by Zoe Chant
But it wasn’t like she knew the inside of Todd’s head. Maybe he did love Stella—but was just too much of a coward to stand up to his friends on her behalf, and couldn’t let her go when she wanted to leave.
Of course, that wasn’t the sort of love that anyone should want.
“Aunt Lynn,” Eva said in a determinedly cheerful tone—Lynn recognized it, and felt bad all over again, because that was the sound of Eva trying hard to keep the two of them from fighting—”will you introduce us to your friend?”
Lynn realized with a start that Ken had been sitting absolutely quietly in the front seat, not pushing himself into her and Stella’s little argument at all—even though neither of them had been very reasonable, and they probably could’ve used a more rational voice.
He was paying attention, though. At Eva’s comment, he turned a bit in his seat to smile back at them.
“This is—” Lynn stopped. What to say about him?
“He said he was your mate,” Stella said, looking at him speculatively.
Oh, yes. He had said that, hadn’t he. So now they knew, and Lynn was just going to have to—figure out how to explain it.
“That can’t be true, though,” Stella was continuing, still with that frowning look. “Right? Are you someone my sister…hired? Or a coworker? One of those park rangers she works with sometimes?”
Ken glanced at Lynn, who had no idea what to say. His smile quirked, and he turned back to Stella to say seriously, “Nope, it was the truth. I’m Lynn’s mate.”
Lynn found her voice enough to add, “That’s right. We’re mates.”
Into the sudden silence came Eva’s voice. “Wow. Congratulations, Aunt Lynn. And—uh—”
“This is Ken,” Lynn said, finally remembering something that looked sort of like manners. “Ken Turner.”
“Nice to meet you,” Eva said.
“Likewise.” Lynn could hear Ken’s smile in his voice.
The tension was dissipating. The weirdness of introducing her mate to her family in the wake of a semi-violent confrontation was overpowering, but with every passing moment, the fight seemed to recede. The way Ken was settled easily in his seat, smiling like he always did, helped a lot.
“Wait a second,” Stella broke in. “Are you really serious? This is your mate?”
“Hi.” From the sound of it, Ken’s smile had broadened into a grin.
Lynn tensed as she waited to hear what Stella could say next. It could be anything, frankly, and she wouldn’t be too surprised if it was insulting.
“Well.” Stella sounded a little stunned. “I have to say, Lynn, I never thought you’d be quite this lucky.”
“Hey, thanks,” Ken said easily, while Lynn processed slowly through that. “But really, I’m the lucky one. Your sister’s quite a woman.”
“This is supremely unfair,” Stella said after a pause.
Lynn finally managed to find her voice. “Excuse me, that is my mate you’re talking about. He’s not open season!”
“That’s what I’m complaining about!”
“Ladies,” Ken said, “please.” A pause. “Continue.”
Stella started to laugh. “I don’t know where you found this guy, Lynn, but please take a look back there and see if there are any more for me.”
“You guys,” Eva said plaintively. “This is gross.”
Lynn finally gave in and laughed too.
It was amazing. She’d been sure that whatever Stella said, it would devolve somehow into a fight, because usually that’s what happened whenever Stella made a casual remark about something important. Lynn objected, Stella took offense, and then they had an argument.
But this time, it hadn’t happened. And somehow, she felt pretty sure that Ken was responsible. Because he hadn’t taken offense at all, Lynn had felt like it was okay to let it go.
And then he’d made a joke, too, but somehow with him, it wasn’t the same. Maybe because Lynn knew for certain that he valued their relationship just as much as she did, and he was just making a little lighthearted fun—kind of at his own expense, she thought, maybe poking fun at the idea that he could be vain enough to appreciate Stella being envious?—and it didn’t bother her at all.
That was something to think about. Why was she okay when Ken joked around, but not when Stella did? This time, at least, they’d been making exactly the same joke.
“Fine,” Stella was saying to Eva. “I’ll let it go. For now.”
“I’m not forgetting this,” Lynn said, and the words came easily to her, the idea that Stella was just joking, and Lynn was joking right back.
