by V. Vaughn
This time, her gaze slid away as she set the stack of Tupperware on the butcher block island and began unsealing the lids. Heavenly scents emerged, stunning his stomach to silence as if he was already full. Just from being with her.
Food was how she dealt with life, and if his last memories of her were her cold leftovers, he could only count himself lucky.
He took a small handful of spiced nuts. “Watch out for the dragons. They’re generous but demanding. Just set good boundaries from the start and you’ll do fine.”
“Good boundaries?” Her lips quirked again, more gently this time. “You’ve been reading online articles too.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Not much else to do.”
Her gray eyes flicked over him. “You’ve been giving your designs to the Sunday home décor line too, haven’t you?”
Chewing the nuts to give himself time to think, he finally said, “How’d you know?”
“I review all the invoicing, always have,” she reminded him. “You don’t have your name on it, but I know your work.” She spun the container of corn fritters toward him. “We licensed reproduction rights to one of the big chains for your crescent moon solar lantern.” She traced one fingertip through a wet spot left on the island’s well-waxed wood. “Where should I send your percentage?”
“I… I’m not sure.” He took one of the fritters, biting past the sweet-hot jalapeno bits.
She crossed her arms again. “If you don’t know where you’re going, how do you know you’re leaving?”
Did she care? The faintest glimmer of hope, like the twinkle of a single star between the storm clouds, made him straighten. The jalapenos warmed him from the inside. "I just know I need to give you your freedom, such as I can, even though I can never really make it up to you." He breathed out slowly, searching for the words that had jumbled around in his brain for the last couple decades. "I stole the life you thought you were going to have. I can make sure that you have enough business to make you a rich woman, and I stood watch a few years ago to make sure those Kingdom Guard bastards didn't mess with you and the boys. But I can never give you back what you lost." He raised his chin to meet her gaze. "And I'm sorry, but nothing can take away what I gave you with the bite."
He meant the wolf, of course. When she gave her head a slight shake of rejection, for a moment his heart leaped with the chance that maybe she'd come to some sort of peace with her beast. But then she said, "Easton and Blaze, and now the babies, are the joys of my life. I wouldn't give them up for anything." A hint of that arch smile returned. "And the dragons will make us even richer." The smile vanished, as if it had never been. "It's not about what you took from me or what you gave, Miguel. But you didn't tell me. You never gave me a chance to say yes."
The flicker of hope in his chest winked out. "I know that now." He rubbed his knuckle over his mouth before he confessed, "I knew it then, but I thought our love was strong enough to survive the change."
She stared at him hard, her gray eyes sharpened to a slicing steel edge. "It was never about our love. What we lost was trust, communication, any chance of an equal partnership."
He wanted to argue her points, denial welling up in his throat like sour peppers coming back to haunt him. For seven years, they’d raised the boys, built the house, grew the company—together, even when they weren’t talking. That was something, wasn’t it?
Slowly, he rounded the end of the island. Not stalking her, but if these were their last moments together…
“The only constant is change.” He gave her a wry smile. “Yeah, I read that somewhere, but it’s true.” He took another step toward her, until there was only an arm’s—or a knife’s—distance between them. “Twenty years is long enough for a change, isn’t it? I was wrong, and now I want to make it right with you. If I asked, would you let me?”
He waited, breathing the spicy-sweet scent that was partly the deeply infused atmosphere of the kitchen but was mostly just the perfume of her skin, delicately seasoned with the salty musk of sweat from her work. No wonder he'd bitten her all those years ago, when he'd been young and impulsive and the spring moons were running hot. It was no excuse, barely an explanation; all he could do was try to make amends, sending work to Sunday Landscaping, donating his designs to the company, funding school accounts for the boys though only Easton had used his and starting the same for his grandchildren. But it still wasn't enough. He knew that. Even though those were causes that Solange loved, they weren't her—his mate, his victim, his love.
"Tell me," he urged. "What can I do to show you how sorry I am? What can I do to make things right?"
"Tell you what?" she said softly.
"Anything. If it's in my power, I'll make it happen. And if it's impossible, I'll die trying."
This close, since she was taller than he was, he had to tilt his face up to meet her gaze directly, and the pulse in his throat felt naked. But there was a reason he'd left the rest of his clothes in the cached lockbox at the edge of the property line. He’d wanted to come to her exposed, vulnerable. If she grabbed one of the knives and plunged into his chest, he wouldn't raise a finger to stop her. A life for a life, since she'd lost hers to the wolf. If she tore out his heart, still beating, he'd let her.
Hell, she had it already.
She angled her head to meet his stare but didn't lower her chin. "I’ll tell you," she repeated. "That I was lost, confused, afraid. That I didn't know who you were anymore. Worse, I didn't know who I was. That I didn't talk to my family for years, and only reconnected when my father was on his deathbed, but I still couldn't tell them what had happened. That I was estranged from your family too, because I couldn't talk to them either. That I nearly lost Blaze when he chose your half of his heritage, and I almost pushed Easton away to keep him from it. And now, after twenty years, I am matriarch of a pack of wolves and one coyote and another on the way. And once again"—her voice hitched—"once again, I feel lost, and I don't know who I am anymore, and the life I thought I'd made is gone." She clenched her hands into fists, and the tiny bells on her sweater chimed with every heave of her breath. "And now you are here again, asking me to tell you what you can do for me before you leave. Damn you, Miguel, for damning me to this half life, alone in this desert."
