Wild Embrace

by Nalini Singh

  They drank water, since anything else would be a bad idea with Kenji having had a bump on the head. “Feeling better?” she asked after he’d demolished an enormous meal that’d fuel his body’s healing process.

  Jaw cracking in a huge yawn, he nodded. “Muscles feel like noodles, though—that fucking wind.” He froze in the midst of sliding down into the bed and, though he was clearly struggling to keep his eyes open, said, “Should I go to my own room?”

  “You can stay,” she said, her heart huge inside her chest at the idea of Kenji’s scent on her sheets, on her. “Just don’t try any funny business.”

  A sinful, sleepy smile that reminded her of the playful boy he’d been. “No promises.”

  Garnet didn’t reply because he was already asleep, his lashes throwing shadows on his cheeks and his damp hair a sleek black.

  Oddly pleased at this glimpse of him without any of his usual shields, she leaned over and tugged the comforter to partway up his chest. When she moved to clear away their plates, he frowned in his sleep. “I’ll be back,” she murmured before rising to put the plates on the small table she used as a workspace when she didn’t feel like staying at her office.

  Going into the bathroom, she cleaned her teeth, washed her face . . . and admitted she was stalling. Because as soon as she walked into the bedroom, she’d be sleeping cuddled up next to Kenji. Gorgeous, infuriating, strong, and the only man who had ever made her heart go boom.

  “He needs you tonight.” She took a deep breath on those words and undid the loose ponytail into which she’d scraped up her hair after rubbing it close to dry with a towel.

  Irrespective of what lay between them, what history, what secrets, what pain, tonight Kenji was a packmate who needed comfort. That was all. He’d probably be fine on his own but if he’d been isolating himself sexually for over a year, then the last thing he needed was more aloneness. Scowling at the idea of Kenji hurting himself that way, she went back into the bedroom and crawled under the comforter.

  He moved in his sleep, curving his body around hers until he was spooning her, one arm around her waist, the other thrown above his head. He burned but it wasn’t a fever. It was just Kenji. Sliding her hand over his muscled forearm, she closed her own eyes and snuggled in.

  It should’ve been awkward, sleeping with a naked Kenji when they’d never done anything like this, but she fell into a deep, sweet sleep, her wolf curled up next to Kenji’s heat. It felt like coming home.

  Chapter 8

  Kenji woke feeling better than he had in forever. Nothing hurt inside him, nothing ached. Nuzzling against the warm skin of the packmate curled up with her back to his chest, he nudged his thigh a little higher. He’d slid it between hers and now it pressed up against the hot center of her—

  His eyes blinked open.

  He already knew who he held, her scent intimately familiar to him. Garnet’s golden hair was soft against his arm and shoulder, her body small and lithely feminine, her breathing even in sleep.

  Kenji’s own heart, however, was slamming against his rib cage, every muscle in his body tense and his cock rock hard. He knew he had to pull away before she woke, but he couldn’t. His wolf didn’t want to go back to being cold and alone and without her. Something broke in him at even the idea of losing her when he was finally, finally holding her as he’d always hungered to do.

  Moving with utmost care, he curled himself even tighter around her, breathed her in . . . and felt her shift. He slid away his thigh before she could ask him to, but instead of pulling away, she turned and cuddled into his chest, her own arm sliding over his ribs to curl against his back.

  Not awake, he realized, just changing position.

  Heart still hammering so hard it hurt, he nudged at her head with his arm. She lifted it without waking and he slid his arm under before curving it around her. His thigh, he pushed back between hers. It wasn’t sexual, despite his aching cock. He just wanted to be close to her, their limbs interlocked.

  She didn’t stop any of it, didn’t even stir.

  That wrecked him, betraying as it did a level of trust that wasn’t instinctive for a dominant predatory changeling of Garnet’s strength. He would never hurt her, of course he wouldn’t, but it meant everything that despite all the years and anger between them, she knew that truth so deeply that she could sleep without concern in his arms.