She settled in to drive. Maybe with Ken here, something might change, for the first time in decades. Maybe.
***
Ken breathed out an inaudible sigh of relief.
When he’d heard that Lynn’s sister—and her teenaged niece, good God—were trapped in a house with a pack of hostile wolves, his mind had instantly sketched out all of the ways the situation could go wrong. Very, very wrong.
He was incredibly glad that none of those possibilities had come to pass. And also that he’d been there in the first place, because if he hadn’t been—
If they’d only been faced with women, it would have been a different story.
That infuriated Ken. The idea that some men, knowing that they were stronger than women, would use that strength to just take what they wanted, was something he found absolutely disgusting. If you were stronger than other people, it was your responsibility to protect them. Or at the very least, the absolute minimum, you needed to make sure you didn’t scare them with it.
Stella and Eva, for all they were joking around now, had clearly been terrified. The laughter in the car had that post-adrenaline edge to it, the giggling relief that you were finally safe. And as for Lynn—Ken recognized her irritability with Stella as disguised fear for her sister’s safety.
Although there was a certain amount of existing annoyance there, too.
Now Ken had to hide a smile. As an only child, he’d always been fascinated by the ways siblings interacted with each other, and he could tell that Lynn and Stella had a well-established pattern. Lynn was the responsible one, the one who sacrificed to take care of them, and Stella was the wild child, who insisted on being a free spirit and got in trouble. It was just the way Lynn had described it, and seeing it in action was—interesting.
Eva had mostly kept quiet, so he didn’t have too much of an idea of her personality yet. Except she was very perceptive, and very good at speaking up at just the right moment to defuse a potential argument.
The car was mostly quiet for the drive back. Eva had leaned across the seat to rest her head on her mother’s shoulder, and Stella had an arm around her, occasionally stroking her hair. Lynn had slowly relaxed, scaling the car back to a reasonable speed. Ken put a comfortable hand on her knee and spent the time running through potential scenarios in case they had to confront the wolves again. At some point, after all, they’d probably have to go back to get Stella and Eva’s things, so even if the pack didn’t think it was worth it to come after one estranged girlfriend, there were tactics to consider.
That was if Stella didn’t decide to go back to Todd. Ken hoped she didn’t, but he knew that these things were often more complicated than they appeared to outsiders. And she might not think she had much of a choice.
Well, Ken would do his best to help Lynn show her that she did.
After all, there was that whole enormous house. It seemed a shame to move in with just him and Lynn.
His lion growled approvingly, and Ken blinked at himself. Was he nesting?
Maybe finding your mate changed you more than he’d realized.
Everyone was still quiet when they got back to the house. Inside, Lynn turned on the light, and Ken was able to see Stella and Eva clearly for the first time.
Stella resembled her sister in almost every way: short, curvy, blondish-brown hair, the same clear topaz-colored eyes. But her hair was cut in a short
, flyaway do that framed her face and looked like she’d put some styling effort into it, unlike Lynn’s severe bun. And she was wearing a flowing dress with a flower print on it, and stylish-looking leather boots, and a good amount of makeup, again totally unlike Lynn. Ken could see their separate personalities easily in how they presented themselves to the world.
Stella was pretty, but Ken definitely preferred Lynn’s no-nonsense outdoorsy look. He couldn’t explain just what about it made it so sexy—everything, he thought with a private smile. Lynn’s everything was what he wanted.
Eva had the same clear topaz eyes as her mother and her aunt—was she a lynx shifter too?—but she was taller, with straight auburn hair to her shoulders. She was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a hoodie, looking like any other teenager, except that the hoodie had what looked like a blue telephone booth printed on it. Some kind of pop culture thing, probably.
“Okay,” Lynn said on a sigh. “You guys know where your rooms are. The kitchen has food if you want it. I figure we can take a break, get some sleep, and figure out more plans in the morning.”
“You don’t have to make plans for us,” Stella said, with a hint of the confrontation she’d had in the car. “We can figure it out ourselves.”
