by Ivy Sinclair
“My father has never made it a secret that he lives and dies for the story,” Maren said. There was a subtle wistfulness in her tone that spoke volumes if you knew her. Maren probably wouldn’t want to admit it, but going into journalism and following in her old man’s footsteps was her way of trying to get his attention. It was sad what we did to get the attention of those we cared about. I knew that better than anyone.
“That doesn’t make it right,” I said.
We fell into a semi-awkward silence. The words that I needed to say gnawed at my insides, but I had no idea where to start or how she was going to react. There were things that needed to be said, and I hoped I hadn’t waited too long to say them.
“Lukas…” she started.
“No, Maren, I need to tell you something,” I said in a rush. “Something I should have told you before, and you deserve to know. After what happened with the announcement with Vivian, I realized that I should have told you already. Then maybe you wouldn’t have felt like you needed to run away from me. You have to trust me when I tell you how I feel about you. It’s going to take some doing, but I’m going to make things work. But only if you want me.”
The cloth slipped completely from her face then and into the bubbly water. I saw her shocked expression, and her mouth opened and closed several times. It was adorable and silly and made me want to kiss her. But I couldn’t do that. Not yet.
“The truth is that I lied to you.”
“You…lied? When? About what?” I saw the guarded expression spring into existence across her face. It was one I was well familiar with and for good reason. Me lying to her wasn’t that unusual of a situation. I lost count at one point how many lies I told her, but they were always in an attempt to cover my true feelings for her. Often, it was stupid stuff to keep her attention right where I wanted it to be: on me. I was a horny, confused, thoroughly idiotic teenage boy, and being a shifter seemed to bring out every negative quality I had in spades.
I felt awful because I knew her mind had immediately gravitated toward me lying about what I had said to her earlier in the day. She probably thought I had told her a fine tale to start the process of getting into her pants. In her pants was exactly where I wanted to be, but that wasn’t what I had lied about.
“I lied about not trying to communicate with you in the last ten years,” I said. “I did try. Three times.”
Her mouth fell open. “You did?”
I felt a strange sense of loneliness waft over me then. I nodded and looked away from her. “The first time was about three weeks after I left. Markus was out of town on a business trip, and so I decided to find a way around his orders. I had been expressly forbidden from calling you, and that was the kind of thing that he would have found out about anyway because he told your father about what happened, or at least a part of it.”
“My father was part of it?”
I snorted. “Of course, he was. He couldn’t wait to see my backside. I was never the kind of influence he wanted around you. I’m surprised he didn’t throw a party the day that I left town.”
“I didn’t see you,” Maren said. “If you came back, I didn’t see you.”
“You wouldn’t have seen me unless I wanted you to,” I said. “I thought for sure after what happened you’d be as miserable as I was. I wanted to see you so badly and tell you how I felt about what happened between us and what it meant to me. I wanted to ask you to wait for me, which I realize now was selfish and stupid on my part.”
Maren sat up a little straighter in the tub. “I was miserable. I felt completely lost and alone.”
“I couldn’t come back to Greyelf without permission, so I had to wait for you to leave town and go somewhere else. Remember you used to work at that store in the mall over in Huntersville? I waited in the parking lot all day for your shift to be over, and for you to walk out to your car. When I saw you, you looked the furthest thing from miserable,” I said quietly. “I watched you talking on the phone to someone. You were laughing and twirling your hair around your fingers as you walked. You must have changed to go out afterward because you were wearing a shirt of yours that I thought was the prettiest one you had. I know I told you that at least a couple of times. I followed you to the bowling alley down the street. You met Kevin Milton there in the parking lot.”
Maren shook her head. “You have got to be kidding me. My one and only date with Kevin Milton was the night that you came back to see me. I can’t even believe it. My dad set that whole thing up. Since he forced me to go, I did my best to make it tolerable.”
“I left before I had to watch anything else,” I said. “But that wasn’t the first time. A couple of years later, Bea let it slip where you had gone to school. I wasn’t allowed to ask anything about you, but apparently you had written something that your dad put in the paper.”
“It was a story about a new club that formed on campus for shifters,” Maren said with another rueful shake of her head. “I barely dated in college, so you can’t tell me that you came to see me, and I was on a date again.”
“No, not that time,” I said. My heart beat against my chest painfully. It hurt to think about the images of Maren from that time. I had wanted so desperately to approach her and talk to her. I had berated myself the entire drive to her school’s campus, but that hadn’t stopped me from waiting for her in the quad. “I told myself that I was going to talk to you that time no matter what. It took me all day long to talk myself into it, but I was determined to go through with it.”
“So what happened?” Maren moved so that she was closer to me. The bubbles still covered all the intimate areas of her body, but they were starting to diminish at a rapid pace. I cleared my throat and glanced in the other direction. This confession was hard enough the way it was.