  Nuzzling his chin on her hair, he closed his eyes and just sank into her scent, into the feel of her skin against his, her curves and her softness, and below that, a steely strength that called to the predator within him. His wolf knew bone deep who Garnet was to him, who she was meant to be . . . and it was because she meant so much that he’d let her go.

  When she finally stirred, he didn’t move, not wanting to end this before he had to. Stroking her hand down his back, she yawned lazily before rubbing her cheek against his chest. “How’s your head?”

  His heart, it filled his entire body, this huge, needy, painful thing. “Good. Did Lorenzo do me?”

  A smile he saw because he’d brushed away the strands of hair stuck to her cheek. “Yeah, Lorenzo did you. All night.”

  Grinning at the sheer rightness of playing with her, he rubbed his chin on her hair again. “I feel good.”

  She continued to pet his back with a small, capable hand that unknowingly held his heart. “What’s up with not sharing skin privileges with anyone for a year?”

  He went to ask her how she knew, shut his mouth before the words escaped. They were part of a pack. Secrets were hard to keep. “I just wanted to know if I could do it.”

  Lines forming on her brow, Garnet drew back but didn’t pull away from him. Instead, she wriggled up until she could look him in the eye. “You’re lying to me.”

  Yes, he was, but hell if he’d tell her the truth. That the reason he’d stopped sharing intimate skin privileges was because no one was her. No one would ever be his Garnet. “You know my family history,” he said instead. “Tanaka men have a constitutional inability to keep it in our pants.”

  Garnet’s response was a growl of sound, her eyes molten gold. “Kenji, you’re a lieutenant. You know how to commit.”

  “Before he retired, my dad’s father was a lieutenant, too,” he reminded her, telling himself to break this dangerous physical contact.

  He couldn’t.

  Having Garnet skin to skin against him was filling the dried-up well inside him, making him whole; he needed a little more. Just a little more. “His relationship with my grandmother lasted five years, just long enough to produce my dad. I love him but I’ve lost track of his lady friends at this point—though I do know he’s currently beating out my father for the sheer speed with which he goes through women.”

  Garnet kept petting him and even if it was out of pity because of his touch-starved status, he’d take it. “Are you trying to tell me you became a player because you thought it was inevitable?”

  Kenji shrugged. The truth was, he hadn’t played around any more than anyone else in his year group—he’d probably done less because he’d known he wanted the right to call Garnet his own since the day of her high school graduation. But his few exploits had gotten blown out of all proportion because wild behavior was expected from a Tanaka. That had irritated him when he was younger; he’d worried Garnet would believe the rumors.

  Later, he’d used it as a shield.

  No one would wonder why Kenji was relentlessly single if he built a reputation as a man who simply couldn’t decide on a woman. Only Garnet’s brother Steele had never fallen for it. To this day, Kenji’s best friend couldn’t understand why Kenji and Garnet weren’t together. Kenji had never told Steele the truth. Not even Hawke knew all of it, though Kenji had a feeling his alpha suspected. Only the senior SnowDancer healer and the healer in his den had the details, and neither would ever break his confidence.

  “That’s a load of
b.s.” Garnet’s tone was flat. “Something’s going on with you, has been for a while, hasn’t it?”

  He knew he was walking a risky road—his defenses were down and Garnet had a razor-sharp intelligence. Tell her, snarled the part of him that had fallen for her a lifetime ago. Strangling that voice, he luxuriated in the sensation of her against him . . . and stayed. “Me?” A deliberately teasing smile. “I’m an open book.”

  “Uh-huh. Why did you stop playing the violin?”

  His gut clenched, his body going stiff before he could control the response. “What?”

  “Yeah, what?” Her nose touched his, her expression that of a hunting wolf. “You loved making music.”

  The last time he’d played, he’d played for Garnet. The idea of putting bow to string when she wasn’t there to listen, it had made him want to break the instrument into a thousand pieces. “I grew out of it.” In the end, he hadn’t broken his violin, had instead locked it in its case and hidden it away at the back of the closet.

  “Liar.”

