by Zoe Chant
Neal let her ride him, drowning in the incredible sensation of her skin and the honeyed smell of her, until he could bear it no longer. He reached up and rolled her over, never decoupling.
Sprawled beneath him, Mary’s eyes were soft and glowing in the dim light of her bedside lamp. Her blonde hair tangled over the crisp white pillow like waves, and Neal had to reach out with one hand and trace the shape of her face, already so unexpectedly dear to him.
“I never thought I’d find you,” she said softly, and even her voice was intoxicating.
“I never… “ Neal couldn’t find the words, too overwhelmed by smell and sight and sensation.
He wasn’t sure if he had ever stopped moving, but now he was thrusting again, slowly, deliberately. Every movement was carefully controlled. He was painfully afraid of losing control, of losing her, and he wasn’t prepared for her writhing moan of pleasure as she crested toward orgasm.
“Don’t stop,” she begged, and Neal could not have if he tried.
Her blissful sound of climax drove Neal out of his mind, and he only became aware again of himself as someone separate from Mary when the urgency merged into release and faded at last into gasping, grasping satisfaction.
His first thought, when he could think again, was for Mary. Had he hurt her?
Her brilliant smile suggested otherwise, and her laughing hands stroked his shoulders in a fashion that Neal wouldn’t have expected to be so soothing.
“That was amazing…”
“I’m sorry… I didn’t hurt you?” Neal had to know for sure.
“Hurt me?” Mary sounded amazed by the idea. “Are you kidding? Oh, Neal!”
She reached eager arms to wrap around him, and kissed him soundly.
The way she said his name was all the reassurance Neal needed, and the way she kissed him made him wonder if she would be interested in a repeat performance. His basic need for her had been slaked, but the touch of her lips on his made him realize that he would be happy for another round.
He let her draw him down for an embrace, and buried his face at her neck, breathing in the scent of her hair and her velvety skin.
I’m sorry, he wanted to say. I’m sorry I’m not the mate you deserve, or the man I ought to be.
But he could only hold her, and be grateful for her arms around him, and live in the moment for now.
Chapter Eleven
Mary was not particularly surprised to wake alone.
The bed was rumpled and the room smelled like sex and surrender.
Mary sighed and sat up. Morning light was streaming through the big glass doors. Mary could see down to the hypnotic ocean over the tile roofs of the cottages in front of her and hear the rumbling call of it over the morning birds and the ceaseless chirping insects. She slid one of the doors open and was rewarded by a rush of humid air.
It had rained overnight, and the world was covered in jewels of water. It was already warming up, and Mary knew from the past few days that the sun would quickly burn off the lingering fog and evaporate the moisture. By mid-morning, it would be sweltering and blue again, and mid-afternoon there would be more warm showers.
There was a tiny lizard on the railing of the deck, and Mary eyed it skeptically. The first day at the resort, a lizard so close would have sent her scurrying back inside, but she was too wrapped up in thinking of Neal to mind it.
Mary continued to think, vacillating between frustration and warm, lustful memories, as she dressed and showered. She walked in a daze out of her cottage, only to turn in the wrong direction on the path and walk directly into a glittering spiderweb.
The sticky brush of it on her skin, the tickling of it in her hair and on her bare arms was bad enough, but out of the corner of her eye, Mary could see the giant orb of the viciously striped creature, bobbing on its tangled home. Bobbing towards her, hairy legs waving aggressively.
Mary screamed, skin crawling and adrenaline spiking, flailing her arms. The web was stickier and stronger than she expected, and the spider moved so quickly that she panicked, screaming again and leaping away.
A figure blocked her path, so looming and terrifying in its silence and menace that Mary barely recognized it as the landscaper before she was shifting out of instinct.
“Mary!”
It was Neal’s voice, and it was the only thing that kept her from flinging herself in deer form in a panic through the brush—where there were undoubtedly more spiderwebs waiting to ensnare her.
She stopped in her tracks, quivering.
The landscaper growled at her and then went past. He went from frightful to horrifying as he scooped up the spider from its ruined web, right into his bare hands. “She wouldn’t hurt you,” he said accusingly, clearly more concerned with the spider than the deer.
Then Neal was there, sprinting over and snarling ferociously, hands balled into fists as he tried to figure out what was threatening Mary.
The surly gardener was the obvious choice and Neal did not hesitate to come roaring to Mary’s rescue.
Wait! she tried to call to him through their bond, but he either didn’t hear or was too deep in protective rage to notice, lunging for the man holding the spider.
Given his animal growl, Mary expected Neal to shift and was surprised when he didn’t.
The gardener dodged with more speed than either she or Neal anticipated, and continued to cup the spider protectively in one hand while deflecting Neal’s attack with the other.
Neal cornered with the kind of strength and reflexes that could only come from intense training and shifter advantages, snarling and striking at the other man while Mary wailed Stop! and Neal didn't seem to hear her.
The landscaper fought only defensively and was hampered by carefully holding his arachnid friend, but still managed to block most of Neal’s rain of blows, absorbing the rest with an impressive show of imperviousness. Mary had never seen such combat outside of movies, and was stunned by the ferocity and might of Neal’s attack.
