by Faye Avalon
All that remained was to tell him. Everything. When he knew, he would be able to move on. Just as she would.
“What do you want for yourself, Tynan? What do you really want?”
With no hesitation, he caught her hand again. “You.”
She gave a rueful smile. “And then what?”
His brows came together in a puzzled scowl. “I don’t get—”
“How do you see our lives together? When you look in the future, what do you see?”
He shrugged. “We’d be happy. We’d set up house somewhere, I’ve got a mind to build something out here on the moor if that’s what you’d want. A place big enough to raise our kids.”
Her fears confirmed, she eased her hands from his and took a step back. God. Her heart felt like it was breaking into pieces. “It won’t work, Tynan.”
“I want you, sweetheart. Have for as long as I can remember.”
She shook her head and repeated, “It won’t work.”
“Do you want me?”
Oh God. It was the simplest of questions, and yet the most profound. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t have you.”
He stepped close and held her face between his palms, tilting it up until their eyes met. “You can have me. I’m yours for the taking.”
Before the tears could form, she closed her eyes. Everything she desired was within her grasp. So close that all she had to do was claim it. But in reality, it was further away from her than it had ever been.
She opened her eyes, wanting to see his face when she told him. “I can’t give you what you want. It’s not entirely about me wanting to make my own decisions, my own choices.” And it wasn’t fair to let him think it still was. He was a good man. The best of men. He would support her, she knew that. With everything she had, she knew that. “I know you would always be there for me. I’ve come to realize that making my own choices means I can choose you, Tynan. And if it were that simple, that’s exactly what I’d do.”
“Then let’s make it that simple.”
She shrugged out of his hold and moved back against the wall. “You said you wanted a family. I can’t give you that.”
“Not right now, I get that. You want to focus on your career. But when you’re ready, that’ll be fine with me. I want you to be happy, sweetheart. I want you to feel that every area of your life is complete and whole.”
God, could this get any worse? Could she love him any deeper?
“It’s not that I don’t want to give you a family, Tynan. It’s that I can’t. It has nothing to do with my career, or timing, or anything. I can’t physically have children.”
He looked at her, and in his eyes, she thought she saw every emotion flash there, while the words she had never uttered were building in her throat, tearing at her heart. “It happened a long time ago. I was pregnant, and I lost the baby. There were complications, and as a result, I can’t conceive.”
He came to her, took her hands gently in his. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
She didn’t want to tell him any more. She didn’t want him to know.
“Have you seen someone? Got a second opinion?”
She nodded. “There’s nothing to be done. I can’t physically conceive. I’ve come to terms with it.”
He watched her intently, as if he didn’t quite believe her. “And you think that matters to me?”
“You want a family. You deserve that. You’ll make a great father and—”
“I want you, Naomi. Everything else is icing.” Before she could respond, he took her in his arms. “I love you. There are no stipulations on that. If you’re in my life, I’ve got everything I need, everything I want.”
Her heart aching, she angled out of his hold. He’d spoken the words she had never dreamed of hearing, but he was likely in shock. He hadn’t yet processed the reality of it.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “You say that now, but when Caleb has a son, when Nathan does, you’ll feel it. You’ll wish with everything you have that you had the same chance to be a father.”
“That means nothing without you. Don’t you see? You’re what I want. You’re who I love. I want to mate with you, Naomi. I want to marry you.”
Still she wouldn’t allow herself to believe him. Maybe she had to tell him everything. It was the only way he would accept the gravity of the situation, and what he would be giving up.
She took a breath, allowing her galloping heart to settle. “When I told you about my father, about him sending me away, about him going after you? It was because I was pregnant.” She waited a painful beat, every part of her aching anew for her loss. “I was pregnant, Tynan. With your baby.”
He looked as if she’d slapped him. Maybe she had. He stared at her, and in his eyes, she saw it all. The shock, the disbelief, the realization, and finally…the heartbreak. She wanted to go to him, to wrap him in her arms and comfort him. But she didn’t have the right to do that. He wasn’t hers to comfort.
“That night?” he finally said. “After that time…on the moor? We…”
She nodded. “I was frigid and naive, and yet I got pregnant.”
He moved away, his head down, and she knew he wanted to pace, the way he always did when he needed to work things through. But he stood, his feet planted, shaking his head as if the movement would help clear it.
“I thought for a long time that I had to be mistaken,” Naomi said, rubbing her suddenly cold arms. “You used a condom. How could I get pregnant? Then I remembered that I kept making you stop because it hurt. You pulled out a couple of times and must have dislodged the condom.”
“I should have taken my time.” He looked up at her, his eyes so ravaged it brought back every one of the emotions she had suffered when she had lost their baby. She had to keep reminding herself that he was suffering through them now for the first time. “It’s my fault.”