  The words, the challenge, shoved past his defenses. “Prove it.”

  Narrowed eyes before Garnet began to play dirty, running her hand over his chest and her foot up his calf. He grabbed her wrist even as his breath caught. “I don’t want you to be with me because you think I need skin privileges.” It wasn’t what he’d intended to say, instinct trumping reason and turning his words into a growl of sound.

  Letting her claws release after tugging away her hand, Garnet pricked his shoulders with them. Her eyes held a determined and distinctly wolfish light. “Baby, we’ve been flirting for years.” She pressed up against him, small and curved in all the right places and his sweet, private addiction. “I’ve just decided it’s time to do something about it.”

  He scowled in an effort to hide his raging need. “I’m getting out of bed.” Gripping her wrists, he tugged off her hands. “I might’ve managed to keep it in my pants for a year, but I’m not good for you.” Let her think he was worried about his ability to be loyal, when staying loyal to her was branded into his bones.

  He’d walk on fire for Garnet. She was it for him, had always been it.

  “There it is again, a lie.” Teeth showing, she gripped his jaw when he would’ve looked away, her hold that of a pissed-off dominant female. “What the hell are you hiding from me, Tanaka?”

  Fuck. “Nothing.”

  Growling low in her throat, she pressed up so close that their breath mingled. “Tell me.” It was an order.

  His own claws released, his wolf rising to the surface. Baring his teeth at her, he said, “Careful you don’t forget who you’re challenging.”

  Her lips curved, pure delight in her expression and that tiny dimple taunting him. “As if you’d hurt me, you big, bad, gorgeous wolf.” A nuzzle of her nose against his, her hand gentling to pet his cheek, his jaw.

  Fuck again. “We should go see if Shane is awake,” he said, desperate to escape before he surrendered and took the one thing he wanted—needed—more than he needed to breathe.

  Garnet nipped at his jaw. When he jerked, hands falling to grip at her hips, she smiled again, and this time, it was the smile of a SnowDancer with a highly specific goal in mind. “Agreed. But we’ll be picking this up later.” Rolling out of bed on that promise, she shot him a smile that was pure sin. “You have no clothes.”

  He growled at her before shifting. Shaking his fur into place, he went to her door and used the footpad to open it before slipping out. Her scent followed him out, his fur branded with her touch, his jaw feeling the lingering echo of her bite. A man would get away with nothing with Garnet. And a man who wanted to keep a secret had better as hell keep his distance, as Kenji had done for so long.

  The only other choice was to tell her everything. Tell her why he wasn’t man enough, wolf enough, for her. The therapist the healer had forced him to go see had told him to stop thinking that way, and on a conscious level at least, Kenji knew the therapist was right. But deep in his gut, in the most primal part of himself, in the wolf’s heart itself, there was a hole he was afraid nothing would ever fill.

  He didn’t want Garnet to have to live with that sense of loss, too.

  • • •

  Garnet was on her way to grab a quick breakfast when she ran into Ruby. “What are you doing waddling about?” she teased her sister before bending to speak to the belly that had taken over Ruby’s tiny frame. “Hey, little man.”

  “Lorenzo says I should waddle. Might hurry my pup up.” Tucking her arm into Garnet’s when Garnet rose to her full height, Ruby leaned into her, the familiar scent of her making Garnet’s wolf brush affectionately against her skin. “Be my breakfast date?”

  “Where’s your beloved?” Ruby and her mate were joined at the hip with Ruby so close to her due date.

  “Emergency with Grandma Maisey. Her computronics went down and you know she only trusts Tex to fix it.”

  “Grandma Maisey” was actually a friend of their maternal grandmother. They’d grown up calling her Grandma, while their maternal grandmother was Grammy and their paternal grandmother was Nanna. “Hmm.” Garnet tapped her lower lip with a finger. “Convenient how Grandma Maisey’s systems always break down or have a glitch right when Tex is driving you up the wall with his hovering.”

