We all burst into laughter because Eliza was right, and our giggles drew the attention of our mates. As they walked towards us in a row, our laughter finally died down.
“When did Spencer get here?” Eliza asked.
“Who knows? But it shouldn’t be a surprise that he showed since you’re here,” Grace replied.
“Holy hell, they’re hot,” I whispered.
“We’re lucky bitches,” Eliza said.
“My ovaries would explode right now except I’m already pregnant,” Grace tossed in right before they reached us.
Her joke had us giggling until tears were running down our faces and we were gasping for air. Then shivers crept up my spine when Parker bent down to whisper in my ear.
“Being a good girl?”
“Yes!” I yelped when his tongue flicked out to lick my ear before he moved away.
“I’m thinking you’re going to be a cheap date if one drink is enough to have you cracking up over here,” he said.
“Drunk sex is fun sex,” Grace quipped, and we all busted up laughing again.
“Claiming sex is the best sex,” Eliza said, a dreamy look in her eyes.
“And I have to wait until the next full moon to find that out myself,” Parker complained. “If I’d met Annora one fucking day sooner, I would have been able to say if you’re right about that.”
“It’s probably for the best,” Elias said as he walked up behind the guys. “Annora’s been through hell, and the wait will give her enough time to get used to you before the claiming. And by then, we’ll know if I managed to get her here without leaving any traces behind so she’s safe.”
“Hell?” Hunter repeated.
“It was bad enough that you needed to make sure you didn’t leave any tracks behind?” Spencer asked.
Parker stood there, his body frozen and his eyes locked with mine. Pain flared in the dark depths as he realized my situation was worse than I’d shared with him so far.
“Don’t leave her side,” he barked out. “I need thirty minutes to check payroll and then I’m taking my mate home so she can explain to me exactly what’s going on.”
I watched him as he stormed into the office in the back and kept my eyes on the door after it slammed shut.
“He needs to know, Annora,” Elias said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have put it like that, but you need to trust Parker to stand by your side through the trouble that might be heading this way. He needs time so he can be ready for the worst just in case. Don’t make it harder for him to protect you. Don’t make him face failure like I did with my mate so many years ago.”
“Oh, Daddy!” Eliza cried as she jumped up to hug and comfort him.
“He won’t face your troubles alone,” Spencer promised. “We’ll stand by you just the same as we would our brother.”
“You’re not just a member of my pack now. You’re our sister,” Hunter added.
I forced myself to look each one of them in the eyes. When I found acceptance, love, and determination in their gazes, I nodded. It was time to put on my big-girl panties and tell my mate about the shameful way my father had sold me into a mating with Wyatt Lyall.
Seven
Parker
I flew through the payroll process, damn lucky I’d done it so many times before that I had it down to a science now. When I was done, I shut the computer down and took a few calming breaths before stalking back into the bar to get my mate and take her home.
The ride there was completely silent as I tried to push down the hurt and frustration I was feeling. It was like I was walking a tightrope with her. On one side, I felt the need to give her time to get comfortable with me so she was happy. On the other, I felt like kicking my own ass for not having listened to that voice in my head that had warned that she was in danger and I had no time to waste to ensure her safety.
Once we made it back to the safety of my cabin, though, I couldn’t hold it back any longer.
“Dammit, Annora!” I yelled in frustration.
Watching her flinch away from me as if she were afraid cooled my ire like a bucket of ice water. That look in her eyes that said that she expected me to hit her or something broke my heart.
“Shit, honey. I’d never hurt you. You have to know that.”
“How can I, Parker?” she whispered, crossing her arms over her chest like she needed to be protected from me. “I’ve been hurt by every person I’ve ever loved. My own family tossed me headlong into danger without a care about what would happen to me. My father only cared about what he could gain from me, and my mother was too scared to lose him to ever go against anything he said. Even if it meant sending me to a psycho who wanted me as his mate.”
The growl that crept up my throat was unstoppable because the wolf inside me had leapt in defense the moment she’d said that there was some other man out there who thought she should be his and not mine.
“Now you have a man who will stand between you and anyone or anything that will ever try to hurt you again,” I promised.
“And a family who will stand with us against the world,” she whispered.
My knees almost gave out when I heard her words. She was starting to understand what being my mate meant.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Along with an entire pack that will help any way they can. That’s how things work around here.”
Her response broke my heart. “I wish that’s how mine had worked. My family and my pack.”
“Tell me,” I pleaded.
“Okay,” she conceded before walking to the couch and sitting down. When she patted the cushion next to her, I rushed to her side. “I’ve already told you about how my parents treated me growing up. How it felt to be an outsider. How my father’s indifference turned to hatred when I shifted into a bear instead of a wolf. But I didn’t tell you what he did to get me out of his house. Out of his pack.”
“The pyscho who wanted to mate you?”
She nodded slightly and dropped her eyes to her lap.
“Whatever happened, it’s their shame,” I said. “Not yours. You hold your head up high. No matter what you have to tell me.”
