by J. K Harper
She grabbed the other banana and worked down the peel. “I doubt I’ll get any offers at all. My new alpha offered to try to make me a match if I wanted one since the goddess guides him to connect true mates. I guess I just didn’t think he could help me.”
“Did you want to be helped?”
“I…” She furrowed her brow and twined her thumbs. “When you ask like that, I’m not even sure I know the answer myself.”
He watched her play with the zipper of her cardigan in between glances at the television screen. She’d tuned the television to a travel show, and the host was eating his way through San Juan.
“Looks warm there,” Grant mused quietly.
The wrinkles in her brow smoothed, and her hand stilled. “Yeah. Wolves don’t travel much, but maybe one day.”
“You can’t go leaving me behind. I’ll go. Gotta wait until Pete’s old enough, though.”
She laid her head against the sofa arm and took a bite of banana. “You’d go?”
He pulled the afghan down from the back of the sofa and draped it over her hips and legs. “Hell yeah, I’d go. I’d go anywhere.”
“I try to talk my mother into going places, but now that she’s settled in Norseton, she’s not ready to leave so quickly. I think she’s afraid that if she leaves, the magic will go away, and she won’t be let back in.”
“Wolves need to travel in little packs, right? You can’t go alone. I’d take you.”
“I’d bore you.”
“Do I look bored now?”
She glanced up at him speculatively, as if she were trying to discern if his question were a rhetorical one.
“I mean every word I say, honey. I like you here with me.”
“Why?”
“I dunno. Maybe because you don’t take up too much space.”
“Natural omeganess.”
“No, not like that. More like…you’re here, but you’re not in the way, because you have a way of figuring out what your place is.”
“What’s my place, Grant?”
“Right now, it’s at the end of my sofa, with your feet squished against me.”
She smiled and pulled her feet up onto the couch.
He rubbed the lump they made through the afghan and smiled ruefully as her breath slowly left her lungs and her body softened against him.
That’s right, make yourself at home.
He managed to reach forward far enough to grab his coffee mug, and pondered that all seemed right in his world for the moment, except for the small matter of Angel avoiding his bite. He had no doubt that her receiving it would be the best thing for her. His mark would keep other wolves from harassing her in his absence. She’d smell like him. She’d belong to Wolverton, or at least, his little wedge of it.
He didn’t understand her reluctance—didn’t know if her believing herself to be “omega” had anything to do with her cautiousness—but he endeavored to find out.
Maybe he made more mistakes than he got things right, but he wasn’t about to let Angel slipping away be one of his regrets. Wolfpacks didn’t cooperate with each other as a matter of course, but if he had to humble himself and reach out to alphas who knew a little more than he did, so be it.
It was high time wolf alphas learned some new tricks, anyway.
Chapter 6
Angel opened her eyes to a semi-dark room and the sound of low chuckles.
The surface beneath her neck was softer than the chair arm she remembered resting against, and her covering much smoother.
She ran her hand along the edge of it. Not the afghan, but a comforter.
She was on a bed.
Rolling onto her left side, she found Grant propped up on a couple of pillows beside her. He laughed at whatever was playing on the television atop his dresser.
“What time is it?” she whispered.
“Not that late. Dark in here because the storm’s got every bit of the sun blotted out. Pete’ll be up from his nap soon, I guess. We can have dinner in a few hours.”
“Why am I in your bed?”
“I figured you’d make my sheets smell nice. Wiggle around a bit and get that scent all over. Feel free to strip if you think that’ll improve efficiency.”
She snorted. “You’re—”
“Tactless. Yep. Move a little closer, why don’t ya?” He patted the space beside her, and reflexively, she moved toward his warmth.
He hooked an arm under her shoulders and snuggled her against his side. “There you go. You’re not naked, but this is still nice.”
It was nice. She felt no more agitated than she did after waking up on the sofa beside her mother following an unplanned nap. She should have been freaking out. “Um…” She flicked at his side, perhaps just to convince herself that she was truly awake and that he was a real, solid male next to her. “Does this feel weird to you?”
“Nope. Feels good.”
“That’s what I mean. Shouldn’t it feel weird?”
“Why do you want to make it weird?”
“Because I’m suspicious when things are too easy. I always feel like I’m being set up for trouble.”
“What’s so easy about it?”
“Just…being here with you. I don’t have a compelling instinct to dart off because I think you’ll hurt me or humiliate me or something. As an omega, that’s my basic survival strategy.”
“You feel good because you’ve been laying there for an hour and the wolf in you has vetted my energy a little. You’re calm because she’s not afraid. She’s so damn quiet.”
“You can sense her?” Angel couldn’t. She knew there was a beast inside her, but they didn’t communicate. Women who hadn’t yet received their mates’ bites didn’t so easily tap into their wolf consciousnesses.
Grant grunted. “Yeah. I guess I wouldn’t be much of an alpha if I couldn’t connect with what makes you a wolf.” He laid one large hand on her hip and squeezed gently. “You know I wouldn’t do what you said, right? I wouldn’t shame you or hurt you.”
Hoping was one thing. Knowing was another.
