by Penny Alley
His hands found the backs of her thighs, prizing them apart enough so he could settle in between. The heat of her was a beacon, guiding him, and her gasp when he entered her filled his breath and fired his senses. From the moment she locked her legs around him, there was no holding back.
And the phone kept ringing.
She whined, a plaintive pleading that struck at every chord in his most primal being. The wolf in him answered in an instant, and he almost Shifted. He caught himself mid-thrust, forcing that rippling need back down deep inside him, but there was no stopping the growl that rumbled out of him. It shivered them both. She lifted her chin, flashing her throat. His gut reaction to that was no less immediate and anything but gentle.
He seized her jaw, forcing her startled eyes to lock with his. “No.” He could hardly speak for the wolf. “Keep your eyes open. Look at me.”
She did, and he kissed her again. Fiercely now, hungrily. Devouring her and drinking in her sighs as he filled first his hands and then his mouth with each breast in turn. Caressing because he couldn’t stop touching her, all of her, as much as he could reach even as his hips began to move, a slow grinding motion that quickly dissolved into undulating thrusts. His cellphone went off again, another round of insistent vibrations that he couldn’t have cared less about answering. Especially not with Neoma striving to match his motions, frantic to find a rhythm they could move to together.
Her flesh tightened around him and she covered her mouth, stifling a mewling cry. He grabbed her wrists, pinning them to the mattress and freeing her to make all the noise she wanted. Her whole body locked under his, the muscles of her abdomen convulsing, her thighs clenching and shaking as she locked them tight around his hips. Bracing his weight above her, Gabe worked his other hand down between their straining bodies. He wanted her to come first, to come harder for him than she ever had, if she ever had. Finding the nub of her clit hidden within folds grown intoxicatingly slick, he made sure of it, pumping into her again and again until the headboard battered the wall, and the room rang with the huskiness of her climaxing shout, and the milking of her sex around his driving cock seized him in a suckling grip he couldn’t ignore not one thrust more.
He meant to be gentle, but in the end he rode her like an avenging fury and spent so deeply and completely within the spasming channel of her core that he was certain his heart was about to explode right out of his chest and he didn’t have breath enough even to pant its loss.
Unable to hold his heavier weight off her, not even to prolong the ecstasy of all those shuddering after-climaxes, milking at his straining, pulsing, dwindling cock, he collapsed to one side. Rolling to his back, he fought to slow his breathing, the thundering pound of his heart, and the pant-laughter of his inner wolf insisting, “Again.”
The wolf might be willing; Gabe needed a few minutes.
God, he was sweating. He couldn’t remember when last he’d broken a sweat quite like this. He wasn’t alone either. Where her leg touched his thigh and her shoulder brushed his arm, he could feel the wetness on her skin as well. She was breathing heavily too. Wondering if her mouth were every bit as dry as his own, he rumbled, “Thirsty?”
She was quiet for so long, he rolled his head to look at her. Lying limp beside him, she stared back with eyes so blue and wide that he could see himself in them. They looked almost teary and that alarmed him.
“Are you okay?” Rolling toward her, he rose onto his elbow and cupped her waist, pulling her back into contact with him. That was a mistake. It was unexpected, how much he liked the feel of her lying under him, the peak of one soft breast rising to brush against his chest with each shaky breath she drew. “Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head, the tiniest of twitches. Her eyes still glistened, but the moisture did not gather enough to form tears or fall.
On the floor, his cellphone chirped out acknowledgement of a received text.
“Do you have to go back to work now?” she asked, her lips like her nipples—rosy and swollen from his kisses. The rasp of his chin whiskers had left splotches of red on her cheek, neck and down onto her chest. The only place he hadn’t rasped, it seemed, was further down her belly and between the pale grip of her thighs, but there was plenty of time between now and the end of the day to remedy that.
“Not if I can help it,” Gabe said, rolling off the bed. The curtain was drawn and they were the only ones home, so there was no need to dress. Walking naked to the foot of the bed, Gabe retrieved his phone with every intention of taking it to the living room and leaving it where it couldn’t disturb them further. His mistake was looking at the message first.
Stopping in the doorway, he read it over twice and was silent for a full minute longer than the two short lines required.
“Change of plans,” he said, dropping the phone on the bed and returning for his pants. “Get dressed.”
“Why?” Neoma sat up slowly. “What’s happened?”
“That was the school trying to call. Scotty just beat up a classmate.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Gabe pulled up to the school, stopping directly in front of the flag pole in the half loop that constituted a student drop-off point. Neoma had her seatbelt off and the door open before he’d fully parked.
“Wait for me,” Gabe said, but Neoma barely heard him. She abandoned him and the vehicle both, hurrying for the double entrance doors with her stomach tangled in a giant mass of knots. All she could think was ‘Scotty in a fight?’ and its single, horrible consequence ‘How badly was he hurt?’
“Neoma,” Gabe called, but she ignored him. She almost had her hand on the door handle when his tone abruptly harshened. “Neoma!”
