by Moira Rogers
It was mostly dark inside the room, even with bright mid-morning sunlight filtering past the curtains on the windows and exterior door. Besides the bed and a large desk that dominated one side of the room, he had a television--the only one she'd seen at the lodge.
He was still in bed, sprawled on his stomach. The blanket across his back had slipped low enough to make it clear he wore nothing beneath it, and curiosity drew her closer. The deep shadows highlighted the strong lines of his back, not to mention the muscled swell of his ass.
She almost jumped when he lifted his head, squinted at her and the tray, and smiled. "Is that bacon?"
"It is." She set the tray on the bedside table and averted her gaze as he rolled over and upright, at which point the blanket gave up altogether. "I helped Mac with breakfast this morning. It seemed a shame for you to miss it."
"Throw me those pants, will you?"
There was a pair of jeans draped across the back of a chair beside the bed. Ashley swept them up and held them out. "I'd say I didn't mean to wake you, but it'd be a lie. This is okay, right?"
"What, you being in my room?" Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him rise and tug on the pants. "Hell, I'd let Blake in here, if he came with bacon. And you're prettier and probably a lot nicer."
"That's debatable." She distracted herself by studying his desk. It was covered with electronics--a widescreen monitor, two different laptops, and a tablet, along with things she didn't even recognize. "I meant waking you up. Blake said you usually sleep in."
He waved that off and snagged a slice of bacon from the plate. "I've been meaning to come say hi, but I figured you had enough to adjust to with the rest of them."
He seemed quieter than Mac and even Jud. Not in a broody way--quite the opposite, actually. He was personable enough, but maybe a bit shy. "I got curious."
"Well, then." He polished off the piece of bacon and held out his hand. "Officially, this time. I'm Connor. And you're still adorable."
The words did what the sight of him naked didn't--flushed her cheeks with heat. She grasped his hand and shook it firmly. "Ashley. Officially."
His grip lingered, his thumb sweeping over the back of her hand. For a heartbeat, she felt that primal tug, the tremor of warning that always came before her wolf's desire to explore a potential mate consumed her.
But it didn't this time. Connor released her, and the tension in the room vanished so quickly she thought her ears might pop.
"Sorry," he murmured, smiling contritely as he reached for the tray again. "I didn't think it would slip."
"It?" she echoed blankly, still reeling from the flash of heat.
"My wolf." His room wasn't quite as big as Blake's, but it had a fireplace. Instead of leather chairs, a plush couch and coffee table sat in front of it, and that was where he carried his breakfast.
He was the first to speak as if that animal part of him was truly separate, and it intrigued her. "You didn't grow up among wolves, did you?"
"No." He patted the spot next to him. "I grew up more like you, I guess. A dad who didn't want to be anything but human."
That described her parents, all right, but not Ashley. Never Ashley. "I tried," she confessed as she sank to the couch beside Connor. "But I was never any good at having two halves. There's just me."
"I wasn't good at it, either." His eyes looked haunted for a moment before he shook it off and picked up his plate. "But I'm glad you're whole. It'll be easier for you, this way, once you get settled."
It chilled her, the implication that, while she might be whole and healthy, he was anything but. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"If it's too personal, I understand."
"We're pack. There isn't much that's too personal."
She nodded and tried to choose her words carefully. "You said he slipped. Your wolf. And I don't have the same kind of difficulty just sitting here, talking to you, as I do with the others." Too late, she realized how that sounded. "It isn't that you're not attractive--you are, you're very attractive--but I..." She trailed off, disgusted with herself. "I'm babbling."
Connor reached out, his hand hovering just shy of her cheek. "In the end, everything's about survival. Your wolf needs to mate so our species will survive. My wolf needed to hide so he and I would survive. I don't know how I learned to lock him down, but I did."
How was exactly the question she'd lost in all her flailing. "You don't have to do it anymore, though. Keep yourself separate."