“An alpha my father has done business with for years wanted to take me as his mate. From what I was told, he loaned my father a lot of money and offered to take me as mate in exchange for forgiving the debt,” she said in a rush, like it was easier to get the words out fast.
My wolf leapt at her response, pissed at the thought of another man wanting to claim her. The human part of me was more troubled by what her father had done though.
“He sold you?”
“Yes,” she admitted, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“What’s his name? This alpha who thinks my mate belongs to him?” I demanded.
“Wyatt Lyall,” she answered.
My brain almost exploded when I recognized the name of the powerful alpha of a dangerous pack. Psycho was an apt description.
“Fuck!” I swore, wanting to punch something as the seriousness of her situation hit me.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I should have told you before you mated me.”
Her apology drained all the anger from my system. “No, baby,” I said as I gathered her close. “There’s nothing you could have told me that would have made me change my mind about mating you.”
“This is pretty bad.”
“I’m not gonna lie to you and say it isn’t. It is bad, but we’ll figure out a way to get past this so we can have the life together that we deserve,” I promised.
“How?” she asked.
I thought about the best way to handle this situation. “Does Elias know all of this?”
“Yeah,” she answered.
“Send him a text and tell him it’s okay to share the information with my brothers,” I told her. “I have a lot of confidence in my brothers’ ability to help me keep you safe, but I’m going to reach out to the bears again. Hopefully, they’ll be willing to stand by us through this.”
“The bears?”
“After Eliza had her dream about you and Elias, I reached out to the head of the McMahon clan. Carrick has a lot of contacts in the shifter world and could gather intel in places I could never go, but he doesn’t like to work with the wolves.”
“But he agreed to help you,” she pointed out with hope in her voice.
“No, baby. He agreed to help you because Eliza figured you were a she-bear based on what she had seen in her dream,” I corrected.
“Without knowing me?” she asked with surprise coloring her tone.
“He has a soft spot for female bear shifters,” I explained. “I think you’ll find that most bears do.”
“That’s really cool.”
“Just remember that I have the biggest soft spot for you of any male shifter,” I growled.
“Don’t you mean hard?” she giggled with a glance down at the boner that was always present when she was near.
“I’ll show you just how hard as soon as I get off the phone,” I promised. “Your safety comes first—before anything. Even my need for you.”
“I’ll let you make your call,” she offered. “I’ll go look through the things Eliza brought over. I saw some lingerie you might like.”
The thought of her body wrapped in satin and lace had my cock leaking pre-come at the tip, but it wasn’t what I wanted most for tonight.
“Naked,” I rasped. “By the time I get off the phone and make it into our room, I want to see you spread out on my bed with nothing coming between my eyes and your skin. I don’t want a single stitch of clothing to separate me from you tonight.”
“As you wish,” she whispered before walking upstairs, leaving a trail of clothing behind for me to follow as soon as I was done with the call.
I yanked my phone out of my pocket, forced to pull hard because the fit was tighter than it had been when I shoved it in there earlier thanks to the boner I was sporting. After swiping the screen to turn it on, I searched through my contacts until I found Carrick’s number. Luckily, it didn’t take long for him to answer.
“Tired of waiting and ready to ask me for help with the search again?” he said as soon as he picked up.
“The wait’s over,” I answered. “I should have called you as soon as she arrived, but I was kind of distracted.”
“She your mate?” he asked.
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“And a bear shifter?”
I chuckled a little at the interrogation he was putting me through. “Yes, Annora is a she-bear. My she-bear,” I stressed, knowing that the man had three unmated sons and no mate of his own.
“Then why are you calling me now if it wasn’t to tell me you’d found her?”
“She’s in trouble and we need your help,” I began before explaining the Annora’s situation to him.
By the time I was done, I could practically feel his anger building through the phone line.
“He sold a she-bear he raised as his own to Wyatt Lyall?” he roared when I stopped speaking.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “After treating her like shit for years, even before he knew he wasn’t her real father.”
Carrick was silent long enough that I began to worry he wouldn’t offer his assistance. Then he said, “The boys and I will head out in the morning. I’ll make some calls tonight and see what I can find out. Hopefully, I’ll discover that that batshit crazy motherfucker is still at home without a clue where she went.”
“And if he is, we’ll bring the war to him,” I said before we hung up, knowing that, if the other wolf lived, then Annora would never truly be safe.
Shaking off all the negativity, I headed upstairs to my mate. Seeing her giggle as she’d made friends with my brothers’ mates, watching her face light with joy when Hunter had accepted her into our pack and our family, listening to her trust me with a secret that caused her shame—tonight had been full of some amazing moments. But knowing she was waiting for me topped them all and made the shitty stuff worth it.
When I walked into the room and found her in my bed exactly the way I’d told her I wanted her, everything else melted away except the need to take her again. Her fingers were playing with her nipples, plucking the hardened peaks as she squeezed them together, and I wanted to shove my dick between them just as much as I had that first night. Only there wasn’t anything stopping me tonight, so I unbuttoned my jeans and slid the zipper down as I walked towards the bed. She crawled towards me, her eyes locked on my hard-on as she licked her lips.