“I saw you walking with your nose stuck in a book. You looked so much older than the girl I remembered, but yet still exactly the same. I started to walk toward you, and I was about to call out your name when someone else beat me to it. I remember you looked up, and I thought that you saw me. Your face lit up in this huge smile, and it took me a minute to realize that you weren’t looking at me at all. There was a crowd of kids that burst into the common area, and you ran toward them. Everyone started talking at once, and then it was as if the crowd absorbed you from my view. But it was so obvious to me how happy you were. They crowded around you as you all walked off, and I knew that for once, you were the center of attention, and why wouldn’t you be? You were always smart and funny and gorgeous. But when you were friends with me, you were always forced to be in my shadow because I needed to be the one that everyone was looking at. I had to do everything I could to keep the eyes glued on me because for some stupid reason that made me feel better about my sorry life.”
Maren reached up and touched my hand. I stared at it. It was so small compared to mine. She was trying to comfort me just like she always did. I was supposed to be the one taking care of her. No matter what I did, it always seemed like she was taking care of me.
“Lukas, you should have said something to me that day. I would have loved to see you then.”
“That was why your greeting in the hospital a week ago was so warm and fuzzy, right?” It wasn’t fair, and I saw her eyes narrow. This was something else that we did well. Fight. But I didn’t want to fall back into our old patterns; not anymore. I had to open myself up to her and hope for the best. “I’m sorry. You had every right to be upset with me.”
“Maybe if you had started with what you’re telling me now, the conversation would have gone differently,” she said.
“I have spent the last ten years convincing myself you were better off without me,” I said. “Despite everything inside of me that said differently. I believed you deserved better.”
“What was the third time?” she asked softly. “You said that you came to see me three times.”
I sighed. “I was there the day you graduated.”
She looked surprised. Then her expression cha
nged, and she shook her head. “You were there. Of course, you were. I thought I felt somebody watching me that day, but Dad said I was being paranoid.”
“No, that was nothing but your resident shifter stalker checking up on you,” I said. “That was the third and last time. I just had to make sure that you were still happy. I remember thinking your dad actually looked proud of you that day, and I thought that you’d go far. You had the world in front of you. You didn’t need me getting in the way of that.”
Maren rolled her eyes. “I moved back to Greyelf and went to work for my dad. You wouldn’t have interfered with much.”
I sank down onto the floor as we stared at each other, and I was less distracted by the constantly disappearing bubbles. “I’ve told you already that you are an incredibly talented writer, Maren. You are only here in Greyelf because you feel an unnecessary obligation to your old man. You could easily go anywhere to any newspaper or magazine in the country, probably even the world, and get a job without even blinking. You’re that good. So don’t tell me that this town’s rag was your only option.”
She bit her lower lip, and I saw by her expression that she was calculating her next words carefully. For being a writer, Maren wasn’t usually one to mince words when it came to verbalizing how she felt or what she was thinking. That was just another thing that I loved about her.
And that was the crux of the whole thing. I loved Maren Lene. I probably had since the day I first saw her when we were ten years old. But I had been too dumb and wrapped up in my own turmoil to recognize it. By the time I wizened up, the opportunity to tell her how I felt about her had passed me by.
“Lukas, you think that I came back to Greyelf to work for my dad because I felt an obligation to him?”
“Don’t you?”
“The only requirement my dad had for paying for my college degree was that he wanted me to be a journalist. He never said where I had to be a journalist. I had three offers from city newspapers and a national publication before I even started my senior year. I never applied anywhere, and I turned them all down because I wanted to be here in Greyelf.” I felt my chest tighten as I waited for her next words.
“I was waiting for you to come back.”
I leaned across the edge of the tub, and she met me halfway. Our lips touched, and then I reached out to cup the back of her head and turn it to give me better access. As my tongue found hers, I groaned. I wasn’t supposed to be doing this. Not yet. I enjoyed the taste of her a few moments longer, and then I dragged my lips away. I felt a small measure of satisfaction to see that Maren was slightly out of breath.
“Maren, I love you. I want you to know that because it is the God’s honest truth.”
“I love you too,” she said breathlessly.
The words were music to my ears, even though I felt as if I didn’t deserve them. We grinned at each other, and I wondered how in the hell I had gotten so lucky.
“There’s this thing about you mating someone else though,” she said, a frown settling on her face.
“Fuck ‘em,” I said. I twisted my fingers through the tendrils of her hair careful not to tug too hard on them and cause her any pain. “I told you that you just have to trust me. The council has its ideas about what it thinks is the best course of action, but I don’t agree.”
“It’ll start a shifter war,” Maren said. Her tone had gone completely serious. “You are the alpha now, Lukas. You have a whole bunch of people that you need to think about.”
“I know, but that doesn’t mean that the best thing for them is this treaty in this way,” I said. “I just have to offer them different terms that get us to the same end result.” My mind was already racing, but then I saw the worried expression on Maren’s face. “Hey, hey. Whatever happens, this thing between us is going to happen.”
“Can you get me a towel and help me out?” Maren asked. “I’m feeling a little chilly now.”
