Chosen Mates (Beasts of the Bay Bundle)

by Bell, Lilith T.

  He drew away again, but only far enough to meet my eyes. Hunger was naked on his face, making me feel more like prey than another wolf. “You don’t trust me with your throat?” he asked, his voice quiet and dark.

  I licked my lips, tasting his lingering presence there. “Give me a reason to.”

  He was quiet for a moment, his head cocked slightly to the side in a very lupine gesture of thought. He had always been more feral than the others in the pack, but it seemed even more pronounced now.

  “I haven’t killed any humans since I came back to America,” Hunter said.

  There was no spike in his pulse or increase in perspiration. The aura that hung around him didn’t waver. None of the signs either physical or metaphysical of lying were present. It was possible he was just that good, but trusting him was easier. He hadn’t killed anyone since he came back to America. What did that mean? It didn’t really matter in the moment, because I could ask later, I hoped. What mattered just then was that he hadn’t killed the joggers in the park.

  My eyes fluttered shut as I tipped my head back and to the side to arch my neck upward, providing my throat to him for whatever he wanted. My own pulse was hammering away with nerves and surely he was as aware of it as I was, but my nervousness wasn’t that important. The gesture of trust was clear.

  His lips brushed over my jugular as it jumped like the beat of a butterfly’s wings. He kissed up along it slowly, making his way up to my ear. There he nuzzled, then scraped my earlobe between his teeth before sucking lightly at the skin and making me whimper. My body rolled up from the desk he had me pinned to, sliding myself against him encouragingly. As I did I could feel the firm heat of his rising cock against my hip, warming me even through the layers of our clothing.

  His lips left my ear to move back down my throat. When his mouth covered the mating mark he’d left there so long ago I jerked like lightning had struck my nerves. My whole body thrummed with arousal as he awoke old memories. It had been our first time together when he gave me the mark and my first time, period. My body had grown tense and on edge with need, so tight around him I was sure he couldn’t keep thrusting into me, but he did. I’d bit down onto his shoulder as I came, muffling my cries with blood and then as soon as I released him his teeth were on my neck and I had come around him a second time as he flooded my body.

  The association had left my neck an intense erogenous zone for me, but every time some other guy I was seeing would try to kiss me there I’d just shut down. Because it wasn’t right. It wasn’t Hunter.

  “I need you,” I breathed to him as I turned to nuzzle into his temple. His teeth lightly scraped against the scar, mirroring what they had done before, and I whimpered, feeling my body draw tight in sensory memory. “Please, Hunter.”

  His lips left my throat and one of his hands went to my hip, the other grasping my shoulder. In one sudden movement he flipped me over onto my stomach and pushed me over the desk again. I hissed inward through my teeth and raised up on my toes as I worked my hands under my body to get my belt unbuckled. As soon as my jeans were open he jerked them down my hips along with my panties and I thought I heard the sound of cloth tearing. I quickly dismissed any concern over that, though. I could buy replacement clothing, but nothing would replace this experience.

  “You want me inside you?” Hunter murmured against my ear as he leaned over me. The sound of his zipper being dragged downward brought a fresh rush of arousal.

  Eyes closed, I swallowed hard as I nodded. “Yes. Please.”

  “I want you to be mine,” his voice rumbled.

  He shifted behind me and then I felt his cock on the bare skin of my thighs. I whimpered, raising my ass a little bit more to him. There was no need to worry about a condom, since werewolf females could only get pregnant once a year. It was a blessing of nature I was grateful for.

  “My mate. I don’t want there to be anyone else,” he said.

  I shook my head. “There’s never been anyone else.”

  Everyone who knew me saw me go on dates. They heard me talk about men. I’d even encouraged my friend Dawn to get out and get laid after she left her husband, because I thought it would help her get over him. Maybe it would have helped me, too, but I doubted it. There was no getting over Hunter. There was no such thing as separation or divorce when it came to the bond we shared. For me, sleeping with anyone else simply wasn’t an option.

