by Amanda LeMay
My mother stepped back a pace and lowered her head in a small nod as her gaze roamed up and down Gunner’s body. A deep, possessive growl escaped from between my lips.
Mine.
Her gaze settled on me once again. “You think this male loves you?” She shook her head and smiled. “Oh my poor, poor innocent daughter. Males don’t love. Especially Alphas. They breed. They rut, and they fuck, and they leave their seed in every female who will open her legs to them. They never love. They only possess. You mean no more to him than his house or his horses or his cattle. You are a possession he wishes to take from another. And when he’s done using you for pleasure, he’ll cast you aside and then where will you go? Rule may have forgiven your earlier transgressions but if you choose to stay with this male, you will regret it forever.”
Each word she spit with venom before she caught herself. And even though I knew it was a lie, she believed every word she said. Closing her eyes, she sighed as if she had regained her composure.
“Come home to your pack. Come home now and avoid the heartache in store for you.”
“Mother, you really don’t know the lies Rule has told. You’ve lived under Rule for so long, you have no idea how other Alphas behave. How a real pack works. They’re not like Rule would have you believe. They take care of each other. They love each other. They would never dream of leaving their offspring to a savage.”
My mother sighed again and clasped her hands in front of herself, trying to appear patient and loving. She didn’t fool me for a moment.
“Your blood belongs to your pack. It lives in them as their blood lives in you. You will carry it with you always.”
“Do you know what I will carry with me always? This,” I pulled Gunner’s flannel shirt off my arms and yanked my camisole over my head. My bra came off and dangled in my hand as my mother glanced at the brands on my breasts. “This is what I’ll carry with me always, mother. Rule’s brand.”
She sighed and smiled, almost as if she were proud to see those Rs burned into me. “Simone, every wolf born to Rule’s pack carries his brand.” Her hands came up and smoothed over her own breasts, caressing them.
My stomach dropped and relocated somewhere south of my wobbly knees.
“You...” My own mother had been with Rule.
“Yes.” She practically purred. “Your blood is Rule’s blood. All the members in our pack belong to him through blood. He is a true Alpha, as Alphas were meant to be.”
“Oh, hell no.” Gunner growled. “No fucking way.”
My mother lifted her chin in order to look down her nose at him.
Gunner pulled me in closer. “It’s against our laws to follow the ancient ways.”
“The ancient ways?” I mumbled, still numb from the knowledge my mother had been through exactly what she’d led me into.
Gunner didn’t take his eyes from my mother when he spoke. “In ancient times, to increase a pack and keep it pure, a few Alphas forbid any other male to breed within the pack. They refused take a permanent mate, because she would keep the other females from coming into heat. Instead, every damn female in a pack bred only with the Alpha, didn’t matter how they were related—mother, daughter, sister, cousin.”
“Well, you do know our history,” my mother said.
“Yes, I do. I also know after so much inbreeding, serious defects started popping up, and other packs were forced to kill our own kind.”
“Inbreeding?” I sounded like a parrot, repeating words because my mind was too overwrought to put together sentences. I looked up into Gunner’s face—waited for him to explain—waited for him to give me something to grab on to, to unscramble my mind.
“Obviously, Rule’s blood is so pure, birth defects do not happen under his leadership.”
“Defects are not always obvious, not always something you can see on the outside, like male sterility, and mental illness, and higher risk of contracting human diseases. The stuff you could see on the outside was pretty obvious, like albinism and malformed limbs or even losing the ability to shift into our wolf form.” Gunner lowered his voice. “Look into your daughter’s eyes and tell me what you see.” Gunner turned and gazed down at me. “Those eyes...” Even though his eyes twinkled, they seemed sad. “Yes, they’re unique and absolutely beautiful, but they’re also a result of Rule’s seed dominating the gene pool.”
“My eyes?” What was he saying?
Are my eyes a birth defect? A genetic mutation passed down from my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother?