She didn't carve out his heart, she shattered it. Every word was the broken edge of an icicle, jagged and freezing. A single tear broke free from her lashes and traced down her cheek. Not a thawing of the ice, but a pain so great even the bitter anger that had frozen him out for twenty years couldn't keep it locked in anymore.
It was too much. He jolted the last step toward her and reached up to cup her cheek, whisking away the tear. “Solange…”
She stiff-armed him, her fingers spread across his bare chest over the moon tattoo that marked his pack affiliation. “You touching me is how I got into this mess.”
“You used to smile when I touched you, not cry.”
“That was a long time ago, and I was different then.”
He’d never felt more like the monster she’d accused him, many times, of being. “We can be different now,” he said, his own voice rough with emotion. “Let me touch you. Let me love you better than before.”
Her hand on his skin was so hot. Or so cold. He couldn’t tell. It had been so long since he’d been close enough to touch her, he shivered with a strange fever. And now he could see the darker streaks in her gray irises, like the clear night sky beyond the storm clouds, as though he were falling upward into her eyes.
“Please, Solange,” he murmured. “Let me remind you who we were.”
With a soft, almost despairing sigh, the stiff set of her elbow cracked, and she melted toward him, her lips barely parting.
3
Miguel had wanted to give her everything: a home, children, meaningful work they could do together—and yes, the wolf. He’d wanted to share the power and beauty and soul of the beast with her.
Now, she seemed to want only this—a kiss.
&n
bsp; Then he’d give her one.
Her lips settled on his from above, light as a snowflake falling, but the impact went through him like an avalanche. His pulse raced as he tried to stay ahead of the seething need to dive into her, to lose himself in the elemental, life-or-death awe. He’d always needed her as much as air or water or food.
Slowly, he slid his hands up around her nape, searching for the tight knots of muscle to either side of her spine where she’d always carried her tension. She might be taller than him, even have a few pounds on him, but he knew the secrets of her body.
Or he had at one time…
Ah, there it was, still, coiled tight as rattlesnakes against the winter cold. She moaned low in her throat when he dug the pads of his fingers into the knots, and finally she bent her head, giving him access. The gesture—much to his delight—left her mouth slanting more deeply over his.
Her scent washed over him. The smoky aroma of cinnamon, the sweeter musk of vanilla bean, the sharp bite of cayenne—she was like his very own mug of spiced chocolate, a tribute to kings, a gift from the gods. And he had trekked across dangerous ground to find her. He cupped her face in his hands as though she was a precious objet d'art, something he might break or lose if he wasn’t mindful.
So soft. Her full, silky skin was tinted with some tropical oil. Along with the lingering taste of the salty tear, he envisioned a remote Baja beach. They’d never had a honeymoon…
Her tongue flicked out to touch his, and every nerve in his body lit up like rare summer lightning. He dragged in a hoarse groan, drowning in the scent and taste of her, nearly forgotten in their years of estrangement. Desperation and yearning gripped him almost as tightly as the lust.
He had to make her believe. After all the years of trying to show her, from a distance, how sorry he was, now he could only hope she'd feel it in his touch, hear it in his sighs, see it in the shivers that danced across his skin when she splayed both hands across his pecs. He knew she must understand the ardent pounding of his heart underneath her palm, must know how much he longed for this, for her. The wolf didn't have words, and he wasn't much wordier himself, but surely she must know that though the years alone had piled up like snow on Mesa Diablo, what was underneath was unchanged, bedrock strong, forever.
When the kiss finally broke, their ragged gasps traded back and forth, his breath into hers, hers into his. The knots in her shoulders had smoothed like kneaded dough, but now her lips were puffy, their natural coral hue blushed as glossy and bright as the carmine-red tiles.
Though not quite as swollen as his erection.
Angling his hips to avoid the obvious, he let his shaking arms slide down her shoulders to link his hands loosely at the small of her back. Tracing the curves of her body only made his cock harder, and unless he went and stood on the other side of the island again, no way was she missing his painfully obvious craving for her.
Her hands slipped down too, until her fingers crooked in the waistband of his jeans, and when she licked her lips, just the flitting glimpse of her pink tongue sent another surge of blood pulsing through his groin.
The tiny bells over her breasts chimed again as she took a shaky breath. “Miguel. I’ve done everything I could to forget you, but everything I have came from you: this house, the boys, the work…the other thing sharing my body.”
Again, her words ripped through him. “Solange—”
Her fingers curled into his Levi’s. “So make me forget how lonely I am.”
With a rasping curse, he hauled her into his arms.
Solange had never minded that he was smaller than she was. When her high school girlfriends had been sighing over bland blond beefcake, she’d fallen for quick, dark intensity. In retrospect, his effortless strength should’ve given her pause, but at the time, she’d been delighted with how easily he’d held her when half the football and basketball teams couldn’t outlift her.
