Stepping aside, I held my breath as she passed so her rose scent wouldn’t fog my brain when I needed it running at full capacity. She wandered into the middle of the living room and looked around slowly before turning back to me.
“Where is everyone?”
I took my time closing the front door before answering. “Wes is on patrol and Ma’s out back. You wanna say hi?”
Please say no.
Please say no.
Please say no.
“I’ll talk to her later if that’s okay.”
I kept the relieved sigh as quiet as possible. “Okay. Let’s go to my room.”
I heard her gulp, but she followed me down the hall to the room I’d occupied for the past eight months. She walked in after me and I closed the door behind us, instantly regretting the decision.
Because I had Callie in a room alone with a bed and suddenly, all the blood in my body rushed between my legs. It took all my reasonable thoughts and replaced them with fantasies.
Callie walked cautiously around the room, her eyes taking in every little detail, although there wasn’t much to see. I hadn’t personalized this room because it had just been a place for me to sleep.
“I’ve never been in here before,” she said, breaking the tense silence.
“I didn’t want you in here,” I said, my voice sounding much gruffer than I’d intended.
She looked over her shoulder at me and said, “Oh.”
There was so much disappointment and sadness in that single syllable, I rushed to explain myself better.
“I knew if I had you in my room, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands to myself. And since most of the time you were in this house, we were just friends, that wouldn’t have been cool, so I kept you out.”
Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open slightly before she said that same little word again. “Oh.”
Thankfully, this time it lacked the melancholy the last one was full of.
I watched her carefully as my hands began to shake with the exertion of not reaching out to her and my chest began to ache at the loss. Suddenly, I knew I couldn’t do this.
I growled softly and grabbed her hand before dragging her through the room and out the door. “I can’t do this here. Let’s go.”
She let me pull her down the hallway and through the house without saying a word. Just before I walked out the front door, I yelled over my shoulder, “I’ll be back, Ma.”
I heard her yell something but didn’t bother responding again. My thoughts were on the woman whose small hand was in mine for the first time in weeks and nothing else.
Not caring who was around to see, I towed Callie behind me as I hurried around the house and into the woods. She kept up easily as I led us deeper into the forest, back to a place I’d found a while ago.
When we arrived at the outcropping of rocks, I finally released her hand, mine tingling at the loss of contact. I motioned to a flat boulder that doubled as a chair, but she shook her head. “I think I need to stand for this.”
And I felt like I needed to sit.
I took the makeshift seat, placing my palms on my thighs, my heart thumping in my throat as I watched her. She looked at everything but me. The ground, the trees, the canopy above us, her shaking hands, all while I waited impatiently.
Finally, she released a deep breath and looked in my direction. “I thought up a whole speech on the way down here, but now I’ve forgotten it.”
I waited and waited, but when she didn’t say anything else, I felt like I needed to speak up. “Callie, it’s just me. You know you can tell me anything.”
She nodded, her head bobbing on her neck over and over again before she squeezed her eyes closed and took a deep breath. Then another. Finally, she opened those beautiful pale blue eyes and looked right at me.
“I’m sorry.”
Those two words rang out in the space between us. I let them settle as I waited for her to keep going.
She rubbed her lips together and started again. “I’m sorry I made you keep us a secret. I’m sorry I pushed you away. I’m sorry I made you feel like I was embarrassed of you because nothing could be further from the truth. You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I was lucky to be with you. Lucky that you picked the bookworm who wears boys’ clothes day in and day out and forgets to brush her hair most of the time,” she said before looking away.
My heart beat erratically in my chest as I watched her, perched on the edge of my seat, wondering if I was dreaming. Or maybe hallucinating. Because this couldn’t be real. She couldn’t be saying these things to me.
She took another deep, deep breath and met my gaze again. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I loved you when you asked me to. The only excuse I have is I was scared. Of you. Of me. Of us. Of this thing between us,” she said, waving a hand at the space dividing us. “But even though I’m still scared, I can’t go another minute without you knowing how I really feel. I can’t toss and turn another night alone in my bed knowing you could be in it with me if I’d just get over myself.”
She held her arms out for a moment before letting them fall against her thighs. “So, this is me, telling you I was wrong and that I’m sorry and that I love you more than I could ever put into words. This is me begging you to give me another chance. This is me telling you I don’t want to face another day without you. This is me hoping there’s still some part of you that loves me back.”
Chapter 36
Wyatt
“What the hell did you just say?”
At some point, I’d climbed to my feet, but I didn’t remember when. I took a cautious step toward her, worried if I moved too fast, she’d run away. Or disappear. Or maybe I’d wake up and this would all be some kind of sick, fucked up dream.
She rubbed her lips together again. “I’m sorry?”
I took another step closer. “No. The other thing.”
She looked away for a moment before meeting my gaze again. “I was wrong?”
“Try again,” I said, closing the distance between us some more.
When I was within reaching distance, she blew out a deep breath, stared right into my eyes, and said, “I love you?”
Holy shit.
