by J. L. Wilder
My son.
I have a son?
I have a son with Haley?
It was the one thing he had spent so long wishing for, and the one thing he had given up all hope of ever achieving. And now she was telling him that it had happened after all, that he had had a son all along.
He followed her down the hall, trying to get his thoughts in order.
How could this be? And what did it mean for the future?
Haley was trailing after Valerie, who still looked as if she might like to take a swing at Ryker.
“He’s in his room,” she said, and Ryker could tell by the way she spoke that her teeth were gritted. “I saw the two of you coming up the lawn and sent him to wait there. I didn’t realize you were bringing Ryker to meet him. I thought he might have looked at the address I gave him and come here to finish us all off.”
“He’s not like that,” Haley said. “He’d never hurt anyone.”
Valerie laughed rather bitterly. “You sure have changed your tune,” she said. “Really, Haley? He’d never hurt anyone? After what he did to you?”
“It was a long time ago,” Haley said quietly.
“And you’re just ready to forget about it? Is that it?”
“Maybe I am,” she said. “If not forget, maybe I’m at least ready to put it behind me.”
“Putting it behind you is one thing. Involving Danny is—”
“Look, it’s my decision, Valerie,” Haley said rather sharply. “You know what I was thinking the whole time those grizzlies had me? I was thinking that Danny would be alone in the world.”
“He would have had me! You know I would have been there for him.”
“Of course I do,” Haley said, her tone a little gentler. “But he needs someone to show him what it is to be a dragon, Valerie. You can’t do that. He needs his father. If something happens to me, I want to know someone will be there for him.”
“And Ryker hasn’t already proved to you that he can’t be counted on for that?”
“Ryker never knew that we had a son,” Haley said. “I really think things would have been different if he had known that. The problems between us were because we couldn’t have a child.”
“After the way he treated you, he doesn’t deserve—”
“This isn’t about what he deserves.” For the first time, there was a bit of a snap in Haley’s voice, and Ryker was glad to hear it. “This isn’t about him at all, Valerie. This is about Danny and what he deserves. He deserves a father. He deserves to know where he comes from.”
Valerie was quiet.
“Look, I’m not taking him back,” Haley said quietly. “It’s not going to be like that. I just want him to know Danny. That’s all.”
They had come to a stop outside a plain wooden door. Valerie knocked. “Danny? Your mother’s home. Want to come out and say hi?”
A pause.
Then the door opened.
Ryker saw immediately why Haley hadn’t ever allowed him to come to her home before now. The boy standing in front of him looked exactly like him, although he had Haley’s bright green eyes instead of Ryker’s own brown color. Even more tellingly, it was clear that the child was a dragon. Ryker could sense it as powerfully as if it had been tattooed on his skin.
“Who are you?” he asked, staring suspiciously up at Ryker.
“Danny,” Haley said. “I want you to meet my friend Ryker. Come say hi to him.”
“Do I have to?” Danny asked.
Ryker’s stomach clenched.
“No,” Haley said. “Of course you don’t have to. But I hope you’ll think about it. He’s a really nice guy, and I’d like you to get to know him.”
“I was reading,” Danny said. “Valerie took Sarah and me to the bookstore and we each got to pick out two books.”
“Okay,” Haley said. “Later on, I want you to show me what you picked, okay?”
Danny nodded.
“Go ahead and get back to your book,” Haley said. “Come on out if you feel like you want to spend some time with us, though.”
Danny scrambled back into his room and shut the door behind him.
Haley sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said to Ryker. “He’ll get used to this.”
Valerie was watching them with a new sympathy in her eyes. “He’s really into that bedroom,” she said. “Both kids are. They’ve never had rooms of their own before. They think they’ve died and gone to heaven. I’ve barely been able to get them to come out for meals.”
“That makes sense,” Haley said.
“They’ve never had rooms of their own?” Ryker said.
Valerie shot him a look. “You saw the house I was living in before,” she said. “Where did you think the extra bedrooms were, exactly?”
He’d seen those shacks. But he’d never thought about it in terms of what it must be like for children to live there.
Even this house was tiny and kind of run down. He had expected that Haley would use his money to get something nice, not this dump.
Maybe she’ll be ready to move on soon.
He couldn’t hold back the image that came into his mind—himself as alpha of the clan, with his newfound son by his side.
Haley didn’t want to reunite with him. She’d said so. But if this place was the alternative...maybe she would change her mind.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
RYKER
“Valerie doesn’t want me here,” Ryker said.
“I want you here.” They were naked, and Haley was kissing her way down the length of his arm. “I feel safer with you here.”
“Hang on, Haley.” He hooked his hands under her arms and pulled her up so that they were face to face. “Shouldn’t we talk about this?”
“About what?”
“You said we weren’t getting back together.”
“We’re not.”
“So what’s with the...” He gestured to their naked bodies.
“I don’t know,” Haley admitted. “I haven’t gotten any in a long time, Ryker.”