Finally, she managed to get enough of a hold on herself to shift back to her human form, and she ran forward, knowing she had to try to stop this. “Neal, no! He didn’t do anything, it’s okay! It wasn’t him!”
The look he leveled at her was feral and full of panic, but faded abruptly at her words, and he pulled the blow he was landing, letting the momentum of it pull him forwards into a slumping crouch. Mary went to him at once, putting her hands on his shoulders without hesitation. He flinched, then looked up in chagrin. “I’m sorry, Graham.”
The gardener wiped away a trail of blood from his mouth and shrugged, looking genuinely unconcerned as he turned to gently deposit the spider gently onto a branch.
“It was just a spider,” Mary explained soothingly. “I walked into a spiderweb, and it scared me. That’s all that happened. I guess… it was a shifter spider?” She looked at Graham for some confirmation, but he only scowled at her and then walked past them, not offering an explanation before he vanished down the path.
Neal’s shoulder shook beneath her hand and Mary realized after a moment that it was a weak laugh. “No,” Neal said wryly. “I’m sure it was just a regular spider.”
Chapter Twelve
Neal knew he was a fool.
Graham may not hold the attack against him, but he’d humiliated himself in front of Mary, and proved his unworthiness beyond a shadow of a doubt. He hadn’t stopped to think when he saw the deer, and Mary’s clothing loose on its form. The flash of her fear had been driving his steps, and between his wolf snarling for freedom inside of him and the rush of adrenaline at the thought of his mate in danger, he’d made a snap attack, not pausing or assessing. It was the worst kind of behavior in a soldier—a terrible slip of control.
No one who was whole, who was thinking clearly, would have reacted so poorly. Surely Mary must know how broken he was now.
“I’m sorry.”
Mary’s hands on his shoulders felt like weights of guilt, like judgment, and Neal was surprised when she kn
elt in the damp grass beside him, one arm still draped around him.
The press of her body at his side was distracting. The buttons of her blouse had popped off when she shifted, and it hung loosely now, open in the front to show glimpses of her luscious breasts as she moved.
“You seem to apologize to me a lot,” she observed without judgment.
“I’m broken,” he said. The simple words came out without effort, and he was astonished by how much better he felt for having said them.
Mary didn’t try to deny his words, and Neal was grateful for that. “Broken things are worth fixing,” she said gently. “You’re worth fixing. You don’t have to be sorry, you just… have to let me in.”
Neal lifted his eyes from the mesmerizing curves under her open blouse and looked into her face.
She looked back without wavering, which was something Neal couldn’t do with his own reflection, and the compassion and emotion in her eyes undid something old and rusty in his chest.
“I don’t know how to do that,” he confessed. He could be nothing but truthful with her.
“Just trust me,” Mary told him simply, as if trusting her was just that easy.
And unexpectedly, it was.
Morning flowed into noon as he told her everything—everything that had happened to him, and its consequences. It streamed from him in a rush of words that he couldn’t stop and didn’t try.
He told her everything backwards, from the escape of Beehag’s prison to the terrible ten years of his stay there. The dart at his throat, and the journey to the Costa Rican island where he was caged and tormented into remaining in wolf form. He recounted the day he was in South America, on the first day of their mission to stop the turncoat Marine who was using school children to shelter his drug business. He even told her about Afghanistan, from years earlier, and the nightmares he had suffered ever since, and they laughed together about playing kick the can in the cul-de-sac, growing up in different small towns.
Mary added her own observations occasionally, but mostly she listened. Not once did she act shocked or judgmental about his revelations to her. She just absorbed everything he told her with solemn attention.
Neal’s voice was raw and hoarse by the time he came to what he felt was the end of his narration, or the beginning. The sun, dappled through the plumeria tree above him, had burned off the clouds and dried the lawn. Downhill from them, the gazelle was grazing. She was in earshot, he thought, with those big dish-like ears, but strangely, the idea didn’t bother him.
He sat with Mary in silence for a long moment. It felt comfortable and natural, as nothing had felt in a very long time. He’d gotten used to feeling tightly coiled and filled with anger, and he felt strangely empty now. Empty—and yet filled at the same time, because of the woman who sat beside him.
“You helped all the other shifters go home, after you were freed from the prison?” she finally asked.
“Almost all of them,” Neal agreed, looking out over the green carpet to where the gazelle was pretending to ignore them.
“But not yourself.”
Neal was silent, familiar tension rising in his throat.
“Does your old unit know what happened to you?’
“No.”
Mary squeezed his arm. “They must think you went AWOL?”
“By now, they’d think I was dead,” Neal guessed.
“You must be pretty angry about that.”
Neal opened his mouth to deny it, then snapped it shut. He’d spent so much time trying not to think about it that he hadn’t recognized how furious it all made him, or how much that frustration was leaking into all the other parts of his life.
Mary, with a thoughtful look that suggested she saw his revelation, went on. “I imagine you’re pretty pissed that you never got revenge.”
“Beehag died,” Neal said shortly.