“Wait! Stop!” I fought the truth beating at my brain. I didn’t want to believe what I’d heard. The thought of who and what Rule might be to me made my stomach twist violently again, until the words burst out of my mouth. “Rule is my father?”
“Yes.” My mother’s smile could not have been any bigger. “He is your father, your grandfather, and your great-grandfather. You belong to him in all ways and he will sire your offspring and they, too, will inherit our amazing eyes.”
“No.” I backed away as my head spun and my stomach twisted. “No. No.”
Gunner moved in front of me, blocking my view, and it was just fine with me. As long as I looked into my mother’s face, I couldn’t breathe.
“You can’t keep her. You have no right to her. She is his blood. Rule will come for her.”
Gunner’s Alpha power exploded outward like a bomb. His chest, shoulders and back swelled. His cotton shirt tightened, then tore at the seams as his muscles bulged beneath the thin fabric. His ears elongated as his hair grew thicker, longer. A feral growl erupted from inside him as he stared down my mother and forced her back toward the waiting limo.
“Leave. Now. Do not come back. Ever.”
“Simone is my daughter. I have every right to—”
“You have no rights to her!” Gunner roared. “None! You gave up your rights the second you gave her to that fucking animal.”
“You will regret your decision, Simone.”
I didn’t look at her as I whispered, “Never.”
I heard her walk away, the limo doors shut, then the car slowly pulled away from the house. Gunner turned toward me and threaded his fingers through his hair as it receded back into place. I had never seen canines so long or so deadly as the ones still filling his mouth. I’d never seen an Alpha hold a partial shift and still stand upright and speak.
“I need a damn drink.” He lifted the flannel shirt from the porch and held it up for me. I slipped my arms inside.
My fingers shook so badly I couldn’t match a single button up to a buttonhole, so I bunched the fabric in my fists.
Gunner was going to have to burn this shirt once I finished with it. He’d never get my dirt off of it. And that’s what I was. Dirt. Dirty. Soiled down to my bones. I was the hideous result of generation after generation of incest. Rule had done this on purpose; bred his pack of perfect wolves.
Rule Arawn was insane. He had to be.
Please let me wake up and find this is all some horrid nightmare.
Everything except Gunner. He might be part of my twisted dream, but he was the only thing keeping me grounded. Still, after the bomb my mother had dropped, I doubted he would want much to do with me, outside of finishing the tribunal. He was a good male. He would do that for me. And afterward, I’d be on my own.
“Here, let me take care of that.” Gunner’s fingers worked slowly with each button.
I looked up at him, ready to see the disgust I felt reflected in his eyes, ready to apologize for my mother’s behavior, ready to tell him that once the tribunal was over, I would not cause his pack any more disruption. Once I saw the look on his face, I lost what I had planned to say. Gunner’s green eyes focused on my skin. His tongue slid out and licked his upper lip, wrapping around his canines as if he could taste my scent on the breeze.
The only thing I could hear was Gunner’s heavy breathing and I realized the other males had all disappeared.
“She was right about a couple of things.
” His anger receded with his canines. His fingers moved down to the next button. “I do want to possess you, Simone. I want to set my fangs to your body and scrape those scars from your flesh. I want to sink my teeth into your neck and hold you down while I rut, and fuck, and fill you over and over. I want to taste every inch of your body and mark you up good.” He buttoned the last button and shifted his gaze to my face. “But I want you to want me to do those things...and more.”
With those words, all my doubts about his feelings toward my disgusting family origins floated away. And, yes, I absolutely wanted all those things from him.
My hands shook even harder as my entire body shuddered from head to toe. “I think I need a drink first,” I whispered.
Gunner laughed and rubbed a hand over his face. “You bet, baby.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
GUNNER HANDED ME THE glass filled with something dark and red. I brought it to my lips and gulped it down like water. It was rich and spicy and tasted of ripe blackberries with a hint of smokiness. I set the empty glass on the bar.