This time, Ken could feel Lynn tensing up, ready to respond with something irritated. Maybe a comment on how clearly they couldn’t figure it out themselves, or none of them would be in this situation in the first place.
“Look,” he said, keeping his voice light and calm. “No one wants those assholes to cause any more trouble, right? So we might as well put our heads together and do our best to make sure that doesn’t happen, if we can.”
Stella looked at the ceiling. “I suppose so.”
Lynn relaxed again, and Ken smiled at Stella and Eva. “I hope you don’t mind if I hang around. I can clear out if you’d be uncomfortable having me here in your space.”
He didn’t want to, of course, but this was their home and he was a strange man, and they’d probably had enough of strange men invading their home. Especially Eva.
But both of them shook their heads. “No, not at all,” Stella said. “You’re Lynn’s mate, you should stay here. As long as you knock before entering any closed doors, there’s no problems.”
“I will definitely, one-hundred-percent knock,” he assured them.
“Okay,” Lynn interrupted. “You guys have everything—crap, do you not have toothbrushes and stuff? I think there’s extras, maybe—”
Stella hefted her bag. “I had Eva pack for us while she was in the back bedroom. We’ve got enough things for a couple of days.”
“Good. Great. Let’s go to bed.” Lynn threw Ken an imploring look.
“Sounds like a plan,” he said, and took her hand, letting her lead the way up the stairs.
Behind him, he could hear Stella’s muttered voice. “Man, she really did hit the jackpot, didn’t she?”
Lynn growled under her breath, and Ken had to grin. He could tell that Lynn wasn’t actually worried about Stella stealing him away—that would be a major shifter instinct moment, he bet it’d be hard to miss—so he felt okay about laughing at the way her hackles rose at Stella’s comments.
And it felt good. That she cared enough to get protective of her claim on him. That was something a man could grow to appreciate.
And when they reached the end of the hall and got through the door into Lynn’s room, he had her in his arms before the door was fully closed.
He could show her how much he appreciated her possessiveness now.
“Oh thank God,” Lynn said between kisses. “That entire drive back, I swear to you, all I wanted was to pick up where we left off, earlier.”
That was hot. The idea that she’d been sitting there, quietly driving along the dark back Montana roads, and all the time she’d been thinking about…
He kissed her again, fiercely, caught up in the taste of her. “We’ve been too far away from each other for hours,” he growled. He wanted to surround himself in her scent, wrap himself up in it like a blanket and carry it around with him forever. He wanted her to smell like him to any other shifters she met, for everyone who saw her to know that she was his.
“No argument,” Lynn gasped into his mouth. “Oh, God, you feel so good.”
She was wrong—she was the one who felt good. But he didn’t have time to argue the point with her, because he was too busy kissing her mouth, her cheek, her neck, burying his nose in the curve of her shoulder and inhaling deeply, then latching on to that spot with his mouth and biting gently, laving the area with his tongue.
She made a noise that was higher-pitched than anything he’d ever heard out of her, going up on her toes. He pulled back. “All right?”
“All right,” she gasped, and he grinned and went right back in.
He wanted to taste her all over. He wanted to bury himself in her, fill himself up with Lynn, leave their essences clinging to each other.
And he could.
“Clothes off,” he said. Which was the best approximation of a sentence that he could manage, with his cock throbbing between his legs and his hands on fire with the need to touch her all over.
She pressed her mouth to his, licking in to taste him, and then pulled back to gasp, “You’re going to have to let go of me for that to work.”
Boy howdy, he did not want to do that.
But he made his hands loosen, letting her step back, leaving him tingling with desire and tearing at his own clothes. Shirt, pants, socks, boxers, shit, why were clothes so goddamn complicated?
But finally they were off. Ken looked up at Lynn, who was halfway out of her pants, and wondered if the air between them really was heated, or if it was just his imagination. He had to clench his hands to keep from pouncing on her while she was still yanking her jeans over her ankles.