“You don’t need a towel yet,” I said. Before she could protest, I stood up pulling her with me. She felt so small and fragile in my arms that it scared me to death all over again that I might lose her. I tucked a towel I pulled from the rack around her and took her into the bedroom. I set her on the bed and pulled back the covers. “You need to get some sleep.”
“I don’t want to be here by myself,” she said.
“You won’t be. I’ll be right here,” I said.
She got under the covers and then patted the bed next to her. “Please?”
How could I resist her? She was the only thing I had ever wanted so badly in my life. Removing my robe, I slid into the bed beside her.
CHAPTER EIGHT - Maren
I knew that Lukas was trying to remain a gentleman because he was worried about my injuries. That was sweet and sensible of him. For once though, our roles appeared to be reversed because I didn’t want to be sweet and sensible. I wanted him; all of him.
Hearing him tell me that he loved me was something that I had always wanted, and I still almost couldn’t believe it. He wanted me to trust him, and I was willing to do that. But there was something I wanted in return for that trust.
Lukas crawled into bed with me willingly enough, but he was clearly trying to keep some distance between us. I moved forward and put my hands out so that I could feel the hard muscles of his chest underneath my fingers.
“Babe, you gotta stop doing that. We’re just going to sleep tonight,” Lukas said. His breath sounded ragged though, and I knew that it wouldn’t take much arm-twisting to convince him. All my body’s aches and pains were forgotten. I had one singular need, and only Lukas had the salve that could take this sweet pain away.
“I want this,” I said. “Please, Lukas?”
I moved closer so that my breasts brushed his chest and was rewarded with a long groan. I pushed myself up so my teeth could nip the underside of his chin. I knew I was playing with fire, but I had no intention of getting burned. Not this time.
I felt his muscles tense as his fingertips barely touched my shoulders. I wasn’t sure if it was to pull me closer or push me away, and, for a moment, I don’t think Lukas knew either. So I decided that I wasn’t going to leave the choice up to him anymore. I was a big girl, and dammit, I knew what I wanted.
Sliding my body up his, I enjoyed the exquisite feeling of his rock hard body underneath mine as I pushed him onto his back. This was something I could do to make both of us feel good, and I sure in the hell wasn’t going to let anything stop me.
It still floored me that Lukas had been there watching me in the wings all this time. Somehow, I think I had always known that. It was part of the reason that I decided to come back to Greyelf. Somehow, I thought that my presence, back where it all started, would draw him back to me. The way that he returned wasn’t the way I would have wanted, but that was something to think about for another day. Right now, the only thing that mattered was I was in the arms of the man I loved and who loved me.
It had all been worth it. Every shred of doubt. Every tear. Every time I wracked my brain and cursed his name. I thought that I might not have fully appreciated the experience if it had come easily. Lukas and I would fight for each other now, and that made me bold.
I tasted his bottom lip, and I heard the growl in his chest which told me I was awakening another side of Lukas as well. There wasn’t anything about his animal side that scared me. If anything, I saw his protectiveness of me in that part of him. There was something infinitely wonderful about that feeling.
Lukas wrapped his long arms all the way around my body and squeezed me against him. I loved the feeling of his skin against my skin. I wanted to spend hours exploring every inch of him, and I would. But first things first. I knew what I had to do, and I didn’t think that Lukas would protest.
I kissed him and moved my hips against his until I felt his hardness press against my thigh. No matter what he said, that part of him was more than ready for what I had in mind. I planned to enjoy that part fully, especially after the delightful experie
nce in my living room earlier which had only served to whet my appetite for the main course.
No, that would come soon. I let my mouth slide from his and then began a slow progression of kisses over his temple. I sucked his earlobe and enjoyed the gentle bucking against my hips. My alpha was excited and wanted to move things along, but I kept him pinned down. It wasn’t his turn to take control. Not yet.
As I found the crook of his neck, I paused as I considered what I was about to do. It was something that I didn’t think I’d be able to take back, not even if I wanted to. But as I felt Lukas’s heartbeat under my fingertips, I knew that was the reason why I needed to do it now. Everything was fresh and right. Tomorrow, things would be confusing again. Lukas wanted me to trust him. This was how I would be able to give him that trust.
I bared my teeth and sunk them deep into his skin. I heard his gasp of surprise. I gently lapped my tongue around the marks just as he had done to me. Lukas took my waist and flipped me over onto my back in a flash. I had forgotten how strong he was, and there was something arousing about being with a man who could dominate me so easily. But that wasn’t the way Lukas had ever been when it came to me; he wanted me to come to him willingly, and I had.
He sat over me, his breath coming in hard waves as he stared into my eyes. I felt as if he was looking into my soul. “This is done then,” he said. “You are my mate. Forever.” His eyes were so dark that I thought I might lose myself in them.
“Yes,” I said. My heart threatened to beat right out of my chest. “Yes, Lukas. I am your mate. Forever.”
As his lips crushed mine, I pulled my knees up to lock my legs around his waist. I wanted to culminate every emotion we had just shared physically as well as verbally. It felt right, and if it didn’t happen soon, I was fairly certain I was going to explode from ten years of anticipation.