by MJ Compton
“I’m talking about something else,” he said, nuzzling her neck. Her scent was different, too. “I never realized it until we started howling at dawn, but singing to the moon is like sex. There’s a certain . . . release, but this sunrise stuff is . . . incomplete. There’s no satisfaction.”
He yanked off her sweatshirt.
“You aren’t listening to me!”
“You aren’t listening to me. I need you,” he tried again to explain. His desire had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with needing the sanctuary of his mate. He tugged at her sweatpants until they, too, were tattered on the floor.
“Are you going to force me?”
She sounded angry, and her scent had turned pungent with fear, which irritated him. He didn’t understand why either emotion separated them right now. Wasn’t she supposed to want him to desire her, to need her when things weren’t going good, as well as wanting her in joy?
“You’re my mate,” he explained. Yet again. What was so difficult to understand?
Her only response was a racing heart and breathing as harsh as his. He couldn’t tell where his ended and hers began. Sounded like arousal to him.
Foreplay wouldn’t take long, which was good, because he didn’t want to wait. He wanted to rid himself of the edginess by burying himself deep inside her, substituting orgasm for the missing moon rapture.
Hands gripping her hips, he lifted her from the floor and carried her to the bed, where he dropped her on her back. She rolled over. He accepted the invitation to mount her.
“I can’t breathe!”
If she couldn’t breathe, he figured she wouldn’t be able to speak, and she was talking, so he reached between her legs to check her readiness. He wanted this over as much as she did. It wasn’t as if they would be making love or anything. All he wanted was meaningless sex. They could snuggle later.
“I can’t breathe!” Lucy squealed, struggling in earnest. She inhaled in short, rapid pants.
What was wrong with her? If she didn’t stop, she would hyperventilate herself unconscious.
“It’s okay,” he whispered against her ear. His fingers continued to stroke, preparing her for his intrusion. Her skin tasted almost rancid as he nibbled on her neck.
“You’re hurting me!” Then she sobbed.
Well, scat. He’d gone and made her cry again. And he’d hurt her when the first rule of mating was to not hurt her.
He rolled off her, and she kicked at his privates before jackknifing away from him. His superior speed was the only reason he beat her to the door.
“Let me out!” Her tiny fists pummeled his bare chest. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
Judging by the evidence, he’d also broken mating’s second rule: make sure your mate is happy.
He scooped her into his arms and carried her to bed. This time, he drew the sheet over her nudity. Something was very, very wrong, and he didn’t need the tantalizing sight of her skin distracting him.
The mattress shivered from the force of her frighteningly silent sobs.
Okay, maybe he should have realized the change in her scent and taste meant something. Maybe he could have been a little more romantic in his approach, maybe even tender, but she’d overreacted. She’d responded the way he’d thought she’d react the first night, when he’d revealed his true nature by changing in front of her.
Besides. She hadn’t said no. She hadn’t told him to stop. Hank had never mentioned moods when he’d doled out advice.
Stoker flopped onto his back and stared at the water-stained ceiling. By the Ancient Ones, he would never figure out this woman. After a week, he ought to have a clue, but her mind worked in ways the Ancient Ones themselves couldn’t fathom.
Finally, her sobs faded to sniffles. She sat up and drew her sheet-draped knees to her chest and rested her chin on them. Her eyelids were red and puffy, emphasizing the brilliant green of her pupils.
“If you need a generic release,” she said, her voice trembling, “use your hand. I know you’re upset about losing your music, and I think I understand the whole howling at dawn instead of the moon thing, but I don’t deserve to be treated like . . . a handkerchief.”
Her thoughts connected in ways thoughts were never meant to join. What did Restin kicking him out of the recording session have to do with anything?
She wouldn’t meet his gaze, and for a moment she looked exactly like her sister, which didn’t sit well with him at all. Michelle looked defeated by her husband, by her pregnancy, by her life. Lucy had him, so she should glow, not look beaten.
“I couldn’t breathe, Stoker. I couldn’t move.”
Tears hovered on the edges of her words, but she didn’t start crying again, thank you, Ancient Ones. Each inhalation sounded less sob-like than the previous.
She hunched her shoulders, as if trying to appear smaller, like prey hiding from a predator, which further annoyed him. This being afraid of him thing of hers had to stop.
He said the first thing that popped into his head. “Would you please quit acting like I’m Randy Butler?”
Lucy’s gaze sliced him like shards of green glass. “Then quit acting like him.”
Anger flared. How dare she accuse him of behaving like an alpha or insult him by comparing him to Butler’s evil?
