by M. L. Briers
Petra felt the warmth all around her and couldn’t quite figure it out. There hadn’t been a time in the last four weeks that she had spent in the little cottage by the lake, when she had ever woken up feeling anything more than slightly comfortable under a mound of heavy blankets that she’d tossed on top of her extra warm duvet to stop the chill from the house that just leaked the cold through it’s very foundations.
The heaviness of the blankets lay across her body, but they seemed to be bunched into two separate areas, over her upper torso and across her legs. The weight was practically pinning her down as she tried to turn in the bed, but found that she could only move in a slight rocking motion, and that was a motion that her head didn’t much appreciate.
Her body tingled from head to toe like she’d got a serious case of the pins and needles, only this was nothing like… Oh great Goddess, take me out and shoot me… She reached out a hand and prodded him with her fingers as her mind snapped to complete awareness that someone was in her bed with her. No, not someone, it was a supernatural someone, nope, not even just a supernatural someone, her someone. Her mate, her life sentence…
CHAPTER THREE
“Did you want something or is that your way of saying hello?”The deep sexy tones rolled over her body like a thousand tiny fingers and she physically clenched everything.
For a long moment her mind took a detour from where she was now to where this could have gone last night. She’d have known it if they’d had sex. She didn’t feel that morning after feeling, and she had a sneaky suspicion that the morning after feeling with him would be more than obvious.
“It’s no good playing possum sweetheart, I know you’re awake…”Those deep tones came from everywhere, as if he was all around her, and in a way he was. Now that she was awake she could identify the parts of him that were curled around her. A heavy arm over her hip and running up her back, hot fingers splayed against the thin material of her top. And a tree trunk for a leg that was hook around hers, as if he was fearful that she was going to try to escape him as he slept…
Damn, but they’d slept together. Curled into each other for however many hours, and she knew that his proximity was only going to speed up the mating pull on both of them, and his would be rampant enough… Stupid, stupid, stupid… How could she have been so stupid? From what she could remember of last night, it hadn’t been that hard to succumb to his will, to allow him to manipulate her into bed… But then was it really manipulation? He hadn’t touched her, well, not in that way…
Dale felt her rush to panic from the moment she’d realised she wasn’t alone and he ached to sooth her worries. In one sense it was damn good to know that she didn’t think him her boyfriend, or that she wasn’t used to waking up in somebody’s arms. He’d hate to waste time having to track some guy down and beat him to death with one of the poor stooges own limbs.
Now he could feel a myriad of emotion as it swept through her. Fear, anger, denial, and then she seemed to plateau out, becoming calmer within herself as her body unclenched a little more with each breath in that she took. He was damn glad for it. She’d whacked him with one hell of a jolt of her magic in that alleyway last night, and it had taken a lot of willpower to keep his wolf at bay within him. Right now wasn’t the time for him to have to rein in his beast.
He was hard for her and had been the whole damn time she’d slept in his arms. He’d wanted nothing more than to turn her on her back and coax her into opening for him. Push into her, inch by inch claiming his mate until he was buried deeply inside her. But that was her choice not his. She would need to accept him before he could claim her, but she would, of that he was certain.
He could no more stop his fingers from stroking down the curve of her spine than he could rid himself of his beast. Her body arched towards him and he felt the skin on skin feeling of his erection against her stomach and groaned with the sheer eroticism of it.
Petra felt the rush of excitement from his touch and the heat flooded her body. The unmistakeable press of his penis against her stomach sent a jolt of something more straight through her sex and woke her brain up to the fact that she was near naked in the bed with him…
“Don’t…”She put her hands against the hot, hard muscles of his chest and pushed back away from him, and he let her.
“We have all the time in the world for you to accept me. I’m not going to do anything you don’t choose, sweetheart.”He let his hand trail across her hip and away from her body as he removed his leg from over hers, giving her the space that she needed. It was harder than he thought it would be to let her out of his arms, and yet he knew it was the right thing to do.
Petra’s hand ran down over her top and she yanked it down over her stomach, as far down her hips as she could get it. But it was only a top, it would cover only a minimal amount of her backside if she stood up, and she knew that at some point her skirt had been removed. She was just thankful that her panties were still in place, a virtual barrier between them, but one he could easily had circumvented, but hadn’t.
When he moved in the bed again her eyes snapped towards him. He turned in the bed and tossed the covers back from his body and she got her first view of the man, fully naked and gloriously endowed.
She’d like to think that the first place she had looked hadn’t been at his raging hard on, but she wasn’t ashamed to say that it had. And how could it not be. It stood away from his body as he moved, thick and hard and ready for action, and she had to swallow down the small squeak she knew was waiting in her throat to be unleashed.
Hard muscles under tanned skin that tensed and moved as he did, looked just so inviting for her touch that she needed to mentally withdraw from him or else she might just fall into the temptation of it all and actually reach out to touch him. When he came to sit with his back to her, she so desperately wanted to reach out and stroke her fingers down his back the way he had hers only moments earlier, moments that seemed a lifetime ago given his current proximity to her.
