He smoothed one hand around to my bare ass and held me even tighter to him. I could feel his arousal, and I ground myself against him, unable to help myself. Heat spread over my thighs. His other hand ran the curve of my breast, and I gasped when he pulled back. But only for an instant, long enough for him to drop his pants.
He entered me slowly, and I opened myself wider for him, loving how he filled me up.
“You make me happy, Aika,” he whispered and slid his tongue over my lower lip. He pulled out again and then drove into me again, hard enough to make the bed bang into the wall. “Only you.”
“You make me happy too,” I murmured. “You’re my favorite grumpy shifter.”
He chuckled into my hair as his hips moved faster. “I’ll show you grumpy.”
He didn’t show me grumpy, but he did show me just how fast he could bring me to the brink, and then push me over into an explosive, mind-numbing freefall. Twice.
While I was still soaring, my nerves still singing, he dropped his head to my chest and sucked one of my nipples into his mouth. His thrusts deepened, and he growled his release, the vibrations spreading out over my chest and curling between my legs to prolong my orgasm.
“Oh…Grady…” I drifted, and eventually my body went limp.
After a long while, I awoke on top of Grady, both his arms wrapped around me tight. I was so comfortable, my body so sore in the best way possible, that I didn’t want to move, but thirst and hunger beckoned me. Carefully, I unfolded myself from him and wrapped myself in one of the blankets on the bed. When I opened the door, Ribbons meowed and wound around my ankles.
“What are you doing awake?” I whispered.
The floorboards creaked across the hallway in front of Shay’s room, a deliberate sound so I’d know he was there.
“They’re all awake,” Thomas said. “Gibby and Shay are in the bathroom. They’re fine.”
“Good.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “And you?”
“Not as good as you,” he said, his voice rough and raw.
My body flushed with heat. Of course he knew what Grady and I had been doing, but I wouldn’t dare apologize for it. Or make a move to better cover my bare shoulders. I could feel his powerful gaze on me, stripping me naked no matter what I wore.
“And Sasha?”
“Asleep.”
I smiled. “You’re checking on her?”
Silence except for Sasha’s wheeze-squeaking from inside the open room, lost in her wolf pup dreams.
"She loves to be held and kissed right between the ears, you know. She'll melt in your hands every time." When he didn’t say anything, I continued. “Holding her feels…pure? Like she's collected all the love surrounding her and let it fill her until it seeps out into you.”
“She’s sleeping."
"She won't care if you hold her. Promise." I wasn’t so sure this was right, pushing him like this, but then I remembered what he’d told me—that he felt everything I did times ten. If that were true, or how it could be true, didn’t seem to matter, but I said just in case, “It would make me happy if you held her.”
After a long, long moment, I sensed him move into her room. I drifted in after him. She blinked herself awake slowly, and our eyesight joined. Large hands wrapped around her and lifted. We stared up at the scarred lines of Thomas's face and the rigid intensity of his gaze.
Sasha yawned. And then Thomas felt it, the power of holding Sasha, and I was lucky enough to witness the second it hit him. His mouth tugged up at one corner, and that single movement had a relaxing ripple effect across the rest of his face.
"You've got your mother's bad breath too." He chuckled then, all raw emotion and heartbreak and happiness, and he didn’t even try to hide it.
I smiled, too, my throat cinching itself shut.
Thomas leaned down, his handsome face closing in between her ears.
"Told you," I whispered.
"So you did." He laid Sasha back down, and she curled up in her crib and went back to sleep.
"She needs her alpha."
"And you?" He closed in, nothing but quiet strength and stealth, and tipped my chin up with his thumb, his fingers stroking my jaw. Our connection sparked, flaming the need I thought Grady had quenched. "What do you need?"
I found his lips, and he met my kiss hungrily, claiming all of me as his own.
One tug, and the blanket dropped. "Tell me."
"I need my wolves to be whole again."
His lips grazed over my jaw and down to my neck. His hands traced my body like he’d already memorized it. "Your wolves."
"Yes,” I breathed. “My wolves. You are mine, and I am yours."