“It hasn’t been since you left the clan, has it?”
“Not that long. But you know...when you’re the only dragon shifter in a community full of bears and wolves, and you’re raising a son by yourself, it’s kind of hard to have much of a social life. I’ve left Danny with Val once or twice and gone out with human men, but that’s about it.”
“So you want us to be friends with benefits?”
“Are we friends? I thought we were in a business arrangement.”
“Okay, so you want to fuck the boss.”
“Maybe I do,” she said. “It’s easy with you. There’s none of that complication that comes with getting to know a whole new body.”
“Okay,” he said. “But we’re not getting back together. Is that right?”
“That’s right.” She resumed kissing him.
“When did you get so bold?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?” She looked up at him.
“Setting the terms of our relationship like this,” he said. “That’s not something you would have done when we were married.”
“I was always happy with the terms you set when we were married,” she said. “There wasn’t any reason for me to push back about anything.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know. Now I don’t trust you as much.”
“You don’t trust me, but you still want to have sex with me?”
She sighed and sat back on her heels. “If it’s going to be a problem, Ryker, let me know. But I thought we had been having fun. We have, haven’t we?”
Her fingers were trailing up the inside of his thigh now. He struggled to focus.
“Yeah,” he said. “We’ve been having fun.”
Her hand curled around his cock and stroked him slowly. “We don’t really need to get into all this shit about trust and feelings,” she said. “Can’t we just keep having fun? We’re going to be pretending we’re mates for the next six months, after all.�
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“Yeah, but—” Ryker had never intended to ask the woman he found for the job to do this.
“But what?” Haley breathed, lowering her head so that her lips were inches away from him. She flicked her tongue out, moistening them.
Ryker felt faint. Everything he had been about to say seemed to slip right out of his head.
She took him into her mouth, humming with pleasure, and all he could think was that she was wrong. This wasn’t how it had been between them when they were married. It had never been this good. He’d never had the impression that she enjoyed going down on him quite this much.
But lately, she seemed like she couldn’t get enough.
Ryker ached to lay back and let her have her way with him, but it wasn’t going to be enough. Not this time. He wanted more. He wanted the weight of her in his arms, the heat of her body surrounding him, her breath and his mingling together—
He grabbed her and pulled her up. There was a wet pop as her mouth released him, and he groaned, missing her already. But it was only a moment that they would be apart, and then—
He rolled on top of her, forcing his knees between her hips to spread her legs apart. She gasped at the sudden shift in power between them.
His body trembled as he lined himself up, ready to take her, aching for it. “Yeah?” he managed.
She nodded frantically, her hands tugging at his hips.
With a quick thrust, he was inside her. He pressed his lips to hers and caught her cry, filling her mouth with his tongue to silence her. They had to be quiet.
She was wrong—but she was right, too. There was something familiar about her body. The chemistry between them had changed, somehow—it felt more powerful—but at the same time, this was like coming home. He knew how she would respond to his touch. He knew what she liked. He knew what pace to set to drive her wild, to bring her along slowly toward her orgasm without rushing her there.
And the shape of her. That was so familiar. He felt the swell of her breasts as she arched beneath him and realized that he had been comparing other women to her for the past ten years. In his search for the ideal woman, the ideal body, he had been looking for her all along.
Haley’s fingers were in his hair now. She was digging her heels into the bed so that she could lift her hips to fuck him, and she held his mouth firmly against hers, kissing him harder than he thought he had ever been kissed in his life.
I’m not going to last long.
And that was fine. They had six months ahead, after all. Six months of exploring her body, six months of long nights spent fucking her, six months of her hands, her mouth, her body—
And then he was coming, and she was shaking in his arms, and he wrapped himself around her and held onto her so tightly that for a moment, he forgot he wasn’t in love with her, that that part of their lives was behind them. For a moment, he forgot they were two separate bodies at all.
There was just heat and pleasure and the pure ecstasy of being joined, and nothing else mattered.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
RYKER
An hour later, they were still awake. They had found their way back into the bare minimum of pajamas—Haley wore a t-shirt and her panties, and Ryker was in his boxer briefs. Even though he was still completely spent from his orgasm, he could feel the heat between their bodies. It was like holding an unlit firework in his hand and knowing the potential that lay inside the moment he struck a match.
He looked over at her. Her eyes were closed, but he could tell she was still awake. She was smiling
“What are you thinking about?” he asked her.
“This is probably going to be the easiest money I ever made,” she said.
“The sex isn’t part of the job,” he said. “I don’t pay for sex.”
“I don’t sell sex,” she said, opening her eyes and giving him a mock glare. “It’s a nice perk for both of us, that’s all.”
He nodded. “I was thinking,” he said.
“About what?”
“About Danny.”
“Oh.” She sat up, and Ryker could tell that she had been anticipating this conversation. “Listen, about today...I kind of knew it would be like that when he first met you. Give him some time. He’ll warm up to you when he sees that I don’t actually hate you.”