"Yes, I do," he replied ruefully, pulling his hand back without touching her. "Sometimes the things we do to survive still fuck us up. My wolf can be a little...feral."
"Oh." It was clear from his tone that feral meant more than wild. It meant danger, and the fine hair on the back of her neck stood up. "I'm sorry."
"Hey, don't." He flashed her another smile, one that seemed genuine. "I'm good. Better every year. Lucas made us a safe place here."
It seemed like it would be cold comfort to a man as torn as he was. Then again, maybe it was perfect for him--a place where he was accepted exactly as he was, protected, even loved.
She reached for him without thinking, brushing down an errant lock of sleep-mussed hair at his temple. "I'm glad, Connor."
Her fingertips grazed his skin, and his entire body stiffened. He inhaled sharply, almost as if by reflex, turning his face to her palm as he breathed deeper. His tongue swept out, touched her skin...
Power slammed into her.
It stole her breath. She steeled herself against the answering surge of hunger and managed--just barely--not to growl at him.
Connor opened his eyes, and they were glowing. He licked her palm again, longer this time, dragging his tongue all the way up to the tip of one finger before closing his teeth around it.
Ashley couldn't look away. She tried, but his golden gaze held her as captive as the teeth locked on her fingertip. "Connor..."
He growled, releasing her finger only to bury his face against her throat.
It felt so good that part of her wanted to echo the noise, to encourage him. But his earlier words held her back. He'd spoken of his wolf, of losing control, and she didn't want him to be frightened or upset.
So she slid her fingers into his hair and clamped them tight. "Look at me. Please."
His lips parted. His breath ghosted over her skin. His tongue. She felt the softest pressure of his teeth, but he didn't bite down. A shudder worked through him, and he slowly lifted his head.
He shook with the effort, and she soothed him the only way she knew how--with her touch, gliding her hands over his cheeks, his bearded jaw, his shoulders.
"Ashley." Even his voice was lower. Rougher. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. "You should..."
"Shh." The others were so in control, commanding their animal natures with such assurance. Connor's hesitation made her ache for him, and she followed the path her hands had taken with her mouth, dropping gentle kisses to his face and jaw.
He groaned and slid one hand over her hip before tangling it in her shirt. "You don't know what you're playing with," he ground out, and this time it sounded like a warning.
Maybe not, but one thing was certain. "I'm not scared of you."
"Yet."
"At all," she countered. "I'm not human, Connor. This?" She scratched her nails over his shoulders and down his bare upper arms. "I feel it all the time. All through me."
Muscle flexed beneath her hands as his control snapped. He surged over her, pressing her back into the couch cushions. "I could make you feel things all through you."
Yes, he could. She knew it in her core, in her bones. He heated her skin, prickled awareness up her spine. If she gave in to it...
A low growl of challenge rumbled up in her throat, and Ashley let it free.
Connor shuddered again and braced both hands on the arm of the couch. It held his upper body above her, giving her a breathless view of every hard line of his chest and shoulders. So tense, shaking with ne
ed--
But holding back.
"Well, then," Mac said from the doorway. "What did I miss?"
"Mac." Connor squeezed his eyes shut. "I want her too much."
"Welcome to the club." The other wolf's eyes gleamed as he shoved away from the door frame and crossed the room, and they glinted gold as he knelt beside the couch and looked at Ashley. "But you can handle it, can't you, honey?"
The ache in her chest had migrated, and now it burned in the pit of her belly. That knowing look in Mac's eyes only made it worse. "I'm not afraid."
"No, not you." He stroked one hand up Connor's spine, then wrapped his fingers around the back of his neck. He leaned in, pressing his forehead to the man's temple as he whispered, "Back off, Con. Now."
Connor's chest heaved. A snarl escaped him, and his elbows bent, his chest dipping low enough to brush her breasts. Then, in the next moment, he shot upright.
"That's right." Mac ran a soothing hand through Ashley's hair, but his words were for Connor. "Later. You can help me take care of her."