“And you’ll join our pack?”
My eyes popped open wide. “What?”
His mouth moved back to mine and kissed me, his huge body pressing in closer. “You are ours, and we are yours, Aika. You’re part of my pack in whatever way you wish.”
“A human.”
“Mmm, there’s a first time for everything.” He touched his nose to mine. “You don’t have to decide right now.”
A click sounded from the bathroom at the end of the hall as well as Gibby and Shay’s voices.
I scooped up my blanket and threw it around my shoulders, smiling, my chest near bursting. A part of a wolf pack. A part of something that actually valued me, a blind, illiterate girl that had been cast off a long time ago by her own parents.
“Yes,” I blurted, because that decision had been the easiest one I’d ever had to make.
“Yes?” Shay said as she and Gibby entered.
“Yes, we’re going to rescue Archer tonight. I’ll let the Slipjoint pack know,” Thomas said simply, and left.
Gibby squealed in excitement.
Shay laughed. “Well, no wonder Aika has such a big smile on her face.”
* * *
"Are you nervous?"
It was early evening, just minutes before we planned to leave to find Faust, rescue Archer, and hopefully end this war once and for all. Grady and I dressed in my room, having spent most of the day in bed. We’d been whittling more arrows, of course, among other things.
"No," I answered truthfully, buttoning up a second flannel over the first.
Grady stepped closer and nuzzled my ear, his palm flat against my belly. "I was hoping you'd say yes."
"And if I do say yes?” I leaned into his touch, my blood humming, my pulse racing.
“The last time you were nervous, I helped.” He slid his hand down the front of my pants and groaned when he found me wet.
“So you did,” I whispered as he slicked his fingers inside me.
“I knew you’d remember.” He ground against me, his low rumbling growl vibrating into my chest and sinking lower and lower still, gathering at my center at the same urgent rhythm as his fingers. "Fly high, my love."
With a flick of his fingers, I soared.
* * *
We traveled halfway into the next night to get to the place on the map with three circles. Only about five miles according to Thomas. Despite the dense forest, moving through it had been a brutal slog.
Shay, Gibby, Ribbons, and Sasha had stayed behind, along with the carriage, protected by the entire Slipjoint wolf pack including Jenk, the alpha. They'd be fine. It was us I was worried about.
Thomas and I lay on our stomachs on top of a hill, the wind throwing a fresh veil of snow over our eyes with every strong gust. Grady caged me in with his body heat, his chest on my back and his arm slung protectively around my stomach. Thomas stayed close to my side in his wolf form to help block the wind and give me vision.
No one said a word. The view in the valley below summed quite a few things up. About twenty-five tents made from animal skins and fur clustered around a large bonfire in the middle, its smoke winding up past the treetops. Three caves carved the other side of the valley wall in the same pattern, in the same location as on Grady’s map, but I saw no rubies.
"Where's Archer?" I clenched my fis
t on top of the hard-packed snow, searching for any sign of him.
"He’d be far away from the rest since no one can sleep peacefully with the sounds of torture, but not too far. The noise helps Faust sleep at night," Grady said into my ear so I could hear over winter’s raging. He glanced left toward Thomas as if for agreement, but he didn't get anything from the wolf. That was answer enough.
Get Archer and Ronin out, no matter what. The rest will fall into place if it needs to, Thomas had said before he shifted.
So that was the plan.
Grady and I scooted partway back down the hill so we wouldn't be spotted while Thomas lay there, unmoving, still as death itself as he surveyed the camp below. Hand in hand, Grady and I stood and started sideways across the hill to circle the camp below. Thomas knew the plan. He'd come when he was ready. Still, I kept my eyes open to see what he could see until distance blinked everything out. Shortly after, it clicked back into place, his large body brushing my hip as if he'd magically deposited himself right next to me.
What sounded like a shout tore through a break in the wind. The three of us whirled. It had come from behind us, not the camp. Had it been Archer?
We waited, listening for more and searching between the billowing snowflakes. After nothing more than the wind, we turned back and kept going. We'd scour the forest to find him, if that was what it took.
