by Chant, Zoe
Aria was right. He and Hebbert were two sides of the same coin. He was the only one who could take Hebbert on.
“I don’t want to leave Mattie without a mom,” Aria said. “But I don’t want to leave her with a psychotic werewolf on her tail, either. This way, either we win, or... at least Mattie doesn’t have Eli Hebbert to worry about.”
“I know.” He rubbed his eyes. “That makes sense. I just don’t like to think of you being in danger.”
“I’m not the biggest fan of it myself,” Aria said dryly. “But I think between the two of us, we can figure something out.”
She offered him a hand up off the edge of the tub and then stepped close to him, resting her head against his chest.
He held her. It felt like her love for him was soaking into his skin, pulling him back together even more quickly than he would have thought possible.
Maybe it was. They did say that finding your mate had all kinds of unexpected side benefits. Maybe this was one of them.
Or maybe it just felt impossibly good to have her in his arms, soft and sweetly warm and everything he’d ever wanted.
Aria said, “I know this might be pushing things, but...”
He couldn’t imagine anything he wouldn’t do for her. “What?”
She tilted her head back, looking up at him. Her expression radiated love and longing; her lips were slightly parted, and her pupils were wide and dark.
“Exactly how tired are you?” Aria said.
12
They headed straight for the bedroom, frantically trying to undress each other as they went.
“I’m not even a little bit tired,” Colby said, before almost tripping on the rug. “Incredibly uncoordinated at the moment, apparently, but not tired.”
“Coordination is overrated.”
She needed to believe that, anyway, since her fingers kept slipping off the sleek, small buttons of the dress shirt Theo had loaned him. Why on earth had she helped him back into it after she’d bandaged his ribs? She should have known that, as hotly as things had been burning between them, she’d just want it off him again in a couple of minutes.
Only now, careless and eager and turned-on, she was being outwitted by buttons.
Was this how guys felt about women’s bras?
Colby made one attempt on his own behalf, but the moment the first button snagged, he said, “Just rip it.”
“But it has to cost—”
He kissed his way up the side of her throat, from the juncture of her neck to her earlobe, which he teased slightly between his teeth. When he spoke, his breath was warm against her ear.
“It’s costing me precious time spent touching you.”
That was a cost-benefit analysis she could get behind. She’d just never done anything this... obviously, openly lustful before.
But now she was with the one guy on earth she knew, without question, wanted her in the exact same way she wanted him.
Aria grabbed either side of Colby’s shirt and tugged it open with all her strength. Ivory-colored buttons shot across the room like an explosion of shrapnel.
She had just seen his bare chest a few minutes ago. But then she’d been concentrating on patching him up. She’d only been looking for where he was hurt.
Now it was like she was seeing his body all over again. His chest was mostly smooth, but he had a thin, barely-there line of soft, dark hair running down the center of him, pointing towards his cock like an arrow. If she’d been standing even another foot away from him, she wouldn’t have been able to see it. Now she stroked her thumb against it, feeling the little hairs smooth out underneath her touch. She ran her hand down, following where they seemed to want her to go, and she heard Colby breathe in sharply.
Aria grinned—and teased him, skimming her hand to the side so that she followed the waistline of his jeans instead. He had high, gorgeous hipbones, and she left her hands cupped against them as they kissed again.
He made a low, growling sound and suddenly Aria was up in his arms, her thighs wrapped around his waist, his hands cradling her ass. They were still glued together at the mouth.
She’d never had a guy pick her up before, and it seemed to activate some extremely primal center of her brain. It was like a whole row of lights had lit up on some panel inside her: Yes, please, more of this.
She fought off her currently sex-obsessed hindbrain long enough to say, “This isn’t hurting you?”
Colby shook his head.
“I could lift you with one hand tied behind my back.” He kissed her collarbone, which seemed to be another thing that made her go berserk. “I just like both my hands right where they are, thanks.”
“Yeah,” she said breathlessly. “Me too.”
He went on carrying her down the hall, the two of them entangled in so many different kisses and touches that it felt like her body was dissolving into his. Aria’s bare back collided with a door, and she reached behind her to turn the knob.
Colby pressed on blindly forward, his head now down so he could run the tip of his tongue around one of Aria’s nipples.
And it was such an unbelievable sensation that she wanted, more than anything, to lose herself to it, but—
“This is an office,” she whispered.
Colby lifted his head. His lips were reddened from their kissing and—she noticed with a trace of smug possessiveness—just the tiniest bit glossy from where some of her lip balm had rubbed off on him. He seemed to be having some trouble taking in his surroundings, and she felt pretty smug about that too.
She saw his gaze move slowly around the room, taking in pieces of evidence:
Desk. Ancient computer with a bulky, boxy monitor. Filing cabinet.
“It’s an office,” Colby conceded. He glared at the room like it had decided to be an office just to spite him. “Okay, where’s the bedroom? I know the layout of this place, just let me think—”
Aria, feeling wicked and somehow deliciously powerful, tightened the hold she had on him with her legs, pressing her body forward against his.