I reached shaky hands out to grasp her hips and drag her closer to me because I couldn’t make my feet work anymore. “That’s it,” I rasped. I dug my fingers into her and ducked my head closer. “Say it one more time.”
The corner of her pink lips curled into the smallest smile. “I love you,” she whispered.
I closed my eyes and let a stuttering breath out of my straining lungs. When I opened them again, she was still there. She was still between my hands. She was still smiling at me.
I didn’t want to ask my next question, but I had to. I needed to know. My heart needed permission to burst in my chest. “Do you mean it? You really love me?”
Her smile grew on her beautiful face as she reached up and cupped my whiskered jaw. “Yes. I mean it. I really love you. And I have for so long–I was just scared,” she admitted, her voice growing small.
I grasped her face between both my hands and brought my lips to hers. This kiss wasn’t gentle. It was hungry and brutal and full of all the pain we’d felt while we’d been apart. This kiss made up for all the kisses we’d missed.
When I finally pulled away, I was breathless, but it didn’t stop me from kissing that birthmark next to her perfect lips and trailing my mouth down her neck.
She gasped, and it only spurred me on. “I thought you were mad at me,” she said, her voice trembling.
I shook my head, my lips trailing across her erratic pulse. “No, love. I wasn’t mad. I was sad.”
She grabbed my shoulders and dug her nails in as I sucked on the delicate skin of her throat. “But you wouldn’t even look at me the other day after the enforcer meeting. And at the office, you were mean to me.”
I winced as a layer of shame coated my insides. Pulling away, I kept her face between my hands and made sure she was focused on
me before I spoke. “I was sad, love,” I said again. “I missed you so much and it hurt just looking at you. I was doing what I had to do to get over you. I thought we were done for good.”
“I did too,” I said softly.
I kissed her forehead before pulling back again. “If I’d known you loved me, I never would have given up.”
She smiled sweetly and my heart tripped over itself in my chest. “But I’ve always loved you, Wyatt. Always.”
I breathed in deeply, pulling her into my lungs, into my soul, where she belonged. Where I’d never let her leave again.
“You realize you’re never getting rid of me again, right? I’ll never let you go now I know you love me.”
She smiled and reached up to kiss the tip of my chin. “That works for me.”
Reality set in as my heart grew in my chest, pushing the other organs out of its way and thumping so loudly, it was almost deafening.
She loved me.
She fucking loved me.
I swore in that moment, that I’d spend the rest of my life earning that love. That I’d never let her go. That I’d never walk away again, no matter how bad things got, or what I thought she wanted. I loved her and she loved me, and the rest we could figure out.
I dragged her lips to mine and kissed her like I’d been starving. Like all I needed was her to survive, which wasn’t far from the truth. I wrapped my arms around her waist, tugging her shirt up so I could feel her silky skin beneath my fingertips.
I walked us backward until my heels bumped into the rock chair and I took a seat, pulling her onto my lap. Our mouths stayed fused together as I grabbed each side of her flannel shirt and ripped it apart, making buttons fly everywhere. She gasped and inched closer, her sexy little ass nuzzling my dick and making me so hard, I swore I’d tear through my jeans.
I split her bra in half next, my hungry hands filling themselves with her tits as she gasped against my mouth. She raked her fingernails down my back and grabbed the hem of my shirt to pull it over my head. My lips only left hers for a brief second before they met again and that fire between us ignited into an inferno.
Both our hands blindly tugged and pulled at our clothes until there was nothing between us, our heated bodies skin to skin. I’d managed to swipe a condom out of my pants before she tore them off me and I slid it on quickly before she lifted her hips and fit me inside her in one swift motion.
“Fuck, Callie,” I moaned as she enveloped me, her insides hot and wet. She gasped as I bottomed out inside her, her body writhing with a shiver before she started to move.
I held onto her hips as they rose and fell on my lap, driving the both of us higher than we’d ever been before. I didn’t know what made this time different, but it was.
Deeper.
Fuller.
Harder.
Faster.
It was so much more than anything I’d ever felt before and I knew it wouldn’t be long before we both fell apart at the seams.
Her movements got wilder as her fingernails dug into my skin and her kiss turned feral. I helped her along, lifting her hips off me and slamming her back down onto my thighs with every thrust.
Finally, she gasped again and shuddered around me, whispering, “I love you. I love you. I love you,” over and over in my ear.
It was enough to send me spiraling as I gripped her thighs hard enough to bruise and emptied myself inside her.
She peppered soft kisses along my stubbled jaw as I fought to catch my breath. She was still whispering “I love you” against my skin as I eased myself out of her and pulled her against my chest.
“I love you too, Callie girl,” I breathed into her hair.
We sat like that for a few minutes, basking in the afterglow and regaining our equilibrium. Finally, she placed a sweet kiss on my lips and sat up straight, her eyes zeroing in on her ruined bra and shirt. She shot me an exasperated look and I just smiled wide at her.
“What am I supposed to wear now, Carter?”
I shrugged and reached for my t-shirt. “You can wear this.”