She rocked her head to the side and stretched out the kink that had formed in her neck. “You’re…supposed to. That’s what wolves do. Most wolves, anyway. Not the ones in Norseston. They’re a different kind of pack, but they’re not what I’m used to.”
“Well, I’m trying to make a different kind of pack here, too. I’d hoped you’d gotten a wild hair to stick around and help be an example for them.”
“Me? No. No way.” She should have gotten up so she could give her head a properly hard shake and to impress upon him how silly what he was proposing was, but she didn’t want to move. Grant smelled wonderful. He felt wonderful. His voice was a balm, and each of his words was a healing promise.
She liked touching him, too. She was half laying on him, really, and his embrace seemed to be far more intimate a thing than any touch she’d ever endured before. He held her like she was worthy of an alpha, but he had to know better.
“Why not?” he asked. “I talked to your alpha. You say you’re an omega, and I didn’t really understand what I was supposed to do about that, if anything. I wanted to ask someone who’d know more.”
“You talked to Adam?” She struggled to sit up, gruelingly. His magic was clinging to her like sticky tethers, and she didn’t have the strength to fight them, so she stopped. Words would have to do. “What did he say?”
“His opinion was that if an omega had to be with anyone at all, it had damn well better be an alpha.”
“Adam said that?”
“Yep. Figured you wouldn’t believe me, but you can ask him. I guarantee he’ll tell you the same thing.”
She didn’t want to think that Grant would lie to her, but the advice seemed far too convenient to her. “Did Adam happen to impress upon you that there would be no children, because omegas tend to be infertile? Keeps us from passing weak genes on to the next generation.”
Grant grimaced.
“Well? Did he?”
He p
ressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, and squeezed. “Okay. Maybe he did say something like that—that there was a good chance you wouldn’t be able to conceive.”
Well, there you have it.
“But also that if I’m dominant enough,” he said, dropping his hand and looking pointedly down at her, “I could possibly flip the switch. I’d have to bite you to find out. I’m willing to take the risk.”
“You’re crazy. You’d shoulder the risk of never having full-wolf children?”
“I’m willing to give that up if I get a true mate.”
“You think that’s what I am?”
“I know that’s what you are, and Adam thinks I’m probably right. He can’t tell for sure without having both of us in front of him, but his gut feeling is that you belong up here. Talk to him if you don’t believe me.”
Her mouth fell open, jaw creaking like an unoiled hinge.
Adam wouldn’t give her up if he didn’t think Grant would take care of her. He advocated for every one of his wolves. He wanted them happy.
She needed to talk to her alpha, and soon, but first she wanted to make sense of all the words Grant had thrown at her. Especially the part about him wanting to take her as a mate in spite of the improbability she’d ever be able to bear him a child. She didn’t know if his offer was sweet or generous or insane.
“Are you that desperate?” she whispered.
Grant sat up, pulling her up with him. “Listen, I wasn’t before, but I am now. Not every wolf is lucky enough to meet the yin to his yang. No one else will ever be good enough. You understand what I’m saying? Why would I settle for anyone else when you’re designed to be the perfect fit?”
“I was born broken—broken from conception, even. That’s probably why my father left. I bet he didn’t want to risk having another like me.”
“Honey, we’re all a little broken. You’re just used to having people tell you that you are, and so you think that’s all you are. But you’re so much more than that.”
Something clicked in her chest—a feeling of highness, of freedom of a sort she’d never experienced before. She didn’t know how to describe what she felt as she looked up at Grant—only that it was scary.
Scary, but…safe.
“You…” She swallowed down the lump in her throat and, closing her eyes, tried again to speak. “You want me anyway? Even if I can’t give you children? That’s the whole point of having a mate.”
“I don’t believe that.” He pressed fingertips to her closed eyelids and gently rubbed. “Maybe I’m only meant to have one child. Not every alpha has a heap of kids. Adam only has the one, right?”
She hadn’t thought of that. Adam was happy with his one child. She never got the feeling that Vic wasn’t enough for him. Adam had made the pack his extended family, so he probably felt like he had too many children at any given time. He was like a father to all of them.
“Right,” she whispered. “Just one.”
“Some things are meant to be, the way I see it,” Grant said. His lips glided across her forehead, and suddenly his hand was beneath her head, tilting it up. “Maybe you were always meant to come into the picture after Pete. You like him a little, don’t you?”
“Who wouldn’t like Pete?” She cringed, remembering the cold woman who obviously didn’t. “What reasonable person, anyway?”
“You’d take care of him?”
“Yes.”
“You could love him, right?”
“Of course.”
“Then as far as I can tell, we don’t have any problems.” He dragged his tongue lazily around her lips, and she just breathed, savoring his touch, enjoying the weight of him against the side of her body. “His Daddy needs to be taken care of, too, doesn’t he? Shouldn’t he have a mate for that?”
“Yes, he should.”
“Glad we agree. The beast in me wants a pretty, sweet mate to show off to his pack. They’re all gonna be wondering what kind of deal with the devil I had to make to get you.”
“You don’t have to flatter me.” Her burning cheeks and the dopey-feeling smile she had on her face said otherwise. She could probably get used to having a man say such lovely things to her, and a man she didn’t mind looking at her, at that.