Her whole body locked, stiffening even as she stilled. As much as she wished she could charge on ahead, barge into that principal’s office, grab her child and leave again, she didn’t know how to ignore that tone. A hot flush of anger invaded her inner urgency. She turned on him, but he was still standing by the jeep, waiting until she looked back before he locked and shut the driver’s side door. Strolling around to her side, he opened, then locked and re-shut her door too before starting after her.
He sauntered—sauntered!—as if he were walking to nothing more important than the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread. A whispering breeze tussled her hair, sweeping her bangs into her eyes. She scrubbed them back again, impatiently waiting for him to catch up, but the closer he came, the slower he seemed to go and the angrier it made her. By the time he reached her, she had to keep her eyes fixed on the ground so he wouldn’t see how close she was to snapping at him.
“Look at me,” he said, maddeningly calm once more.
Turning away, she tried again to enter the school, but he caught the door and leaned on it, refusing to allow her in. At least not without throwing a complete fit first. The temptation was there, but when she confronted him, blue eyes flashing with all the things she dared not say out loud, he said, “A moment ago, you trusted me enough to shed your towel and climb on my lap. I need you to do that for me now.” He thought about it. “Except with all your clothes on.”
Without cracking so much as a smile, he tossed her a wink and heaved the door open, holding it for her.
Neoma didn’t move. “Why?”
“Has Scotty ever started a fight before?”
“Never,” she said fiercely.
“That’s what I thought. Let’s go nip this bullshit in the bud.”
Again he gestured for her to precede him. Shaken, her anger slipping away faster than she could hold onto it, Neoma went. Once inside, she let him take the lead, following him through the open courtyard, past the trees growing up from carefully maintained flowerbeds and glass display cases of childish artwork and sports awards that hung on the walls. They found the library first, and directly after that, through a set of double doors that led into a fully enclosed office complex, the administration and principal’s offices.
“Let me do the talking,” Gabe said, getting that door as w
ell.
Ever obedient and resenting the hell out of it, Neoma walked inside. She stopped, frozen when she saw Scotty, the smallest of three children sitting beside the only adult other than Vivie in the waiting area. Spaced two empty chairs away from the others, his bottom lip was split and swollen and bruises darkened his cheek and left eye. Arms folded across his chest, he stared hard at his shoes. There was no expression on his small face, but there was no hiding the mutinous flash of temper that lit the back of his eyes when he noticed her.
Gabe’s hand on her arm stopped her from rushing to him. She grabbed herself, hugging her own arms so hard that her fingernails cut through the lace of her sundress sleeves into her biceps. That minute pain was nothing compared to the hurt of having to stand idle when everything inside her was screaming for her to grab Scotty and race him out of this school.
“Sign us in,” Gabe told her, giving her a push toward the administration desk.
“Hello again,” Vivie said, making little effort to hide a smug smile as she passed Neoma a clipboard and pen. “I’ll get Principal Schaffer.” She pushed away from the counter and headed down the hall to notify both school authorities of her arrival.
“You do that,” Gabe replied cordially enough, though he didn’t wait for them. “Wade,” he said, greeting the man sitting beside the two other boys.
“Gabe,” the man replied, thin-lipped and holding onto anger of his own.
Of course, he would know them, she thought bitterly, setting the clipboard aside once she was done with it. She wished she were brave enough to throw it, so everyone in this office would know exactly what she thought of this situation, but she wasn’t and she honestly didn’t know if that cowardice was better or worse than also knowing, despite what he’d said outside, knowing them meant Gabe was far more likely to take their side than Scotty’s.
He tsked when he looked at the boys, and they looked back, as chagrined as any two pups could be while sitting with their father outside the principal’s office. Wade, on the other hand, guarded his temper. Arms folded across his chest, he slouched in his seat, long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, his only sign of impatient being the way he waggled his foot at the air while he waited.
“I’ve got a question,” Gabe said. He dragged a chair from the wall and set it down in front of all of them. Gathering each boys’ attention with little more than a firm look as he sat, he turned to Scotty first. “Did you throw the first punch?”
Scotty squared his jaw, his eyes darkening.
Taking that as a yes, Gabe nodded to the door. “Go wait for me in the hall.”
Sliding off his chair, Scotty was almost to the door when the principal exited her office. “Mr. Michaelson, if you’d like to come in my office,” she tried to interrupt, but Gabe held up a silencing finger.
“I’ll get to you in a minute,” he promised, then pointed Scotty on his way. “Go on. Not you,” he told Neoma when she closed in defensively behind him. “You can go wait in the car, if you want. Otherwise, take a seat, both of you.”
Principal Schaffer glared at Gabe over her glasses, then at Neoma. Trying not to bristle, Neoma took the chair closest to the door so she could be through it all the faster once this was over. Her back as stiff as a broom handle, she held her fists clenched tight upon her knees.
“Mr. Michaelson,” the principal tried again, her tone dropping testily. “Outside this school, you may have the authority to—”
He cut her off with a look. “I said I’ll get to you in a minute. And believe you me, I’ve got as much authority in this school as I’ve got out of it. Take a seat.”
Twin spots of yellow lit up her eyes and her face flushed hot pink. So did Neoma’s, though not because she was embarrassed, and when Gabe turned back to the two remaining boys, Principal Schaffer shut her gaping mouth and this time kept it shut. Though he deliberately avoided looking at Wade, the other man sat motionless and frowning, head slightly cocked as Gabe addressed both boys.