  He slid his cock against the lips of my sex, gathering some of the slickness there on his thick shaft. He rocked his hips ever so slightly, but wouldn’t take that last step to press inside of me.

  “Please, my mate,” I begged to him through a tight throat.

  Almost before the words were out he thrust into me. Just two or three inches at first, making me cry out and arch up off the desk, pushing myself back to him. He drew back and then rolled forward again, working just that much deeper into me. I kept moving back to meet him each time he thrust forward, until his hips cradled my ass and I felt him as deep inside of me as he could possibly go. One of my hands left the desk to reach behind myself, so I could bury my fingers in his hair again and hold him close.

  He gave a few slow, experimental thrusts, drawing out almost completely before burying every inch once more. Each little movement from him made me react in some way, gasping or shifting. When he seemed satisfied, as though he had worked out some plan of attack, he began thrusting into me in a smooth, rolling rhythm. My hand that wasn’t in his hair kept a death grip on the side of the desk, giving me something to hold onto as I was set adrift by him.

  His hands weren’t nearly as still as my own. One worked up under my shirt to push my bra out of its way impatiently, then cupped my breast. His thumb swirled circles around my nipple before teasing directly against it. His other hand slid over my hip and then wrapped around to the front of my body to touch where we were joined. Two of his fingers brushed lightly over my clit, stroking it in time to his thrusts.

  “Sofia,” he whispered, his lips brushing against my ear again.

  I whimpered and tipped my head to the side to give him easier access to my ear or the side of my throat. I would have given him anything in that moment, just so long as he didn’t stop. He kissed and nuzzled at my ear for a moment, then moved down to fit his mouth over the old bite. His teeth scraped against the scar, making me shudder and writhe under him.

  “God, I’ve missed you.” His breath tickled against my throat as he spoke, then he kissed his way around the back of my neck. When he got to the other side he nudged my braids out of his way so he could dig his teeth into unmarked flesh.

  I cried out and nearly fell forward onto the desk. Instead, I rolled my hips back to his more insistently, on the edge of desperation. The sting of the bite throbbed when he released me, but it faded quickly, leaving only a faint ache in its wake.

  His thrusts began to grow faster, soon pounding into me with enough force and speed to shake the heavy desk. As my body grew tighter and tenser around his, my awareness narrowed down, blocking out the entirety of the world that wasn’t us.

  It was his teeth digging into the back of my neck that finally gave me the last little push I needed. I whimpered his name, my fingers twisting in his hair to hold him to me as I lost myself in my orgasm. His groans of pleasure were muffled by my own flesh as he worked himself against me, barely pulling away as he gave quick, savage strokes. A few seconds after I came down I felt him jerk against me with his own climax, filling me with heat. I moaned and rocked back to him, finding nearly as much satisfaction in that as I had my own orgasm.

  When he was done he pulled out of me and rested his cheek against my shoulder, still holding me pinned to the desk. I didn’t particularly mind, at least not for the moment. With my eyes closed, I listened as his heart slowed down and his breath grew less ragged beside my ear.

  He shifted against me to kiss gently at the side of my neck. “Come home with me tonight.”

  I sighed in pleasure, turning to nuzzle him. “I can�
��t. I have to stay and watch over a puppy.”

  He made a quiet scoffing sound. “Then take it with you.”

  “He was hit by a car and has to stay here,” I explained. “You can stay here with me, though. There’s a roll-away in the back we use when someone has to pull an all-nighter. It’s not very big, but we could probably find a way to share it.”

  “You’re coming up with excuses.” Hunter pulled away from me, despite my protests. I turned over to watch him as he straightened up his clothes, his eyes avoiding mine the entire time. “If you don’t want to come home with me, just say so.”

  “This has nothing to do with you.” I slid off the desk and pulled my slacks back into place, my nose wrinkled at how very uncomfortable it felt to pull them back on after that. Just leaving briefly for a shower and a change of clothes wouldn’t be a bad idea, but I couldn’t abandon my patient. “Honest, Hunter. I’ll show you the dog and his chart. I’d love to go home with you tonight.”