“You don’t hate me?”
“Don’t push it,” she said, grinning.
“Well, okay,” he said. “I was thinking, though...you know what this means?”
“What what means?”
“I actually do have a son. An heir.”
The smile dropped off her face. “No, Ryker.”
“Just hear me out,” he said. “The reason Shane became alpha was that I was unmated without an heir. He is mated, but he doesn’t have any children. So the fact that I have a kid means my claim to the alpha role beats his hands down.”
“Your claim beats his anyway,” Haley said. “You have a mate now.”
“A mate everyone thinks is infertile. We’re back at square one.”
“You told me we were going to tell them I was pregnant, though. What happened to that plan?”
“It’s so much more airtight if we can produce an actual kid!” Ryker said. “Nobody could accuse me of lying when the kid’s standing right there. And it’s not as if anybody could look at that boy and say he wasn’t mine. He looks just like me.”
“My son isn’t going to be any part of this,” Haley said firmly.
“Our son,” Ryker countered.
She sat up in bed and moved away from him, her face twisted into an expression of sudden fury. “No,” she said. “My son. Be clear about this, Ryker. I’m willing to allow you to know him because I think it’s what’s best for him. But I’m still his mother. I’m the one who raised him for ten years. I’m the only parent he’s ever known. You don’t get to cut in half through the parenting job and be an equal decision-maker in his life. That’s not how this is going to work.”
“That’s not fair, Haley,” Ryker said. “I would have been there. You didn’t tell me you were pregnant.”
“Do I need to remind you why I never told you that?” she asked.
He sighed. “No,” he said. “I don’t want to get into it again. We’ve been getting along so well.”
She nodded. “I don’t want that either.”
“And I’m not trying to question your parenting. At all. I promise I’m not doing that,” he said. “Of course you’re the primary parent.”
“That’s right,” she said.
“But I would have thought you’d be happy about this,” he said. “Think about what I’m suggesting. You and Danny could come back and live with the clan full time. It wouldn’t be a ruse anymore.
“You don’t seriously think I’d want to go back and live with the clan, do you?” she asked. “I don’t even want to go back and live with you full time, Ryker.”
“You don’t want to live here,” Ryker said.
She raised her eyebrows. “No?”
“Our home is so much nicer than this.”
“You don’t understand anything,” she said.
“What don’t I understand?”
“Ryker, this place is the first home I’ve ever had that’s been mine,” she said. “Don’t you get that? No one can kick me out of this house. It doesn’t matter that it’s smaller than yours. I own it. I make the decisions here. For the first time in my life, I’m actually in charge of the way things are going for me.”
Fuck. I really did a number on her.
Her voice softened slightly. “Look, I get it,” she said. “Your plan falls together more neatly if you can produce a real son.”
“I’m not just using him,” Ryker said. “You know I’ve always wanted to raise a son of my own to be the next alpha of the clan.”
“Yeah, I know that,” Haley said. “But it’s not my son. I’m sorry. I know having him solves all your problems, but that clan has never brought me anything but pain and heartache. I just don
’t want him having anything to do with it. I’m glad for you to get to know Danny—but away from all of that. I don’t want him involved. We can still do the plan the way you originally set it up, with me pretending to be pregnant. But that’s all.”
“I’m not going to make him do anything,” Ryker said. “But he is my son, Haley. I’m not going to try to take him from you or make decisions on his behalf. But his existence gives me the rightful claim to the alpha position. For the sake of the clan, people need to know he exists.”
“No,” Haley said. “I don’t care about the clan. I care about my child. And that’s my final answer. He’s not getting involved in this. Absolutely not.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
RYKER
Ryker sat on the porch, staring up at the sky.
He knew he was inviting unpleasantness by being out here. It wasn’t a good idea to walk away from Haley so soon after the two of them had had an argument. She hadn’t changed that much. She’d be inside right now, he was sure, stewing over it, and when Ryker went back in, they’d have to go over it all again.
But he couldn’t stand to be around her right now. It was just so completely unfair.
He had done wrong by her. He knew that. He admitted to it, and he was sorry. But this was more punishment than he deserved.
After all this time, I learn that I’ve had a son all along, he thought bitterly, and I’m not going to be allowed to have anything to do with him.
He couldn’t blame the boy for his hesitation. After all, Danny didn’t really know who Ryker was. He’d been told that he was meeting a friend of his mother’s, but what was a ten-year-old boy supposed to do with that? He didn’t know Ryker was his dad. He’d never even known what it was to have a father.
But Haley knew how to manage a situation like this. Haley knew how to help her kid grow used to a father’s presence in his life.
She’s gotten too independent. Too high on herself. She doesn’t think she has to listen to anybody anymore. He’d been noticing it since she had come back into his life. Until now, it hadn’t been much more than a curiosity, an interesting development in her personality. But if it was going to keep him away from his son, he didn’t know if he could tolerate it.