Elbows on his knees, Gabe leaned towards them as he said, “Last week, Neoma became my Bride and our Alpha welcomed her son to our pack.” For the first time, he allowed a steely edge to creep into his voice as he looked at each scuffed and now slightly sheepish pup in turn. “Who are you to ignore your Alpha’s wishes? Volka who attack their pack brothers quickly find themselves without a pack, and that’s a fact. So, you both think about that the next time you decide to say or do whatever it was that made my boy swing on you. Because the next time he gets beat up, it won’t be me you have this little talk with. It’ll be the Alpha. You’re in my sights now. How badly do you want to be in his?”
Neither pup said a word. Neither did their father, despite his deepening frown. With one last stern look to make sure the message took, Gabe stood up. He put his chair back where he’d found it and turned. When his eyes found hers, that hot flush staining Neoma’s face rippled out through all the rest of her.
He was supporting them. Of all the things Neoma had expected—from the second he’d announced that Scotty was in trouble to now—to have him stand up for her son honestly hadn’t been among them. Her chest rose and fell, fast shallow breaths that felt so tight in her chest that it hurt to take them. No one had ever done that before. Not once. Not ever.
“May I have my word now?” Principal Schaffer asked tight-lipped. She folded her arms over the gray sleeves of her skirt suit, red-faced and eyes flashing over the rims of her glasses. Mustering every ounce of ignored authority, she stepped back and gestured for him to proceed her into the back office, but Gabe made no move to take this conversation out of the public ear.
“The only thing I want to know from you is how long your teachers and playground supervisors stood back watching while he got beat on.” He kept his tone low and calm, but his stance was combative. So were his hands, those hands that had been so gentle with her when he’d laid her down upon his bed and which now hooked into his game warden’s utility belt, not far from the holster that housed his cuffs. As if he wanted the woman he was staring down to notice how close he was to using them.
The principal’s already wide eyes flared and her mouth gaped. “As if anyone here would allow harm to come to a child!”
“Except they did,” Gabe interrupted, his stare hardening. “They allowed it to happen to my child. Somehow I doubt once they saw who was on the bottom of the pile, they hurried right over to stop the fight.”
Those spots of color on her face darkened as she snapped, “You bring the enemy into our school, and then you have the nerve to—”
“I brought my son into this school,” Gabe snapped back and with such ferocity that Neoma jumped all over again. She blinked hard against a sudden rush of tears she hadn’t realized were building. “If you’re incapable of keeping him safe, I’ll have you replaced with someone who can.”
His son? She had to force herself to breathe, to draw a deep breath into her aching chest when all those cold knots inside her spasmed. She stared at Gabe as if seeing him for the first time all over again—the broad set of his shoulders as he squared them in Scotty’s defense; the way his eyes flashed when he stared the principal down, giving her no soft opening in which to attack.
Nostrils flaring, very softly Principal Schaffer said, “Perhaps we’ll see what the Alpha has to say about that.”
Taking his cellphone out of its holster on his belt, Gabe had the number dialed before she could finish her threat. The room wasn’t large, but a good six feet separated Neoma from Gabe and she heard each tinny ring that preceded the click when Colton answered the call. His voice was even fainter than the rings had been, but she heard both the faint breathlessness and the exaggerated calm of the Alpha’s tone as he said, “Gabe, I’m in the middle of the best makeup sex I have ever had. If someone isn’t lying dead on the roadside somewhere, you will be exactly two minutes after I get my pants back on. I know where you live.”
Without bothering to answer, Gabe put the phone on speaker, “I’m at the school. P
rincipal Schaffer has a question for you.”
Frowning, the principal opened her mouth, but Colton didn’t wait for the question. “Whatever Gabe told you the first time is what I’m telling you now. Does that answer it?”
“It does to my satisfaction,” Gabe replied, his gaze steady on Principal Schaffer. When she closed her mouth, he hung up without another word, but kept the phone in his hand while her angry flush deepened and her lips compressed. She said nothing more, not even when Gabe turned to Neoma and said, “What about you, honey? Are you satisfied?”
The bottom fell out of Neoma’s stomach when everyone in that room turned to look at her. The principal, her eyes gleaming with impotent fury; Wade, sitting motionless beside his shamefaced sons; Vivie, once more sitting at her computer, but making no effort to hide how she was watching the whole exchange with open resentment.
‘Not at all’ the mother in her wanted to rage, but it was the omega who emerged, forcing a whispered, “Yes,” from her too tight throat.
“Good.” The matter settled, Gabe left the principal staring daggers into his retreating back and headed for the door. She fell into step beside him, every fine hair on her body prickling up on end when his hand caught her arm just above the elbow. His grip held none of the severity of Gabe’s parting glance as they left.
He’d defended them. Neoma was so shaken by the unexpectedness of it that she bumped into the door on the way out. Switching his hand from her arm to the small of her back, he prodded to keep her shaky knees walking, that light touch offering steadiness and strength until they met up with Scotty out in the hall.