“Suck my cock,” I ordered. “I want to see your perfect lips wrapped around me while you blow me.”
Her lips parted and her tongue flicked out to moisten them before she licked the head of my dick. After sliding her tongue along the slit at the tip of my cock, she sucked the bead of pre-come that dripped from me and drew it into her mouth. The sight of her eyes staring up at me as her lips moved up and down on my cock was driving me wild.
“Mmmmm,” she hummed as she twisted her mouth around the tip. Then she tried to take as much of my cock into her mouth as she could.
“So good, baby,” I complimented her on a moan when her fingers moved to tease my balls.
She cupped them in her palm and squeezed lightly before running her nails over the tight skin. Then the tempo of her mouth changed and she was bobbing her head up and down in a quick rhythm that had my hips pumping with each downward swipe. I felt the telltale tingling at the base of my spine, but I didn’t want to come yet.
I wrapped her hair around my fist and grasped her chin to control her movements so I could slow her down. Then I fucked into her mouth once, going deep and bumping against the back of her throat. It convulsed around me before I pulled back. Her tongue flicked along the tip as I rested it against her lips. Watching her dark eyes peer up at me with satisfaction gleaming from them, I was tempted to finish while she sucked me off, but her tits had been swaying with each thrust and I couldn’t wait to feel her soft skin sliding against me.
When I dragged my cock out of her mouth, it glistened with her saliva. I pumped it with one fist as I pushed her onto her back.
“Remember what I told you about your tits our first night together?”
“That you wanted to fuck them?” she asked softly, a blush creeping up her cheeks.
“Your ribs feel good enough for me to do that?”
Instead of answering me, she nodded and moved her hands to the outside of her breasts to squeeze them together. Carefully placing both knees on either side of her body, I straddled her and drove my wet cock between her breasts. The sight and feel of her warm skin rubbing against my wet cock lit a fire in my veins, and I knew I wasn’t going to last long like this.
“Suck me hard,” I demanded when my cock slipped through the top of her tits on my next thrust.
Her mouth opened wide and I slid between her lips. She sucked the tip, swirling her tongue around, and the combination was enough to send me to the edge again.
“I’m going to come,” I warned before I pulled away and watched as my come spurted from cock onto her chest.
Annora lay there, naked with my come splattered on her tits and dripping from her chin. Her skin was flushed all over, a rosy-red hue tingeing it. Her legs were splayed open, and her pussy glistened with the evidence of her arousal.
“I need to taste you,” I growled as I knelt between her legs.
She traced her finger along a rope of my come, popped her finger into her mouth, and then sucked. “If I taste half as good as you do, I understand why.”
My fingertips slid along her thighs until I reached the seam where her legs met her pelvis and gripped her tightly. I brushed my lips over her slit as I moved to the other side, teasing her by breathing hot air on her damp skin. The scent of her arousal grew stronger as I tormented her with flicks of my tongue along her pussy lips without touching her clit or pressing down too hard.
Her hips bucked against my hold as she begged with her hands fisted in my hair, trying to pull my face closer. “Please, Park
er. I need more. Fingers, tongue—anything!”
Nudging her legs wider, I spread her open with my fingers. When her clit peeked out of its hood, I flicked it with my tongue, going gently at first until I heard her moan. Then I increased the pressure until she was writhing in need, and I slipped my fingers through her wet folds to sink two inside her.
“Tastes so fucking good,” I rasped before I licked my lips, savoring her flavor. “Gonna make you come for me with my mouth.”
I added another finger and twirled them around, searching for that spongy spot I knew would drive her as wild as she made me. After I found it, I made sure to rub against the same spot on each stroke into her body. At the same time, I tugged her clit into my mouth and gave it quick, little sucks that had her walls clenching against my fingers. I kept going until her hips surged up and she screamed out my name as she climaxed around my fingers.
I continued to pump my fingers and lazily lick her clit, determined to make it last as long as I could for her. When she stopped trembling and lay there gasping for air, I flopped onto the bed beside her. A sense of contentment I only felt when I knew I had satisfied my mate filled me.
“Sleepy,” she murmured, slurring the words a little because she was so tired.
I drew her closer and pulled the sheet over our bodies so she wouldn’t get cold in the night. Running my fingers through her hair, I watched as she drifted to sleep with a smile on her face—one I’d put there.
I spent the night with my mate wrapped in my arms, but I couldn’t manage to fall asleep. My wolf was on edge and alert to danger. As the hours passed, I watched her chest rise and fall as she slept soundly. My heightened alertness paid off when I decided to walk the perimeter of my cabin in the wee hours of the morning and smelled wolves I didn’t recognize in the distance. I wasn’t certain how close they were, but their scent so close to my mate that it made my hackles rise.
I let out a loud howl, alerting my brothers to the danger that was near, before running back inside to grab my phone. Annora was sitting up in the bed with a startled look on her face when I made it back to our room.
Crying Wolf, Shoot for the Moon, Thrown to the Wolves Page 22