  He finally looked at me again, frowning. “If you’d really love that, you’d make it happen.”

  “Oh come on, are you twelve?” I rolled my eyes. “You understand adult responsibilities by now.”

  There was a soft growl as he closed his eyes, then turned his face from mine again. One of his hands came up to ward off anything else I might say. “I don’t want to fight. I’m just saying that you’re not making much of an effort.”

  He didn’t want to fight, but he couldn’t resist the chance to work in one last dig. I rested a fist on one cocked hip as I just looked him over for a long moment. “That’s what it is,” I finally said softly. “I didn’t drop my entire life and run after you fast enough and so nothing I ever do is going to make up for that.”

  “You just watched him throw me out,” he exploded, turning on me again. “You didn’t try to stop him. Yeah, so maybe you went back inside and packed a bag to try to follow, but it was too fucking late.”

  For a moment I could actually feel my heart breaking. It always sounded like a bunch of flowery garbage, but there was an actual, physical pain running from my heart down to the palm of my hand. Tears stung at my eyes as I settled down onto the corner of the desk.

  “Get out,” I whispered.

  He was quiet for a moment, perhaps surprised. “What?”

  I raised my eyes to look at him, my expression hardening despite the tears. “Get out. You came back to the pack covered in human blood. Your breath stank of it. If ten years isn’t long enough for you to forgive five minutes of hesitation in the face of that, you need to get out.”

  His teeth ground together before he responded. “You have no idea what happened that day.”

  “No, I don’t,” I admitted, “because you didn’t give me a chance to find out. Stop blaming me and tell me.”

  Instead of saying anything, he turned away to the front door. I watched as he unlocked it, then pulled the door open.

  “You wouldn’t believe me anyway,” he said with his back still to me.

  “Hunter—” I began, but it was too late. He walked through the door and shut it again behind him. For a moment I debated following, but that was just letting him win. Whether he was purposefully being manipulative or not didn’t even really matter. He had set things up so that the only way we could ever move forward from that day was if I took all the blame first.

  I got up to set the security alarm for the office, then headed into the back again with a heavy heart. That he had been here would be obvious to any of the rest of the pack, so there would be no hiding it. At least I could assure everyone that he wasn’t the one who attacked the joggers. Somehow that wasn’t nearly as much of a relief as it should have been.

  Chapter 5

  Hunter

  “Who’s free today?” I asked as soon as I stepped into the office.

  It was a quarter until nine in the morning and Cristina had already come in to get the day started. Technically she didn’t start work until nine, but ever since I had given her keys and the security code she had been in before me nearly every day.

  She looked up from the desk and frowned at the sight of me. “You look rough. Did you have a bad night?”

  I hadn’t been able to sleep after leaving Sofia, but I had convinced myself that enough caffeine would do the same work as eight hours of sleep. While it was keeping me awake, it must not have done much for my face.

  “I just need to know who can come in,” I snapped.

  Her brows rose as her eyes lowered to the screen, a facial expression that managed to express so much more than words. She clicked through the schedule quickly, then said, “Etienne and Joe are both free and on call. You want them?”

  That was far from ideal. Joe was an ordinary human, which made him basically useless for my purposes, but Etienne wasn’t much better. A necromancer had some potential as a phenomenal ace up the sleeve, but only in specific circumstances. I had wanted someone whose nose would be on par with mine. Still, a paranormally gifted human was better than nothing.

  “Just Tien.” I headed for my office door, rubbing a hand over my eyes. “Tell him to get his ass in here as fast as he can.”

  “You normally send everybody out in teams of two,” she pointed out skeptically. “Are you sure?”

  I gritted my teeth, suddenly wishing that I hadn’t hired an ordinary human as my administrative assistant. She was good at her job, but there were far too many things that she didn’t know about. “It’ll be a team of two. Tien is going out with me.”