“More, please.” The words came out on a shaky breath. “What is this? It’s wonderful.” I covered my mouth with my hand to silence the small burp that crept up on me. “Oh, excuse me.”
“Souzão.” He smiled and filled my glass again. “It’s from a winery here in Comfort. They make a great Cabernet Sauvignon, too. I think I’ve got a couple of bottles of that around here.”
A nervous laugh escaped my mouth. “That’s good to know. I think I’m going to need them.”
I drank the second glass more slowly, but still managed to drain it before he had taken even two sips from his glass.
“More, please.”
He took the glass, set it on the bar, but didn’t fill it.
“We need to talk.” He shrugged off his torn shirt, balled it up, and threw it into a small wastebasket next to his big desk.
“I don’t want to talk.” My cheeks tingled with heat that seemed to slide down the length of my body. “What I want to do has nothing to do with talking.” What I wanted to do was tear the rest of Gunner’s clothing off.
His eyes twinkled as his mouth curved in a sly smile. He took a sip of his wine, set the glass down, and wiped his hand over his goatee.
He’d said he wanted me. Well, I’d given him the go-ahead.
“Simone, your mother just dumped a truckload of horseshit on you out there. If what she said is true, you need to understand what that means for your pack.”
“They are no longer my pack. I’m never going back there.” I reached for the bottle to pour myself another glass. Gunner’s soft touch stopped me.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. And yeah, you are never going back there. But she—”
“She can’t hurt me. Rule can’t hurt me. I won’t let them. Not again.”
His fingers wrapped around mine. “There’s one problem with that.” His other hand drifted up my arm, over my shoulder to wrap around the back of my neck. “You’re not angry enough to bounce that shit off your sweet, little heart. Tribunal gets here, you’re gonna face him and it’s gonna hurt. You’re locking it all down. Saying you’re okay.”
“I am okay.”
If I say it enough, believe it enough, hold it close enough, it will be true.
His eyes softened as he took a deep breath. His outward sigh blew warm across my face. He stood there, gazing into my eyes as if he couldn’t make up his mind if he should continue or give up and accept that I was okay. His pulse raced through his palms. I heard the deep thumping of his heart, smelled that wonderful scent that came off him.
“Gunner, are you going to kiss me or pour me another glass of wine? One way or the other, you have to make a move. And I’ll tell you right now, I want both. The former way more than the latter, but if you’re not ready to kiss me and keep on kissing me—because once we start, I don’t think I’ll want to stop for quite a while—then I’ll gladly take another glass of wine. Full. Like, surface-tension full.”
A smile spread across his mouth and touched every inch of his face. “Seducing you while you’re drunk wouldn’t be right.”
Still, he didn’t take me in his arms. He didn’t kiss me. He didn’t turn on his Alpha powers of persuasion to try and coax me into letting him closer. He didn’t need to. I wanted him. More than anything. I glanced between us and saw the evidence of his arousal in the bulge of his jeans. Smelled his hunger and desire in the air.
More heat rose in my face, tingled around my mouth, spread down my neck and into my breasts, into my belly, and flashed hot between my legs. It wasn’t the two glasses of wine I’d downed, but something so much more.
Gunner’s nostrils flared.
“Come on, Gun.” I leaned in closer. “I’m not drunk.”
His full lips met mine. Gently, tenderly. His soft goatee tickled my skin. I wanted his mouth all over my body. His hand tightened around my neck, his thumb moved up under my jaw and held me in place as his lips moved lightly over mine. He broke the kiss and we stood gazing into each other’s eyes. My breath stuttered in and out of my lungs.
“Baby,” he whispered, his eyes still locked on mine. “I want you sleepin’ in my bed tonight. I want to wake up with you next to me. I want to wake up to those beautiful eyes of yours.”
Right. My eyes. My freakishly, possibly incest-created, two-toned eyes. “Can I ask you a question?”