The second she was naked, though, he sprang. She laughed in surprise as he propelled her back onto the bed, getting her legs over his shoulders and descending mouth first.
God, she was wet. He sucked on her clit, tasting her salt-sweet and so, so hot. Sex on his tongue—going down on a woman had always driven him a bit crazy, the idea that sex was happening right there in his mouth. And with Lynn, it was so far beyond anything he’d done before. He felt like he was tasting her core, white-hot and intoxicating.
And the way her legs fell on either side of him, the soft skin against his bare shoulders, muscles clenching as he licked her clit, how her high-pitched noises filled the air, added to how her taste filled him: it was like he was utterly surrounded by Lynn’s pleasure.
He lost track of any technique he might’ve known once, too caught up in the way she felt, tasted, sounded. He wanted to catch every moment of her pleasure, taste every hint of her. When she shuddered under his tongue, he felt it echo through his own body, his cock throbbing and his stomach clenching with desire.
He nosed downward from her clit, searching for more of her. When he traced his tongue around her entrance, she made a strangled noise, and when he plunged his tongue inside, her muscles clenched instantly. Ken spread his hands over her hips, pulling her forward into his tongue, and drowned in her.
He was halfway to embarrassing himself by coming right there on his knees, against the side of the bed, when she reached down, scrabbling at his shoulders, and pulled him away.
It took him a second to catch his breath, relearn what it meant to be up here in the air instead of down there, breathing her. “What?” he said. It came out as a growl, a rasp.
“Get inside me,” Lynn said. Her eyes were wild, topaz flames. Her hair had slipped free of its tie and was a wild halo around her head, and her own voice was throaty and hoarse. Ken could hardly tear his eyes away from hers, even with the glorious curves of her body on display.
Then he processed what she’d said. “Yeah,” he said, still hearing his voice as that low growl of want. “Yeah, Lynn, I need—”
The sentence got lost somewhere as he looked down. Her legs w
ere open, the silver-blond curls surrounding her entrance were damp with her wetness and his spit, and he needed to be right there.
He got up on the bed, catching her knee as he went, tugging her open. She reached for him, pulling him in. Like he needed encouragement, yeah right.
Sinking inside her was everything he’d ever wanted. The way she felt around him, so hot, so wet—he surged forward, losing any of the scraps of intention he’d had of going slow. But she didn’t protest. Instead, she grabbed his hips, like she wanted him even further inside.
Ken let go of the ragged edges of control and let himself surrender to the wild rhythm that was driving him. Lynn met him at every thrust, just as wild as he was. Her breaths had a little whine at the edge of each one, and every time he bottomed out inside her, she clenched hard around him. His cock jerked inside her, and he knew it wasn’t going to be long.
“Can you—God—what do you need?” he panted.
“Just this, just this, just keep doing this—” Lynn’s face was caught up in a gorgeous overwhelmed twist of pleasure, and Ken kissed her hard. She ground her hips up against him, once—twice—God, she was strong, he’d never been with a woman who could match him strength for strength like this, had always had to be careful, take his time.
And now he’d surrendered to the wildness within and found her right there with him. He tore his mouth away from hers and bit her neck, right where he’d bitten earlier, but harder. And at that, Lynn’s fingernails dug into his back, and her muscles clenched impossibly tight. Ken lost track of anything that was happening other than the feeling of her locked up, orgasming around his cock, and the little pricks of pain from her fingers, which somehow only got caught up with the pleasure.
That rough edge was the thing that did it: he drove in as deep as he could, and came harder than he ever had in his life. His climax was like a firestorm of pleasure, overrunning his thoughts, his vision, his hearing. He couldn’t say if he made any noise, because all he could hear was the roar of blood in his ears as he filled Lynn with himself.
It seemed like a long, long time passed before he was aware of anything else. Eventually, he blinked his eyes open and realized he’d collapsed on top of Lynn. He went to extricate himself, because having that many pounds of sweaty man on top of her couldn’t have been pleasant—but she made a protesting noise as he moved, grabbing at his waist and refusing to let go.