A moment later, we heard it again—a shout cutting through the wind. I still couldn’t tell if it was Archer or not. Or Lager. We hadn’t seen any sign of him, so we didn’t know if he was ahead or behind us. The Slipjoint pack hadn’t seen him, either, which was concerning. We also didn’t know if my very special order of wine had been delivered or not.
So many things were unknown that I felt like I was balancing on an arrow tip’s edge. Now, I really was nervous.
Thomas gave a low chuff toward Grady who nodded as if it had been a voiced order. Though with Thomas, almost everything was an order.
"I'll check it out." He squeezed my hand and then brought it to Thomas's soft, furry back. "Be safe."
“Don’t get too close,” I told him and turned my face up for a kiss.
He obliged, turned, and walked away, soon disappearing into the whiteout.
Thomas kept going straight, slow at first since I hesitated to follow.
"Shouldn't we wait?" My chest tightened painfully at the idea of being separated once again when we'd just found each other.
Thomas glanced back at me without breaking stride, and I startled at what we both saw—a frozen, shivering icicle framed with writhing black moaner snakes for hair. No, we shouldn’t wait. We had to get this over as quickly as possible so I wouldn't freeze to death. And so we wouldn't be detected.
I followed reluctantly, my ears straining for any more sounds behind us.
When we'd circled about halfway around the camp below, Thomas slowed. His hackles rose beneath my fingers as he gazed to our left where the trees thickened. At first I didn't see anything, and then out of the swirling snow, a small, dark cabin appeared. It crouched like a wild, waiting and watching.
Archer. Was he in there? So much of him had been stripped away since Faust had played such wicked games. I only hoped there was at least a sliver of him still left.
Thomas swished his tail to the bow hanging over my shoulder, a reminder, an order. This was it. The beginning of what we'd prepared for since a human and a wolf pack had joined together. I was ready. In one fluid motion, I readied my bow and nocked an arrow. Unpoisoned. We’d dumped almost all the four-step poison into the wine at The Scratching Post, and I didn’t dare use the rest unless I knew exactly what I was shooting at.
We drew closer to the cabin, Thomas flush with my hip to guide me through the snow and between the trees. At the door, we shared a look. My chest nearly buckled under the pressure of what we'd find on the other side. My nerves stretched thin and frayed as I adjusted my bow to settle my hand on the icy doorknob.
What if Archer wasn't here? Why wasn't Grady back yet?
I released a breath that steamed all my worries back into my face, and breathed them in yet again. Squaring my shoulders, I turned the knob. Thomas slithered in past me, even his claws silent on the wooden floor. Before the door had fully opened, his gaze swept the room, snow-lit around the three small windows and shadowy everywhere else. The rotten smell within rolled my stomach and made me recoil in the doorway.
When his eyes settled on one spot, my whole body jolted, struck with horror. There, near the back wall and bound to a vertical beam that supported the ceiling, slumped Archer. Naked and shivering, he appeared to be passed out or had become so lost he wasn’t even aware of his surroundings. Bloody welts that looked like bites covered his skin, some fresh, some days old from the festering stink of infection.
My heart spasmed as I stumbled toward him. "Archer?" I whispered.
Two sounds came then, one right after the other. Neither from Archer.
A creak from the far, shadowed corner to the right.
And a gunshot from outside, far away yet close enough to make me jump.
Grady. Oh god, Grady.
I didn't hear or think anything else, because in the next moment, a pale face floated low to the ground from the corner. It advanced on Thomas on all fours, wolf-like but human. Thomas growled a vicious warning. The rest of a man emerged, or the broken pieces that remained anyway. Both feet at the ankles were gone, and there was something missing behind his midnight eyes, something that could never be given back—a rational mind.
He moved surprisingly fast. Silver shimmered in his hand close to the ground when he passed a window. An ax, I realized, as sharp as his twisted grin.
“You came back to me, Thomas.”
Gabriel, Faust’s second-in-command, the one Baba and I used to make our deliveries to in Old Man’s Den. I’d never seen him before, but I knew. He was the one who tortured Thomas for almost two years. And now, Archer.