“Tynan—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She’d expected the question but found it hard to answer. “Everything happened so fast. I didn’t realize the truth until I kept being sick in the mornings. My periods were all over the place, and I thought that because our lovemaking had been so brief and painful for me, I couldn’t possibly have gotten pregnant.
“My mother got suspicious and she told my father. He was crazy mad. Said I’d disgraced him. He sent me to live with his sister, my aunt. I was so lost, so heartbroken about…everything. I hooked up with a couple of girls I met at the clinic. They were fun, and under their influence, I rebelled. I was so mad at my father, mad at my mother, mad at you. But that’s no excuse for what I did. We were at this party one night, and I had too much to drink. I was coming downstairs and lost my footing. The fall made me bleed, so they rushed me to hospital.”
She had to take a breath, had to steady herself. Tynan remained motionless, his face a mask of steel while he listened. It hurt more than the story she conveyed, seeing him holding back his anger, pushing down his heartbreak for the child he had lost.
Naomi swallowed. “I lost the baby. There were complications, and they had to operate. After that, they said I could never get pregnant again. My father wouldn’t let me come home. He said I’d gotten what I deserved and the world would be better off for not having to endure any of my offspring.”
“Bastard,” Tynan grated, his hands curling into fists at his sides. “Fucking bastard.”
“My aunt helped me get into medical school. She said a female had to make her own way in the world and not rely on any male to help her. She had never married. In fact, I think she hated men in general. Anyway, she was good to me, and I’m grateful to her for that.”
She rubbed her arms again and noticed that Tynan had released his fists so that his hands lay resigned at his sides. She wished that he would come over and hold her. She needed his arms around her right then, needed his strength, his supp
ort. Until that moment, she didn’t realize how much. But he was grieving, trying hard to process what she’d told him. He would need time to make sense of it all, to come to terms with it as she had.
“I’m so sorry, Tynan.”
His head snapped up. “None of it was your fault. It’s that asshole of a father who drove you to leave, who pushed you into retaliating against his brutish regime. I’d swing for the bastard if he were still around.”
She started to shake uncontrollably. “It…it was my fault. Despite what you say. I lost our baby. My actions caused me to lose our baby.”
His arms were around her in a flash, her head pushed against his chest. She wept into his shoulder, silent tears that tracked down his shirt. “It’s past,” he murmured, his hand stroking down her back. “All in the past now.”
He let her weep, not trying to hush her but letting her give vent to her remorse, her grief. He would need to deal with his, she thought wretchedly. She only hoped that in doing so he wouldn’t push himself hard again, that he wouldn’t need to shift and pound across the moor in an effort to cope with his loss.
Spent, she eased gently away from him. He pulled his shirt from his waistband, used it to brush away the residue of her tears. “None of this could ever change how I feel about you,” he said softly. “I love you. I want you as my mate, my wife. We’ll deal with anything we need to deal with. Together.”
Oh, how she wanted that. More than anything she’d ever wanted in her life. But she wasn’t quite ready to hope for it.
“Since I lost our baby, I haven’t been able to shift.”
He raised his eyebrows, his hands stilling on her arms. It took only moments before she realized he was remembering the times she had refused to run with him.
“I haven’t wanted to,” she admitted. “I thought I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve the gifts I’d been given as a member of the pack.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I’d failed in my duty. I’d failed to procreate.”
He huffed out a derisive laugh. “Shit, Naomi. Your value isn’t determined by your ability to give birth.”
She was only now starting to realize that. It had been a hard-worn path and a long one to get to this point. “Any more than yours is determined by your ability to run fast,” she felt compelled to point out.
He gave another huff. “What a fucking pair we are.”
“That night? When we were together and you asked me to run? I wanted to, so much. But I couldn’t. Then, when I was attacked, I felt the power rising in me. I know it was anger and desperation, but I felt it.”
“We can try together. If it’s what you want.”
“I’m scared, Tynan.”
“We’ll deal with it. All of it. Together. Just you and me.”
He drew her in for a kiss. Gentle and tentative at first, then driving toward passion and exhilaration and need. She matched his enthusiasm, poured everything into showing him how she felt.
When she drew away, the need to ensure he understood the implications of the promises they were making took precedence. “Are you absolutely sure, Tynan? If you want, I’ll be yours. We can date, have sex, and generally enjoy each other. That way if you decide along the way that you want more we can go our separate ways and no harm done.”
“If I suspected you really thought it was that easy, then we may as well go our separate ways now, because you sure as hell can’t love me the same way I love you.”
“I do,” she said, almost falling over the words in her efforts to assure him. “I love you with all my heart. I think I always have. But it’s because I love you that I need to be certain you understand what you’re throwing away for me.”
“Doc?”
Eyes wide, heart pumping, Naomi looked him firmly in the eye. “What?”
“Just shut the hell up and kiss me. You keep stressing me out like this, and I’ll soon be needing another of those massages.”
His sexy grin broke down the final restraint on her heart, and with it, the last of her doubts that he realized what he was giving up to be with her. She wrapped her arms around him, placing her palms low down on his back. “Is your back hurting again?”