Snatching control of his temper away from the moon, he spoke between clenched teeth. “I hope you don’t mean that.”
She sniffed and reached for the box of tissues on the night table. “I asked you–I told you to stop, and you ignored me. You were thinking only about yourself, just like when Randy locked me in that cellar. I can’t stand being closed in. You pinned me down, and it scared me.”
“You never told me to stop. If you’d told me to stop, I would have stopped.” He might not be Hank, but there was nothing wrong with his hearing.
Maybe if he humored her, he could get her to cooperate. “When you say you can’t stand being closed in, do you mean you’re claustrophobic?”
Her cheeks turned peony pink. Her lips quivered. “Kind of.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Stoker asked. “We’ve done it–the Big It–in that position before, and it didn’t bother you then, so why now?”
That she hadn’t confided in him bothered him even more than being likened to Butler. She didn’t trust him.
“Was I supposed to figure it out when you told me you wished you were a butterfly?” Something else occurred to him. “Butler knew about your claustrophobia, didn’t he? That’s why he chose that hole for your punishment. You told him, but you didn’t tell me?”
Stoker was going to savor every scream, every fearful drop of sweat and blood he wrung from Butler when he took his revenge. Maybe he’d take Butler to Loup Garou and put on a show of savaging him.
If he focused on killing Butler, maybe he could move beyond the hurt that Lucy had kept such a big secret from him.
“If Randy knows, it’s only because Michelle told him. What does my wanting to be a butterfly have to do with anything?”
“Butterflies soar without boundaries. If you’re claustrophobic, wanting to soar makes perfect sense.” At least it did to him. He was surprised she hadn’t figured it out herself.
“You’re trying to distract me,” she said.
He sighed. Sometimes, he felt as if he kept repeating himself. “I guess you haven’t figured me out yet. I am not like a human male, with depths or angst or any of that scat. I’m a simple guy. What you see is what you get. So why didn’t you tell me you’re claustrophobic the night you told me everything else?”
Her face folded into uncharacteristic sullenness. “It’s not something I’m proud of, you know. And want to talk about a secret weapon?” Her laugh was harsh and very un-Lucy-like. “It worked real good for Randy the other night. No wonder Miche
lle won’t leave. It’s just like home sweet home.”
Stoker had never heard her sound so bitter. One didn’t need to be a thinking kind of werewolf to know there was a lot more to the story than she was telling.
“Lucy, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were claustrophobic. Next time, you can be on top.”
There. That ought to appease her.
“You’re sorry you didn’t know I had a problem, but you’re not sorry for trying to use me?” Her voice squeaked on the final syllables.
He thought about it for a heartbeat or so then shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to use you! Didn’t you understand a thing I said to you?”
“You needed a female,” she muttered.
“It’s the same thing!” he shouted, frustration finally seizing the upper paw.
“All you need is a body,” she shouted back. “It doesn’t matter who.”
“That is not true. I already explained this to you. Lycanthrope—”
“I don’t care about werewolf physiology,” Lucy snapped. “Your erections have nothing to do with me, personally.”
Her cheeks were vivid red now, but he didn’t know whether from anger or embarrassment.
Here was the fury he’d wanted only a few days earlier, the emotion he’d thought more honest and forthcoming than tears.
Turns out he couldn’t deal with rage, either. At least not hers. Maybe if it weren’t so close to the full moon, he’d be more sympathetic, but life never seemed to happen on his schedule, especially lately.
“You were behaving like Charles-the-Fink,” she said. “Any port in a storm.”
Her ex-fiancé and her brother-in-law. Great company. He didn’t deserve to be lumped with them. “Thanks a lot.”
“Explain to me how you’re different,” she said, her tone icy enough to freeze boiling water. “You had an itch, he had an itch. He used his secretary–and God only knows who else–and you wanted to use me.”
“The difference,” he said, enunciating each word as he quoted her own logic, “is that I’m married to you. Don’t I deserve some happiness, too? All I ever wanted was to mate, get off the road, and start a family. Instead, I’m stuck in a smelly motel room with an unhappy human wife, thrown out of the band, and howling at the rising sun in an attempt to rescue my sister-in-law without getting killed. Butler’s guns fire real bullets. I can’t rescue your sister if I’m dead. I’m doing the best I can, Lucy. I’m only delta.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to use me!” she shouted at his back as he stomped away from her.
“I wasn’t using you!” he shouted back. “I needed you.”
“Stand in line!”
“Maybe you need to let go. You can’t control the world, Lucy. Life isn’t about what you want.” Stoker opened the window blind and the window to stared at something outside their room.