He groaned. “That’s not helping.”
“Don’t think. We’ll just keep trying doors.”
The next door was another bathroom.
Honestly, if it had had even a slightly soft-looking bath mat, Aria would have been okay with them stopping then and there. She had never been so wet in her entire life, and Colby had decided to take an amazingly sweet revenge on her by carrying her one-handed after all—so he could slip his other hand between her legs, stroking up between her bare folds.
She kept hearing impossible-sounding whimpers coming out of her mouth. She hadn’t even known she was capable of making sounds like that.
She threw her head back, her thoughts scattering like marbles. This was unfair. There was no way that tight, hip-grinding embrace she’d done with him could equal the hot, tantalizing play of his fingers and thumb against her clit and entrance.
Or, if it did, then she couldn’t wait to see what else she could do for him.
“Next room,” she said, gasping as he gently slid one finger inside her. “I don’t care what it is. If it’s a utility closet, or a pantry, or a—”
She was rapidly losing her ability to even remember what different rooms were called. A second finger had joined the first.
“—or a library or a conservatory...”
Okay, now she was just naming places from Clue.
Aria Clarke, killed by Colby Acton, in the hallway, with his ridiculously talented fingers.
The next room, thank God, was a bedroom.
They hit the bed with so much force that she was surprised they didn’t immediately break it in two.
She lay on her back, naked, her legs spread wide. She couldn’t take her eyes off him as he stood above her, clad now only in his tight, dark-washed jeans. She could see the way his hard cock was straining against them.
Maybe she really had teased him too much, deliberately rubbing up against that.
Good. Maybe he�
��ll keep on teasing me back.
She dug her hands into the quilt, bunching up the material in her fists in a futile effort to keep her desire in check as he finally shoved his jeans down and finished undressing.
However much she wanted him—and she wanted him so much she was surprised she wasn’t just spontaneously combusting on the spot—she had to remember that he was still sore.
He was superhumanly strong and even, unbelievably, superhumanly in love with her, but that didn’t mean he still wasn’t hurting from his fight with Weston Hebbert.
She needed to be gentle with him. And, even more importantly, she needed to make sure he was gentle with himself.
He wanted to look out for her, and she loved that. But she wanted to look out for him too.
“You’re so beautiful,” Colby said.
There was an ache in his voice, one Aria knew firsthand. He sounded like someone seeing one of the true natural world wonders for the first time.
Like he had thought he was prepared for her, but he was completely staggered by how gorgeous she really was when he finally saw her bare and face-to-face.
The fun, sexy delight of playing with having that kind of pull over him morphed into something more tender. It reminded her that she was just as unprepared for this as he was.
She would never have been able to see him coming. Even some hypothetically perfect guy designed in her imagination wouldn’t have been even a tenth as good.
She moved back on the bed, giving him as much room as she could.
“Be with me,” she said softly. “Please.”
“Always.”
He joined her on the bed and, without any further ado, sank down between her legs, licking a hot line up between her folds.
She’d been so primed already that that single, unbearable stroke of his tongue was all it took. Her world exploded into an impossible array of fireworks. Everything else in the room dropped to nothingness, and all that existed were the cascading bursts of bright pleasure. One tremor raced after the other, longer and fiercer than any orgasm she’d ever had before.
When everything came back into focus, she saw that Colby had been watching her face.
A little flush of post-climax self-consciousness gripped her, and she turned her head aside, pressing one hot cheek against the cool pillowcase.
Colby brushed his hand against her face. “What is it?”
“It’s embarrassing. I probably looked like a dork.”
Wow, a little voice in her head said. Okay, I guess we trust Colby’s love for us right up to the point where the word “dork” can come back into the picture, huh? And then we’re right back in high school.
Not that she’d ever specifically thought about her orgasm face back in high school. She hadn’t been worldly enough for that. It had taken college—and a couple issues of Cosmo—to give her that particular worry.
“You looked amazing. I still can’t believe I’m lucky enough to get to see you like this.”
The naked honesty in Colby’s voice left no room for doubt, no matter what kind of emotional baggage she’d lugged in with her.
“I’m the lucky one,” Aria said.
He leveled a look at her, with those dark blue eyes, that she could only—and with a shiver of delight—describe as some kind of alpha warning.
“Okay,” Aria said. “We’re both lucky.”
“I’ll take that.” He kissed her forehead.
She put her legs around him again. “I just want to feel you. All of you.”
He looked torn between two different kinds of want—his desire to spend more time just leisurely exploring her body and his desire for one of the most primitive, intimate kinds of satisfaction there was.
“You’re sure? I don’t want you to feel rushed—”
If she wasn’t going to feel ridiculous, then she wasn’t going to feel ridiculous.
And if she was going to be mated to a werewolf, then, dammit, she was going to be mated to a werewolf.
