole new kind of difficult. Her brain was organized to find its way through labyrinthine forests and long grasses in search of prey. It couldn’t make sense of the painted lines on the ground, the different levels, the numbers on the walls.
Rylie ended up driving to the top floor and parking where it was empty. She got out to find that she had angled her car across two spots, far enough to the right to make a third equally unusable.
“Sorry,” she said to nobody in particular.
At least she was right next to the stairs. She could head straight down to the pedestrian bridge without trying to navigate the parking garage on foot.
Rylie had become inured to the “We Report Preternaturals” signs that marked most local businesses now, but there was no preparing for the signs that greeted her at the airport. The first of them started to show up on the pedestrian bridge—warnings that preternaturals weren’t allowed to board airplanes without filing itineraries with the OPA.
The automatic doors had signs on them, too. These ones threatened “Violators of OPA Law May be Shot On Sight.” Cheerful.
Once inside the airport, Rylie was met by an overwhelming tangle of odors. She found it easy to pick out which people had already come off of a flight, and which ones were still waiting to board, just by following the stale smell of recycled air and sweat.
Rylie picked up the scent of coffee and trailed it to a first-floor cafe. She had to rub her eyes in order to read the illuminated clock on the wall. In her rush to escape Abel’s bed, she had managed to arrive at the airport at six-fifteen in the morning. Her mom wouldn’t even be there for forty-five minutes. Plenty of time for coffee.
“Medium cappuccino,” she said, digging in her back pocket for her wallet.
“Any syrup?” asked the barista.
She pulled a face. “No.”
Rylie paid with a ten dollar bill and almost dropped the change into the tip box—until she saw the “We Report Preternaturals” sign taped to the back of the cash register. She returned the money to her wallet instead.
She wandered through the airport in search of the C gate, sipping her cappuccino. After seeing all of the threatening signs, it didn’t taste very good at all.
Rylie located the security checkpoint, which she couldn’t enter without a ticket. Or a travel itinerary, she thought with an unpleasant twist to her stomach. She prowled around in search of a nearby bench, thinking that she could catch a quick cat nap before her mom arrived.
A scream drew her attention to the security checkpoint.
There were so many milling bodies and commotion that Rylie couldn’t see who was crying out. But the scream immediately ratcheted her adrenaline to eleven, making the hair on her arms stand on end.
That wasn’t a human noise.
The chaos drew Rylie’s wolf forward. She dropped her cappuccino in a trash bin.
More people were shouting now, and there was running. A woman shot past her, ramming into Rylie’s shoulder hard enough to make her stumble. A man followed, and then two more people.
She heard one clear voice through all the shouting: “It’s one of those things!”
The crowd parted enough for Rylie to see.
A man was standing in the body scanner, frozen with fear. But he wasn’t a human man. Black hair fell loose around his shoulders, framing a pale face, and his hands—his hands—were semi-transparent, baring the skeleton through the skin. Rylie picked out a chilling smell, like shedding snakes.
The last time that she had encountered that smell and seen someone lose their skin, it had been a demon—something that Seth called a megaira. This man didn’t look like the megaira, but he was almost surely a demon. Something about the scanner must have disrupted his energies.
A demon.
And security had seen him.
Rylie was rooted to the spot as people ran past her. The TSA agents h
ad drawn Tasers and circled around the scanner, blocking all of the demon’s exits. They didn’t have guns, but that was probably better—shooting at demons had never seemed to do much good anyway.
“Help me,” he pleaded, eyes wild. “Please, just let me go!”
Even when panicked, his voice was strangely seductive. It brought to mind Abel’s mouth between Rylie’s legs, his body moving inside hers, their gasps as they worked against one another. Rylie shook her head to clear it.
Apparently, she wasn’t the only one affected. The security guards wavered. Most of them dropped their Tasers.
One of them fired.
Spikes latched onto the demon’s shirt, and electricity lanced down the wire. He screamed again as his skin flashed, his hair flickered, and his skeleton collapsed to the ground.
They were killing him.
A man with a scraggly gray beard grabbed her arm. “What are you doing standing around? Run!”
Being touched with her adrenaline running so high was bad. Very bad. Rylie didn’t even think before flashing her teeth at him and growling.
He dropped her arm and stepped back.
“Holy shit,” he said. “You’re one of them.”
Rylie’s hand flew to cover her mouth, but too late. He had already seen her reaction. She didn’t have fangs yet, but her teeth were loosening in her skull, and blood slicked her canines.
“No, I’m not—” she began, lisping around her loosening teeth.
“There’s another one here!” the man shouted, pointing at her.
Rylie backed away slowly, struggling to maintain her form. Her fingernails were coming undone, too. A few more seconds of this kind of panic, and she’d be fanged and clawed and impossible to pass as a normal human.
The crowd had dissipated from the area around the security checkpoint. There was nowhere to hide.
The captive demon’s power rippled over her again, more powerful than before. Her mind flooded with overtly sexual memories. Not just the last night with Abel—but the first time that they’d had sex, and the last time she’d slept with Seth, and every time before that. The mental images of naked bodies overwhelmed her. It was too much—scary, rather than sexy.