Connor sprawled against the opposite side of the couch and rubbed at his face. "If she even wants me to."
Mac snorted and leaned in again, his mouth close to Connor's ear. "Does that look like a terrified woman who never wants you to touch her again?"
It took forever for Connor to drop his hand from his face. His gaze met hers, and the vulnerability in his eyes almost broke her heart.
She came up on her knees and silently reached for him again, smoothing her hands over his cheeks. After a tense moment of silence, he folded his arms around her and tugged her closer. "I won't hurt you," he promised, nuzzling her hair. "Not even by mistake. Mac won't let me."
"Not a chance." Mac eyed her over Connor's shoulder. "Lucas sent Blake and Jud to take care of things at your old place."
Confusion and disappointment warred within her. "Blake left? He didn't say anything about it."
"He just found out, I think." He tilted his head. "He'll be back, honey. Wild horses couldn't keep him away."
"And we'll be here," Connor added. The tension drained out of him as he stroked her hair and back, taking that uncomfortable pulse of demanding power with it. He sounded almost relaxed again as he pulled back to smile at her. "I know how to keep you distracted."
Ashley couldn't resist that smile. "Now you're just teasing me."
"I'm better at it than Mac is," he replied. "Usually."
Maybe he could help her more than he thought. "Jud said you have a library here."
"Mmm, a big one." Connor tugged at a lock of her hair, using the end to tickle her chin. "Blake didn't show you?"
Between her arrival and their feverish sexual encounters, he hadn't had time. "We've been busy."
Mac barked out a short laugh.
Connor ignored him and urged Ashley to her feet. "Someone should have shown you the library, and not just for the books. For the archives."
"Archives?"
He huffed and glared Mac. "The rest of them don't care because they grew up knowing what they are, but Lucas has the pack histories in the library. They go back generations. Your family's probably in them."
The reminder startled her. But of course they would be, because this was the life they had led before fleeing to the city. They'd been part of a pack, a family, and Connor was right.
She knew nothing about it.
"Will you show me?" she asked as he pulled a T-shirt off a stack of rumpled but clean-smelling laundry.
"Of course." He dragged the shirt over his head and glanced at Mac. "You coming?"
"Sure." He shot Ashley a wicked grin. "History's one of my best subjects."
The library was on the first floor, a small office separated from the huge main room by a set of heavy wooden folding doors. Everything in it was dark stain and plush leather, and the sumptuous scent of cigar smoke hung in the air.
Connor went straight to a large desk. The books on the shelf above it were different--ancient, some of them, the kind you found in special collections in libraries. He bypassed those and pulled out something else--a leather bound photo album.
"I don't know who put this together," he admitted as he opened it on the desk. "Maybe the pack's historian was branching out into human technology, or maybe someone just got sentimental. It only covers the last few years before Lucas's pack fractured."
Most of the photographs were posed shots, groups of people gathered close under trees or around fire pits. Ashley peered down at the smiling faces, lingering over a shot with the blurry profile of a woman far off in the background. "My mother," she whispered, brushing the photo with her fingertip before turning the page.
An image of Lucas stared back at her--younger, clean-shaven, wearing a wide, relaxed grin. He had his arm around an older man's shoulders.
"That's Joshua," Mac told her, nodding to the book. "Their alpha."
Ashley barely heard him, because the picture at the bottom of the page had caught her eye. It was of her mother and father, their heads bent close together, small, secret smiles on their faces.
Her throat ached, and her eyes burned. She could almost remember them like this, back before their quiet devotion to one another had twisted into paranoia and seclusion, and that hurt, far more than she'd expected. There was something tragic about the lost possibilities, all the might-have-beens that stabbed at her as she gazed at their likenesses, frozen in time.
"Those are your parents?" Connor asked, touching the edge of the photo. "There are more shots of them. And you, I guess. There weren't many kids in the pack by this point. The bloodlines had already started failing."