  Ruby giggled, eyes dancing. “Wolves are the worst hoverers,” she said. “It’s adorable really, how protective he is, but every so often, I want to waddle about without him nearby ready to catch me.”

  Well aware her older sister was nuts for the tall drink of water who was her mate, Garnet wrapped an arm around Ruby’s shoulders. Ruby was one of the few members of the Sheridan family with whom Garnet could do that—everyone but one other sister had ended up on their father’s side of the genetic height lottery. Ruby’s twin, Steele, was six foot four. Needless to say, taking family photos required some judicious management—and clever use of hidden boxes.

  Kenji’s pups would be tall, she thought suddenly. His entire family was tall. Even if certain short genes mingled with his, she didn’t think they’d hold sway.

  Smiling at the thought of wild and beautiful Kenji with a newborn in his arms, she looked down when Ruby squeezed her arm. “I told Kenji I liked both him and Revel equally, and I do, but for you, it’s only ever been Kenji.”

  Garnet wasn’t surprised at Ruby’s out-of-the-blue statement—her sister knew her. “Rev and I aren’t an item anymore,” she told her sister. “As for Kenji, he’s holding something back.”

  “I figured. Otherwise, that man would have hunted you down long ago.” Ruby’s tone was definitive. “Kenji Tanaka is not one to sit back when he wants something.”

  That was exactly why it had hurt so much that he’d let her go. “I’ll get it out of him,” Garnet murmured. “First I have to put this situation with Russ and Shane to bed.” Only after that could she focus on her personal needs and desires—and on one stubborn wolf lieutenant.

  • • •

  She’d just finished breakfast, while Ruby was nibbling at hers, when Lorenzo alerted her that Shane was awake. Kenji, who’d come into the communal dining area a couple of minutes after her and Ruby, saw her get up, said, “You want me to cover something for you?”

  “I was meant to take a training session for the junior soldiers.”

  “On it.”

  Garnet couldn’t understand how she’d thought, even for a minute, that Kenji would be an unreliable lover. She’d have to watch his habit of hiding things under a laughing, playful facade—because he was going to be hers. She’d made up her mind. They were through with this game of hide-and-seek and obfuscation.

  And after this morning, after the panic she’d sensed in him at her teasing, she knew damn well he was in no way immune to her. In fact, she was starting to suspect Kenji had a mile-wide vulnerable streak when it came to her. That both confused and delig
hted her. Confused because why the heck would a man who felt that way walk away from her, and delighted because she damn well had a vulnerable streak when it came to him.

  Crossing over to him, she very deliberately ran the back of her hand over his cheek. Males weren’t the only ones who had a possessive streak and Kenji Tanaka needed to learn that Garnet Sheridan could play as dirty as any dominant. “Thank you, baby.”

  His eyes glittered, and then he actually flushed—with temper. Grinning as the other packmates in the room, including an overjoyed Ruby, whistled and hooted, she left him simmering and began to walk down the corridor.

  Her mood grew darker the closer she got to the infirmary. She entered to find Shane sitting up in bed, a lost expression on his face. “Jem!” He clung to her hand when she took a seat on the bed; the bruises on his face had turned black overnight but Lorenzo had managed to keep the swelling to a minimum.

  “What’s happening?” Shane’s voice rose, his breathing ragged. “Why isn’t Athena here?”

  “She’ll be here soon.” Garnet had no intention of keeping Shane isolated now that he was conscious; that wasn’t good for any wolf, much less one who’d been hurt. “I need to talk to you first.”

  Shane’s deep blue eyes locked on her face. “Why?” he pleaded. “Why am I here? I don’t—”

  Garnet interrupted before the usually steady-tempered man could spiral into panic. “I want you to tell me what you did yesterday morning after you got off your shift,” she said, careful not to suggest anything with her words. “Go through it step-by-step.”

  “Yesterday morning?” Frowning, he let go of her hand to rub at his temple. “I was tired,” he said slowly. “I’d started my shift early, pulled extra hours to help out after one of the other maintenance techs got sick. Wanted to go straight home and crash but I promised Russ I’d meet him after work.”