Petra’s hand seemed to have a mind of its own. Snaking out from under the covers she went to reach for the prize of feeling his skin against her fingertips. But she saw his muscles tense across his back and she yanked her hand back as he pushed up to his feet.
This time there was no subduing the little squeak of awe that escaped her lips as she took in the length of him. The broad shoulders down to his dipped waist, the flare of his hips and then that butt, and oh what a tight, muscled, glorious backside he had… She was so intent on it that it took her a long moment to realise that he had twisted at the waist and was staring back at her over his shoulder, a smirk on his lips and his eyes were laughing as they held her gaze…
“Do you approve of your mate?”He knew the damn answer to that, she told herself, how could he not? She could feel herself practically drooling where she lay…
“I thought you’d be… bigger…”She offered with a roll of one shoulder.
“Bigger?”He looked down at his penis and his head tilted to one side as a small frown swept onto his brow…
Petra couldn’t help the smile that touched her lips as she watched him take his appearance in. He’d gone from Mr-Self-Assured to a doubting pup in moments. Talk about a deflated ego, but she couldn’t exactly point to his manhood as the source of her statement for long. He had to know he was well endowed when it came to that, but she could throw a shadow over his whole being…
“Bigger muscles…”She tried to sound as plausible as possible as she watched him pout, just a little, his brow drawing down further over his eyes as he took in his gorgeous, sexy body…
“Muscles…”He echoed her words and the sight of him subconsciously flexing his muscles made her want to cackle out an evil laugh. Payback was a bitch… But then what was she paying him back for? He hadn’t really done anything to her, except be her mate…
“But, I’m sure we can work on those issues…”Oh she just couldn’t help herself. He was an alpha and he could do with being knocked down a pe
g or two, maybe even three.
She took her eye off him for just a second as she started to turn in the bed and he was over her body, caging her in with his arms and legs and staring down at her intently…
“Perhaps I just need a good workout…”He growled with every word, and every word hit home, deep inside her where her inner muscles clenched and her stomach flipped over. Talk about turn the damn tables, she thought.
There was a long moment when her traitorous body rushed to push her to say yes, go for it… and then her brain kicked in and she narrowed her eyes on him and mentally slapped herself upside the head.
“Thought we had all the time in the world and you wouldn’t do anything I didn’t want…”
“It was choose, but I like your choice of word better, because you do want, don’t you?”He was hovering above her. Not one inch of him touched her and yet it felt as if he was stroking her in all the right places.
“In body only.”There was little point in trying to lie to him. They both knew what she was feeling, and that was more than evident with the small smile that was playing on his lips, teasing her to the point where she wanted to whine her submission to him.
“Well then, we’ll just have to wait for your mind to catch up.”Dale growled and was gone in an instant, allowing her to suck in a much needed gasp of air into her lungs. Geez, but he was good. Turning the tables on her the way he’d done it was an indicator that she either needed to step up her game, or she’d finally met her match with this alpha.
“Your skirt is on the chair. I can’t help you with your feminine attire, but I can offer you something warm to wear.”He was riffling through a chest of drawers on the other side of the room when she finally managed to drag her mind from the gutter and concentrate on him. Him, sill standing there stark naked in all of his glory as he found her something to wear and tossed it onto the bed.
“I’m guessing you’ll probably answer to a grunt…”She saw his head whip around towards her and those dark eyes narrowed in on hers. Damn, even that small act was akin to him devouring her body, and her heart fluttered as her muscles tensed. “But it’d be more helpful to know your name.”
“So you can add it to the curses you’re going to throw my way?”He padded back towards the bed and she wanted to face plant the mattress when she realised that her eyes had once again dropped to his manhood. Not that it was entirely her fault, what with it bobbing about and practically bloody waving at her in an overly friendly gesture that had her nearly swallowing her tongue down her own throat, as she tightened the muscles at her thighs, pressing her legs together as her arousal grew…
“Or so I know what name to cry out when you’re bringing me to the brink of orgasm…”She’d meant that imagine to affect him, to tease his needs and desires, to up her game, and as she tore her eyes away from his hardness and travelled up the hard muscles of his body to finally find his face, she was grateful to find that he was grinding his jaw. If only because her words had caused her mind and body to race with the images she’d conjured up.
Dale wanted nothing more than to bring her that pleasure that she spoke of. He wanted to climb over the mattress, open her to him and taste her with his tongue until she screamed his name, over and over. His hands turned into white knuckled fists as his sides. He ground his teeth and tensed every muscle within his body to hold himself from doing just that.
“Be careful. I only have so much self restraint where you’re concerned.”His words were akin to a silken stroke of that very friendly appendage against her most intimate sex, and she tightened her own grip on her muscles as the rush to offer herself on a platter to him became a fire within her blood.
“Name?”Her voice sounded scratchy to her ears, Lord only knew what he made of it.
“Dale.”
“Petra…”She offered, a little more shyly than she had ever been in her life before. As if knowing his name was somehow the clinching factor in this deal between them that had been forge by Fate itself.