"I think..." She flipped through the pages quickly, and caught her breath as she finally found what she'd been searching for.
So young. She couldn't have been more than five or six, just like the freckled, pigtailed girl beside her. "Dani." They were inseparable, best friends--
And her mother had spent the last fifteen years telling Ashley she had never existed.
"The Brady girl?" Connor wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders. "I've been trying to track them down for years. It's hard to find people who didn't exist in the human world until they joined it to hide."
"It's not that." How could she explain? "If only I had been allowed to have my memories of this, of the pack. But my parents took that away from me, told me I'd imagined it all."
A rough swell of energy surged through the room, stealing Ashley's breath again, and Mac took a step back. "Sorry," he muttered, his jaw tight.
"It's okay," Connor murmured, and Ashley didn't even know which one of them he meant it for. But it was her arm he rubbed. "I get it. My father couldn't make me forget, so he made me shut up."
He did understand, after all. "Thank you for telling me about these."
"I get it," he said again, reaching for one of the larger, older volumes. "You can read some of the history of the old packs. You can learn a lot about what we were by reading the laws and treaties."
"Cultural context." Ashley nodded, then shrugged when Mac raised an eyebrow. "My parents wanted me to be human, but not too human. I was sheltered, so I studied. A lot."
He grazed her arm with the back of his hand, raising goose bumps on her skin. "I'm just glad you're here now."
Connor touched her, too--the briefest graze of his knuckles across her arm as he turned, but too precise to not be deliberate. "We all are."
The contact shivered up her spine, a quick flash of heat that reminded her of the overwhelming, feverish desire that could hit her at any moment. "How long will Blake be gone?"
"He may not be back until tomorrow," Mac rumbled.
She didn't know how to ask about practical arrangements, so she forged ahead, forcing out the words. "Will someone stay with me? Later, I mean. Tonight."
Connor glanced at Mac in silent communication. Maybe it was something that came with being pack, an undercurrent she could almost feel before their gazes broke and Connor smiled. "It gets cold at night. Ho
w about a wolf or two to warm your feet?"
"That sounds nice." Weak words for the relief that flooded her at knowing she wouldn't be alone, and the warmth at their concern. "It might be nothing, but...I don't want to be alone."
Connor pressed the heavy book into her hands and curled his fingers over hers. "You're part of this pack now, Ashley. You'll never be alone again."
Chapter Eight
The fever dragged her from a dead sleep.
Ashley shoved her disheveled hair back from her forehead and turned her head toward the window. The only light in the room filtered in through the window, where sunshine had given way to the dark glow of evening.
She stretched, her muscles still tight from her run that afternoon, and gasped when the soft glide of the sheets over her skin teased her nerve endings into blazing awareness. Hot, everything was so hot, a burning that never stopped.
At the foot of her bed, a beautiful gray wolf opened his eyes and lifted his head. She recognized him by sight and scent--Connor.
"He would only sleep there as a wolf." Mac was sitting in a chair by the window, backlit by the scant light, his voice hoarse. "It's less intrusive."
"It's not an intrusion." The words came out scratchy, husky, and Ashley licked her lips. "I asked you both here."
Connor rose gracefully and hopped from the bed. She felt the magic of his change, like a prickle across already heated skin, so much more intense because she could remember the rush of it, the pain so sharp and hot her body had twisted it into something else.
So did Connor's. He came to his feet as a human, naked and aroused, his chest heaving and his eyes still glinting gold.
His cock stood out, erect and proud, his shaft etched with delicate veins. She ached to trace them with her tongue, to explore the flared head, to hear the sounds he would make as she took him higher. Made him harder.
Connor's breath hissed out through his bared teeth. "Jesus fuck, Mac. The way she's looking at me..."
"I know." He rose from the chair in the corner and walked over to stand behind Connor. He slid his arm around him, fingertips running lightly across the man's chest. "You won't scare her by wanting. But if you take it too far..." His fingers curled suddenly, his nails scratching sharply.