“His heart gave out over the antidote to a sedative. I don’t imagine there was any satisfaction in that.”
Neal realized his hands were balled in fists. He sighed and uncoiled them.
“Are you a therapist?” he asked, not entirely teasing. Some of the staff had tentatively suggested he talk to one, but they had stopped dropping hints after he reacted poorly.
“I’m a math teacher,” Mary said with amusement. “At a middle school.”
Neal saluted. “I should have known you worked in a combat zone.”
“Because of the way I screamed about a spiderweb in my hair?” Mary’s sideways look was rich with humor and self-deprecation.
Neal might have let her brush it off with humor, but their talk had left him raw and observant. She was genuinely embarrassed about her fear, and felt bad for her reaction.
“I was the only deer shifter in a family of big cats, a throwback to a great-grandmother who was a deer,” she explained shyly. “I guess I got used to being protected, and everyone … just expected me to be afraid of things. I think it's just a habit, now.”
“It’s okay to be afraid,” he said roughly, and unexpectedly, it was true for more than just her.
Into the silence that fell after that, Mary’s stomach rumbled audibly, and she giggled. Neal let out a rusty guffaw with her, startling himself, and said, “It must be after lunch. Damn, I was supposed to help Travis with some cement work…”
They unwound themselves from each other and stood.
“You have to take care of yourself first,” Mary said.
“Why do I get the feeling that’s advice you don’t always take?” Neal asked suspiciously.
He knew he was right by Mary’s blush.
“I’ll meet you later?” she deflected.
“I’ll be working until late,” Neal said apologetically.
“Then I’ll meet you late.”
“By the pool? I’ll be closing the bar.”
Mary nodded. “I’ll be there.”
An awkward moment of silence followed. Neal felt as if all the words had been dredged out of him and he had none left to offer.
“Later, then,” Mary said shyly, and she moved to leave.
Neal couldn’t let her leave like that, and caught her after only a few steps for a passionate kiss. The blouse that had been barely staying together slipped off one shoulder at last. Her mouth was hungry under his, salty and tantalizing. Neal kissed her mouth and down her neck to that deliciously tempting bare shoulder, then went back to her lips for one final kiss before setting her back from him firmly.
“Later, then,” he agreed, and he walked away with a rare smile at his mouth.
That was a proper goodbye.
Chapter Thirteen
Mary got to the bar just before last call.
There were only a few guests left—a determinedly drunk elderly man with a thick Russian accent, and a cold blonde in high heels and little else. They both took Neal’s last call as gospel and grumbled back to their cottages after downing unusual choices (he had something with an umbrella, and she had a vodka, straight). Spanish music played quietly from a tinny stereo behind the bar.
Mary took a shy seat at the counter.
“I just have to wash up a few glasses and wipe down the tables,” Neal said.
“It’s no problem,” Mary said, and it occurred to her that for the first time, his explanation had sounded more like a statement than an apology. She smiled, and the memory of his goodbye kiss made her squirm on her stool.
It was certainly no hardship watching him clear up. He scrubbed the tables with more vigor than skill, and the resort issue khaki shorts and polo shirt did nothing to hide the incredible physique beneath. Mary caught herself staring at his ass as he bent over to scrub a stubborn spot, and had to look away before he turned back, blushing like a schoolgirl.
He toweled off the last clean glasses and put them away before he turned off the radio and flipped off the bar lights, plunging them into relative darkness.
Mary gave a little squeak of fear. “It’s dark,” she said, as he came around the bar to her. In the darkn
ess, he was a little frightening, big and looming and featureless.
“I’ll protect you,” he offered, and his voice reassured her.
“I’d like that,” Mary breathed.
Then he was gathering her into his arms for a kiss in greeting, and it was every bit as breathtaking as his goodbye kiss had been.
“It’s starting to rain,” she said, when she could again. Her eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness.
“Are you made of sugar?” Neal teased her.
Mary laughed. “No, but I am a little cold!”
“The pool is warm,” Neal suggested.
“I didn’t wear my swimsuit!” Mary protested.
“The resort is clothing optional,” Neal pointed out. “Besides, I’m sure your underwear is less revealing than most of the bikinis I’ve seen here.”
Mary sputtered. “Oh, I couldn’t… it’s… I could never…”
“Never say never,” Neal persuaded.
Mary found herself drawn to the steps into the pool, flanked by the waterfalls. Running water and insects were the only sound outside of her own heartbeat that she could hear; the resort was otherwise quiet, and anyone sensible was tucked into their beds, safe from the drizzling rain.
She let Neal pull off her shirt, enjoying the sharp intake he gave at the sight of her lacy bra, holding her breasts snugly. She shimmied out of her own shorts, while Neal shed his own clothing down to briefs that did nothing to hide the impressive bulge of his cock.
“Sure you want me to stop?” he asked, putting a finger into his waistband teasingly.
Mary was quite sure she didn’t, but she wasn’t ready to admit that. “This is a terrible idea,” she said, giggling like a misbehaving child. They crept down the grand steps to the water, and Neal pulled her down into the pool before she could balk.