Lucy bit back a snarky retort.
A cool breeze slipped through the screen, chilling her. The distant thump-thump of a helicopter provided a backbeat to the birdsong Stoker invited in with the fresh air.
She didn’t have a clue how to make Stoker understand how much he’d hurt her.
Okay, he’d lost his music because of her, and no one had ever sacrificed anything on her behalf before. She’d always been the one to relinquish dreams and goals, so she understood his resentment, even if he wouldn’t acknowledge it. She really did want to be sympathetic and supportive of him, but that didn’t give him permission to treat her like an object. She refused to be anyone’s convenience.
Now there was no way she could argue with him with the window open. Leftover childhood traumas manifested themselves in the strangest ways. She distinctly recalled her father closing windows before he started beating her mother.
Funny. She hadn’t thought of that in years.
She lifted her face to the breeze. If only it could blow away the emotional clutter of her childhood.
Childhood?
She almost laughed aloud.
She was struck by how alone Stoker appeared, standing there at the open window, looking at anything but her. She knew about being alone. Loneliness had been her companion most of her life.
“As I keep telling you, I’m not much of a thinker,” he finally said, “but I think you’re not claustrophobic. I think it’s about control.”
“I wish,” she muttered. Control issues would be so much easier to live with.
“Hank says I’m the most literal guy he knows,” Stoker said. “You have to spell things out for me in plain language, Lucy.” He finally turned to face her. “The deepest thoughts I have are about convincing you to tattoo musical staffs on your torso so I can compose on your body. But that’s ridiculous, because I can’t read a note of music.”
Lucy swallowed a lump in her throat. “You want the whole sordid truth? Okay. You’ve got it.”
She started with something he might appreciate, one bit of minutia beyond the bare facts. After all, his pack manufactured the brew.
“My father liked his Moonsinger Beer. A lot. I don’t know why. Drinking never made him happy, only angry. Michelle could sleep through his rages, but I couldn’t. One time, when I was about eight, I snuck out of bed and saw him punching my mother, so I tried to phone for help.”
She buried her face in her hands, not able to witness the disgust on Stoker’s face when he learned exactly what he’d married into when he’d stood with her before that judge. Randy was bad enough, but mild, really, compared to Drunken Daddy Dearest.
She thought she heard Stoker step toward her, but the helicopter now seemed to hover directly overhead, ominous background music to her tale.
“Did he hit you?” he asked.
Maybe he hadn’t moved closer, because he sounded so distant, so . . . remote.
Her throat was so tight she didn’t know if she’d be able to finish telling him.
But he was right. He planned on forever with her, so he needed to know, but talking about it brought back everything, all the emotions she’d worked so hard to repress just so she could function.
“I wish he had hit me,” she said. “I probably would have gotten over that. But he didn’t. He took the phone away from me and told my mother I was more trouble than I was worth and that he was going to take me to the dump and throw me away, because it was my fault he was stuck with her. Mom was pregnant with me when they got married.”
Stoker made a choking sound, but Lucy still couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t face her future while so deeply mired in her past.
“He grabbed me and his car keys then locked me in the trunk of his car.”
“Oh, Ancient Ones,” Stoker said, sounding as if speaking strangled him. “No wonder you’re claustrophobic.”
She raised her head, her eyes burning with unshed tears. The pity on Stoker’s face was worse than disgust.
“Then he drove away.” The ache in her chest threatened to grow until it consumed her completely. “Except he was drunk. And he ran a stop sign. Later on, I was told the other car broadsided him on the passenger side. And as usual, the drunk guy wasn’t hurt. The other driver had to be removed from his car with the jaws of life. He died anyway.”
“What about you?” Stoker asked. “Were you hurt?”
Lucy sighed and wished she’d never started this tale. Even after all this time, it still hurt, although not the way Stoker meant. Well, this was going to be the only true confession he was going to get from her on the subject, and she wanted it over. So she told him the awful truth.
“No one knew I was there.”
Chapter 17
Someone knocked on the motel room door, startling Stoker nearly as much as Lucy’s confession.
Luke. Stoker could have scented the omega’s trepidation a mile away. It was all Stoker could do to ke
ep from crashing through the wood and tearing out Luke’s throat, but that might upset Lucy, and the last thing he wanted to do right now was upset Lucy even more than he already had.
This interruption didn’t bode well for prying the rest of the story from her. He needed to know, because . . . well, because the event shaped Lucy into the person with whom he would spend the rest of his life. He didn’t want to accidentally push buttons that would send her into tears again.
“What?” Stoker growled as he opened the door.