Of course, those boys had been merely human, and Miguel Domingo had always been…more.
When he swept aside the Tupperware and boosted her onto the island, she sensed the surge of the beast in him, its power and hunger unmatched.
Except by the rush in her own blood.
She wanted him, the same breathless, wild way she’d wanted him when she’d been a silly teenager. Even though she knew better, the thrill in her bones was irresistible. Sinking her fingers through the silvering at his temples, she swooped down to kiss him again.
Santo Domingo, was it heretical to need this? But she’d denied herself for so long. Surely one night wouldn’t make her a monster.
His mouth parted recklessly wide beneath hers, and the click of their teeth and wet tangling of tongues reverberated through her, magnifying the pulse of desire in her core. She squirmed on the butcher block counter, pricklingly aware of his hips pressing between her spread knees. It had been so very, very long…
The bells on her sweater rang as he grabbed the hem. But instead of ripping it off her as he once would have, he paused. The little bells fell silent, the only sound their seesawing breaths.
He gazed up at her, his eyes shining like tempered chocolate, his dusky cheeks almost as dark with a needy flush. “Solange, is this what you want?”
When they were younger, he hadn’t asked. He hadn’t needed to. She’d jumped him with an eagerness that would’ve earned her a year’s worth of Hail Marys in the confessional. Except she hadn’t gone back to church to reveal her sins. Couldn’t, not when she’d given him her body and her heart.
And given the wolf her soul.
She could never stop herself from burning for him.
So she peeled off the sweater herself, turning it inside out so no church bells could peal a warning, no censorious googly eyes would watch them. The sturdy white cotton bra she revealed was too damn virginal by half, but too late.
Not that it seemed to matter. If anything, his eyes brightened even more. Or…was he…crying? A sick rush of embarrassment jangled through her, but before she could cover herself in shame, he dove forward to bury his face against her belly. It wasn’t the cheerleader stomach she’d had before. Now it was a middle-aged spread, not to mention a post-feast bloat, atop the stretch marks of twins.
She put her hands on his lean shoulders, to push him away, but the hot gust of his exhalation across her skin, his fingers gripping her hips hard, made her moan. So long with no touch but her own, no breath but the wind through her bedroom window late at night, open to the desert…
He kissed his way up across the scars, a swirl of tongue around her navel, another kiss atop the curve of her belly. Then one nip between her breasts and the clasp of her bra parted.
With a deep groan, as if it was the hardest thing he’d ever done, he paused again. His panting breaths feathered across her nipples, and they stiffened to aching peaks. “Solange,” he prodded. “Do you want this?”
“Yes,” she said in a ragged whisper. God help her. “I never stopped wanting you.”
He waited another heartbeat, his eyes closed, and she wondered what was going through his head. She knew what was going on in his pants…
When his eyes opened, the deep, warm brown was ringed in the hammered gold of the wolf.
The thrill that went through her this time was tinged a darker red than passion. The predatory obsession prickled the tiny hairs across her body, a threatening tingle.
Her beast, rousing from its long sleep. Hungry.
It should’ve been terrifying, but she wasn't the naïve girl of so long ago. The wolf's appetites didn't seem as scary as they'd once been.
And anyway, Miguel was offering himself up as a willing sacrifice.
She flattened her hands on either side of her against the smooth butcher block and boosted her butt off the counter. "Take off the pants," she demanded.
"Yours or mine?"
"Both." She wiggled her hips. "Me first."
That grin—still so familiar after twenty years—flashed white and hot. "Always, mi vida. Always."
Not listening, just feeling. He stripped her of her trousers, white grandma panties, novelty Christmas socks, and soft ballet slippers in one move so tidy that the pile he left at the base of the island was better than when she folded her own laundry. She lounged back with one hand braced behind her, eyeing him as he stepped out of his own Levi's with less grace, hopping on one foot before he faced her again, his engorged cock pointing the way.
She cranked her jaw to one side. "You look the same after all these years," she said, not bothering to keep the accusation out of her voice.
"I'm not the same," he assured her. "Can I show you? May I touch you?"
She frowned, not sure what to make of this Miguel, whose ropey muscles quivered like the hunting male she remembered but whose gaze on her changed body was more steady than ever. She knew wolves didn't stalk and pounce from behind like the big cats, nor overwhelm with massive force like the bears. No, the wolves chose their prey and pursued with unwavering commitment until the end.
She shuddered to be the focus of such devotion. “Yes.” Her voice was stronger this time. “Touch me.”
He cupped his hands behind her knees to part them. For just the briefest moment, her nerves froze and she resisted his tug. Instead of pulling, he let go and skimmed his fingertips up the insides of her thighs. The feather-light sensation unzipped her hesitation, and he stepped up between her spread knees. His lean body was no particular stretch for her, but the heat and closeness of him—especially that part of him—melted the last of the struggle inside her.
His hands kept going, whisking past the needy center of her, up over her belly—the stroke as ephemeral as the shadows of ravens’ wings gliding over the mesas and valleys. At her breasts, as his fingers spread wide and touched down, he inhaled a ragged breath.