He must have sensed the change in my mood. Slowly, his hands slipped away from me and he took a small step back. He closed his fingers around the stem of his wine glass.
“Anything, baby.”
“This thing with my eyes...it’s a genetic mutation?”
“Yeah, I think so.” He spun the wine glass between his finger and thumb. “It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, though. Not to me.”
“You don’t care about my heritage? About where I came from?”
“I don’t give a flying fuck who your parents are, if that’s what you are worrying about.”
Truth.
But I kept my gaze locked on his, searching for some little flinch that might give him away—might let me know he hadn’t really taken the time to think about the severely twisted genes running throughout my body. He hadn’t given me any indication he had second thoughts. At least not yet.
“Do you want to possess me?”
His eyes seemed to go dark. “Yeah, I do.” He tipped his wine glass and took another drink.
“Do you want to add me to your long list of lovers?”
“No, I do not.” He drained his glass and set it aside next to mine. “And that’s four questions.”
No, I do not.
Truth.
My heart clenched. “You...don’t?”
He walked across the room, moving from window to window, pulling a cord to release the dark wooden blinds and let them fall into place, blocking out the sun.
No, I do not.
I tried to catch my breath.
“There’s something you need to know. Yes, I was an active Breeder before I mated and became an Alpha. Do you understand what that means?” He moved toward the office door, closed it, and turned the lock. “Probably not, since you don’t seem to know the first thing about your wolf heritage.” His hand swept up and turned off the lights, leaving only the small desk lamp to illuminate the darkness.
I swallowed past the lump that had formed in my throat, and gripped the edge of the desk.
No, I do not.
“You’ve had lots of lovers?” And that was okay. I was okay. I’d had a few lovers, if that’s what they were called.
“Not exactly.” He moved toward me, huge muscles all grace and power, rippling as he moved. “There is no collection. There is no long list of lovers. I’ve never even had a lover. Every time I had sex, it was to increase the pack. I bred, Simone. And yes, I rutted and fucked in my Breeder form and spread my seed all over kingdom come. And when it was time, I mated because it was expected of me, and I sired offspring from that m
ating.”
Truth.
The palm of his hand cupped my cheek. His thumb stroked over my lips as he gazed into my eyes. “And even though I’ve been mated, I’ve never made love. I’ve never closed my lips around a female’s breast. I’ve never tasted the wetness between a female’s thighs or felt her come on my tongue. My hands have never touched a female the way I’m dying to touch you.”
Truth.
“The lamp—turn it off.” The request passed as a whisper through my trembling lips and in the next second, darkness enveloped us.
Slowly I began to unbutton the flannel shirt and once I reached the bottom, my breath hitched. I couldn’t make my hands pull the two sides apart. If he didn’t see my brands, everything would be okay.
I took Gunner’s forearms and led his hands beneath the flannel shirt to my breasts. “Please, touch me.”
His hands were warm and rough. He sighed when he lifted the weight of my breasts and gently squeezed.
“So soft. So soft.”
I wrapped my hand around his neck and led his mouth to mine. After he paid my lips attention, he moved his mouth across my cheek, over my jaw, my throat, my collarbone, then to the top of my breast, until his lips circled my nipple. His tongue brushed against me as his hand went behind my back and pulled me forward, into his open mouth. I slipped my fingers into his hair. His tongue gently flicked over my nipple.
My head fell back as pleasure shot straight from my breast to just below my belly.
“Yes.”
When I wanted to squeeze my thighs tighter together, Gunner spread them apart, wrapped them around his hips, and picked me up. He laid me on the leather couch. His mouth moved to my other breast as he ground his erection into my hip.
He groaned as if he were in pain. “Baby...”
“Gun...please, help me.” I needed to get my jeans off in the worst way. Reaching between us, I worked at the button, then the zipper, and started shoving them over my hips and in the process, my arm brushed against the rock-hard erection still hidden inside his jeans.
“Oh...fuck...” Breathing rapidly, he laid his forehead between my breasts.