“Nice to finally meet you, Petra. I’ve been waiting a long time for you.”The growl that rumbled through his chest made her ears prick up as she went to say something, something profound, something sarcastic, something… But nothing came out as she stared back into his smiling eyes.
“You have to come out at some point.”The laughter in his voice made Jill want to curl up into a ball and rock back and forth until the end of time. This could not be happening to her. It just couldn’t, she thought. Party time out in the great wide world offered so many new and varied choices, and she was about to be attached by a ball and chain that she would be dragging around her ankles until the end of her days. How was that right?
“No I really don’t.”She’d retreated under the covers so she didn’t have to look at him, and although that was the sum total of her plan to date, she wasn’t about to change her mind just yet.
“From the amount of alcohol you managed to ingest last night you’re going to have to pee sooner rather than later.”That laughter in his tone made her fists tighten even further. But he wasn’t wrong, her damn bladder was already screaming at her for relief.
“Please go away.”It wasn’t an unreasonable request, she told herself. She was still trying to get her brain around the fact that she was a mate. A mate, she rolled her eyes in the semi darkness of her woman cave under the covers. Wow, because that didn’t suck enough, she was a Lycans mate. Bum.
“It must be something of a shock…”He offered as sincerely as he could, considering she was hiding beneath the covers of his bed, considering he had slept curled around her all night, considering he wanted nothing more than to get her to come out.
“You think?”Jill hissed through the rush of that little gene within her that she liked to call her irk gene, and she had a big one, and right now he was practically dancing on the bloody thing.
“But you are my mate and the sooner we get to mating…”He nearly bit his own tongue off trying not to laugh. He could tease her like this for as long as he needed, for as long as it took her to come out of hiding and face the reality that they were in this together, and that burying her head in the sand wasn’t going to change Fate.
The covers snapped backwards and she gasped in a breath of pure fresh air as her eyes found him and she glared, truly glared as well as any alpha could at her mate.
“Sure, hop on, have fun, don’t mind me…”She hissed at him, doing a damn fine impression of a She-Devil. Brad wondered for a long moment just what Fate had delivered to his doorstep, just how unhinged his mate could be, and then he remembered the way she had slumbered against him, curling into his warmth, and he felt slightly easier within himself.
“That’s not what I said.”He shook his head, dismissing her irrationality, her rush to believe the worst of him.
“It’s exactly what you meant…”She accused him with her words and her eyes, and he felt the heat of annoyance rush to the surface within him.
“You know me so well as to judge me like that?”He growled back at her.
Jill noted the way his eyes had darkened with the anger she could see within him. She noted the playful upturn of the corners of his mouth had gone, replaced by the hard thin line of his lips, and she felt the pang of guilt at her possible rush to judgement of him.
“Then say what you mean so there is no misunderstanding between us, doofus.” Jill couldn’t help adding the insult. It was born out of guilt.
“Fine.”He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and narrowed his eyes on her, perhaps getting her to come out was a mistake after all. “You can bury your head in the sand, or the covers if you wish, but the sooner you accept that we’re mates the easier it will be for…”
“You.”She supplied and watched as he ground his teeth for a long moment.
“The both of us.”
“But mostly you.”She sneered, certain of one thing, she wasn’t about to make anything easy for him, and the low groan of annoyance told her that she was already succeeding in t
hat endeavour.
“I’m trying to…”
“Be as obnoxious as possible? Job done, you’ve succeeded.”Jill tossed the covers back over her head and tried to placate the hard beat of her pulse within her. She knew she was probably being unfair, but she wasn’t happy about being a mate, and if she wasn’t happy why should he get to be happy? She was a firm believer in passing around the pain, there was always enough to share.
“I’m the obnoxious one…”She snapped the covers back just in time to see his eyebrows do a cute little dance on his brow. She wanted to smile, but that would be like waving the white flag and she wasn’t ready for that yet. Fate dictated that it would happen sooner rather than later. But who needed to give fate a helping hand, especially when her mate was as sexy as hell to start off with?
“Glad you agree. It’s probably something you should work on…”She aimed for sincerity and hoped she’d hit the spot.
Brad considered her for a long moment. Fae were mischievous and she was certainly Fae, therefore, he surmised that she was either trying to push his buttons, or she had a couple of cards missing from the deck she was playing with. Either way, he needed to tame this side of her if she was going to fit in with the pack.
“If by obnoxious you mean catching you before your face hit the pavement last night, guilty as charged. Or perhaps you’re referring to my bringing you home and caring for you through the night, again, guilty. And I will even hold my hands up to the fact that I made you breakfast, brought it to you in bed, and have been a complete gentleman the whole time.”
Brad started to back away towards the bedroom door. He was more than ready to leave her alone to contemplate his words on the hope that they would sink in, but it was already there on her face, guilt. The crimson blush at her cheeks, which he had to admit looked better on her than the green around the gills appearance she’d presented him with this morning, and it gave him hope that she wasn’t such a shrew after all. That was a good sign and something he could work with.