She smiled softly and pulled it on over her head. It was about three sizes too big, but she looked so cute in it, I had to kiss her again.
Her smile grew as she turned her head and sniffed her shoulder. “I smell like you now.”
Something primitive inside me roared to life and my chest expanded with a deep breath. Not only would she smell like me because she was wearing my shirt, but also because we’d just made love. That did something to a man.
“Good,” I grunted.
She giggled and climbed off my lap to grab her jeans and pull them back on. “At least I got to keep my pants. There’s no way I could wear yours.”
I gave her a half-hearted laugh as my mind raced ahead to things I’d rather not think about but couldn’t avoid. Callie said she was sorry, and she’d been wrong to hide our relationship, but did that really mean she was ready to be with me out in the open? To tell her family? To tell the pack?
There was only one way to find out.
I cleared my throat as I slid my jeans up my legs and fastened them. “So, what happens now?”
She shrugged as she knotted my shirt at her waist. “What do you mean?”
I watched her as I cautiously constructed my next sentence. “I mean where do we go from here?”
She frowned in my direction. “Um, dinner? It’s getting kind of late.”
Okay. That was a start.
“We’re going to dinner together?”
She shrugged again. “I don’t see why not.”
“As a couple?”
“If that’s what you want.”
I raised a brow at her. “Is that what you want?”
She sighed and propped her hands on her hips. “Well, I’d kind of like to tell my family myself before the whole pack knows about it. I feel like it’ll go over better that way.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “When do you want to tell them?”
“Is tomorrow okay?”
I nodded slowly, still not sure if this was going to send her running or if she’d been serious about going public. “Tomorrow works for me.”
“In the meantime, we can tell your family tonight,” she offered, a small hopeful smile on her face.
I felt my answering grin pulling at my lips. “Yeah? You really wanna tell ‘em?”
She rolled her eyes and closed the distance between us, her arms circling my waist and her head tilting back to look me in the eye. “I meant what I said, Wyatt. I’m all in.”
I wasted no time kissing those pretty pink lips of hers before wrapping an arm around her shoulders and heading back toward the house. “I think I should warn you about Ma.”
I felt Callie tense beneath my arm. “You don’t think she’ll be happy about this?”
I snorted. “I think she’s gonna lose her fuckin’ mind over this. She loves the shit out of you, Callie girl. You know that.”
Her smile was huge as she snuggled closer to me. “What about Wes?”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly as I thought about that one. “He’s got nothing against you, but he’s been cynical about us from the start.”
“Why?” she asked softly.
“You need to understand how we grew up. We were always treated differently because our mom was human. The fact that the alpha’s sister actually wants to be with me, a half-breed, is gonna be hard for him to wrap his head around.”
She shook her head. “I don’t care about that at all. Why would I?”
I shrugged and pulled her closer. “Everyone else in our lives always has. It’s all we’ve ever known.”
She sighed softly and threaded her fingers through mine where it hung over her shoulder. “Things are different here. And I don’t care who your parents are. I love you.”
I couldn’t help the stupid grin that spread across my face like wildfire. “I’ll never get sick of hearing you say that,” I told her quietly.
She kissed my hand an
d we spent the rest of the short walk in comfortable silence as we basked in each other’s presence. The time we’d spent apart had felt more like two years than two weeks, and I was looking forward to making up for all the time we’d lost.
We walked through my front door, my arm still around her shoulders. “Hey, Ma. We’re home!”
I waited for a response, but when none came, I frowned into the quiet house. Straining my ears, I listened for her heartbeat, but that was absent too.
Dread crept through my veins as I called out again, “Ma!”
No answer.
I pulled away from Callie and first checked the backyard but found it empty. Next, I searched her bedroom and the bathroom, but she wasn’t there either. For good measure, I looked in my room and Wes’ room, but they were just as void of life as the rest of the house.
The panic was rising in my throat as I raced back to the living room.
“She’s not here,” I told Callie.
She frowned at me as I started pacing the living room floor. “Is there somewhere she would have gone?” she asked calmly.
“No! She never goes anywhere. Why would she have left the house? Where would she go? She barely knows anyone here yet. Do you think she went up to the lodge?”
She shrugged as she pulled her cell from her pocket. “I’ll call Evey and have her check.”
I nodded, my head moving too fast. “I’ll call Wes. See if he’s heard from her.”
My hands shook as I dialed my brother’s number, every possibly scenario running through my head.
What if something happened to her?
What if someone took her?
What if someone hurt her?
I’d never be able to forgive myself.
Wes’ phone rang and rang, and just as my anxiety was reaching peak levels and I thought I’d throw up, there was a knock on the door. I stormed across the room and whipped it open to find Doc Monroe there.
“Hey, Wyatt. Didn’t see you come back. I’ve got your mom over at my place if you’re looking for her.”
The relief was instant and so powerful, it knocked me back a step. A small hand slipped into mine, squeezing tight, and I held on with everything I had left in me.
Chasing Callie (Southern Werewolf Sisters Book 1) Page 30