“Starting to.” He grinned. “But there’s something else that’s beginning to hurt even more, so you might want to move your hands around front a little, just to make sure you hit exactly the right spot.”
“Tynan Galloway. Even in pain, you’ve got a one-track mind.”
He drew her closer still, dropped a kiss to her mouth so tender it made her heart tremble. “Where you’re concerned? You’d better believe it, sweetheart. You’d better believe it. Now, about that massage…”
Epilogue
“Is your back feeling okay?”
Naked, Tynan stretched out underneath the blanket they’d brought to the spot where they’d first made love a decade ago. “Guess so. Can’t feel a thing, seeing as most of my body is numb from pleasure. All I know is my cock is one very happy dude right now.”
Naomi punched at his shoulder. “I told you those sessions with the massage therapist would do you good.”
“Amen to that. Although I still prefer my original therapist. The one with the magic hands.”
Naomi hoisted herself up beside him and grinned down. “These magic hands?” She fisted his for-once flaccid member. “Just say the word, and I’ll do my thing again.”
He returned her grin. “Abracadabra.”
In the four weeks since they had declared their love for each other, things had happened so fast. Now, in less than seven days, in a ceremony officiated by Caleb and her grandfather, she would be mated to the man she loved. Two weeks after that, they would be married in a civil ceremony, and she would be joined to Tynan in the eyes of the law.
“Seriously,” she said, punching his shoulder. “Maybe we should ease off a bit. You promised me not to overdo things for a while to give your body a chance to regain strength.”
He waggled his eyebrows. “Have you noticed any problem in my strength department?”
“Be serious, Tynan.”
“I’ve kept my promise and haven’t pushed things. Hell. I’ve been running like a girl for weeks now. You start restricting me in other areas and I’m likely to spontaneously combust from frustration.”
“I wouldn’t say you’ve been restricted. Far from it.”
He slid his hand around her neck and let his fingers glide gently over the spot where he would mark her after their mating ceremony took place.
In response, Naomi mirrored his movement and tenderly stroked his neck. “What would happen if the powers-that-be ever found out that, in one important area, you’ve already marked me?”
Tynan hoisted himself up and eased her back to the blanket. He ran his hand down the front of her body, palming her mound and slipping his middle finger into her pussy. Lightly he circled the bite mark on her labia, the intimate mating practice a male performed on his female. A practice that was reserved for the night after the mating ceremony had taken place, when a male marked his female with two bites—one to the neck and the other of a more intimate nature.
“They’ve been intent on making us wait for the ceremony, so it’s on them. Not that anybody but me will ever see it.” He touched the mark again. “You sure it feels okay now? I’ve been going at you pretty much full on for five days.”
She reached up and stroked his hair back from where it fell across his forehead. “Tynan Galloway. You have such a romantic way with words.”
“We’ll see what you have to say about that after you’ve heard my mating promise. I’ll show you romantic.”
Delighted, Naomi’s eyes widened. “What are you going to say?”
“My lips are sealed until the ceremony. Unless you want to stick your tongue between them, that is.”
She huffed, but it was hard
to stay the joy that bubbled inside her. He kissed her, his finger sliding deeper inside her while his breath expanded and lengthened. His cock, at full mast again, pushed against her hip. Her nipples tightened in response, her breasts already desperate for his hands, his mouth.
He released her, his grin quick and easy before his head disappeared beneath the blanket. He moved down her body, kissing his way along and drawing out needy little moans from her. Naomi stretched her hands above her head, gazing dreamily up at the star-spattered sky while Tynan continued to heat her up.
He spread her legs and moved between them, pushing her knees up so that the blanket fell away. Naomi grabbed the edge of it and tossed it aside. It seemed they were both hot enough now not to worry about the chilly night air circling around them.
With his thumbs, Tynan opened her pussy lips and touched his tongue to the bite mark. Naomi arched, enjoying the energy that pulsed from its center before spreading through her whole body. She had often wondered what it would feel like, and now she knew. It was fire and heat, ice and cold. It was orgasmic in its intensity, both grounding and ethereal.
Tynan rose above her, his cock nudging her entrance. Having both decided that they would no longer have need for a condom, he pushed inside. Naomi loved the feel of him with no barriers between them. She loved the heat of him and the strength of him.
They moved in unison, their lovemaking at first slow and rhythmic but soon turning to desperate need. Naomi clung to Tynan, squeezing him with her inner muscles and reaching down to grab his backside. He shuffled slightly higher up her body, changing the angle of his penetration. In this position, the rocking movement soon brought her to the edge, and she cried out when the orgasm hit her.
Over and over, with wave upon wave of contractions firing through her until she thought they would never stop, Naomi gave herself up to the bliss of it. Tynan’s climax followed, his hot release spurting inside her and shooting her own pleasure into orbit.