  “Okay.” She didn’t sound as if she liked my answer, but she picked up the phone to make the call anyway.

  I shut my door to give myself a few moments of privacy while I waited. Seeing Sofia the night before had been a huge mistake. I dropped down into my chair and leaned back to stare at the ceiling as I replayed every moment with her. The salacious moments were easy to bring to the forefront of my mind, but it was what we had said that was more important. I had been an idiot and I didn’t know how to get around that or fix things.

  Cristina’s voice came over the intercom. “Etienne will be here in twenty minutes.”

  I leaned forward and pushed the button to respond. “Thanks.”

  Leaning back in my chair again, I reached inside the collar of my shirt to brush my fingers over the scar on my shoulder. There was supposed to be magic in the scars. That’s what Sofia had said when we’d done the binding ritual. We would always be part of one another, always able to share our thoughts and feelings without hesitation. That was about the polar opposite of how things were now, so I wondered what the hell had gone wrong. I had the sneaking suspicion that whatever it was had been my fault, which only made me angrier.

  A little more than twenty minutes passed before Tien got there, but it had been enough time for me to settle down and lose at least some of the worst of my foul mood. He stepped into the front office while I was listening to Cristina talk about her kids and nursing a fresh cup of coffee. I didn’t know very much about necromancy or how it tied in to voodoo as practised by ordinary humans, but the fact that Tien was a transplant from New Orleans certainly seemed to fit my internalized stereotypes. He was a melting pot of European, African and American Indian ancestry, with short cropped black curls and pale green eyes that contrasted with the rich brown of his skin. Regardless of what the assignment was, Tien always showed up in a suit and a tie. I couldn’t help imagining that he slept in it as well.

  “The cavalry has arrived,” he drawled as he shut the door behind him, a little smirk curling up one corner of his lips. “What’s up?”

  I flicked my eyes toward Cristina, then back to Tien and gave a small gesture in her direction with my head. “I’ll fill you in on the way.”

  “Ah. Gotcha.”

  Once we got to my car I gave him a brief synopsis of what I knew, covering the arrival of Marcus and the attack in the park. “It seems pretty likely to me that if we’ve got new wolves in town and people getting killed by canines that there’s a connection there,
” I finished.

  Tien nodded thoughtfully, turned in his seat to watch me. “Smart of you to call me in on this.”

  I arched a brow as I glanced at him, then returned my eyes to the road. “Was it?”

  “Who else can tell you what the dead saw?”

  As soon as he said that, I swore under my breath at my own stupidity. I had wanted someone who could sniff out the crime scene with me, another predator to join the hunt, but his abilities were for the dead in general. Who else better to take to a murder scene?

  “It was dumb luck you were available,” I confessed. “Sorry.”

  Tien shrugged without complaint, but he did look amused. “What are you going to do if this Marcus guy is responsible for the murders?”

  “Kill him.”

  “Whoa,” he breathed, settling back in his seat. “This is getting pretty serious. I guess a new pack killing in your territory is like a gang war with fangs.”

  I shook my head. “The park isn’t in my territory. The Richmond District is claimed by the Leones pack.”

  “Yeah? Then why the hell do you care?”

  I shot Tien an annoyed look because I couldn’t easily answer his question. I turned the radio up to signal that the conversation was over until we got across town.

  There had been rain over night and it had continued on into morning so that the murder scene was slightly squishy underfoot when we arrived. Despite his dress shoes, Tien picked his way nimbly through the spongy grass. I didn’t give a shit about my shoes. The tape was gone from where the bodies had been found and no one was guarding the area. Probably official channels had already decided it was nothing more than a horrific animal attack and didn’t need to be treated like a crime. I crouched down as low as I could without looking completely insane and sniffed.

  “Rain’s washed away most of the smells. I can pick up a wolf, but I think it might be Sofia,” I commented.

  Tien was standing there with a slightly glazed look to his eyes, as though he was listening to a symphony that no one else could hear. “Who’s Sofia?” he asked, his voice strangely hollow.