She let herself make the same kind of low growl he had earlier, and she tugged him even closer, until his body was pressed right up against hers. She could feel the hard length of his cock fitted so agonizingly close to her entrance. It made her moan.
“I’m sure. I’m one hundred percent sure.” She took in the sight of the bright white gauze against his tanned skin and added, “Just go slow. Don’t hurt yourself.”
Colby looked like not hurting himself further was pretty far down on his list of priorities, but he at least nodded.
And when he started moving, he moved slowly.
He slid into her inch by inch, her body opening for him with a kind of hot, slick ecstasy. He was big, and it had been a long time for her, so she had been prepared, subconsciously, for some kind of pinch of pain. But no—this was as easy and sweet as anything she’d ever done. They were made for each other.
When he was fully inside her, he began to rock back and forth, sliding in and out of her. She knew, with a kind of fond humor—and maybe even a kind of weird shifter mate telepathy—that he was managing to take things slowly only by getting himself to treat her as delicate and fragile. And he was definitely doing that. He ran his hands over her as lightly and reverently as if she was some kind of priceless treasure.
The look on his face was like nothing Aria had ever seen before, even from him. She didn’t think it was her imagination that she could feel something happening between them. Something more than even the most loving sex.
It felt...
It felt like their souls were connecting.
Maybe this is what it’s like when someone’s your mate. Maybe this is what it’s like every time.
She clung to his shoulders and raised her hips to meet his thrusts. She could hear herself making a small, uncontrollable gasping sound. It sounded like she was begging him—but all she wanted was more of him, all of him, and she knew, beyond any doubt, that that was what he was giving her.
“I love you,” she said, digging her fingers into his back. “I love you so much.”
“You’re my heart,” Colby said, with a kind of desperate sincerity.
He lowered his head and kissed her so sweetly and fervently that that was what tipped her over into a second orgasm. She cried out against his lips, and he kissed her again.
Through the haze—no, the whirlwind—of pleasure sweeping through her body, she somehow made herself tighten her hold on him, clenching her inner walls tight around his cock. She wanted them to come together, and even more than that, she just wanted this from him. She wanted to feel the rush of him inside her.
And then she did, and she could hear him saying her name, over and over again.
A name that she finally thought actually fit her. The way Colby said it, it really did sound like beautiful music—and it really did sound like he meant her.
13
Colby’s mind—or at least whatever part of it he was left with, after all that—was torn between warring impulses.
Sleep, said the human half of him. Hold her in your arms and get some rest. This has probably been the longest day of her life too.
No, eat, his wolf said, with an insistent growl. Get up, hunt, and provide for your mate. She’s as hungry as you are.
A third part of his mind ignored both of those suggestions and chimed in, Make love to her again.
It was the last suggestion that was honestly the most appealing to him, but despite that, it was his wolf’s advice that he intended to follow. Eli Hebbert was wrong to try to live as some kind of ultra-pure, completely-back-to-nature wolf, but Colby had almost committed the opposite offense. He’d been ignoring his wolf’s needs and opinions for too long. He’d been telling it for years that they didn’t have a pack, didn’t even need a pack, and now that he had Aria, he could see what an idiot he had been.
Sometimes his wolf had some pretty good ideas. And making a late dinner for Aria, who really had to be starving, was one of them.
Does that mean you’re going to stop call
ing me mutt? his wolf said.
Colby was ready to concede that much, and then he realized that there was a weird tone in his wolf’s inner voice.
It sounded disappointed.
“Mutt” is affectionate, Colby said. So no. I do like you, you know. I’m sorry I haven’t been the best at getting you—us—what we need. But I do like you.
His wolf’s tail twitched before it could stop it, and then it put its head on its front paws and gave him a very doggy kind of smirk.
You should, it said. We are one.
Yeah, they were. And he hadn’t always taken the best care of himself. But... he guessed he was part of his pack, too.
Still, though, the most important part of his pack, and of his life, was the woman lying next to him.
Aria’s eyes were closed, her long eyelashes a dark, delicate fringe. Colby liked seeing her curly hair spread out across her pillow. It made a kind of cloud around her, like a halo.
He could have looked at her forever: every bit of her was compelling and gorgeous to him, down to her elbows and toes and earlobes. But as he traced expanding circles around her navel, loving the feel of her soft skin beneath his fingers, he heard her stomach growl.
Aria had almost been purring with contentment, but now her eyes shot open. She laughed, but, this close, he could see her cheeks darken very slightly, too, turning an even richer brown.
“Sorry. That’s embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing to me,” Colby said, sliding down a little so he could kiss the slight rise of her belly. “I’m supposed to be making you dinner. I’d decided to, anyway. I just got distracted.”
She smiled. “I’m glad to be distracting.”
“Incredibly, unbelievably distracting.” He wanted that to be perfectly clear. “But—”
“You want to provide for your mate.”
She propped herself up on her elbow, watching him with interest. He had the sudden, not unwelcome idea that she was about to snap a photograph of him; he recognized the gleam of professional interest in her eyes.