An alpha—she was in bed with an alpha. Her mother would never believe it.
Hell, Angel couldn’t even believe it.
“Open up for me,” he crooned, and she let her mouth open again.
He slid his tongue in and settled his body over hers. Heavy, but not too much of him. He held himself up partially on his forearms, spreading the rest of his weight along her torso and onto his legs, which straddled hers.
He moved his hips slowly, dragging the head of his cock up and down her inner thigh as his tongue blazed in her mouth. “Just a little while before I have to wake Pete,” he said. “I could wait.”
“I can’t. Not this time.” She snaked her hands inside the back of his sweatpants and grabbed two meaty palmfuls of ass. She’d never felt so wanton and brazen before. Never before had she taken such initiative, but she wanted him more than she wanted her next breath—wanted every inch of him inside her, and his teeth set into her flesh.
“But if you have to run afterward,” he said, “I won’t be able to go with you. I can’t leave Pete.”
She understood. Ladies who got bitten shape-shifted for the first time soon after. They’d want to run in their wolf forms, but they’d be disoriented. Usually, their new mates ran with them, but there was no one else to watch Pete. Grant wouldn’t be able to go.
“I’ll be fine on my own. I could…follow my own tracks in the snow.”
“I don’t know, Angel. I don’t like the idea of you out there alone. Anyone could be out there stalking and running tonight.”
“You’ll hear if they are. I’ll howl, and…”
“I’ll put Pete in his crib and go running out to get you.”
“Yes.” She rubbed the side of her face against the soft stubble on his chin and let out an indulgent breath, wondering how his jaw would feel against the tender skin of her breasts and brushed over her nipples. “Undress me.”
“Okay.”
After one more tender kiss, he leaned back onto his heels and unzipped her cardigan yet again. He helped peel her shirt over her head, and then growled low in his chest when she sat up in her bra.
He stared, dragging his tongue across his lips again and again as his gaze tracked from one lace-covered breast to the other.
Maybe he was in no hurry, but she was. She wanted him against her, and soon.
She reached behind her back with one hand and deftly unfastened the catch of her bra. Without their wired support, her breasts spilled down, and Grant’s hands immediately found them.
“Fuck.” His palms intermittently crushed and kneaded them, and his breathing had gone thready and shallow.
She flung the bra over the side of the bed and let him play. She watched him tweak and roll her nipples. Watched him cup and palm the weight of her breasts. Watched his tongue dart out in quick flicks against the very tips of her.
He made her body thrum and her sex so wet.
“Help me get my pants off,” she whispered. If she didn’t keep him moving, he’d remain distracted. She liked the attention he was paying to her breasts, but they had a task to complete. He had a claiming to do, and she wanted him to do it with his cock plunged home.
Grant seemed to come out of a daze then. He sat back, brow furrowed, and wrestled with the button of her pants. Somehow, in spite of his enthusiastic fumbling, he got the zipper down and the jeans around her ankles, along with her panties.
“Fuck.” His appreciative gaze raked down her body that, for once, she didn’t bother trying to cover. If she aroused him, then she wanted him to look. Wanted him hard so he’d press into her sooner, and so he’d give himself to her.
So the omega can have what she wants, for a change.
She’d never wanted anything more
—had never even imagined that being touched to tenderly and looked at so longingly by a man like Grant was possible.
He paused long enough to divest himself of his own clothes. She’d seen him in all his nude glory before, but doubted the sight would ever get old—certainly not when his cock was straight and proud, and when moisture pooled at the tip because he was so ready.
And she was so ready.
“Please,” she whispered, spreading her legs.
He crawled between them, his breath half growl, his sharp fangs already deployed. “Let your hair down, Angel. I want to see it spread all over my pillow.”
Her hair wouldn’t be going down, so much as out, but she didn’t hesitate. Her finger hooked beneath the elastic loops and snatched it to her ends.
Coyly, she fluffed her hair and tried to massage out the line the band had left. She must have looked a fright, but if Grant cared, she couldn’t tell because he kissed her again, rough and growling all the while. His fingers snaked into her hair, his body colliding with hers.
She tried to arch her hips to take him inside, but he was too far away.
“Please,” she said into his mouth.
So desperate.
She needed him, had finally wanted to be taken by someone, even if letting herself belong to him was selfish of her.
“What do you need, Angel?”
“You. Inside me.”
“Like this?” Not cock, but fingers. One, then two—slid in and out, stretching her with each small thrust, then he jammed in a third.
She gasped, knowing that three was nearly big enough.
He pulled her earlobe between his teeth, and let it snap as he massaged his wet fingers up and down her lower lips. “Want more?”
Automatically, her hips arched up to welcome further touch.
“Tell me,” he said into her ear. “Tell me what you want.”
“Make me burn,” she whispered. “Then make it better.”
“I don’t want to hurt you. Have you been with anyone like me?”
As big as him, he likely meant.
She didn’t answer because he had to already know. If three fingers in her wet sheath were a trial, then she couldn’t have possibly have felt anything the size of four.