“You really shouldn’t have come.” The man surged up onto his knees and lunged, lifting his ax high.
Chapter Eleven
Thomas dodged Gabriel's attack. His vision bounced every which way, too fast for me to see even if I wanted to.
My limbs trembling, I shouldered my bow and replaced my arrow in my quiver. Then with my eyes squeezed shut, I rushed toward Archer with my hands out.
"You ruined me, you bastard!" Gabriel shouted. His fury ricocheted between the walls of the tiny cabin and shrank it even smaller.
Over Thomas's vicious growls, steel whistled through the air much too close to my head. Gabriel’s ax.
I ducked and froze. Every single movement or pause felt like the final assault on my life was just a second away. Raw panic burned down my throat and evaporated my voice to barely a whisper.
"Archer. Archer, please." My fingers met flesh, so cold to the touch.
"Why won't you fucking die?" Gabriel screamed.
The fight rounded behind me. Something cracked into the door and split the wood so the wind whipped throughout the room. Then the door burst open, and the two of them spilled their battle out into the snow.
Thomas's idea, no doubt. He was giving me a chance to rescue Archer.
"Please, wake up." I slid my fingertips up to his face and then over his head to his wrists tied to the beam. "I'm going to need your help to get you out of here. Archer, it's me. It's your Aika."
He stirred, his forehead grazing mine, and his long hair feathered across my numb cheeks. He shuddered harder. "He's…here."
"He's not." Mindful of his wounds, I pressed in closer to try to offer what little body heat I could—and to reach higher for the rope around his wrists. "Thomas drew him outside."
"Thomas is dead. Remember?" There wasn't enough blame in his voice for what I deserved, for what I'd put him through for letting him think that.
"The arrow wasn't poisoned. He's fine."
A relieved breath funneled out of him but then choked off. "Sasha."
"She's safe and
in good hands. I promise." Finally, I found the knot in the rope, but my fingers were so frozen they didn't feel like a part of me anymore. "Can you shift?"
"No," he rasped, and he sounded so desperate, so filled with rage, that a violent tremor ripped through him.
I clamped my mouth shut on the why. Gabriel must've done something to him. My heart splintered for him while my own rage awoke with bared teeth.
The knot loosened in my fumbling fingers and then slipped free. With a groan, Archer lowered his arms slowly. "My ankles."
Nodding, I knelt in front of him. "Do you think you can walk?"
"I…don't know." Another full-body shiver. "Where's Grady?"
"He's…" The gunshot from before echoed in my mind. He should've been here by now. Nothing would've kept him away unless— I worked the knot, thankful I had something to angle my face at other than Archer. Tears sprang up and overflowed, but somehow I kept them from my voice. "He's on his way."
"Aika?"
"What?"
"I didn't think I'd ever see you again. Even now, I think I'm dead because you're here. Dead, or almost dead."
It took a long moment for me to find my voice since his words had both shredded me and made me fall in love with him even more. The final knot around his ankles slipped free, and I pulled myself together enough to stand only to fall apart in front of him. "You're not dead. I'm just sorry we couldn't get here sooner. I'm sorry I had to play Faust's stupid game and Release you over to him and make you think I'd killed your alpha. I'm so, so sorry."
"There's nothing to be sorry for." He brushed the tears from my cheek, his frigid touch like a shock, but I held his hand there anyway. “Just promise me we’ll never be apart ever again.”
"I promise. Let's get you out of here,” I told him. “See if you can walk."
With a long inhale, he sidestepped, and then immediately dropped to the ground with a pained growl.
Oh no. I knelt next to him, my mind whirring. "I can't carry you."
"We'll have to do it"—he grunted, already trying to get his feet underneath him again—"one step at a time."
And get Ronin too? What if Faust was already onto us and was headed toward the cabin? Speed wasn't possible, and without Thomas and Grady, so was my vision. But Archer was right—one step at a time.
Winter's Rage (The Crimson Winter Reverse Harem Series Book 3) Page 11